This post was first published in May 2017 and last updated in January 2025.
Sometimes, it’s obvious who the POV (point of view) character(s) will be for a particular story. Maybe you’re writing a first-person romance
novella, for instance, with the heroine as the only viewpoint character.
But in many cases, there isn’t a clear-cut choice. You might have a main character plus other characters who play a big role in the story. Your protagonist will likely be one viewpoint character, but you may want others too.
When you sit down to write any new story, viewpoint (often called POV, for point of view) is pretty much the first decision you have to make. Who will begin your story? What other voices will you bring in? The decisions you make will shape the whole of your narrative … and they’ll shape the reader’s experience of it.
Choosing a POV Character: One Person … or More?
The simplest option is to stick with a single viewpoint character: this could be a first-person or third-person narrator.
If you have just one POV character, they’ll normally be the
protagonist – though that’s not essential. Some older works in particular use a non-protagonist narrator: John Watson is the first-person narrator of the Sherlock Holmes stories – but Sherlock is the protagonist.
Read
more...
