POV

Hey everybody,

I hope you all get this email before you show up to class. My car broke down, and I’m waiting on a tow truck. No class today. Here is the lesson and homework. 

 

Point of View

 

First Person – Told from a single character’s perspective

Pronouns: I, Me, We, My, Ours

 

Example:

     I should’ve fixed my car months ago. I ignore my “tomorrow problems”, until they hurt all the people. 

 

• Soliloquy – A character’s inner dialogue with themselves (Sometimes Italicized)

 

Example:

     Jesus, Mark, why did you eat all the doughnuts? You’re a More Monster. I hear someone in the kitchen. They yell for me, “Mark, have you seen the doughnuts?” I pretend not to hear the question.

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Second Person – The narrator tells a story with “you,” the reader. The story being described can be a specific character’s experience. The narrator wants you to experience what happened or is happening to a singular character.

 

Example:

     You look out at a room full of reincarnated middle school bullies. They stare waiting for you to empty your brain. Your brain is empty. You never bring what you are supposed to bring. 

 

• Sometimes the narrator is directing “you,” the reader, as a general character through a larger story. Often used in choose-your-own-adventure stories.

 

Example:

     You get out of bed. You go through your morning routine. You run into a wall of expectations. You change direction, but you run into a wall of can’ts. You go back to bed. You make up a lie. 

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Third Person Limited – The narrator tells a story from an objective point of view but stays close to one character’s experience. It’s like the first person point of view with the ability to see things a singular character can’t. 

Pronouns: She, Her, Hers, He, Him, his, They, Their, Theirs, Them

 

Example:

     Mark was in a room full of strangers. How was he going to get all these people to like him? He closed his eyes and practiced some words in his head. All of the ideas sounded naked and unimpressive. Everybody in the room could see the rehearsal sentences shaking in Mark’s brain. Mark kept his eyes shut. A person in the back of the room was trying to round out the corner of a doodle. A person in a squeaky seat successfully suppressed a burp. Mark imagined all of the people in the room laughing at him, judging him, torturing him. There was no self-esteem to support any objective logic. A person by the radiator drooled down their shirt as they nodded in and out of sleep. A person by the window studied the clouds, trying to predict afternoon weather. The laughs in Mark’s head grew louder and louder until his eyelids sprang open like two mouths about to scream, and he saw the same nothing he could never learn to trust.

 

Third Person Omniscient – The narrator tells a story from a more distant, objective point of view while being able to go in and out of multiple characters’ inner thoughts. 

 

Example:

     Jake walked into the classroom to find the professor and two-thirds of the class missing. The Professor had canceled class three times in the past month—all at the last minute. 

     Devin checked his phone and announced, “He said his car broke down.” 

     Jake questioned a memory that he had of the professor saying, “I don’t have a car. I’m at the mercy of a sadistic train schedule.”

     Devin vented, “You know we’re all fucked for jobs after we graduate, and this guy never shows up.”

     “Don’t get mad about a canceled class,” Brianna argued as she gathered her things. She had always noticed a terrified shaking underneath the professor’s lectures. Brianna had access to empathy.

     Devin chased after something clever to say as he followed Brianna out of the room.

     Jake sat down in the empty classroom and read the professor’s email. He figured he’d give minimal effort toward the assignment because the professor graded like a guilty man. But what if the professor unraveled and started slashing grades with the same recklessness he used to cancel class?

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Homework – Write an example from each point of view. Just practice writing from different perspectives and see how that can create truth.