Narrative POV: Which One to Choose?

Firstly: What Is a POV?

Context matters if you want a message to be properly understood, so — as usual — let’s establish a starting point from which we can all travel with the same information.

What is a Point of View (POV)? It’s the place from which the information we receive comes: the perspective of the one telling the story. Who sees, who knows what, who narrates.

At first glance, it seems obvious — simple, even — but the moment you actually sit down to write and have to decide what kind of narrator to use, things get more complicated. Because, just like in real life, there are different points of view from which to tell the same story.

First Person or Third Person

The first-person narrator is you. Well — not you you — but it reads in a way that puts you inside the main character’s skin. It uses “I” or “we”, and you live — and experience — the events of the story as they happen. Every plot twist happens to the character and to you at the same time. It’s as if you’re a witness inhabiting the character’s eyes. Very meta. (If you want to read the epitome of literary meta, I recommend Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis.)

It’s a very intimate narrator, but tremendously limited. You only know what that character knows — or what they think they know, because — in my opinion — this type of narrator lends itself to being unreliable. This isn’t bad per se; it’s just an authorial choice to decide whether the information the character has is true or not. (A good example of this is Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.) To better understand this narrator’s limitation: if the character isn’t there, it didn’t happen.

Third person is the opposite — but with nuances. At first glance, it knows everything. What we usually call an “omniscient narrator”. This is the most common. It knows what characters think, their deepest desires, and everything happening around them — even to other characters. It jumps from one to another, focusing the narrative where it needs to for maximum drama. Elantris by Brandon Sanderson is a good example.

It can also be as limited as the author wants. Multi-character omniscient narration is common, but there are also narrators limited to a single character. They stick to them like glue but still know everything around them and what that character thinks or will do — always using “he”, “she”, “they”.

Depending on how you want to tell your story, you’ll have to choose one or the other. “But what about second-person POV?” you might ask. My answer: shame on your cow. We do not talk about that narrator here.

Types of Narrator

But are there more than one kind? Of course. It’s not enough just to choose between first or third person. You also need to decide how much that narrator knows. On paper it seems simple: first-person only knows what they experience, and third-person knows everything.

But what if the information the reader gets isn’t entirely correct? At first, that might seem silly — because if you’re reading it, it must have really happened, right? Well, no. Because, as someone far smarter than me once said: “History is written by the victors.”

On one hand, we have the reliable narrator. They tell the story in an objective, believable way. The reader assumes what they’re reading is true (or at least has no reason to doubt it). This is typical of omniscient narrators, who tell the story sequentially as events unfold.

But on the other hand, there’s the unreliable narrator. This comes into play when the author wants to get creative and mess with the reader’s mind. Their version of events is ambiguous enough to make us doubt, deceptive, or outright false. They might lie deliberately, have a distorted perspective for reasons initially unknown, or simply withhold information. This breeds distrust and adds a layer of complexity to the narrative — leaving it up to the reader to work out what’s real and what’s not. (Like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, as we mentioned earlier.)

And there are plenty more you can find in both commercial and more indie works:

Intrusive: the narrator comments and opines on events and characters (typical of the classic omniscient style).
Neutral: simply describes what they see and hear, without interpreting or judging.
Partial witness: only knows part of the story and tells it from their limited perspective.
Choral: multiple voices narrate the story, whether in first or third person.

Which to Choose?

Whichever you like best. In the end, there’s no perfect narrator — only the one that best serves the story you want to tell and fits your way of telling it. Experiment, play around, and don’t be afraid to change until you find the voice that fits what you want to say.

My Choice

Nobody asked me, but I’ll say it anyway: I prefer to use the third-person narrator.

I’ve tried both. I’ve written stories in first person — mostly horror or mystery — and I’ve found that for those genres it works very well. But I find it tedious to craft descriptive paragraphs from such a narrowly focused viewpoint. Maybe it’s a lack of practice, but I just can’t create the atmosphere I have in my head when I have to base it on such a limited perception.

Third person, on the other hand, gives me complete freedom to create immersive scenes. To guide the reader’s mind through the setting as if it were a camera. To make them empathise with one character while also giving them information about another’s intentions. I feel more comfortable with this perspective because it’s as if I’m the one telling the story to a group of friends or family.