Point of View:

The Point of View (or “POV”) is the narrator’s position in relation to the story.

There are a few basic possibilities here, one of which is exceptionally rare. They are:

1. First person narration

In this instance the narrator speaks in the first person, (“I did this, I said that, I thought
the other.”) The narrator and the novel’s protagonist are essentially one and the same.
2. Second person narration
Here the narrator speaks in the third person (“You did this”, and so on.) It’s exceptionally
rare as a technique and is definitely not advisable for beginners.
3. Third person narration
In this instance, the narrator speaks in the third person, (“She did this, he did that, they
did the other.”) The narrator is basically an invisible storyteller, telling the reader what
happens to the novel’s protagonists. Third person narration comes in two basic
flavours: limited third person and the extremely grand-sounding omniscient third
person. We’ll get more into the detail of those two in a moment, but the basic difference
is that a limited 3rd person narrator stays very close to the character whose viewpoint is
being used. An omniscient one is more inclined to wander free from the character and
give a broader view of things. (Not sure you’ve got the distinction? No worries. We’ll get
to more details in a moment.)
4. Mixed narration
If a novel combines passages told from the first person point of view with passages told
from the third person point of view, it has mixed narration – or mixed first and third
person point of view, if you really want to spell it out.

Point of View: Examples

Examples of first person narration are legion. For example:

 The Sherlock Holmes stories (narrated by Dr Watson, in the first person)

 Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe stories (narrated by Philip Marlowe, of course)
 Bridget Jones’s Diary, narrated by … well, you’ve already guessed, right?
 Moby Dick, narrated by … well, put it this way, the famous first line is “Call me
Ishmael.”
 Hunger Games, narrated by Katniss Everdeen
 Twilight, narrated by Bella Swan
 The Kay Scarpetta novels of Patricia Cornwell
 Some of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books (but not all)

Here’s an example of first person point of view in practice:

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no
money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail
about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the
spleen and regulating the circulation.”
—Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

Examples of second person perspective are extremely rare. Famous recent examples include:

 Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City opens with the line, “You are not the kind of guy
who would be at a place like this at this time in the morning” and then it continues from
there, with the protagonist always described as “you”.
 Italo Calvino did much the same thing in If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller.
 There are a few other examples too, but you’ve got to be a really smart and skilled writer
to do this. In short, for 99.99% of writers out there, just fuhgeddabahtit. This technique
isn’t one for you.

Examples of third person narration are also commonplace. For example:

 Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, which is about Lisbeth Salander, but not narrated by her
 The Da Vinci Code, about Robert Langton, but not narrated by him
 Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice
 John Grisham’s The Firm
 Stephen King’s Misery
 Some of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, but not all

And here’s an example of third person narration in practice:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be
in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a
neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is
considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let
at last?”
—Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

Got that? OK. We’ll skip on to the limited / omniscient distinction, then start figuring out how to
apply point of view to your novel.

Third Person POV: Limited vs Omniscient

OK, the thing that probably most confuses newer writers is the distinction between third person
limited and third person omniscient.

Quite honestly, though, this isn’t something to trouble with too much. If you want to write in
third person, just do what’s right for your characters and your story, and you should do just fine.

If you want to know more, however, what you need to know is this:

Third Person Limited: Definition & Example

When you use a limited form of third person narration, you stay very close to your character. So
the narrator isn’t telling the reader anything that the character in question wouldn’t themselves
know / see / hear / sense. Here’s a beautiful example from Anne Tyler (in Breathing Lessons):

“They planned to wake up at seven, but Maggie [the point of view character in this passage]
must have set the alarm wrong and so they overslept. They had to dress in a hurry and rush
through breakfast, making do with faucet coffee and cold cereal. Then Ira headed off for the
store on foot to leave a note for his customers, and Maggie walked to the body shop. She was
wearing her best dress – blue-and-white sprigged with cape sleeves – and crisp black pumps, on
account of the funeral. The pumps were only medium-heeled, but slowed her down some
anyway.”

You’ll notice that nothing at all in that passage is something that Maggie doesn’t know about. So
even when the passage talks about Ira heading off to the store, that’s done from Maggie’s
perspective. We know that he goes and what his purpose is there, but we know nothing at all
about his walk itself – whereas we know exactly what Maggie’s wearing, and why, and why her
shoes slowed her down.

This is third person limited (because it’s so closely limited to Maggie’s perspective) and as you
can see it delivers a kind of intimacy – even a homeliness.

Third Person Omniscient: Definition And Example

The omniscient version of third person is, as you’d expect, able to tell the reader things that
aren’t directly knowable by any of the characters in the tale. The most famous example of this
narrative voice in literature is surely this passage from Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of
foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair, …”

As you can see, this isn’t told from any character’s viewpoint. It’s almost as though a lordly, all-
seeing Charles Dickens is hovering over London (or England? or the world?) and giving his
kingly overview of the situation.
This type of writing has become rather less common in fiction, so you’ll tend to stick with
broadly limited narration, interspersed (perhaps) by something a little more omniscient in
flavour.

