Learn About the Different Types of POV (+Head-Hopping)

Today we’re going to be talking about a topic all writers have questions about at one point or another—and that is POV.

POV stands for “point of view.” It is the perspective through which you tell your story’s narrative. Specifically, we’re going to talk about which “person” you might want to use when choosing your POV. By that, what’s meant is either you’re going to choose to tell the story through first-person, second-person, third-person, or omniscient.

There are many other questions that come up around POV, such as which characters’ POVs you should choose to filter story through, but that’s a whole other topic. I recommend the books Characters, Emotions, and Viewpoints by Nancy Kress and Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card.

Today, we will cover the differences and the advantages and the disadvantages of these different approaches to POV.

Types of POV

To get us started, let’s go over each one quickly, and then we will talk about some of the reasons you might or might not choose them, depending on the type of story you’re writing. At the end, we’re also going to talk just a little bit about head hopping.

Second-Person POV

I want to talk about second-person POVs first, since they’re the easiest to cover. Second-person is when you would tell a story using the pronoun “you,” as if telling the story is from the perspective of the reader.

For example, “you are opening the door, you are doing this thing, you are fighting in the battle,” whatever the case may be.

Obviously, this is quite unusual. You see this very rarely within books, and it’s almost always gimmicky. There are only a couple novels relatively well-known for having used it. One is Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. Another is If on a Winter’s Night… by Italo Calvino.

Second-person is an interesting approach. It’s kind of like the Choose Your Own Adventure stories you may have read as a kid. It’s highly stylistic and therefore can be quite gimmicky. As a result, it’s used very rarely and isn’t recommended for most fiction, particularly mainstream fiction. However, it’s good to be aware of it because it is out there.

That leaves the two main and most popular points of view you can use. These are the two that are seen and used most often.

First-Person POV

The first is first-person, in which you use the pronoun “I,” telling the story from the protagonist’s point of view.

For example, “I went through the door, I bought groceries.”

Third-Person POV

This is contrast to third-person, in which you’re using pronouns like “he” or “she” or “they” to tell what’s going on/

For example, “he knocked on the door, and she opened the door.”

For all intents and purposes, first- and third-person are actually quite similar to execute. The advantages or disadvantages that you might gain from the way you write the story in a deep third-person POV is very similar to those of a first-person POV. The only major difference is the pronouns. In these POVs, what you’re trying to achieve is the effect that the entire story is more or less being told through the thoughts and the voice of the narrating character.

Again, this can be very stylistic in the sense that the voice you’re trying to create on the page is the character’s voice. It’s the same voice the character would use when speaking dialogue, only you’re in his or her head. You can still share what they’re actually thinking through direct thoughts which are told in present tense and usually italicized or something like that, but in these deep POVs everything that’s coming across the page is from the character’s point of view.

Tips & Tricks for Writing in First-Person POV

First-person is always deep. It’s always right there inside the character’s head. Every word is intended to be seen as the character’s point of view. Because of this, first-person is the most intimate of all of the POVs. It puts the readers right there in the character’s head. Sometimes that’s exactly what you want. That level of intimacy between readers and characters rarely a bad thing. You want readers to identify with the characters and understand what they’re thinking and feeling.

This particular approach is very popular right now in romance, alternating first-person POVs between the two love interests. Just because you’re writing in first-person doesn’t mean the whole story has to be told from the same POV. You just have to make it very clear when you switch—which is usually done chapter by chapter, with a heading on at the beginning of the chapter indicating which character’s POV you’re in.

The more advanced side of the technique is that, ideally, you want readers to be able to tell which POV they’re in just because the characters’ voices are distinct. That can get tricky because ultimately it’s all your voice. The more personalized each of the voices in a multi first-person narrative, then the more characterized those people become. They pop off the page as dimensional and separate people, rather than just kind of facets of same person with the same voice and the same personality.

Downsides of First-Person POV

One of the downsides of first-person is basically too much intimacy. There are stories in which maybe you don’t want readers to be that close to a character. This could be for a number of reasons. It could be because the character is so unsavory, readers won’t enjoy being in this person’s head. That’s not always true because obviously there are stories about horrible people, in which it can be fascinating to explore a dark psyche.

1. Can Make Unlikable Characters Even More Unpalatable

I actually think the most complicated characters for deep or for first-person POVs are characters that in between: they’re not entirely lovable, but they’re also not fascinatingly evil. Their foibles are more along the lines of pride or self-obsession or insecurity. If that’s not handled just right, that can become very grating within a first-person POV, because all the bad things the character may be thinking either about themselves or others is just constantly there in the reader’s face. Sometimes that’s fine. Sometimes that’s part of what the character is working through in the story. But be aware that sometimes first-person can actually have the unintended effect of distancing readers from the character, simply because they don’t like the character that much. In these instances, the character might actually be more likable if there was a little more distance in the narrative.

2. Can Give Away Plot Twists Too Early

Another limitation of first-person is that sometimes you don’t want readers to know what’s happening in the character’s head. For example, maybe the character knows something and you don’t want the reader to know it. There are definitely ways to get around this when you’re writing a deep POV.

