: Re: Should I change my point of view? I am not very familiar with "point of view". From my understanding, (correct if I'm wrong, but I looked it up so I think I'm right) 1st person

@Tiffany377

Vote Up Vote Down

After the book is read, no one really remembers what perspective it was written in. So perspective isn't necessarily important at all. Other aspects of your story are much more important.
However, there are a few differences.
The first-person perspective is the easiest for most beginning authors, however, it can only show what the POV character can see. If you have several plots with different people you can still do it in first-person, but it could become very complex and confusing with several different "I"'s in the story so in most cases first-person means one perspective.
The first-person perspective also helps to avoid head-hopping (too abrupt changes of POV-person in a scene).
The second-person perspective is very special and quite uncommon. It can, of course, only speak to a single second person (the reader), but I am willing to bet, people won't remember that your story was written even in this POV, but rather if it was a good story in all the other aspects or not.
The third-person perspective is the one preferred if you want to have many threads and show different events that a single person could possibly not cover. However, it also comes with the risk of head-hopping, if you decide to have more than one POV-character per scene.
For a study case, compare the book "The Hunger Games" with the movie. The movie, doing "third-person", can show things the book, being first-person, cannot. Which one is better? I'd say they are both good and they are both telling a good story, just a bit differently.
That being said (you probably don't have to change your POV) I've found doing it isn't that hard. It's more of a "shouldn't there be a script for this"-kind of exercise. It takes time and is boring, but once you get into the flow, it's pretty easy (unless you have several perspectives, then you'd have to cut parts away).
I've even done it a few times and found that it can breathe new life into the story and make you see it from a different perspective, so you could try and see what it shakes loose...

(0)

Login to post a comment!