How to choose the right narrative POV for your story
Choosing the right narrative perspective for your novel or short story feels like make-or-break territory. And don’t get me wrong: it’s a significant decision, with a significant impact on how (and how compellingly) your story emerges. Should you choose the conversational intimacy of first person limited? The sweeping scale of third person omniscient? (Or even—whisper it—the roguish allure of second person narration?)
The bad news is that there’s no hard-and-fast science behind choosing the right POV—no magic formula, no secret handshake. Sorry about that. But there are some key factors and vibes that can help guide you through the murky waters and point you in the right direction. So, buckle up, grab your favorite beverage, and let’s dive into the wonderful world of narrative perspectives.
Contents
A quick refresher on narrative POVs
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to choose your POV, here’s a quick overview of the main contenders:
First Person: The narrator is I. You’re inside one character’s head, seeing their thoughts, feelings, and worldview directly.
Second Person: The narrator is you, making the reader the protagonist. It’s like being handed the reins of someone else’s story. (This is not a common or particularly popular narrative choice, but I feel it’s unfairly maligned. I’m in the minority, though.)
Third Person Limited: The narrator is he/she/they but sticks to one character’s perspective at a time.
Third Person Omniscient: The narrator knows all—thoughts, feelings, backstories—of every character and often comments on the story or characters.
(If you want to read about all of these POVS in more detail, by the way, check out my posts on first person, second person, and third person omniscient vs limited.)
Why do writers stress over choosing POV?
Because it feels important—like choosing your GCSE subjects or your soul mate (no pressure). Emerging authors often think they need to be strategic or confident about this choice at every stage of the journey, and if they pick “wrong,” they’ll have delivered a critical injury to their story before it’s even had a chance to get going.
But here’s the truth: it’s almost exclusively about vibes. That’s not helpful, I know—and I know because (a) I’ve been the writer struggling to make a POV decision and (b) I’ve delivered this information to many roomfuls of writing students in my years of teaching narrative POV, and I’ve seen the way they glare at me when I tell them. We want there to be some kind of rule about what POV goes where and when but… there just isn’t one. Here’s a quote from Scott Westerfeld’s absolutely stellar blog on single limited viewpoint, which I return to over and over again with my students because it’s just so damn good:
I frequently see people saying, “First person present tense is a very immediate way to tell a story!” Which is crap. The grammar of a narrative and its distance are two different things.
Take this story opening:
“The summer has been long and boiling, my body changing in ways I don’t understand yet, my mind tangling in those changes’ wake. So it’s a mystery how I first get the idea to set fire to the home of the only girl I’ve ever loved.”
Yes, it’s in present tense and first person, but there’s an elegiac lilt to the language, a sense that everything has already taken place. The grammar doesn’t change that.
But let’s say you started the story this way:
“It was a hot day, and Roger was bored and itchy. ‘Let’s set fire to Cindy’s house,’ he said.”
This is in the past tense and third person, but it’s way more immediate, with the story happening in real time before our eyes. In other words, the grammar doesn’t determine distance. Far more important is the way the story is told.
Far more important is the way the story is told.
If you take nothing else away from this article, take that. Yes, there’s a decent chance that second person POV is going to garner you an instant reject from all but the most experimental and cool literary magazines (I’m still salty about that, by the way—don’t ask…) but making a slightly shaky choice between first and third person is extremely unlikely to inflict any lasting damage. In my experience, a story will very quickly let you know if the initial POV choice isn’t working: the key is to experiment, listen to the story’s vibe, and just go with what feels right—even if that means changing it later.
But, okay. You’re probably here because “go with the vibes” is not sufficiently robust for your current predicament. So let’s talk about some other factors that might help you decide.
“Making a slightly shaky choice between first and third person is extremely unlikely to inflict any lasting damage on your story.”
Key factors that might influence your choice of POV
Here are a few things you might want to weigh up when deciding which narrative perspective suits your novel best.
How Intimate Do You Want Your Story To Feel?
The level of intimacy between reader and character is probably the biggest factor here (pace Scott Westerfeld above).
First Person is like eavesdropping on someone’s diary entries or overhearing their confessions over coffee. It invites readers into one character’s mind completely.
For example, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye famously uses first person narration so effectively that Holden Caulfield’s voice feels like a friend who just won’t shut up—sometimes infuriatingly honest and vulnerable.
Conversely, first person is also fantastic for developing an unreliable narrator, because it creates an illusion of rapport between the reader and the narrator, which is easily mistaken for candour. So a first-person narrator is ideally placed to mislead the reader, whether deliberately (by omission or outright lies) or accidentally (by unidentified gaps in their knowledge or faulty assumptions).
Do you want to explore multiple characters’ thoughts?
If your story benefits from seeing inside several heads, third person might be your best friend. (Don’t get me wrong: you can absolutely have multiple first-person narrators in your novel, too—I’ve done it myself—but it can get confusing for a reader to be presented with multiple “I” characters, and it needs careful management to keep everything clear.)
