***Rosetta's Guide to POV

One of the most important things about writing is choosing the POV you’re going to use. There are three: First, Second and Third person. Each of them has a different kind of style to them and it’s important to be aware of each. Let’s begin!

First Person

First person is a point of view I personally rarely write with. It’s written from “your” point of view, entirely in “I.” When using first person, the character is speaking directly to the reader. You may or may not break the fourth wall when writing in this style. First person allows a more intimate look into your character’s mind. You have a lot more insight in your character’s thought, but that also takes into account their bias. If your character meets another and finds them stupid and annoying, that’s ALL you’re going to see of this other character. First person concerns the thoughts and opinions of the character you’re writing from only and it’s important to tap into the way they perceive the world around them.

A good exercise to understand your character’s perception better is documenting their biases to certain personality/appearance traits and objects. Do they like funny people? Or hate them? Are they afraid of red-headed people? Do they hate the sound of cars or do they find it relaxing? Documenting their biases can help you formulate their later reactions to other characters and objects.

It’s also important to remember that you’re speaking directly from your character’s thoughts. They could be writing down this story themselves or speaking it even. Therefore, you must remember how people document their world around them themselves. When you walk up to a person, do you, in your head, describe every single detail about them, down to the freckle on their nose? Of course not and so neither does your character unless it applies (example: they’re a detective, writer or serial killer).

I find that much of first person is emotion. How does your character feel about a particular situation? Remembering to show and not tell is also an important part of first person as well (actually it applies to all POVs, so remember it!) When your dog dies, you don’t sit down and say, “I’m sad. I’m angry.” You may say, “This sucks,” and then you may being to cry. Your hands may ball into fists. Your stomach may contract. You may stoop over, shoulders shuddering. Feel what your character is feeling, show it through what they’re doing, don’t just say it.

Here’s an example of first person:

I read through my life like everyone else reads through history books. Scrawled onto pages in messy script, mapped out through days, months, years, I can look through it and learn all about Clea Jenivie. The words are cold against my fingertips, the pages hard and stiff and bent carelessly at the corners. I see and I learn, but I'm never truly there. I can't recall the flood of emotions, the vivid colors, the warm sunlight falling on milky skin. They are occurrences of the past, subtle days and chaotic nights in the Jenivie household that are secured in the pages of a book. A journal. But the curly letters and quickly sketched pictures mean nothing. Boreal, hardened onto the pages, so benumbed and far away that I can't even taste them. And for most people, that would be okay. They’re finding interest in another person’s perspective on events that never existed in their own life. But when I read through my journal, it aches right down into my core, a kind of pain that pulsates through my entire being until all I want to do is curl up on my bed and cry. Because those are supposed to be my moments, that's supposed to be my life.

But it's not anymore.

Looking at Luke, cheeks flushed in shame, all I can hear is a voice in my head scolding me like I am a child who breaks everything I touch. This is why we can't have nice things. I am a deficient little girl who can only have the things as shattered as she, but up until now that didn't matter. I would try to salvage all I had ruined to build some kind of a future. But now I have a taste of the life I lost, something so sweet and addictive that I actually pretended in vain that it was mine, and all I want is more. Real girls, normal girls, they get nice things. They get jobs and futures and boys like Luke and then eventually husbands who will love them so fully that they drown in bliss until the day they die. And then there are girls like me, girls who messed up their entire lives and have to work for every single beautiful thing they have until it is snatched away and then they find a new falling star to catch. Those are the girls that no one wants - the outcasts. The broken dolls that aren't worth fixing. I've accepted that fact, and I think that my family is starting to, too. People see me, and they recognize lost hope.

-Stare (also check out Thundy’s 1st person!)

An important thing to note about this post is our Stare’s character perceives herself. She calls herself “deficient.” Who knows if others think this? You don’t because all you’re seeing is the inside of this character’s mind, their biases and they don’t like themselves. Remember to incorporate perception. With 1st person, the reader will view reality ONLY through that character’s eyes. While in RP, we only control one character, with 3rd person, there’s the elimination of as readily obvious bias.

Third Person

Third person isn’t as directly told from the character’s POV. It’s rather a bit more separate, the narrator being “he” or “she.” There are three different kinds: limited, multiple and omniscient. Limited is most often used, then multiple and then omniscient. The last should be used sparingly to avoid confusion. I’m only going to focus on third person (limited) because it’s the only one we can use here!

Third Person (Limited)

Third person limited is told from the point of view of ONE character. You’re not directly in their head. It’s the he/she voice. With third person limited, you’re not as directly affected by your character’s bias as you are with first person. Again, showing and not telling should be taken in account in order to create a stronger emotional argument, but it’s a bit more acceptable to mention, in the midst of your character’s mannerisms, that they were “filled with sorrow” or “brimming with fury.” With third person, it’s possible to tap into your character’s thoughts, but it must be stated that they thought this particular things as it’s not as readily obvious. How your character feels about something is more hidden and MUST be brought out by slipping their emotions via showing and not telling.

More action and description can be played out with third person and should be played out. It’s easier to describe and show what’s going on without seeming forced. Moreover, with third person, it’s easier to hide certain things about your character. If your character has a secret, slight allusions towards it are easier in third where you’re slightly distant from your character whereas in first, you are your character.

Be wary when writing in third that you’re not too distant from your character. While you’re not in their head, it’s important to get to know them as to better represent their emotions. Try this:

List all the things your character does when they’re feeling a certain way. Do they rock back and forth when they’re sad? Do they look down when they lie? Getting to know how your character reacts to certain situation is a positive step in getting to know them!

