Experimenting with different points of view can be great fun and hugely rewarding, but settling on a point of view for a long piece? A little scary.
These four worksheets can help you weigh the pros and cons of various point of view techniques, and help you decide.
Point of View Terms
1ST PERSON = in English, narrative using “I” or “we”.
2ND PERSON = in English, narrative using “you” (or a plural form in languages where this exists).
3RD PERSON = in English, narrative using “he”, “she”, “it”, or “they”. SINGULAR = in English, narrative using the singular pronouns “I”, “you”, “he”, “she” or “it”.
PLURAL = in English, narrative using the first person pronoun “we”.
OMNISCIENT = a narrator who can see into the thoughts of all characters. LIMITED = a narrator who can only see into the thoughts of one character.
DEEP = similar to Free Indirect Discourse, but the authorial voice is absent, and the narrator is Limited.
FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE = narrative that elides speech tags and merges the character’s voice with the author’s.
PERIPHERAL – a narrator who is not the main character.
OBJECTIVE = a narrator who doesn’t look into the thoughts of the characters, but only describes action or relates direct speech.
OBSERVER = a narrator who doesn’t take part in the story but witnesses it as a character without any omniscient capacity.
EXTRADIEGETIC = a narrator who is not part of the story, such as an author- narrator.
UNRELIABLE = a narrator who hides information, or isn’t in the best position to tell the story.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS = stream of consciousness narration which attempts to mimic thought processes.
