When we talk about point of view, we’re talking about the overall approach to telling the story, and there are three basic terms:
1st person: “I saw the bird. It was bright and yellow, and I wanted to fly with it.”
2nd person: “You saw the bird. It was bright and yellow, and you wanted to fly with it.”
3rd person: “John saw the bird. It was bright and yellow, and he wanted to fly with it.”
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Leaving aside complications like past/present tense and omniscient/limited omniscient styles of writing, those three terms are the children’s building-blocks of storytelling.
Perception, on the other hand, is what the chosen point of view actually sees and how that POV interprets it. This is where character building comes into play; the character has to act as a filter for all that great research and world building you’ve been doing for your novel.
Let’s take John and Amy, for example. John is a depressed, self-centered jerk, and Amy is a loving, happy, generous person. (Notice the gender stereotypes buried in that statement—but that’s a discussion for another post.) Filtering their personalities through the various points of view, we might get:
First Person POV:
I walked along the park path. The birds were chirping away as though to announce that the world was a good place. Lying, brainless, obnoxious little creatures: I never can understand why anyone likes birds. They’re not even good to eat, as far as I’m concerned.
Second Person, with John speaking and “you” meaning you, the reader:
You always smile when you see birds. Why? They’re obnoxious and messy, and even chicken tastes, at best, like roadkill. You walk around watching the birds swoop and wheel around in the sky, you point out the bright colors and the different songs, and you think other people agree with you—but really, they’re just too polite to tell you you’re a moron.
Third Person:
John walked along the park path. The birds were chirping away as though the world might actually be a good place. He couldn’t understand why anyone found them attractive. All they did was crap all over the place. He didn’t even like eating chicken, because chicken was a bird and birds were dirty creatures.
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And now for Amy’s rather more cheerful view of the world:
First Person POV:
I walked along the park path. The sun and the warmth of the day had brought flocks of birds out; I saw and heard robins, woodpeckers, chickadees, thrushes, sparrows, and a dozen more varieties, all within a half mile walk of my house. I always feel better about my life after walking through the park and listening to the birds; it reminds me that even my largest problems really don’t affect the world at large, so they must actually be pretty small.
Second Person, with Amy speaking and “you” meaning John, the person she’s addressing:
You never smile any more. You used to smile. You used to laugh, you used to go out to dance and walk through the park and even sing, when you had a beer or two in your system. Now you just sit around the house and mope and drink more beer than you ought to. You don’t look at the birds any longer, you don’t listen to music, you’ve given up all hope. Come out to the park. Take a look at the birds. Feel the sunshine on your skin, run a few steps, sing a little, and realize that your problems are all actually pretty small, compared to the miracle of a bird flying through the air and the leaves waving in the wind.
Third Person:
Amy walked along the park path, enjoying the sunny warmth of the day. Flocks of birds wheeled overhead: starlings, descending en masse and startling away the lesser robins, chickadees, and sparrows. The noisy grackling of the big black birds filled the air, drowning out even the wails of a nearby infant in a stroller. Amy smiled and went on, watching the birds, not particularly thinking about anything at all.
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Those are just a few rough examples of what can be done with any given scenario from different perspectives and points of view. Try it with your own work—rewrite a paragraph or two, or even an entire chapter, from another character’s perspective, or from a different point of view, just to see what happens. Just for fun. (You are writing for fun, after all…right?)
