According to Mr. Knight, there are four basic POVs from which one can choose.

1. Omniscient: In a word, the author is a god. As Knight says, “The omniscient author still has the tale-teller’s power to condense or summarize events and to move freely among the characters. She can go into the central character’s mind, to show what he is thinking and feeling; then she can drift out and look at him quite objectively and with amusement. She can also look at other characters” in the same way.

2. Limited Omniscient: With this POV, you can talk about your character from both the inside and the outside—you can describe what they look like as well as what they’re feeling. Keep in mind that it’s limited, which means you’re limited to one character. As Mr. Knight says, you may only want to use this viewpoint for the first few paragraphs before moving into a single-character viewpoint.

3. The Detached Viewpoint: The author is merely an observer of events: what people say, what they are wearing, what they are doing, etc. In this viewpoint, the author is forbidden to do two things—he can't tell us what’s going on in the head of a character, and he can’t interpret a characters actions. The second forbidden aspect of this POV is the hardest to get a hold of, since so much of what we do is an interpretation of actions. If we see a person sitting on the edge of her chair, we can interpret that in a variety of ways, but not if we’re writing in a detached viewpoint. We can’t say, “Sally sat on the edge of her chair in nervous anticipation.” Rather, we must show what Sally is doing: “Sally sat on the edge of her chair, biting her nails, knees bouncing,” or something to that effect. As authors, we must let the character’s actions speak for themselves.

4. The Single-Character Viewpoint: Here, we have to decide if we’re writing in first person (I said, I did, I thought, etc) or third person (Ted did, Sue said, Ryan thought). (I’m assuming no one here is avant-garde enough to write in second person.) Let’s start with third person.

When we writ in a third person POV, we have to decide if we’re going to write in a subjective way or an objective way. A third person subjective POV means two things. First, we can’t describe the outside of the character—we can’t tell the readers what he looks like. Second, we can—indeed, we must—speak directly about the inside of the character: his feelings, his thoughts, his sensations.

With third person objective, the opposite is true. We can describe the outside of the character—we can describe what he looks like—but we cannot speak directly about the inside of the characters. (I don’t really understand the difference between 3rd person objective and a limited omniscient viewpoint.)

If you’re writing in first person, you’re automatically in a single-character viewpoint—no question about it. But how the taleteller relates to the story is a different matter. The first-person taleteller doesn’t have to be the protagonist, the hero, of the story. A good example of this kind of narrative are the Sherlock Holmes stories, told in the first-person by Dr. Watson. On the other hand, the taleteller can be the hero, the primary mover of the story.

Another concern is how the first-person storyteller is going to tell the story. Will it be in the form of a memoir or a series of journal entries? Or, does the storyteller know he’s telling a story? If that’s they case, who is his audience? One person? A family? Or, does he not only know he’s telling a story, but does he know it will be published and read—in other words, is every reader his audience? Will he address the audience or not? Is he a trustworthy storyteller, or will he tell the story to deliberately mislead the readers?

We could talk about tense, but I don’t see the point. Personally, I enjoy first-person stories told in the present tense, but, strangely, I don’t like third-person stories told in the present tense. Perhaps it’s because the present tense used with a first-person narrative gives an warm-hearted immediacy to the story. I don’t know.

OMNISCIENT: The first three Dragonlance novels were written in the omniscient POV. Can’t think of anything better right now.

LIMITED OMNISCIENT: ????

DETACHED VIEWPOINT: Anton Chekhov’s short story, “The Lament.” Damon Knight recommends the short stories of John O’Hara.

THIRD PERSON, SUBJECTIVE: I think Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is a fine example of this POV, worthy of much study.

THIRD PERSON, OBJECTIVE: ??? Partly because I don’t see the difference between this POV and the Limited Omniscient POV. It seems to me that one can easily alternate between a third-person objective and a third-person subjective. Perhaps Isaac Asimov’s “Nightfall” would fit into this category as well as Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

FIRST PERSON:

-- Telling about another hero: Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
-- The narrator is the hero: Stephen King, Bag of Bones
-- Talking to the audience: Herman Melville, Moby Dick
-- Writing a diary: Daniel Keyes, “Flowers for Algernon”
-- Untrustworthy narrator: Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier (perhaps the most famous example of the untrustworthy narrator).

If you’re really up to it, read Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury for a very intense lesson about writing in the first person. The novel has four parts, the first three are narrated in the first person by three different brothers—the first is a mentally retarded man in his 30s; the second is a intelligent Harvard freshman; the third is a blue-collar worker in his 30s. You’ll quickly see that writing in a first-person POV is very difficult because you must become the narrator. The fourth part is written in omniscient, which is a fine example in its own right. You can learn a lot from that novel.

With any POV the writer must remember that they can only write, tell, show what the POV character knows.

So often lines such as: but he just didn't know it yet, or worse was to come sneak into first person or limited third. If the character doesn't know it then he can't think about it.

Another thing that makes first person so hard is character description--we don't look at ourselves in the mirror and think about what we look like. We don't describe those around us that we know well, or rooms, scenes etc that we know well--so it becomes a real challenge to get these descriptions in.

