The voice<\/i> of the story is the point of view from which it is told, and there are three main choices, identified (grammatically) by the personal pronouns used for each, with important sub-categories in the last, as follows:<\/p>\n
1. FIRST PERSON (I or ME): <\/b>When the narrator is speaking directly to the reader, she uses the 1st<\/sup> person POV, and the pronouns I and me. The first person POV is used for nonfiction narratives such as autobiographies, memoirs, and personal essays, but more and more for fiction, too. Some notable examples of the use of the 1st<\/sup> person narrative in fiction would be Herman Melville\u2019s Moby Dick <\/i>(\u201cCall me Ishmael.\u201d) and F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s The Great Gatsby <\/i>(\u201cIn my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I\u2019ve been turning over in my mind ever since.\u201d)<\/p>\n 2. SECOND PERSON (YOU): <\/b>This POV is rarely used in fiction because it can have an unsettling effect on the reader:<\/p>\n You wake up, the room is dark. You find your way to the bathroom and turn on the light, eyeing yourself in the mirror. You look the same, but something is wrong.<\/i><\/p>\n Italo Calvino\u2019s If on a Winter\u2019s Night a Traveler <\/i>(1979), <\/i>Jay McInerney\u2019s Bright Lights, Big City <\/i>(1984), <\/i>and Jeffrey Eugenides\u2019s The Virgin Suicides <\/i>(1993) are\u00a0<\/i>noteworthy 2nd<\/sup> person novels, but there are not many others that come to mind.<\/p>\n 3. THIRD PERSON (HE, SHE, THEY)<\/span>: <\/b>This is the most versatile POV, and while most beginning writers feel more comfortable writing in the 1st<\/sup> Person POV, that voice is limited in that you can only tell the story from the perspective of one character. If your character isn\u2019t in the scene, there is no scene. You can only write about what your character sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells. True, this will be your main character, but you will see that the 3rd<\/sup> person POV is much more versatile, and does not chain you to that one character in terms of storytelling.<\/p>\n There are three sub-categories of 3rd<\/sup> Person POV, as follows:<\/p>\n A. 3rd<\/sup> Person Omniscient: <\/b>The 3rd<\/sup> Person Omniscient POV is the POV of the god of the story\u2019s universe: he knows everything about the universe of this story. He knows what the main character had for breakfast this morning. He knows what the main character had for breakfast on her 13th<\/sup> birthday. He knows what the main character\u2019s best friend had for breakfast on that same morning. He knows what the main character\u2019s great-grandfather had for breakfast on the shores of Normandy on D-Day in World War II. There is nothing<\/span> the omniscient 3rd<\/sup> person narrator does not know about the universe of this story.<\/p>\n Examples of 3rd<\/sup> Person Omniscient in fiction include Louisa May Alcott\u2019s Little Women <\/i>(1868), Leo Tolstoy\u2019s Anna Karenina <\/i>(1873), and George Eliot\u2019s Middlemarch <\/i>(1874) [and for the record \u2018George Eliot\u2019 was the pen name of Mary Anne\u00a0 [later Marian] Evans).<\/p>\n These days the 3rd<\/sup> Person Omniscient is not used as much as the 3rd<\/sup> Person Limited (discussed below) for several reasons. First, it\u2019s a difficult POV to master, and it\u2019s easy to go astray and make mistakes that will alienate your reader. Beginners who think they are writing a 3rd<\/sup> Person Omniscient narrative actually wind up writing a narrative with multiple 3rd<\/sup> Person Limited POVs (called Head-Hopping<\/i>, more on this later). The result is not<\/span> an interesting and well-integrated story with useful information where it is needed, but a jumble of mixed points of view that confuse the reader.<\/p>\n Another pitfall in using the 3rd<\/sup> Person Omniscient POV is the narrative distance between the narrator and the reader. In the 1st<\/sup> person the distance is quite small, the narrator is as close to the reader as she can be, talking directly to the reader: Hi, this is me<\/span> talking to you. I\u2019m right here<\/span>! <\/i>With the omniscient 3rd<\/sup> Person POV the narrator is at a greater distance, looking down on the universe; it\u2019s difficult to pull off, and these days the 3rd<\/sup> Person Limited POV has been favored, especially for the short story form. (And the 1st<\/sup> Person POV is still popular, as well.)