Erik’s Point of View on Point of View
- Erik Harper Klass
- 18 hours ago
- 19 min read
A work of writing typically employs one or more points of view (POVs). POV is the position or perspective from which a narrative is told or experienced. Below are the four main POVs we see in contemporary literature, listed in order of popularity. (I’ll get into some challenges of identifying POVs—especially when they blend or vary within a piece—later.)
First person (“I”): The narrator in first person POV is typically an active character in the story-world (and often the narrative’s protagonist).
Third person (“he/she/they”): The narrator in third person POV is—at least ostensibly—not part of the story-world. I’ll discuss the three types of third person POV—limited, omniscient, and objective—in detail below.
Second person (“you”): The narrator in second person POV primarily addresses a “you” (often the reader).
Fourth person (“we”): This POV is similar to first person, but instead of a singular “I,” the narrator uses a plural of them (that is, “we”).
As usual with my essays on style and craft, most of the following examples will come from my “textbook”: The Penguin Book of the Modern Short Story, ed. John Freeman (New York: Penguin Press, 2021). I’ll also use this book for some rough statistics about the relative popularity of the above POVs, and I’ll list the Penguin stories for each POV (at the end of each section below); feel free to use these lists to dig deeper into any of the POVs.
First Person
Roughly half of the stories (18 of 37) in the Penguin book are in first person POV. These are easy to spot: just look for “I/me/my” (excluding dialogue). A couple quick examples (needless to say, the bold text is mine):
Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right … — Toni Cade Bambara, “The Lesson,” 1
My father is eighty-six … —Grace Pale, “A Conversation with My Father,” 10 (note that the title gives the POV away a priori)
First person POV is hard to get wrong. Most writers effortlessly, without much fuss, manage to inhabit the minds of their first-person narrators. I shan’t discuss it further.
First Person Stories in the Penguin Book
“The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, “A Conversation with My Father” by Grace Paley, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich, “Story” by Lydia Davis, “Pet Milk” by Stuart Dybek, “River of Names” by Dorothy Allison, “Emergency” by Denis Johnson, “Sticks” by George Saunders, “Fiesta, 1980” by Junot Díaz, “Silence” by Lucia Berlin, “The Hermit’s Story” by Rick Bass, “The Penthouse” by Andrew Holleran, “The Conductor” by Aleksandar Hemon, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu, “The Great Silence” by Ted Chiang, and “The Midnight Zone” by Lauren Groff.
Third Person POV
As mentioned above, third person POV is a narrative position or perspective that incorporates the pronouns “he/she/they.” It is, as suggested in the Penguin book, about as popular in contemporary prose as first person (18 of the 37 stories in the Penguin book).
Below are the three types of third person POV. I’ll cover these one at a time:
Third person limited omniscient (close third)
Third person omniscient (or unlimited omniscient)
Third person objective
1. Third Person Limited Omniscient (Close Third)
Some other descriptors for this POV include third person limited (sans omniscient), restricted third person, and close third. Hereon, to avoid nomenclatural confusion, and because I like brevity, I’ll mostly use the last (and shortest) of these: close third.
Close third is now (’twas not always thus) the most common of the third person POVs (12 of 37 stories in the Penguin book: 32% of all POVs and 67% of third person POVs). Brace yourself: because of the popularity of close third, and the fact that it’s sadly often bungled, I’m going to spend no small amount of time on it.
The important thing about close third is this: the narrator senses and imagines the world through only one character’s perspective (at a time). (If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like first person POV, you would be correct.)