Point of View: Which One Should You Write In?

First Person Point of View

First-person narration shares action as seen through the eyes of your narrator. A narrator can
therefore only narrate scenes in which he or she is present.

Coming-of-age novels – Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of
Being a Wallflower – work exceptionally well in first-person narration. A lot of YA books are
written in first person, because their intimate, emotional narration chimes with their teenaged
readership.

Romances (with their emotional focus) are also often first person. So are ghost stories with a
sense of claustrophobia like Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black.

In particular, however, it’s worth thinking about Jonathan Franzen’s dictum that, “Write in third
person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.”

In other words: (A) do you feel you have to write in that first person voice, and (B) does that first
person voice really sound and feel distinctive, personal and indvidual. I’ve mostly written third
person, but my recent detective novels are first person – essentially for the reasons Franzen hints
at. Here’s an example from my book, The Deepest Grave. (I’ve made some short edits for length,
but mostly this is as it appears in the finished book.)

The narrator is Fiona Griffiths, my detective protagonist.

I’m a little earlier than I said, but it’s not long before I hear the sound of approaching feet.

Katie appears. Sees me up here on my bank. I raise a hand and smile welcome.

She approaches.

Impressively torn black jeans. Black cowboy boots, well-used. Dark vest-top worn under an
almost military kahki shirt. A chunky necklace. One of those broad-brimmed Aussie-style hats
with a leather band. […]

The look has attitude and personality and toughness, without quite dipping into angry hippy
counterculture.

Also: she walks with a ski-stick, a mobility aid not a fashion statement.

She comes up the bank towards me. Sits beside me.

I say, ‘You hurt your ankle?’

You’ll notice that it’s not just that the observations are made by Fiona. (eg: “not long before I
hear the sound of approaching feet”). It’s also that the character of those observations is shaped
100% by Fiona herself. So yes, the list of clothes that Katie is wearing is a fairly neutral list
(though the very short sentences and lack of any verbs – that’s all Fiona). But that summary
comment about the overall effect (“the look has attitude . . .without quite dipping into angry
hippy counterculture”) is what Fiona thinks about Katie’s look. I can’t comment myself, because
this is Fiona’s narration. She’s in charge.

For the same reason, if there were, let’s say, a lion in the undergrowth about to spring out on
Fiona, the book couldn’t say anything about the lion, until Fiona herself had seen / heard /
smelled / witnessed it in some way.

Does that sound claustrophobic? Needlessly restrictive?

Well, maybe. But I’m now halfway into writing novel #7 in that series, and when that book’s
complete I’ll be close to 1,000,000 words published in the series. And every single one of those
words, without exception, comes from Fiona’s voice. There is no other perspective anywhere in
the series.

In other words, the restriction of first person is real, but you can still write at length, and
successfully in that style.

First Person Point of View, Pros And Cons

This is quite easy, really! The pro is the opposite of the con and vice versa.

Pro: First person narration gives you intense, personal familiarity with the narrator. The reader
can’t – short of putting the book down – separate from the narrator’s voice, their thoughts, their
commentary, their feelings etc.

Con: You lose flexibility. If there’s a lion in the undergrowth, you can’t say so, until your
narrator has seen the damn thing. If a key thing happens in your plot without your narrator in the
room, then tough. He or she can only talk about it when they encounter the consequences down
the road.

My comment:
I’ve written books both ways. There’s no right or wrong here. I love both. One good tip is to use
first person narration mostly when you have a distinctive narrator with a strong voice. Most
thrillers are written third person (so they can flip between different points of view (eg:
investigator / victim / perpetrator), but there’s no absolute rule. I write mine first person.
Likewise, a lot of romance stories are written first person . . . but you can go either way there
too.
Intrinsic Elements analysis of the gift of the Magie

Setting
Setting of time : one day before Christmas.

Setting of place : in a small apartment,

Character
Della
 protagonist
 static
 flat
 major/ main

Della is patient, loving.

James
 protagonist
 static
 flat
 major / main

James is -----

Plot
Orientation :
In a small apartment, there were living a young happy couple, James and Della.

Conflict / point of attack :

They both don’t have money while tomorrow is Christmas.

Rising action (complication) :

Event 1 : Della sells his hair but it only cost 20 dollars
Event 2 : Della is insecure because she has short hair.
Event 3 : James sold his watch in order to buy a gift for Della.
Event 4 :

Climax
They both want to give the gift.

Resolution
They are accepted the condition

conclusion

conflict
character vs him/herself

Theme :
Major theme :
sacrifice

Minor theme :
Love and affection

Tone :
Desperate and caring

Mood :
Sad,