<\/p>\n B. 3rd<\/sup> Person Limited POV<\/span><\/b>:<\/b><\/p>\n In the 3rd<\/sup> Person Limited, we are almost<\/span> as close to the reader as in the 1st<\/sup> Person POV, though somewhat removed:<\/p>\n Kristen watched the man standing on the sidewalk. Why didn\u2019t he come inside? Why didn\u2019t he ring her buzzer? The tea kettle began to whistle and she let it whistle and stood by the window. An hour earlier she had wondered if he would show up at all. Now he was here, right outside the door. The kettle reached a pitch and began to scream. Kristen turned away from the window and hurried to the kitchen as the whistle reached a peak, the steam flying from the hole in the lid, and as she reached for the knob to lower the flame the buzzer rang in the hallway.<\/i>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n Your reader is inside the character\u2019s head, so the narrative distance between narrator and reader is still very small, very \u2018close.\u2019 For that reason, this POV is also called a Close 3rd<\/sup> Person POV<\/b>, meaning that the reader is very close to the character.<\/p>\n But returning, for a moment, to the narrative distance of the Omniscient 3rd<\/sup> Person POV, the distance is much greater, the reader is not<\/span> inside the character\u2019s head, but further away, standing on a mountaintop, holding stone tablets, depicting the story\u2019s events from a distance. This is a difficult POV to master and, as I say, it is little used these days. My advice is to stick to the Limited 3rd<\/sup> Person POV, it\u2019s versatile, and much easier to master. One caveat: avoid \u2018Head-Hopping.\u2019 What is head-hopping<\/i>?<\/p>\n Head-Hopping: <\/b>Head-hopping happens in a short story when a narrator jumps from a Close 3rd<\/sup> Person POV of one character to a Close 3rd<\/sup> Person POV of another character. In Novels this is permitted, because there are chapter breaks that make it less confusing. Also, a novel supports multiple characters and subplots, etc. A short story, though, is a different animal: it needs one main character, and therefore only one close 3rd<\/sup> person narrative POV. So if you are writing a short story from the 3rd<\/sup> Person Limited POV, stay with the main character<\/span>, do not jump to the Limited POV of another character. Why? Because your reader wants to know who to root for. A short story should have one protagonist, one conflict. In a novel, we can have several, or many. But again, there is the expedient of chapter breaks to allow the reader to \u2018reboot,\u2019 so to speak, and accommodate a different Point-Of-View. In a Short Story there must be only one main character, and we want to know who that is, and we want to root for her. C. 3rd<\/sup> Person Objective POV (Fly on the Wall):<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n The 3rd<\/sup> Person Objective POV is also called the Fly on the Wall POV because the reader feels like a fly on the wall: she can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell everything the characters can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, but that\u2019s all. It is a completely OBJECTIVE narrative perspective, there is nothing SUBJECTIVE provided by the narrator, meaning no comments, no opinions, no judgments, nothing<\/span>. Just the facts. Our exemplary story at the end of this chapter, Hemingway\u2019s \u201cHills Like White Elephants,\u201d is a perfect example of this POV.<\/p>\n *Note: This is another very difficult POV to master. Why? One of our prompts below will test your ability to write a completely objective narrative. It\u2019s not easy, but you will be able to try this out for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The voice of the story is the point of view from which it is told, and there are three main choices, identified (grammatically) by the personal pronouns used for each, with important sub-categories in the last, as follows: 1. FIRST PERSON (I or ME): When the narrator is speaking directly to the reader, she uses the 1st person POV, and Continue reading III. POINT OF VIEW<\/span>
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