Close third is usually made clear right away in a story, often in the first sentence. Here’s the opening of Raymond Carver’s “Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes”:
It had been two days since Evan Hamilton had stopped smoking … (25)
Mentioning a character’s name, of course, doesn’t guarantee we’re in close third—the writer might choose to narrate from other minds later, or even present a first person narrator—but because of the ubiquity of close third POV, it feels like close third at this point. Our expectations have been set. But we need to keep reading …
In this opening sentence, we eventually experience Hamilton’s feelings. Officially entering Hamilton’s mind further strengthens the likelihood that the piece is in close third:
… and it seemed to him everything he’d said and thought for the two days somehow suggested cigarettes. (25)
As we continue reading, the story offers clue after clue that the narrator is inhabiting Hamilton’s—and, importantly, only Hamilton’s—mind:
Hamilton saw an orchard, and then they turned another corner onto a dead-end street. He hadn’t known the existence of this street and was sure he would not recognize any of the people who lived here. He looked around him at the unfamiliar houses and was struck by the range of his son’s personal life. (27)
Again, it’s important to note that we (readers) understand the world subjectively through Hamilton’s senses, thoughts, and feelings. And the sensing/thinking/feeling of other characters is strictly avoided (except indirectly through dialogue or Hamilton’s own suppositions).
Here is the first sentence of “The Flowers” by Alice Walker:
It seemed to Myop as she skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had never been as beautiful as these. … (36, italics in the original)
Once again, the first sentence, which reveals how Myop feels, strongly suggests a close third POV.
Another interesting example of close third POV is “Water Child” by Edwidge Danticat. While, as mentioned, close third is usually signaled very early in a story, sometimes writers delay the revelation. In this piece, Danticat doesn’t offer any character interiority until the second paragraph of the second section: “Every time she read the letter, she tried to find something else between the lines …” (311). But this interiority is clear. And once again, the writer maintains the POV throughout.
Multiple Close Third
When a writer switches POV between characters in the middle of a story, but (1) carefully maintains a close third POV for each character and (2) offers fairly clear signals for the POV switches (such as section or chapter breaks), we still call the POV close third. I’ve seen this called multiple or alternating third person limited omniscient; I’ll use multiple close third.
“The Reencounter” by Isaac Bashevis Singer offers an interesting case study of multiple close third. The story begins with “Dr. Max Greitzer” (first sentence). It might take us a while to figure things out (the piece could always turn out to be another POV), but we enter Greitzer’s—and only Greitzer’s—mind from time to time (e.g., “Dr. Greitzer understood what she meant” (52)). It certainly feels like a standard single-character close third.
But we come to a section break on page 54—the section break is a clue—and for the rest of the story we seem to be in the mind of a new character, Liza. Interestingly, the POV is not made clear for a page or so after the break (it’s mostly dialogue), but we have confirmation on page 56 (“Liza listened to herself”).
To be honest, I don’t love using this story as a model of multiple close third POV. Most writers, including the very best, mark their POV shifts by immediately using the new protagonist’s name and clearly entering this character’s mind. Jhumpa Lahiri is one of my favorite multiple close third writers. Though her story in the Penguin book, alas, is a single-character close third, I recommend tracking down her “Unaccustomed Earth” for a masterclass in close third. Olive Kitteridge (interconnected short stories) by Elizabeth Strout is another great example of multiple close third. Finally, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and The Hours by Michael Cunningham are two well-known novels written in multiple close third.
Rules for Close Third
I mentioned above that close third POV mirrors first person POV insofar as the narrator is limited to experiencing the world through only one character’s mind (at a time). While the sound of the prose of these two POVs is obviously different, the reading experience—especially in retrospect—is often quite similar. If you allow enough time to pass after reading a work in close third, and then ask yourself to name the POV, you might guess first person. It turns out that inhabiting the mind of one character feels a lot like inhabiting the mind of one character.
So, thus, close third and first person POVs follow very similar rules. (Again, writers usually follow these rules naturally when they write in first person, but this is not the case, I’ve found, in close third.)
Rule One: Stay out of the minds of other characters.
Yes, for standard close third POV, we must stay in one mind. For example, our narrator cannot know unequivocally what other characters are thinking or feeling. The narrator may take some guesses. Bob seemed angry. … Sue, surely, was ready to leave. … He knew deep down Stephen would never call again. … Those added words—seemed, surely, knew deep down—maintain the POV. Bob is probably angry. Sue is probably ready to leave. It’s quite likely Stephen will never call (the narrator just kind of “knows” it). But the narrator is not entirely certain of these things.