Generally speaking, you do want readers to know what your character knows, so they can advance through the story with the the characters and identify with them as the story progresses. However, there are definitely stories where you don’t want readers to know. And in those instances, first-person might not be your best choice.

3. Can Create a Flat Narrative Tone

If you don’t have a really good voice for the character-–if it’s flat or monotone—then first person is probably not your best choice. This is not always true. But generally speaking, this can flatline your entire narrative in a way that wouldn’t necessarily happen in a different kind of POV. First-person can sometimes lend itself to staccato prose, which will just be exacerbated by flatness in the narrative voice.

If you’re going to write in first-person, find a character or create a voice for a character that’s really interesting, that is lively and has personality and isn’t a monotone recording of what they see and what they do and how their thoughts are reacting.

Tips & Tricks for Writing in Third-Person POV

Third-person can be quite similar to first-person if you’re doing a deep POV. One of the advantages of third-person is that it’s quite flexible. You can do a lot with third-person. Again, third-person is where you are telling a story about someone else. You’re using third-person pronouns like “he” or “she.” That is how you’re addressing the POV character.

If you’re going deep with a third-person POV, then you’re essentially just as deep in their head as with first-person, reporting what they’re experiencing and what they’re thinking and feeling in pretty much the same way. Again, you can do direct thoughts that are italicized, but you don’t have to because the whole narrative is still in their voice. It’s coming through the character. In contrast to first-person, you’ve just chosen to take that one little step back and use third-person pronouns instead of first-person pronouns.

There’s a whole gamut of depth and shallowness you can play with within third-person POV. You may choose to go really deep and be completely inside a character’s head, or you may choose to draw back to varying degrees and not be so deep in their head. In the latter case, you’d still be using the third-person pronouns and reporting what they’re doing, but you’re not so deep in their head and you can still tell what they’re thinking. You share that with readers, but it becomes more that you are reporting their thoughts rather than that you’re recording them through their voice.

In most stories, you’ll zoom in a little bit here and zoom out a little bit there. You want consistency, but you can think of it in a similar way to what you would see in a movie, in which sometimes there’s close-ups and then sometimes it’s a wide shot. What’s important is that the voice remains consistent, so readers always have a sense of who’s talking to them, that it feels like it fits with the narrative voice that’s been used up until this point.

Multiple POVs

Again, with third-person, you can totally do multiple POVS. You can go deep within the perspective of any number of characters and show what they’re seeing in different scenes.

One thing to think about with POVs of any type, is that if you’re going to do multiple POVS, really consider why you’re putting them all in. POVs create your narrative; they frame every piece of your narrative. It’s true that putting in random POVs or a POV from a character who’s going to have a POV scene just once (just so you can show something that’s happening that the protagonist isn’t on stage) can be effective. I can definitely help you show information that the reader wouldn’t be able to access through the protagonist’s point of view. But you have to be careful with this because it can easily scatter your narrative.

Generally speaking, the fewer POvs you can get away with, the better. The use of a single POV is really, in my opinion, very underestimated. These days, we tend to want huge sprawling POV stories, but a single POV story, when done well can be unparalleled for the effect it creates.

Again, multiple POVs are great  in romance, in which you will generally have two. In other types of story, it’s fine to have dozens. What’s important is that you’re aware of how these POvs are interacting with the story’s overall structure. We talked a few months ago in the video about multiple timelines and plot lines about how it can be really effective to bring minor characters in at the structural moments as kind of a subplot, sewing them in at regular intervals so they don’t just show up once randomly. You want each POV to feels like it was on purpose and that there’s a thematic reason and a structural reason for why these POVs are in here rather than them just being convenient for the author.

That’s always something to think about when you’re choosing how many or which characters are going to get POVs within a story.

Tips & Tricks for Writing in Omniscient POV

With third-person, you can zoom all the way out, and when you get all the way out, that is generally what’s called omniscient POV. Omniscient POV is where you’re not really in any one specific character’s head. As the name suggests, the story is being told from an all-knowing point of view—that point of view generally being the author, although it can on occasion be a specific narrator within the story, who knows everything that’s happening and they’re just kind of reporting it back.

The advantage of omniscient POV is that you can go anywhere and tell anything. It isn’t as confined. It doesn’t have to play by as many rules, in a certain sense, as the more limited povs of first-person and deep third. The disadvantage is that it isn’t as intimate. By nature, it’s more distant. Even though you can dip into a character’s head here or report on what they may be thinking there, you aren’t following a character through the entire story and experiencing it from the inside out.

Deep POVs—first-person and deep third—offer an inside-out experience of the story. Omniscient is an outside-in. You’re looking at the story from an outside perspective and sometimes delving into characters’ heads and thoughts. It’s more like you’re reporting what they’re thinking rather than trying to create an experience where readers are equally experiencing it.

