Tense and point of view: Part TWO - First Person

In the last issue we encountered the Building Block of Tense and Point of View. Having reduced the sixteen or so different tenses to just two – past and present – we described Point of View as from what perspective or through whose eyes the story being told. To help us with this, we created an analogy whereby we used a movie camera to help us decide or identify the answer to this question.

In the Third Person Point of View, for example, the movie camera is placed outside of the story, looking in, watching the events taking place and reporting them. In First Person Point of View – the POV we will be examining in this and the next couple of issues – the movie camera is placed inside the head of a character from within the story (usually the main character) looking out at the world through their eyes whilst also looking deep down into their thinking and feeling world. There is no distance, no separation between the character’s thoughts/feelings, and the reader’s experience of them. In First Person Point of View, as the writer, you are the character. You become the voice, the feelings, the thoughts. The all of it. And the only things you have to make all of these feel real are the words that you write.