Rule Two: Stay out of the minds of all non-characters (including the writer).
Taking the first rule above one step further, the story should not include any information that the narrator simply cannot know, including information beyond the story-world (such as, for example, the writing of the story itself). The narrator must be present (and conscious) for every scene.
Rule Three: Avoid (most) physical descriptions of the protagonist.
If the narrator is experiencing the world through the mind of one character (as I did above, for convenience, let’s call this character the protagonist), it’s unlikely we should come across lengthy descriptions of the protagonist’s appearance. This applies especially to the face (unless the protagonist happens to be looking in a mirror).
So I would consider the following a minor POV breach: Her face turned bright red. A better option: She felt her face turn bright red. The difference here is subtle, but important. (This is clichéd writing in any case; I’m just giving an example!)
Rule Four: The language should (often) match the protagonist’s.
Once again, think about first person. If your protagonist is a young child, she (via the narrator) is probably not going to discuss the ontology of spatiality. On the other hand, if your protagonist is a college professor of philosophy, she’s probably not going to discuss that totally weird-ass feeling of, you know, existing.
Furthermore, if you’re writing in multiple close third, it’s often helpful to differentiate the prose styles of your characters. Imagine, for example, the possibility for stylistic differentiation as we move from the girl to the philosophy professor above. Not only are these stylistic changes kind of hip, but they’ll also help the reader understand that we’ve jumped from one mind to another. (When writers write in multiple first person POV, these changes in the prose style seem to come naturally.)
How to Fix POV Breaches in Close Third
I sometimes call POV mistakes in close third “breaches” (as I did once above). We’ve breached the border between one mind and another. The good news is that fixes are usually fairly straightforward.
The easiest fix (for so many things in writing!) is to cut. This may be hard to do, especially if you’re losing important content, but it’s obviously better than maintaining the breach (which could sink the whole ship).
Another fix is to simply shift the work to a third person omniscient POV, in which the narrator may inhabit many minds more or less at once (see below). I recommend this fix basically never. Third person omniscient not only risks dating your writing (close third is considerably more popular these days), but it’s also a difficult POV to get right. Few writers nail it. In any case, I’ll discuss it below.
Finally, occasional breaches can usually be fixed with small rewrites. I’ll give you some examples below. (For these examples, assume that our close third protagonist is Mary.)
likely breach: Bob was overjoyed to come along to the fair.
The narrator enters Bob’s mind to reveal his joy; hence the breach (we’re supposed to be in Mary’s mind). Most of the following fixes soften the claim:
fixed: Mary could tell Bob was overjoyed to come along to the fair.
fixed: It seemed Bob was overjoyed to come along to the fair.
fixed: Bob appeared overjoyed to come along to the fair.
fixed: Mary knew Bob was overjoyed to come along to the fair.
Or simply show Bob’s joy, through actions or dialogue, to avoid jumping into anyone’s mind (both of the following, the reader assumes, are witnessed by our protagonist, Mary):
fixed: Bob glowed when Mary said he could come along to the fair. He ran up the stairs, came down in his best suit, and with a permanent smile etched onto his face.
fixed: “Yes, I’d love to come along to the fair!” Bob said.
How to Approach Writing in Close Third
When you sit down to write in close third, embody your protagonist—that is, so to speak, become this character. Treat this transformation like a prewriting ceremony of sorts. Get into the mood, in other words. Of course, following the rules above is essential, but usually, when you’ve gone through the routine of embodying your protagonist, the rules take care of themselves.
Third Person Limited Omniscient (Close Third) Stories in the Penguin Book
“Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes” by Raymond Carver, “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, “The Reencounter” by Isaac Bashevis Singer (multiple close third), “China” by Charles Johnson, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, “The Fix” by Percival Everett, “Water Child” by Edwidge Danticat, “The American Embassy” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Dune” by Stephen King, “Diem Perdidi” by Julie Otsuka, and “Anyone Can Do It” by Manuel Muñoz.
