Point-of-view [POV] is like the air quality of a novel – it affects everything that happens and how you access it, and yet if it’s working properly, you likely don’t notice it at all. I also find that it’s something newer writers struggle to control. In trying to find clear and useful breakdowns of the different POVS to point my students to, I’ve never quite found the thing I was looking for. So here it is!
Therefore, this is probably the most nuts-and-bolts of all of these lessons. I’m going to break down the various POVS, include some examples, and share ideas about when you might most want to use each. I do this because it’s a deceptively tricky part of crafting a narrative – often in an early draft, POV will leap all over the place without the author being fully in control of it.
What point of view (POV) should you use for your novel?
Let’s break them down real quick.
