Now that you have identified what you want to say and you have selected an effective category and genre by which to deliver your message, it’s time to cast your messenger. All of your characters are auditioning. The question is, who is best suited to communicating the message and how do the readers need to interact with this character for the message to deliver the greatest impact?
Casting the POV Character
The human experience is entirely unique. Given any event, every person present at that event will walk away with a different feeling, a different perception, a different story to tell. So, at least one of your characters must end up sharing your perspective in order to communicate your message. And given that you will need to build conflict into your story (we’ll dive more into this in a later post), at least one of your characters should view life differently than you do.
This principle clearly applies to fictional stories with animate characters. But it also applies to non-fiction narratives and stylistic pieces with more of a metaphorical bent. In fiction, the story could potentially be told through any character’s point of view (POV). When sharing a message from someone’s real-life experience, the POV character is the real person whose story is being told. When illustrating a message metaphorically, even inanimate objects could become the POV character. Let’s look at a few examples to better understand this.
Fiction POV Character
Let’s say you’re writing a story about redemption. The story line is going to resemble that of the prodigal son. Your character line-up includes the prodigal son, his parents, his siblings, his parents’ friends and neighbors, the ranch hands, and the people he met while he was living in the fast lane.
Who should serve as the POV character in this case? That depends on what exactly you want to share about redemption.
- If your point is that, no matter how far we’ve fallen, God will always welcome us back if we return to Him, then the prodigal son is your POV character.
- If your point is to encourage people to stand and pray for their wayward children and never give up on them, then one of the parents should be the POV character.
- If your point is to not judge people to be irredeemable based on their current choices, then perhaps the story should be told in the POV of one of the family friends or neighbors.
- If your point is to believe that people can and do change, then any one of the characters would work. You just have to decide which character’s transformation is going to give you the perspective shift you’re looking for.
The possibilities are endless. Whatever angle you take in your redemption story, the POV character is the person whose life is most invested in your message.
Non-Fiction POV Character
Let’s suppose you want to relay a piece of wisdom that Aunt Suzie shared with you when you were a child: He who sets others up to fail will soon fall to his own devices. Aunt Suzie had backed up her sage observation by recounting an episode of hide-and-seek in the barn with Uncle Joe. She said Uncle Joe rigged up a pile of poop to fall on her head when she crouched down in her favorite hiding place. But she hid somewhere else that day and Uncle Joe forgot all about it. The next day, Uncle Joe inadvertently tripped the trap and dumped the poop on his own head.
When you share this story, whose POV will you use? Uncle Joe was the primary actor in this story and the consequences came down on his own head… literally. But you actually heard the story from Aunt Suzie, so the story and the message were delivered through her eyes. And ultimately, the story you have to share today reflects what you remember—what stood out to you—from the story Aunt Suzie actually told you.
In this example, you will communicate your message from your POV as you relate the time that Aunt Suzie told you her story. And as you share her story, the POV will shift to Aunt Suzie’s perspective. In Aunt Suzie’s POV, we cannot know anything about Uncle Joe’s thoughts, motives, etc. But we can know whatever assumptions she made about Uncle Joe’s motives if she shared those details with you.
Inanimate POV Character
In this example, let’s suppose you want to share what it’s like being someone who is strong and dependable, always available to help but often taken for granted. So, you write a story that takes place around a table. The table metaphorically represents the nature of this person you are describing, so you personify the table.
Your POV character in this story is the table. When the kids come home and drop all their muddy sports gear and heavy textbooks on the table, what does the table think about that? How does the table feel? When the cat claws at the table legs, does the table judge the cat for being so inconsiderate? Every person, object and action will be presented through the table’s eyes in accordance with its attitude, assumptions, etc.
Narrator POV
There is one more option if none of the real or fictional characters personally possess the enlightenment required to communicate your message from their own point of view. You can effectively step into the story as a narrator and keep the POV for yourself. We will further discuss this Omniscient POV below.
This approach is not as common because it does not naturally allow the readers to get close to any of the characters. The entire story is presented as though the readers are watching it through a window. For fictional accounts, there is generally no reason why a character cannot be created to have the necessary perspective. And non-fiction stories are inherently presented from the perspectives of the people who experienced them.
Relating to the POV Character
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
James Baldwin
People connect with people—not plots. If you want your story to stick with your readers and move them in a meaningful way, your readers absolutely must connect with your POV character! There are four possible ways to present your character’s POV and each approach will connect your readers to the character differently:
- 1st Person – This reads like a diary in which your POV character is telling the story. In present tense, this gives a real-time play-by-play in which the readers ride shotgun as the character is navigating the plot. In past tense, the character shares a story that happened to him/her some time ago. Either way, the readers experience the entire story from within the mind of the POV character.