2. Third Person Omniscient
Third person omniscient POV means that the narrator can experience the story-world through any or all characters, and even none of the characters (that is, the narrator may describe things and experience emotions beyond the purview of all characters in the story-world). The narrator is like an all-knowing (omniscient) god.
While third person omniscient POV offers great flexibility for the writer, it is not an easy POV to get right. Below are the common problems:
jumping around among the characters’ minds too much, or with too little warning or clarity, creating ambiguity or confusion
excessive telling or explaining (with so much to know, there’s a temptation for writers to over-tell)
uninteresting voice or lack of prose style
frequent (but not clearly intentional) breaking of the “fourth wall” (between the writing-world and the story-world)
archaic prose sound (third person omniscient is somewhat—but only somewhat—“out of fashion”)
For the above reasons, if you’re going to write in third person, I usually recommend sticking to close third. But … third person omniscient does show up, sometimes wonderfully (it is used four times in the Penguin book (11% of all stories)). Let’s look at some examples:
In “Taking Care,” Joy Williams begins with what feels like a close third POV (“[Jones] is baffled …”), but in the second section (and paragraph), the narrator suddenly knows the future—“[Jones’s wife] is going to Mexico, where soon, in the mountains, she will have a nervous breakdown”—and, importantly, “Jones does not know this …” (59).
But then a few lines later, we’re back in Jones’s mind (“To Jones, this is a graceful thought”). And in the next paragraph, on page 60, we experience the world through Jones’s wife’s mind. The transitions between characters (and occasionally away from all characters) are too fluid for a label of close third multiple. While, no question, the story is mostly Jones’s, it’s safe to call the POV third person omniscient.
In “Salvador Late or Early” by Sandra Cisneros, again the piece at first sounds like close third. Our focus is on only one character—“Salvador with eyes the color of caterpillar” (123). But even that first sentence is a clue that this might not be close third—as mentioned above, a narrator in close third would not likely describe the protagonist’s own eyes. Indeed, by the end of the story, when Salvador “[g]rows small and smaller … before disappearing like a memory of kites,” it becomes clear that an omniscient narrator is telling the story.
In third person omniscient POV, we might tend to feel a sense of fluttering around (and within (and without)) the consciousnesses of multiple characters. (Again, this can be tricky to pull off, which is why I often discommend this POV.) Note the page numbers of the following examples from “The Twenty-seventh Man” by Nathan Englander:
The agent in charge felt his strength was in leadership. (202)
Vasily Korinsky, who, seeing no way out, was prepared to exit his bedroom quietly … (202)
The two agents were not enthusiastic about the task. (203)
[Zunser] fancied the picture had a moroseness to it … (204)
That’s at least four characters’ inner thoughts and feelings in only a couple of pages. Clearly, this is a third person omniscient POV.
Finally, one of my favorite stories in the Penguin book is “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff. Once again, this one feels like close third at first, but once the narrator starts discussing the path of a bullet in Anders’s brain (whence the story’s title, of course) on page 224, not to mention the many things Anders “did not remember,” it’s clear a close third narrator is not telling this story.
Third Person Omniscient vs. Close Third Multiple
As suggested above, there can be a bit of a gray area between third person omniscient and close third multiple. If a piece has section breaks between POVs, and if we’re always in at least one of the character’s minds (no god-like narrator describing things the characters could not experience), it’s safe to call the POV close third multiple. But what if a writer uses paragraphs (not sections) to switch POVs throughout the story? And what if the switches are frequent, and the POVs are not sustained for long (perhaps the paragraphs are short)? This story should probably be called third person omniscient.
Deciding between third person omniscient and close third multiple can sometimes be a close call. But clearly, if the author is jumping around like crazy, especially within paragraphs, or if we ever leave all characters’ minds completely, we’ll call the work third person omniscient.
Third Person Omniscient Stories in the Penguin Book
“Taking Care” by Joy Williams, “Salvador Late or Early” by Sandra Cisneros, “The Twenty-seventh Man” by Nathan Englander, and “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff.
