ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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Let’s say you’re looking out over a lake.

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Pretty nice view. [Girl looking over a lake with binoculars]

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But now there’s someone on the other side…looking out over the lake in your direction.

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Same lake…very different pictures. [Girl looking over a lake and a bear with a mans face appears]

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Is that…Bigfoot?

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Well, when you’re reading a story, a character’s point of view is the perspective of the character…

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…or who is telling the story and how they see it. [Girl reading a book on how to kill a mockingbird]

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Kind of like when you get in a fight with a friend and you both have completely different

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ideas about who started it… [Family driving in a car]

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So how do writers communicate point of view?

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Often in stories the main point of view is told from the perspective of the narrator.

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This narrator might speak in first, second, or third person.

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"First person" means the narrator is telling the story as if he were there witnessing it… [Boy walking down a dark street in the rain]

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or if he’s a part of the story himself.

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If you see a lot of “I”s and “me”s, you’ve got a first person narrator.

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And a pretty self-centered one, at that…

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Then there's “third person.” Third person can be all-knowing and omniscient…. [Third person sign falls from a cloud]

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Or more limited—just describing characters' actions and letting us play detective about

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what they're thinking. [Lou staring at his broken bike]

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Most third person novels shift back and forth between the perspectives

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of a number of different characters…

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But be careful.

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Stories sometimes give more weight to one or two perspectives than they do others. [Couple sitting on a bench and a treat jumps from a dogs nose into its mouth]

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All points of view are not created equal.

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Pronouns—words like I, you, he, they—are your biggest clues when figuring out point

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of view in fiction and nonfiction.

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Let's practice. [Piano keys making sounds]

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What's the perspective here? [Boy standing on top of an elephants back]

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Third person.

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What about here? [Man in a hospital bed with broken arm and girl visiting him]

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That's right—it's still third person, but now with dialogue.

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What perspective is this? [Boy falls off an elephant]

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Third person.

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And now?

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How about this?

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Easy—first person.

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And now for the tricky one… [Boy in bed sweating]

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Second person is a pretty dramatic narrative point of view that writers don't use all that much.

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It can get pretty old after a few pages. Still, it's fun to play around with it in your writing. [Old person reading a book]

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So, uh…what’s the point?

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The point is that…point of view allows us to hear from some characters who allow us to think [Car pulls up outside a house]

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differently than we do…

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…and that might make us think differently about some stuff, too.

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Like…if we listen to Voldemort’s side of the story… maybe we’ll actually be [Voldemort inside a church building]

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able to see where he’s coming from.

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Okay, no, he’s just a huge jerk. [Wizard in Harry Potter robes casting a spell]

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