Omniscient was very popular back in the day. Victorian novels, etc., were almost all told from an omniscient point of view. Omniscient has grown more out of favor to where mainstream fiction is more in a deep POV these days. However, it’s still used and it can be very effective at creating more of a stylistic tone for a story. Particularly if you are trying to give it a historical flavor. Omniscient can be very effective at doing that. In the Aubrey Maturin series, Patrick O’Brian this masterfully. Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell comes to mind also as a story that does this really well.

Downsides of Omniscient POV

The major downfall is that when omniscient is done poorly, it lacks focus. It feels like an author who doesn’t have control of their narrative, like they’re using omniscient because they just want to tell everything—versus it being a cohesive choice.

Good omniscient story is still limited. It’s still choosing to focus on very specific things for very specific reasons. It’s not just jumping from this character to that character to that character because it’s convenient to tell a bigger story.

I feel like the random omniscient narratives that don’t really work are doing that because they’re more plot-based. They’re just using the characters and jumping from character to character to character as a way to just tell what’s happening. They focus on what’s “out there” and what the characters are seeing rather than the characters  themselves and what they’re doing. In contrast, a more controlled and contained omniscient narrative is one that is still focused on the characters. It has a good grasp of how to integrate character, plot, and theme and is using its POV choices to accomplish that.

What to Know About Head-Hopping

Part and parcel of omniscient narratives that don’t work and that are just jumping around all over the place is a POV mistake or pitfall that you will often hear called head-hopping. Head-hopping can happen in any of the different POV types that we’ve talked about. Basically, head-hopping is when you’re breaking the rules you have set for your story and your POV use within your story. Instead, you’re jumping out of the established POV into a different character’s head.

Head-Hopping in Deep POVs

This is most obvious if you are writing a deep third-person or first-person. Head-hopping occurs when you’re writing a deep POV, in which you’re telling a scene from within one character’s head, and then all of a sudden there’s a thought or an observation from another character. Maybe this other character is watching your protagonist, or maybe you’re including this other character’s thoughts because you want an outside perspective on your protagonist (e.g., you want somebody to describe how they look or offer a perspective on what they’re doing or why they’re doing it). And so you jump real quick over into this other person’s head and give their thoughts and their perspective, and then you jump back to the original character. That’s head hopping.

This can be very jarring and confusing for readers. At the very least, it does not contribute to a cohesive narrative. The simplest way to avoid head-hopping is to recognize that you can use other characters’ POVs, but you need to do so in a structured way, such as by ending one character’s POV with a scene or a chapter break and then switch to the next character’s. Generally, because this is indicated by scene breaks, each characters’ POV needs to constitute a scene or at least a big chunk of the scene to be worth the break. Jumping to another character’s POV for a paragraph or something generally isn’t a good idea. It can be kind of quirky and funny if that’s the kind of story that you’re writing, but otherwise it’s basically head hopping just sort of disguised.

If you want to include multiple POVs, the best approach is usually to create a scene from one character’s POV, then switch to the next character’s POV and remain consistent with each character within their section.

Head-Hopping in Omniscient POV

The topic of head-hopping becomes a little more complicated when you’re writing an omniscient POV that by nature is able to look into any character’s head. The rules do blur a little here. It’s a little harder to be able to say, “Well, that’s omniscient and that’s head hopping.” The basic bottom line is always to ask yourself:

Does it work? Does it feel jarring? Does it feel like you’re just jumping from character to character to character? Does it feel seamless?

Studying how authors have done this in omniscient narratives and made it work can be very helpful in recognizing the difference between head-hopping and omniscient.

Although not a hard and fast rule, a general way to test whether you are head-hopping versus using an omniscient POV is to ask yourself:

Are you going deep into the characters’ heads when you shift? Are you explicitly saying “this character is thinking this” and then “this character is thinking this“? Are you using direct thoughts (e.g., maybe the one character is thinking, I really want ice cream for breakfast, and then you go over Sally’s thinking, I really want eggs for breakfast.)? Are you trying to switch into a deep POV for multiple characters?

Again, you will see exceptions to this, but often that’s going to be a pretty jarring approach to readers versus maintaining a consistent POV. Think about who is telling the story. What is the specific narrative perspective? This creates a unified cohesive perspective, whether that perspective is a specific character within the story or an actual narrator, such as in Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief, in which Death narrates the entire story. In this case, Zusak is ultimately the narrator, since he’s the one writing the book, but he uses Death as an omniscient character within the story who can examine everything that’s happening and give a big picture view of what’s going on.

POV is arguably one of the trickiest techniques within narrative fiction. There’s a lot to get your head around and learn. The best way to learn is studying how it’s done. It’s one thing to read it casually, because if you’re not paying attention, a good POV is very seamless. As a reader, you’re not normally thinking about it. You’re not thinking, Oh, that’s in first-person. You want the effect to be so seamless that readers don’t have to think about it.

However, as you’re trying to figure out how to write it, you need to go back and study. Ask, “What is the writer doing to create this cohesion and this seamless effect, whether they’re writing first-person or third- or omniscient.” Always pay attention to how you respond and react to these various POVs, so you can understand which effect you want to convey within your own story.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Which different types of POV have you used in your stories? Which did you enjoy most? Which did you find most challenging? Tell me in the comments!

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