Here’s an example of third limited:

Free, out of his sweaty, gripping hands, Ariadne was tall and strong and Ariadne who had been beating herself down for weeks now, realized that she had been fighting the wrong enemy. The warrior took off her dented helmet and saw clearly, staring into that darkness, that crushing alley and at the man who’d caused all this pain, stabbing scalpels in his hands, stabbing scalpels in her gut that she reached for now, sliding out, welcoming the resounding agony and soaking in the sudden, sharp freedom. And she held these scalpels up now, the power in her hand, adrenaline in her veins, pumping and Ariadne was light.

For weeks, she lay in the grass, curled up around her wounds, crying, moaning, begging the pain to cease, but it just came back, waves, to and fro, each one bigger than the last, tsunamis that crashed over her, dragged her into their swishing, crushing clutches until she couldn’t breathe and her lungs were filled with water and she was choking, knowing she deserved it.

But, for the first time since it was blood on her hands, Ariadne fought those waves back. She picked up the pieces of the puzzle and put them all back together. When she was younger, she was told she had fire inside of her and now, for the first time in a while, she felt it, warming up her insides, sparks on her tongue, sparks in her eyes that leered at the man before her.

–Ariadne post, Rosetta

Notice the descriptive language. It’s a lot easier and more acceptable to use figurative language in third and using such language allows the writer and the reader to more easily tap into the character’s emotions. Only Ariadne’s POV is shown here as well.

Second Person

Finally, we come to second person, another narrative that I only suggest in small doses (usually used for prologues, mystery novels, or create-your-own-adventures). Second person makes the reader the narrator. A problem to avoid with second person is not making it sound mechanical. You do this, you do that. It’s harder to avoid this with second person. Second person is often used as a step-by-step analysis. If you’re writing something creative that you want to sound like it’s a series of steps, second may work!

However, second is so rarely used because it doesn’t allow as much insight and character development as you’d like. In fact, there’s little character’s development from a second person perspective. Don’t stray away from second person though because of that. Second person is good for distorted reality as well. When the mind is unsound, it’s more effective. Most importantly, it needs to flow. Strictly speaking, ALL writing should flow, but if a 2nd person piece can flow perfectly, then you’ve succeeded! Just follow your instinct. Let each word come out gently and don’t force it.

A good exercise for making your unsound make sense (I know, weird, right?) is by wrapping their distorted reality around the senses. What do they see, taste, smell, touch, hear? It doesn’t have to be clear or relevant. But, becoming aware of how your character’s mind is working is a good way of staying in touch with their mind (even if they’re not) and their character! Also, how do these things invoke memories? Memories are extremely important to keep in touch with.

Take this example:

Faces flash by your vision but they all blur together into one massive mess of bleeding colours, touching and caressing but you can’t be brought to care – your eyes are too heavy to keep open and you feel so light, like you could just rise up and float upupup any second now, just go and run and never come back. You try to tell them that, that you feel fine (better than fine, you feel so good it’s like sex but not to you) but they don’t listen they never do, and instead keep stringing together words and numbers that don’t make sense. People keep trying to make life into things that they aren’t; set points and clear lines and things that don’t mix together to create new problems and difficulties. You have lived your whole life with a problem that would never go away and learned to adapt, to fly past it in the constant bang bang bang of your feet hitting the pavement and the searing muscles that burn away everything you’re supposed to be.

You’ve lost count of how many times you’ve demolished who you are to build yourself up to be this newer, better thing that is always supposed to know things the old Jessa didn’t. Things like school and speech and just living the way other people want you to live. Normally and without faults.

But that’s not how it works and you see something in the eyes of the strangers that should clue you into the fact that something is wrong and out of its intended alignment (they look wet and feral and so so serious you could lose yourself in the lines of their faces) but it’s common fact that Jessa is slow and stupid so you can’t place it, you can’t. They look like Lydia did when Denver fell on the screen, so lost and wild and broken that you ache to put them back together because you’re always trying to compromise for the things that you don’t have. They feel like smoke clinging to your skin as hands touch your neck and keep it there with your eyes riveted to the ceiling, speaking in foreign tongues that whisper a makeshift lullaby.

-Chaos

Notice the way things flow so easily and so intricately. This is a lovely example of 2nd person. It’s an unsound mind, dribbling in emotions and thoughts, a process of sorts that captures what 2nd person is.

Another lovely example by Chaos:

Spring paints you in gorgeous hues you never knew you wanted, clashing greens and blues and reds that just feel so right against your skin as new life blooms and the cold melts away to reveal new chances, second glances and tiny apples on your tree's branches. The way she touches you still has the ability to steal your breath away like the bitter winter's chill but it's different, infused with a kind of budding warmth that stays with you long after you're gone.

"You're spring to me." You mutter one day with a blush and the radiator humming on low, burying your face in the crook of her neck and inhaling everything that she is. It takes her a moment because she's still not in tune with you like Lydia is (was?) but then she smiles - you feel it against your skin and it warms the insides of your skull.

"Really?" she murmurs, tracing delicate swirls in the skin of your back and watching as tendrils of black and gold mix on the sheets. You try to melt into her so you can take her wherever you go because you've barely known her for a few months but she is yours now the way that nothing has ever been before, and it scares you. "You're summer to me." And it kind of makes sense, so you smile and let all those unsaid things you don't know how to say rest comfortably in the space between you.

There you have it! First, second and third, all summed up! Now, take this information and write!