There is no writerly pain quite like realizing you’ve been writing your story using the wrong point of view. Unfortunately, when this happens, it’s not a matter of finding and replacing. You’ll likely need to painstakingly comb through your manuscript, swapping out verb tenses and pronouns in every sentence.
It’s never a waste of time to do something that will improve our story, but it certainly feels like a waste of time, and I’m guilty of abandoning projects for far less.
To avoid your WIPs suffering a similar fate, I’ve identified three painless ways you can figure out which POV is right for telling your story.
Refer to Comparable Titles and Today’s Publishing Trends
If you love the genre you’re writing in, you’ve probably read more than a few books. Even if you’re only just beginning to learn about the genre you’re writing in, you’ll have to research at one point or another in order to discover your WIP’s comp titles and develop a marketing strategy.
Whether you’re looking for a new, related read or doing market research, navigate to Amazon.com’s bestseller list for the subgenre and peek at the sample chapters for the current top-selling books. This can give you a good idea of what today’s readers would expect and enjoy. It’s also worth checking out the perennially popular titles for the same reason, especially if your book has a lot in common!
Explore What POV You Naturally Gravitate Towards
Knowing the standard POV won’t do you much good if it feels unnatural to write in. Mistakenly writing the wrong verb tense or pronouns is a solid sign that the POV you’re writing in is not in harmony with your writing voice or your story. You can certainly overcome this with determination and diligence—and an eagle-eyed copy editor on your side—but you can also choose to switch to what’s comfortable.
I’ve only run into this problem a couple of times, but the minute I suspect I’m not writing in the right POV for the story, I stop what I’m doing and jot down a sentence or two depicting the same scene using different POVs. Here’s an example of how that can look:
- Third-person Omniscient: Bridgit placed a hand over her heart like the new winged thing was going to burst out of her flit towards the opposite side of the room any second. Alicia, on the other hand, had long ago locked her heart away. She ignored the stirrings completely—or as best as one could when the cause of those stirrings was staring so intensely.
- Third-person Limited: Bridgit hadn’t heard whatever Alicia said. She was too absorbed in that mysterious figure across the room and the unfamiliar, fluttering feeling in her chest.
- First-person: Alicia kept talking, but I couldn’t hear her over all the beating wings. Butterflies had taken flight in my stomach, my chest, my head—all of them flying in the same direction: towards the stranger across the room.
You may have an instant favorite, or you may have to write a few more sentences to see how things flow, but it works! I’ll let you be the judge of which is best, but it’s clear if I were to continue with this story, I’d be writing in past tense.
Determine Which POV Will Suit Your Storytelling Devices
This will be your most limiting factor. For example, in the case of some books—like mysteries and thrillers—having a third-person omniscient narrator might lead to revealing clues or motives too early. In others—like epic fantasy—using first-person might dramatically limit your ability to worldbuild and explore the perspectives of a large cast (dual- and multi-POV novels notwithstanding).
There are also genres and formats that simply don’t work if they’re not written in a particular point of view, like epistolary novels. It’d be quite strange to read letters written in third-person omniscient!
Ultimately, the POV(s) you write in—like every other aspect of your novel—will culminate into the unique experience only you can give your readers, and must be chosen with that in mind.
Now that you know how to figure out which POV you’re writing in…
Work out the rest of your book in our 90-Day Novel Planner, featuring weekly and daily planning pages and space for notes about characters, plot threads, and whatever else you need to keep track of while you get the book done.