3. Third Person Objective
The last of our third person POVs is called third person objective. This is the least popular of the three types (used in only two stories in the Penguin book, or less than one percent).
Third person objective is the fly-on-the-wall POV mentioned above. Like a fly, the narrator cannot enter the minds of any characters. The narrator merely observes and records. This is not to say the narrator won’t provide information that might suggest a character’s thinking or feeling, using the same strategies discussed above for close third POV. We probably won’t see: “Bob was anxious.” But we might see: “Bob seemed anxious.” Or, better, the writer might show it: “Bob bounced his leg up and down, a million miles an hour. He couldn’t sit still.”
Sometimes the difference between third person objective and third person omniscient is subtle. Going back to “Salvador Late or Early,” much of the story could be told by a fly on the wall (no mind reading). But there are indications of the narrator’s knowledge of Salvador’s interiority—e.g., “in that cage of the chest where something throbs with both fists and knows only what Salvador knows” (124)—to make clear we have a god here, not a fly. For a story to perfectly fit the third person objective label, we must steer clear of the inner thinking of all characters.
Since there are only two third person objective stories in the Penguin book, I’ll discuss both. In the first, “The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag, the entire story objectively reports what various people say. “At first he was just losing weight, he felt a little ill, Max said to Ellen, and he didn’t call for an appointment with his doctor, according to Greg …” (102), and so it goes. We never enter the minds of these characters (doing so would make this third person omniscient). We are flies on the wall, hearing what has been spoken (or “pointed out” or “admitted to” or “avowed,” etc.).
“The Last Thing We Need” by Claire Vaye Watkins is an epistolary story (composed of letters). I decided to add this to the third person objective category because we readers observe the letters as if we were flies (yes, literate flies, but you get the point). But each letter is written by a single character, who, unsurprisingly, writes using “I/me.” Thus, one might label the piece first person POV, and point out that the POV is merely disguised formally by the letters. (The letters are addressed to a “you,” so even second person (see below) might be a temptation.)
There may not be a perfect POV label for this story. Except within the frame of the letters themselves, the story doesn’t feel to me like first (or second) person. Maybe epistolary stories should have their own special POV label. Or let’s just call them composites. I added this story here, I suppose, to keep the Sontag piece from getting lonely (and you can see how one must grasp at straws sometimes to find examples of the relatively unpopular third person objective POV).
Third Person Objective Stories in the Penguin Book
“The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag and “The Last Thing We Need” by Claire Vaye Watkins (maybe).
Second Person
In second person POV, the narrator extensively uses the pronoun “you.” If a work only occasionally uses “you”—e.g., “You understand …” “You, dear reader…”—the work generally doesn’t warrant a second person designation. Moreover, if another POV is present—most commonly first person—this POV will usually supersede the second person.
Over the past decade or two, second person has been relatively popular in contemporary prose writing (despite there being only one example in the Penguin book). That said, I sense there’s been something of a movement away from second person in recent years. Perhaps it has simply become too popular. Perhaps it’s just the natural pendulum swing of trends. I’m not against second person POV, but know that it’s been done and it’s been done and it’s been done. But when done right (as with all of these POVs), it can work wonderfully.
While sometimes second person may address a real character, one lurking somewhere off the page, this POV often never clarifies a singular or concrete intended recipient. The “you” is universal. It is you, the reader! “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid (the one story in the Penguin book that uses second person) offers a good example of this. The first sentence sounds like a command, with an implied “you”: “Wash the white clothes on Monday …” (38). We need to read a few more lines before “you” becomes explicit: “… soak your little clothes right after you take them off …”
At no point in the Kincaid story, with the possible exception of one clause in italics, do we enter the mind of “you” (or anyone else). But writers often do allow their narrators to jump into the minds of these “you”s, creating an effect for the reader similar to first person and close third.
