Tense and point of view: Part four

So far, in our examination of the Building Block of Tense and Point of View, we have looked at First Person Point of View, and all its derivatives: First Person Simple, First Person Peripheral and First Person Multiple. We stressed that it does not matter what these Points of View are called, only that you are aware of how each can be used to tell your story in the way you want to tell it.

To help understand the merits of the various Points of View, it helps to write your story as if you are making a movie of it (writing visually is good practice, anyway, as it is your best chance of writing something that will jump off the page with colour and immediacy). We have mentioned several times - and I will continue to mention it - the analogy of the Movie Camera. In terms of the analogy, the Point of View you choose is directly connected to the placement of the Movie Camera. In First Person Simple, the camera is placed inside the head of the protagonist, looking out through their eyes. Every successive First Person Point of View choice places the camera a little further away: First Person Peripheral has the camera inside the head of a character other than the main character, witnessing the story as it unfolds. First Person Multiple shares the camera between more than one character, thus telling the same story from more than one point of view.

Note, all First Person Points of View are viewpoints from characters inside the story.

A very important point to note, also, is that the subjectivity of First Person Point of View renders All First Person Points of View UNRELIABLE.

And that, people, is a lot of fun.

In this, the fourth part of our look at Point of View and Tense, we are going to shift the placement of the Movie Camera from inside the story to outside the story, using Third Person Point of View.