PRESENT:
I’m pulling up to the library. The clock is just now chiming 3:00, so Ms. Winthrop can’t accuse me of turning my books in late this time!
PAST:
I pulled up to the library as the giant grandfather clock in the town square chimed 3:00. Ms. Winthrop couldn’t accuse me of turning my books in late that time!
- 2nd Person – This makes the readers the POV character. You develop your character, giving him/her an emotional and psychological profile, and then you impose those characteristics on the readers by using the subject “you.” This could seem presumptuous since you don’t know your readers. But it has the potential to force your readers through the complex highs and lows of your character’s inner journey whether or not the readers would naturally respond in the same way.
PRESENT:
You pull up to the library as the giant grandfather clock in the town square chimes 3:00. Ha! Just let Ms. Winthrop try to accuse you of turning your books in late this time!
PAST:
You pulled up to the library as the giant grandfather clock in the town square chimed 3:00. You weren’t giving Ms. Winthrop any wiggle room for accusing you of turning in your books late again.
- 3rd Person – You, as an external narrator, tell the story of your POV character from your character’s perspective. You can still reveal your character’s thoughts and feelings, but you will refer to him/her as “he/she.” You have the option to select multiple POV characters as long as there is only one POV character per scene.
PRESENT:
He pulls up to the library as the giant grandfather clock in the town square chimes 3:00. Ms. Winthrop can’t accuse me of turning my books in late this time!
PAST:
He pulled up to the library as the giant grandfather clock in the town square chimed 3:00. Ms. Winthrop can’t accuse me of turning my books in late this time!
NOTE: In 3rd Person POV, the narrator recounts only what the POV character does and is aware of. Because everything is shared as the character would experience it, the character’s thoughts are written exactly as they are phrased in the character’s head; they are NOT converted to 3rd Person and they are NOT altered to match whichever present/past tense you are writing in.
- Omniscient – You, as an external narrator, know and can reveal everything that is happening, whether or not any of the characters are aware of it. Whatever you reveal is truth and may not align with your characters’ perspectives.
PRESENT:
He pulls up to the library as the giant grandfather clock in the town square chimes 3:00. As he expects, Ms. Winthrop hasn’t yet pulled her infamous stop watch out of her drawer. He’s not giving her any opportunity to accuse him of turning his books in late this time!
PAST:
He pulled up to the library as the giant grandfather clock in the town square chimed 3:00. As he expected, Ms. Winthrop hadn’t yet pulled her infamous stop watch out of her drawer. He was not going to give her any opportunity to accuse him of turning his books in late.
So, which POV is going to most effectively impart your message to your readers to bring transformation?
Up Close and Personal
The 1st and 2nd Person POVs are more intimate and experiential. They either pull the readers deep inside the POV character, or they impose the POV character onto the readers.
1st Person POV can build empathy in the readers for the inner journey of the character as your message matures in his/her life. As such, this perspective is especially useful when you want to invite your readers to reflect on the deep matters of their own hearts.
2nd Person POV essentially establishes your character inside your readers, so your readers experience everything your character experiences as though it were themselves. If you want to drop your readers into new emotional and psychological territory, perhaps as a means of shaking up preconceptions and broadening their perspectives, 2nd Person POV may be ideal.
From a Distance
3rd Person and Omniscient POV don’t draw the readers into such close communion with the character. Since they don’t dive so deep into the psyche, they are able to explore more of the complex social interactions between characters and provide a moral commentary from the standpoint of an outside observer who sees the big picture.
3rd Person POV still reveals the character’s thoughts and emotions, so readers have the ability to relate to the emotional and psychological transformation of the character. But readers will experience this on the level of a long-time friend or acquaintance who is familiar with the character’s heart as opposed to someone who is walking in the character’s shoes.
NOTE: Jerry Jenkins posted an excellent discussion on the nuances of writing in the 3rd Person POV. This perspective offers the author some flexibility in the implementation, primarily as it concerns the inclusion of multiple POV characters.
Omniscient POV focuses more on the moral take-away to be gleaned by observing how the characters’ lives unfold. Aesop’s fables, fairy tales, and the parables of Jesus are all prime examples of stories told from the Omniscient POV. So, this perspective is your best option if your goal is to impart a moral principle rather than an emotional journey.
This completes Part 1 of our POV discussion. When we return, we will walk through how to properly implement POV.
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