There are three points of view available to the writer; first person, second person and third person. Second person point of view is far and away the least used of the three, so let's get it out of the way first.
Second person is the point of view of an observer narrating the story to the character in the story. For example:
"You are writing your column this morning, hoping to get it up somewhere close to 7:00 AM Central time, because being late for anything rubs you the wrong way."You can see why it's rarely used as a point of view. It's awkward. I'm sure there's some artsy reason to use it for the unique literary voice it provides, but if your goal is to draw your reader into your story, I'd recommend avoiding it entirely.
Much more common is first person point of view. This one is really easy to understand because we are all living our lives from in first person. In first person point of view, the main character is telling the story. We see and hear what the main character sees and hears and we know the main character's thoughts. The thoughts of other characters and anything that occurs beyond the main character's five senses are out of bounds. The reader can only learn of these events if the main character learns of these events. For example:
"I am writing my column and still hoping to get the column up by 7:00 AM Central time. I doubt I'll make it."I was about to write that the first person point of view limits you to a single point of view through out the story. Having multiple characters referring to themselves as "I" or their group as "we" would be pretty confusing, even if broken out by chapters. Then I remembered that I have actually written a first person story using the points of view for three different characters. It was issue 27 of the Southern Knights comic book and the story worked quite well, even if I say so myself. I suspect the transition from character to character was easier to follow in the comic book than it would have been in prose because the artwork immediately told the reader that the point of view had changed. In prose, you would have to find some way to quickly tip off the reader that you had changed to another character's first person point of view. The simplest approach would be to name each chapter after the character whose point of view you were using.
Side note: Writing a comic book in first person is pretty simple. You write all captions in first person from the point of view of your main character and eliminate all thought balloons. Make sure the art doesn't convey anything the point of view character cannot see or hear. That's all there is to it.
Third person point of view is also called the omniscient point of view. Using this point of view allows you to write what any character is thinking and describe scenes none of your main characters can see or hear. I don't have any statistics, but I would bet the mortgage that third point of view is not only the most common point of view, it's far and away the most common one. The neat thing about the third person point of view is the freedom it allows you to tell your story. You can include anything you want your characters to learn, even if there isn't any character present during the scene. For example:
"Knowing it was already too late to post his column on time, Henry wrote as quickly as possible hoping to post it before 8:00 AM Central time. He knew many of his readers wouldn't be able to check his column earlier than that, anyway, so he could pretend he had posted the column on time."If your story involves a sea crossing, you can build tension by describing a vast storm building off in a remote part of the sea. You can describe the gravitational forces at work on an asteroid, causing it to change course and plunge toward an inhabited planet. You can describe anything your little heart desires. It's all fair game.
Let me amend that last line. It's all fair game unless your point of view choices through out the story work to restrict your choices. This is where point of view can get complicated. It is not uncommon for writers to use the third person point of view while effectively telling the story from the point of view of a single character. The writer is likely to change the third person point of view from one character to another as required by the story. This works just fine, even if the new point of view character will only used for a single scene, provided the writer is consistent about it. By "consistent" I don't mean that the writer must shift every chapter. I mean that the writer must demonstrate his intention to do this fairly early in the story and continue doing so through out the story.
In the story that kicked all of this off, Miko wrote in the third person point of view but that point of view always stayed with one character. Then, right at the end, we got a third person point of view from the other character in the story. Had this been a novel, the shift would have been fine. It would have been early in the novel and would have demonstrated that the writer was going to shift from character to character. As this was a short story, there wasn't time to establish this kind of character shifting and still tell the story. When the single character shift occurs, it was jarring.
I'll be the first to admit that there are good and great novels out there that don't follow what I've written. It's been a long time since I read The Lord of the Rings, but I believe the point of view in The Fellowship of the Ring hovers over or near Frodo until the very end of the book. Only then does the point of view shift to follow the other members of the fellowship. The narrative then shifts to follow the other characters as the Fellowship splits into three groups. It works and works quite well.
In the end, these are just guidelines I've picked up from my own writing and reading and slowly discovering what works and what doesn't work. You may develop different guidelines that mine. What's important is to discover what works for you and your readers.
Henry is a former comic book writer and wannabe novelist. Wanting to get this column posted as quickly as possible, he didn't take time to proof read it. Maybe this will teach him to write his columns in advance from now on!
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