One of my favorite examples of second person POV is Italo Calvino’s novel If on a winter’s night a traveler (Harcourt, 1981 (translation)). The novel begins: “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. …” (3). (Yes, this novel is very cool.) Eventually, the narrator enters the mind of “you”: “But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed …” (5). “You derive a special pleasure from a just-published book …” (6). And so on.
While the Kincaid story above reads something like a self-help book, second person writing can also feel similar to a “choose your own adventure” book, as is the case with the Calvino novel. We readers are, in a way, unconsciously “tricked” into believing we’re part of the story. We know, of course, that we’re not the actual “you” being addressed, but somehow we start to feel like this you. It’s an interesting effect.
Yes, because of possible overuse, writing in second person carries with it some risks (it can sound like you’re doing something different just to do something different (and it ain’t that different anymore)), but it can still be an effective POV.
Second Person Story in the Penguin Book
“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid.
Fourth Person
Fourth person POV is really just a fancy way of saying “first person plural.” In other words, the writer uses a collective “we” as the primary pronoun. There are, unfortunately, no examples of fourth person in the Penguin book, which gives you some idea of its popularity.
Despite this lack of popularity—or perhaps because of it—I love fourth person POV. It immediately differentiates a piece of writing (more so than second person). It feels something like first person, but instead of experiencing the depths of one character’s psyche, we experience the shallows (rarely the depths) of many. Because the narrator inhabits multiple minds at once, I often feel a sense—a pleasant sense—of disassociation.
There are many wonderful examples of fourth person POV. Two of my favorites are The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides (1993) and Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris (2007). The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka (Anchor Books, 2022) is another. It begins:
The pool is located deep underground, in a large cavernous chamber many feet beneath the streets of our town. Some of us come here because we are injured, and need to heal. We suffer from bad backs, fallen arches, shattered dreams, broken hearts, anxiety, melancholia, anhedonia, the usual aboveground afflictions. … (3)
Otsuka maintains the fourth person POV throughout several chapters (other chapters are in second person). The challenge of fourth person seems to be that many writers fail (wittingly or not) to sustain it. Sooner or later, they want to leave the collective experience of the group and jump into one mind (for example, see George Saunders’s “Sticks” in the Penguin book). But embracing fourth person throughout a work can create a fresh sound to your prose.
Blending and Variations
The POVs above are not always separated by clear lines of demarcation. For example, take “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin (17ff.). The POV is first person (the “I” shows up in the third paragraph, and continues off and on throughout), but the story includes quite a bit of apparent second person (“you”), more than I usually see in first or third person. E.g., “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No?” (21). Furthermore, the story often “feels” like third person (especially in retrospect). The narrator is somewhat distant. We never really get to know them (gender, etc.). One could—with the right skills, and with the hopeful forgiveness of the literary gods—rewrite this story in third person in less than an hour, and I suspect it would still, for the most part, “feel” like the same story.
So we sometimes have to make a judgement call on POV. (For the record, my call for “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is that it’s in first person.)
When it comes to POV, the blurriness described above, I think, is fine. Take some chances. Challenge your readers. I suppose the most important rule is this: know what you’re doing. This means, by extension, that it should be very clear to the reader that you’re intentionally writing in, for example, a somewhat distant first person, with frequent dabs of second person, all giving a (remembered or felt) impression of third person objective. The greater your command of writing, the more you should feel free to “mess around.” No sane human would question Le Guin’s skill (or intentions) as a writer. She can mess around to her heart’s content.
But if you’re just getting started as a writer, or if you’re writing is, for the most part, fairly “tame” or “conventional” or “unexperimental” (I’m using these terms free of pejorative, I really am), then I recommend sticking to one clear POV (probably first person or close third). Blending (or changing) POVs midstream often comes across not as mastery, but as mistakery.
Summary
Phew. That was a lot. I hope you found it helpful. For something as important (and as frequently flubbed, based on my editing experiences) as POV, I think it’s worth taking the time to get this stuff right. The above is a good place to start—please especially review the “rules” for close third (third person limited)—but, as usual, I recommend you supplement my discussion with the many great stories in the Penguin book, and beyond.
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