Author’s Point of View

An author's point of view refers to the lens through which a writer approaches a topic. The way the author looks at the subject, the words they choose in describing or explaining it, and the evidence or examples they use all reflect their point of view.

• Example: You walked the dog. The third person uses impersonal pronouns—he, she, they, it, etc. The majority of fiction is told in the third person, as is non-autobiographical work and some poetry. Example: She walked the dog.

There are three points of view as follows:

First-Person Point of View

First-person point of view is ideal for writers who want their readers to identify strongly with the main character and understand that character's thoughts, motivations, and experience. Examples of first-person narratives include:

• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Stories can be told in first-person point of view with just one character all the way through, as in the above examples, or they can use multiple first-person narratives, switching between the perspectives of different characters throughout the story. This can give readers a sense of how several characters in the story are feeling. Examples include:

• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Both of these types of first-person narration can be effective when used well, and they can create very different types of stories. This is especially true in things like Gone Girl where the two narrators' versions of events often contradict each other.

Second-Person Point of View

Second-person point of view is used much more rarely in literature than first- or third-person. It is a slightly awkward point of view to use in many cases, but it can be quite striking when used well. Second-person point of view examples include:

• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (second-person only used in some passages)
• If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
• How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

Something that happens more commonly in literature is a combination of first- and second-person narration. This is common in epistolary novels and in stories where the protagonist breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the reader. Examples of this kind of combination include:

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

In these stories, the first-person narrator is the one experiencing the events of the story, but they will address other characters or the reader as ''you'' throughout.

Third-Person Point of View

Third-person point of view is very common in literature. It is also the most diverse; there are three major types of third-person narration:

• omniscient, where the experiences of many characters are recorded
• limited omniscient, where the narrator follows the thoughts of just one character
• objective, where the narrator does not give the readers any information about the thoughts or feelings of the characters

Of these types, limited omniscient is by far the most common. Examples of each type include:

• 1984 by George Orwell (limited omniscient)
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (omniscient)
• ''Hills Like White Elephants'' by Ernest Hemingway (objective)