First person, second person, third person limited, third person omniscient… Over the years, different narration styles have gained and lost popularity in fiction. At some points in novel history, we had omniscient narrators with insight into all characters’ thoughts and feelings, telling us what happens from a removed, all-knowing point of view (POV). At other points, we’ve had trends of immediate, close up narrators, bringing the reader into the moment with the character.
Different narration styles and points of view depend largely on what is popular at a given time, but the choice of narrator and POV dramatically change how a story gets told. When choosing a POV, a writer asks the question: Who is telling this story?
Third-person point of view: the omniscient, interrupting narrator
Omniscience narration allows a writer to tell a broad story without being confined to one character’s thoughts and knowledge. This style of narration often jumps between characters’ viewpoints.
Think about, for example, Pride and Prejudice, in which the same chapter might describe Lizzy’s distaste for Darcy and also Darcy’s thoughts on Lizzy’s fine eyes. Through the omniscient narration, we as readers gain access to more information than either of the characters does. (This, as those of you who studied books will know, is a fun trick called “dramatic irony.” Maybe we’ll get into that some other time.)
Some of my favourite books from the Victorian period use a type of omniscient narration in which the narrator is not a character in the story but is an active participant and storyteller. In Middlemarch, the narrator periodically interjects with opinions or commentary on the story. Chapter XXIX begins:
“One morning […], Dorothea—but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this marriage? I protest against all our interest.”
The narrator of Middlemarch (who may or may not be George Eliot, depending on whom you ask) objects here to the fact that we only ever hear Dorothea’s POV and never her husband’s. The narrator interrupts the story to inject their own opinion, making themself a character. This approach appears in other books of the era—in Vanity Fair the omniscient narrator, at one point, mentions going to a party at Becky Sharp’s house—but has fallen out of fashion since then.
Third person-limited narration
The more common type of third-person point of view is third-person limited narration. This type of storytelling sticks to one person’s thoughts and feelings, with no head-hopping or external narrator. The narrator is almost nonexistent: this approach allows the writer to pretend that we are watching the story unfold without anyone specific telling it to us. Often we witness the story through a character’s eyes and mind, but there is still a slight distance imposed by the third-person POV.
Consider Tamsyn Muir’s spectacular novel, Gideon the Ninth (it’s so good; go read it; seriously, I’ll wait), which begins:
“In the myriadic year of our Lord—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!—Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.”
Gideon the Ninth is indisputably told from Gideon’s POV, with all of her wit and humour and irreverence (I’m not kidding, go read it), but it’s still not first-person point of view. In one of my favourite moments of characterization of any book ever, a character named Camilla reacts to a disastrously messy room. Muir writes:
“‘Hm,’ said Camilla neutrally, and Gideon knew immediately that she organised Palamedes’s and her socks by colour and genre.”
We are fully in Gideon’s head in this moment, in which she witnesses Camilla’s reaction to a mess and intuits how she would act in her own personal life.
Some books stick to one character’s point of view per chapter, but have multiple viewpoints over the course of the book. This is a particularly common approach in romance novels, in which the author wants to simultaneously develop the two central characters equally.
Immediate first-person point of view
Third-person limited point of view is, as I mentioned above, close to first-person narration. In what I’m calling “immediate” first-person narration, we experience the story alongside the main character. We’re in their head; we read things that happen as they happen to the character.
This can happen in past-tense POV, like in Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education, or, as is currently extremely popular in YA fiction, it can be in present-tense. The Hate U Give, The Cruel Prince, The Wolf and the Woodsman: all first-person, all immediate, all present-tense.
First-person narration (especially present-tense POV), allows the reader to experience the story as intimately as possible. There is no separation from the main character, no possibility of hearing other characters’ thoughts, no external narrator relaying the story to an external audience. It allows for immediacy, for high stakes, for the tension of learning things only as the main character does.
Retrospective first-person narration
In some cases, stories are told retrospectively. In these stories, the main character is relating their story from a future time in their life. In Jane Eyre, for example, a grown-up Jane tells us her life story, starting with her unhappy childhood. She is remembering the events of her life, rather than experiencing them as we read.
Retrospective first-person introduces layering to the storytelling. If a story is told from the future, then the reader knows that, among other things, the main character lives to adulthood to tell the tale. We know that the main character is reflecting on past events, and therefore it’s possible that they are imposing their adult opinions or viewpoints on their childhood memories.
This point of view allows for a particular storytelling voice. It’s the narration style I think of when I imagine someone sitting by a campfire and telling a story—Bilbo telling the story of the three trolls to enraptured hobbit children. It’s a great approach for a particular style of storytelling, but it takes the reader out of the moment: by telling a story from the future, you lose the immediacy of the plot points.
Second-person point of view
Finally (well, not finally, because there are all sorts of narrative variations that writers can play with), every once in a while we encounter the second-person point of view. This is when the main character is given the “you” pronoun: “You go down the hill, then think for a moment before you decide where to go next.”
Second-person narration is incredibly hard to do well. Second-person POV demands the question: Why would you have a narrator describing the story to the main character? Second-person narration is telling someone a story about themself. In order for this to work, there has to be an excellent narrative reason for this technique.
For spoiler reasons, I can’t explain why either of these writers makes this choice, but in both The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin and Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, at least part of the story is told through second-person POV. All I’ll say is that in both books, the choice to write in second-person makes sense and is made clear by the end.
The other thing I’ll say is that these books are so good. So. Good. They’re so good. Go read them.
Unreliable narrators
In almost any narration style, there’s a possibility of an unreliable narrator. This is a narrator who is not giving you the full story, for some reason or another. This is most common in first-person narration and least common in third-person.
Maybe the character is lying to themself, or to the person listening to the story. Maybe they are misremembering or are intentionally hiding from something they don’t want to admit. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day is a great example of an unreliable narrator, as is Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place.
Unreliable narrators are a lot of fun, but are hard to do well. To explore an unreliable narrator, consider why the main character isn’t being honest. Whom are they lying to—others or themself? Are they aware that they aren’t being honest, or is something blocking them from telling the story correctly? Are they repressing something? Do they have incorrect information that they believe to be the truth?
If your narrator is unreliable, make sure that you’ve made that choice for a good reason. Make sure it’s important to the story and to your character development. Make your narration style part of the book: make it count.
Do you have the right narration style for your story?
As we’ve explored today, your choice of narration sets up your entire storytelling approach. Who is telling your story, and what effect does that have on the reader? How immediate is the action, how considered are the reflections? Has your narrator had time and space to consider how to tell the story? Are they telling the story at all, or just living it?
If you want to hone or adjust your narration style to best fit the story you’re telling, Rookwood Editing is here to help. Get in touch today to make your narration the best it can be.