POV PART 1: EXTERNAL POV
(Look Who’s Talking)
It’s important to have a good grasp of narrative Point of View (POV) when writing works of fiction.
Why ever would that be Wing?
Well, Imaginary Questioner, just as the narrator gives voice to your story, POV helps define that narrator’s voice. Shifting POV can dramatically change how a reader experiences the story.
Because of this, and because differences between POVs can be pretty damn subtle, the topic is a HUGE one, which will take us multiple posts to cover properly.
Today we’re going to be looking at what I like to call External POV.
Well, my nonexistent rhetorical device friend, the most crucial factor when discussing POV is placement. From where is the story being told? And by whom? Hence the term, Point of View. This is External POV.
(That’s a term I made up so don’t go Googling it.)
External POV describes the narrator’s physical relation to the story.
The Common Ones
At least five External POVs can be said to exist, but the vast majority of narratives fall into one of only two categories: First Person and Third Person. Because these are by FAR the most prevalent, we’ll focus on them first.
First Person
First Person POV’s narrator exists within the story. (This is marked with self-referential pronouns like “I” and “me”.) The narrative is thus anecdotal, a retelling (or just telling) of the events in a character’s own life.
Such narrators are usually the story’s protagonist, but not always. First Person Narrators can take the form of a sidekick, a minor character, or even a fly-on-the-wall type observer. What matters is, they are present in the narrative.
What We Get From First Person
1. Intimacy: In allowing a story’s character to speak directly to the reader, First Person offers a clear line of communication between a fictional person and a real one. This connection creates a subtle sense of intimacy between Reader and Character, which could manifest as trust, affection, or increased empathy—all of which help immerse a reader in the story.
2. Tone: Because the actual words used to tell the story are in a character’s voice, First Person makes it easier to add personality to a description or scene. Use of colloquialisms, jokes, or clever/fun expressions tend to land cleaner in First Person. It also opens a space for character commentary on what’s going on, which can add subtle (or not-so-subtle) meaning to events.
3. Narrative Structuring: A First Person narrative is limited by what the character knows. This can be useful in hiding certain plot elements from the reader, or revealing them at moments of maximum impact. But it can also be an obstacle. If there’s something the reader needs to know for the story to work, which the character doesn’t know, it may become a challenge to reveal this information in a way that makes sense and doesn’t feel particularly contrived.
4. Unreliable Narrator: Since the Narrator is telling their own story, it’s easy enough to conceive they’d paint themselves in the best possible light. At best, they can only relate events as they themselves perceive them. At worst they’re out-and-out lying to the reader. There’s always a bias. While it can be a challenge to imbue such character bias into the narrative, it can also be a useful tool in framing events. A truly Unreliable Narrator has become a popular trope in First Person stories; betraying the inherent trust between Reader and Narrator not only develops the narrator as a character, it engages readers in ways difficult to achieve in any other way.
Third Person
In Third Person POV, neither the narrator nor reader exist within the story. The narrative follows characters who never interact with the reader. (This POV is typically marked with the pronouns “she/her”, “he/him”, “they/them”, or even “it”.)
Third Person is the most common POV in narrative writing.
What We Get From Third Person
1. Intimacy: In the same way First Person connects Narrator to Reader, Third Person creates an intimacy between Character and Plot. Characters are unaware they’re being “watched” by the reader and so are free to connect with events without having to justify or explain their actions. It’s an exclusive and inseparable relationship. This is why Third Person character-plot relationships tends to be deeper than in other POVs.
2. Credibility: Because they are not a part of the story, because they have no inherent stake in it, Third Person narrators tend to give the impression of offering events exactly as they happened. Ironically, though we’re more likely to trust a First Person narrator, we’re more inclined to believe one in Third Person. Distance = Credibility.
3. Versatility: Third Person POV lends itself to variation better than any other. Perhaps this is because it’s the most familiar, perhaps because Western literature largely developed around it, or perhaps simply because a story about other people has more options in how it can be told. Whatever the reason, Third Person most easily indulges variation greater than simply who is speaking, variation such as how they speak, what they know, and whether they even exist. This is what I call Internal POV, which we’ll explore in Parts Two and Three of the topic. For now, we’ll just say that while most POVs can be broken into Internal POV subcategories, this is most easily done in Third.
The Rare Ones
I mentioned above that nearly all narrative writing is told either in First or Third Person; I also said there are others. These include: Second Person, Fourth Person, and No Narrator. There’s a good chance you’ll never write in any of these. But that’s no reason not to know more about them, is it?
Second Person
In Second Person POV, you, as the reader are in the story; the narrator relates events that happened (or are happening) to you. (This POV is typically marked with the pronoun “you”.)
Of the Rare POV categories, this is probably most common. Interactive stories such as Choose Your Own Adventure books (and arguably table-top RPGs) would be considered Second Person. As are stories that use a stand-in you for the protagonist. (Example: “You know, how it is when you wake up to find your mattress adrift in an endless sea. Having not been raised in a barn you set about making your bed. And that’s when things get weird.”) In such cases the story’s you doesn’t actually represent the reader but a known or unknown protagonist; this doesn’t matter however, as the narration treats the reader as if they are the character.