Third Person Limited sticks close to one character at a time, giving you the intimacy of first person but with more flexibility to shift perspectives between chapters or scenes.
My novel Edge of Heaven relies on multiple third-person narrations to inch the reader ever closer to understanding the complex web of conspiracy, lies, bad decisions, and arse-covering that underpins the emergence of the novel pathogen sweeping through the city of Creo Basse. Without this ability to hop between my secretive protagonist, Danae Grant, her more sociable love interest, and various shadowy governmental figures all with their fingers in different parts of the pie, the reader would only know as much as Danae knows (and she hates talking to people, so… that might not be much).
How much control do you want over what readers know?
Third Person Omniscient has fallen slightly out of favour in recent decades (it used to be the de facto gold standard for novel-writing, back in the day, but often gives modern editors and publishers the heebie jeebies), but it’s still seen regularly in epic genres like fantasy and historical fiction, where the author needs to be able to sweep across the storyworld in a kind of narrative wide-angle lens and capture large chunks of information for the reader, beyond what any individual character has the capacity to know.
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series is a great example of third person omniscient playing to its strengths: as the series progresses, Pratchett’s sharp eye turns ever more towards using the Disc as an analogue to discuss contemporary issues on our own (globe-shaped) world. His gently piercing satire critiques the ridiculousness of, for example, xenophobia or the power-struggles of the obscenely rich, and,as such, requires a certain level of authorial distance to work. Third person omniscient gives the author the power to know all characters’ thoughts and feelings—and, because the author is all-knowing and all-seeing, they can offer comments on the story or the world or the motivations of their characters. Pratchett’s famous footnotes are a fantastic (and unambiguous) example of this kind of commentary, but some of his best and most keenly observed jokes also flow from his authorial omniscience.
Are you brave enough for Second Person?
Second person is a bold choice that puts readers directly into the protagonist’s shoes—“you” are living this story. It can feel immersive, disorienting, or invasive, depending on how it’s handled.
Epistolary writing—where the story takes the form of a series of letters written to a named character (like, for example, in We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver) is easily confused with second person narration, but the key difference is that there is an “I” character in this narrative perspective: it’s the person writing the letter. In second person narration, there’s no “I” character—the “I” is “you.” It usually looks a bit like this:
You step into the dark alley, heart pounding louder than your footsteps. The rain soaks through your coat; every shadow seems alive, whispering secrets only you can hear. There’s no turning back now—you’re part of this story whether you like it or not.
Jay McInerny’s Bright Lights, Big City is—to my knowledge—the only published novel written fully in true second person POV, but many other novels and short stories have made full use of this fascinating, unsettling perspective. One of my favourites is Iain Banks’ Complicity, which moves between second and first person… and makes the reader inhabit the character of a hired killer in the second-person chapters.
Other factors to consider when choosing your POV
Beyond intimacy and information control, you should also consider…
- Genre expectations: Some genres favour certain POVs (cosy mysteries, for example, often use first person; epic fantasies may lean more heavily toward third person omniscient). This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but it can be a helpful guideline if you’re looking for a steer.
- Narrative complexity: If your plot involves multiple intertwining storylines, shifting POVs might be necessary. This can get confusing in first person narration (though it’s by no means impossible to do it effectively, with a bit of careful planning).
- Your own personal preference: Which POV feels most natural for your writing style? Don’t fight it too hard. Honestly, don’t. Some writers gravitate towards first person; some gravitate towards third. If you favour one over the other, it’s worth experimenting with a POV outside of your comfort zone, but don’t force it. Your author voice may simply be better suited to a particular narrative perspective, and that’s absolutely fine.
“Which POV feels most natural for your writing style? Don’t fight it too hard. Some writers gravitate towards first person; some gravitate towards third.”
Trust your story's vibe
At the end of the day, there is no “wrong” POV—only what works best for your story. And if you happen to start with a POV that later proves less than ideal, you’re not locked in. You can change your mind at any stage: the narrative POV police aren’t going to show up with a writ compelling you to revert from third person omniscient back to your original first person limited. Sure, it’s going to be a bit of a pain to transpose so many thousand words from second to first (ask me how I know…), but it’s in no way a disaster. It’s your story letting you know what it needs.
So, yes, there are definitely some tools we can use to help us zero in on the right narrative POV for our stories. But I stand by my earlier position: this is an area of the craft that primarily relies on vibes. I’ve had to swap out a POV or two in my time—every author has, I’d warrant. But I’ll tell you what: more times than not, the POV that vibes for me in the opening sections is the POV I stick with. I’ve learned to trust that instinct—and I reckon you should too.
It’s very rarely wrong. And if it is? It’s easily fixed.
Have you ever made the decision to change your POV after you’d started writing? Let me know in the comments!
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