Every story’s got a narrator. They have to, because someone has to tell the story. How much this narrator knows about the story and how they interact with the characters becomes your story’s point of view.

Choose whatever you want, but when you do, you have to stick with it. An inconsistent point of view can be frustrating for the readers, the writers, and most of all, the characters.

The Points of View:

• First Person
• Second Person
• Third Person Omniscient
• Third Person Omniscient, Limited

Here’s the scary bit: this all comes from grammar. You heard me. Grammar. You might vaguely recall these sorts of lessons from elementary school, high school, or for those of us who decided to continue on with the verbal punishment, college.

However you learned it, or however you didn’t pay attention to it in whatever course, you use it every day. Why? It’s how we talk. In stories, it’s how our characters talk. Most importantly, it’s how our narrator talks. Here’s what you’ve got:

First Person Personal Pronouns—
Singular: I, My, Me, Mine
Plural: We, Us, Our, Ours

Second Person Personal Pronouns—
Singular: You, Yours
Plural: You, Yours (this is why we get word combinations such as ya’ll and you guys, because English doesn’t have a very good second person plural like other languages do.

Third Person Personal Pronouns—
Singular: She, Her, Hers, He, Him, His, It, Its
Plural: They, Them, Their, Theirs

Are you starting to get where the connection comes in? Whatever pronouns you’re using (for the most part) indicate what point of view you’re using.

First Person—
This is where you use first person pronouns, because your narrator is a character in the midst of the story and all you and the reader know is what that character knows. The story is told through his eyes only.

To illustrate, we’ll bring in our friend Mike again. The last time we saw Mike, he was heading for a nice long stay in the brig.

They didn’t talk to me much after my comment. Actually, they all pretty much stared at me and wondered why I hadn’t burst immediately into flames because of the captain’s glare. Before I knew it, that Klingon Worf was hovering over me, then hauling me unceremoniously out of my seat. Of course, on the way up, I ended up smacking my knee on the console. Hard.
 
So hard that when Worf let go of my shoulder, my knee buckled under me and I fell straight down. My hands went straight to my knee and found that my kneecap had decided to migrate itself to the side of my leg instead of the front, where it belonged.
 
Apparently, migration wasn’t a strong suit of my body parts, and when my brain realized what was going on, I blacked out.

As you can see, we only know what Mike knows and sees. We’ve no idea what the others are Really Thinking and we’ll have no idea what happens after Mike blacks out…because our narrator is unconscious. This is what you’ve got to remember when you’re using first person. We only know what our narrator knows. Nothing else.

Second Person—
This is where you use second person pronouns. And I’m not talking dialogue here, like, “Hey, you! Shut up and listen!” This point of view is found when you’re reading a choose your own adventure.

Why?

Because the narrator, dear reader, is you. It’s also very hard to write. So I’m not going to talk about it.