What We Get From Second Person
1. Intimacy: Since the reader either is the character or at least a stand-in for them, Second Person POV tends to offer a deeper connection between Reader and Plot. You (the reader) interact directly with events as you couldn’t in any other POV.
“The problem is choice.”
2. Choice: Second Person can often involve branching narratives, or even open choice narratives. Since such stories allow the reader to decide, it’s much easier to conceive of yourself inside the story. You are in essence, playing a character.
3. Distance: Just as Second Person draws you closer to the plot, it actually distances you from the you character. This is because the reader doesn’t actually know anything about this character. Everything about the person you ‘are’ in the story has to be told to you by the narrator. Essentially, just as in real life, you look out through their eyes, but you can’t look back into your own head. Only, unlike in real life, you don’t have the benefit of a lifetime of memories. So everything about yourself, you must be told. (NOTE: This may not be the case for table-top RPGs, in which you often create their own character. But of course, that’s only one way TTRPGs are different from written stories.)
No Narrator
No Narrator is exactly what the name suggests, a story in which nothing is described and no events are detailed.
Wait, Wing … what??
Welcome back, Invisible Voice! You asked the question, and of course, YOU are the answer!
What do you mean, I’m the answer? How am I what defines a No Narrator story?
Well, you see, dear Voice, No Narrator stories are told entirely within communications between characters. (Like we’re doing now.) Neither of us is telling the other the events of a story (or it would become First or Third Person), we are just interacting. The narrative is both what occurs between us and the events that can be inferred by what we say.
Any plays without stage direction could be considered Second Person, as could epistolary narratives (stories told in the form letters/emails/articles/etc.). But not all epistolary is No Narrator. Dracula, for instance, is told primarily in a series of letters, but these are all First Person accounts of events. An example of a No Narrator story would be the 2018 Hugo nominated short story, STET which offers a narrative in the form of editor’s notes to an author who is writing a technical book, as well as the author’s replies. (And it is shockingly powerful.)
What We Get From No Narrator
1. No Intimacy: Unlike any of the previous POVs, everything in a No Narrator story is disconnected from everything else. Obviously there’s no connection to the narrator, because there is no narrator. But there’s also no connection between Character and Reader, Character and Plot, Reader and Plot, or even between characters. Story elements are seperated by vast white spaces on the page. This can create a powerful effect in the reader, perhaps a sense of isolation or uncertainty.
2. Discovery: Because there’s no one to tell the reader exactly what’s going on, No Narrator POV is an excellent vehicle for stories that don’t want to spoon-feed the reader. The narrative is implied, and it’s up to the reader to figure out what’s going on. The realization that comes along with this can offer an extremely satisfying experience.
3. Pacing and Description: Without a voice to offer description, or slow or speed up a scene, No Narrator stories can feel bare and/or a little hurried. This need not be the case of course, but must either be contended with or used to the story’s benefit.
Fourth Person*
One might wonder what this owl has to do with Fourth Person. One shall continue to wonder.
Where the last POV lacked a voice to tell the story—relying instead on character communication—Fourth Person has no primary characters (not even inanimate ones), and instead, tells readers what would happen if such characters existed. (This POV is typically marked with the pronoun “one”, or terms like “a person” or “readers”.)
Fourth Person is usually expected for academic writing, but EXTREMELY rare in storytelling. One might go a lifetime without ever encountering such a narrative. (What’s a story without characters, after all? Is it still even a story?)
Such narratives, however, do exist. Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1973 short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas uses Fourth Person (hypothetical) POV. It is inarguably a narrative, with inciting incidents, conflicts, stakes, and an outcome (albeit an ambiguous one). Yet, beginning to end, the story consists wholly of a ‘what if’ scenario.
What We Get From Fourth Person
1. Intimacy What Fourth Person stories essentially do is strip away the foundations we’re accustomed to having to build our stories on. Settings. Characters. Events. The world itself. What’s left is the story’s essence, the message delivered in its experience. Its THEME. So, in such stories we get an intimacy between Reader and Theme. Successfully creating such a connection is an enormous challenge for a writer, requiring a delicate balance in structure, pacing and tone.
2. Hypothetical: Fourth Person is more than its pronouns. A writer can’t just tell a Third Person story replacing “he”/”she”/”they” with “one”. The key is that the events are not happening to a character; they are what would happen to a character if one was present. It’s all hypothetical. So how would one do it? How does one tell a story about events that only just would happen?? That’s an excellent question.
*NOTE: We’re talking about to Grammatical Fourth Person. There is another kind of Fourth Person, known as Linguistic Fourth Person. I don’t like Linguistic Fourth because I think it’s really just a variant on Third. But for the sake of thoroughness, we’ll just say what it is:
Linguistic Forth Person is when the narrative focuses on a character different from the one the narrator’s actually talking about. In the details of the character being described, the reader is able to see what’s going on with another character who is scarcely mentioned. And that’s who the scene is about. It’s weird and I don’t like it.
Wow, that’s a lot to digest Wing! Is that all of it?
No, dear Voice, dear friends and readers; that’s only everything you need to know about External POV. In the next post we’ll start to explore Internal POV, talking about how much the narrator knows.
Check back soon because it’s going to be a thrill!