"I drove my car to my office and went inside, politely greeting every person I met on my way."
"You drove your car to your offie and went inside, politely greeting every person you met on your way."
"He drove his car to his office and went inside, politely greeting every person he met on his way."
So let's talk a bit about 'Point of views'.
What different point of views can you write in? What are the pros and cons of them? Which one is better for your story?
1st person
The 1st person POV might feel safe and familiar for you to write in, probably because you use it everyday when speaking. Most of us will refer to ourselves in 1st person while talking, using pronouns such as I, me, my, mine and myself.
In 1st person you view the whole story from the eyes of your main character. It's a very intimate way of writing a story and you'll get to experience every situation as the main character sees and feels it.
2nd person
The amount of people writing in 2nd person POV is a minority. Some people don't even think about this POV when considering how to write a story.
When writing in 2nd person, you project the story onto the reader by using pronouns such as: you, your, yours, yourself, yourselves.
3rd person
Writing 3rd person, you aren't a part of the story the way you are in 1st person POV. Instead you feel like a fly on the wall, an observer explaining everything that's happening from a larger perspective. Writing in 3rd person gives you the greatest freedom as you are able to "move the camera" around and look at the situation through a lot of different perspectives.
Which POV should I write in?
Someone once explained it in a simple way by starting from the top and eliminating the different POV's one by one.
Example: Anna didn't want to go to work today.
If you think "I am not Anna", you can eliminate writing in 1st person. If you think "I am not talking to Anna", you can eliminate 2nd person too and this leaves you with 3rd person POV.
You might think this sounds way too simple, but this is really good way of choosing if you are new to writing and don't know where to start.
When you become more experienced, you might want to experiment with the different POV's and you realize there's no problem writing in 1st person, even though you don't relate to everything about your main character.
The strenghts of each POV
I have never written in 2nd person POV, so I am not the right person to talk about it. As a writer it might feel exciting to write in this POV, it's new and challenging and not many people write in it, but as a reader, it might feel a little bit uncomfortable to read. Having a character projected onto you; the reader, might not give the best experience.
The places I have seen 2nd person being used and working very well is fx. in video games, visual novels and things like these where you want to feel incoorporated in the story.
But since I don't have any experince with 2nd person POV, I will only go in dept with 1st person and 3rd person, explaining when and why I use them.
1st person is intimate and character based, whereas 3rd person is objective and story based. This is very general, of course this isn't always the case but it's just how I use them. I think it'll make more sense if I explain when and why I use either of the two.
When writing a novel I always use 3rd person, simply because writing a whole story with 30+ chapters seen through one person would become limiting for me. I'd feel like I was writing a diary, not being able to fully tell the story as I wanted it. Most of my full length novels have a lot of characters and I want to be able to tell their story, just as much as I want to tell the main character's story.
When writing a short story or a one-shot I mostly use 1st person, because when I write a short story I am trying to tell the story of a specific event and I want to explain it's impact on one specific person. So writing in 1st person just works better. It also allows me to connect with my main character much faster which is important, since I don't have 30 chapters to connect with him/her.
Now you're probably wondering; 'can't I just write in 1st person and change up the point of view whenever I feel like it?'
Well, my short answer will be 'no'.
Switching between the POV of different characters in a chapter can make it really confusing and it feels messy. If you want to tell the story seen through every character's eyes, then why not write in 3rd person?
It's a different matter if you make an entire chapter from another person's point of view. I once read a book series where the author would switch between the 3 main characters, but she never changed the point of view in the middle of a chapter, every character always had at least one entire chapter for themselves.
Another example was a book series I read where each book had a different character's point of view. This is a great idea if you're writing a fantasy and have build a world, but want to show different sides of it and travel in it through the eyes of different characters (a bit like Narnia).
Now let me remind you, everything stated above is purely my opinion, an opinion I have gained after being an amatuer writer for almost 10 years. But when all comes to all, you have to write your story the way YOU want to write it.
Writing a full length novel in 1st person isn't bad at all. Writing in 3rd person isn't always the better solution. It is simply different ways of telling a story. You could write the exact same story in 1st person, then write it in 3rd person and realize the story has changed completely.
What I want is just for people to think about this before they start writing a story. Sit down and look at your plot, ask yourself; what is it you want to tell and which 'point of view writing style' would fit it the best? Don't simply go with one or the other because it's the one you always use. Don't be afraid to try something new, who knows, it might be just what you needed for your story to get that final touch.
Happy writing!
Love Annalise~