You walk down stairs into the kitchen. You open the fridge and cold air and dim light bathe your face. You reach in and grab a carton of milk and drink right from the spout. Your wife would be angry, if she hadn't already left you. Maybe it was a mistake to sleep with all those prostitutes. Not that there's anything you can do about it now. You toss the carton to the floor and stomp on it. Slamming the fridge door shut, you walk into the living room where your shotgun leans against the fireplace...

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With any POV the writer must remember that they can only write, tell, show what the POV character knows.

So often lines such as: but he just didn't know it yet, or worse was to come sneak into first person or limited third. If the character doesn't know it then he can't think about it.

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A slight qualification. So long as we talk about writing from a character viewpoint, this is correct. But if we write from an omniscient viewpoint, then we certainly say things like, "...but he didn't know that yet." I know Shawn knows what she's talking about; I wanted only to make it a little clearer.

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Another thing that makes first person so hard is character description--we don't look at ourselves in the mirror and think about what we look like. We don't describe those around us that we know well, or rooms, scenes etc that we know well--so it becomes a real challenge to get these descriptions in.

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True! It's for this reason that if we write in the first person, we have to decide on the author's relationship to his audience. And what I learned from Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is that we also have to decide on the author's intelligence. You don't have to read Faulkner to learn this lesson; you can read Daniel Keyes, "The Flowers of Algernon," which is a wonderful and profound story in its own right.

Regarding Hildy's comment -- Has anyone ever read a good or successful story written in 2nd person? If so, what is it and how can we get a hold of it?

NOT true. If you really believe this then you have never had to go to a 20 year reunion and wonder if you were fatter than anyone else, or had a wife that gained a few pounds over Thanksgiving, or had a big date (meeting, job interview, trip to the store, fill in the blank) to worry about, or simply dressed yourself in the morning and noted the mustard stain on your favorite yellow and green checkered tie as you rushed out the door (that description alone speaks volumes).

Bulimia and anorexia epidemics prove that we constantly look at ourselves in the mirror and think about how we look. We all have our rituals of this every morning before going out. "Bad hair day" is most often thought about by the owner of the supposed bad hair than anyone viewing them, probably because we are all worried we are having a bad hair day ourselves (or have a mustard stained tie to hide).

It is very easy to work in some description of the POV character in this case, as we all are constantly aware of the outward image we project, otherwise my son would not cry like a baby if he doesn't get the new $300 jeans that are in style, or my daughter would not throw fits over the small gap between her front teeth when it is school picture day (I keep telling her the dentist wants to wait on braces, she wants to hear none of it).

How we look, including complete descriptions (favorite shirt, I guess these jeans will do, where the h-e-double-toohpicks are my black pumps) is a very basic part of our self-image and would come out very naturally in the course of a day. Everyone thinks of themselves as pretty or ugly or normal or plain or georgeous or a knock-out or a lady killer or downright handsome (despite the afforementioned mustard-stained tie) and this descriptor can change day to day or minute to minute. As proof, my wife thought of herself as the prettiest girl in her class at her high-school reunion, for once not asking me constantly if she looked fat in her dress...until her old nemesis showed up 20 pounds lighter and several thousand dollars of plastic surgery prettier than in high school. Right then, my wife went from pretty to butt-ugly in her own mind and spent much of the night trying to hide. Everyone can think of similar examples from their own lives with just a few seconds introspective or a glimpse in the mirror.

Better: Mary glared at her reflection in the mirror and pulled the skin upward near her eyes getting rid of the crowfeet around her eyes. When she tried to do the same thing with the bagging "turkey skin" under her chin she almost choked herself.

But unless we are getting new contacts and a hair dye job, characters don't look in a mirror and think in descriptions.

John looked in the mirror. He had blue eyes, and sandy blond hair. His skin was tan, beach bum tan-etc

This is classic telling and an easy out.

What you describe as reasons to describe by looking a mirror are not character descriptions--they are parts of character trait.

If Susan looks in the mirror and decides she has a fat butt that doesn't equate to a general character description. We have Susan look in mirror decide her butt is too fat and then run off to the gym. Then we have her overhear someone there talking about her protruding bones and have her think they have to be speaking of the person next to her. Then we have an anorexic.

But the old look in the mirror to tell us a characters characteristics is a cliché way of doing it and a turn off for most editors ( I won't say all--I'll just think it OK?)

It shows a lack of creativity to fall back on such a thing--the reflective surface cop out.

And you bet--I look in the mirror when I get dressed or when I brush my teeth and notice flaws--but I don't notice I have dark brown eyes and dark, a few shades away form black hair. Or that I'm 5'4. We notice the abnormal but not the normal.

Make sense now?

Neither the rule nor the explination makes sense to me ... unless, of course, you're writing in first person. But even then you can have the character die at the end of the story -- you'll have to imply it and you can't show it. Think of 2 Timothy and 2 Peter in the New Testament -- both of those know they're on the threshold of execution.

I would promptly dismiss both the advise as well as the book.

Character description, for instance. Does every story need a detailed description of your character? If you absolutely must have a camera trained on your character describing how he looks in each scene, then, sure, first person is probably not your best choice of voice. On the other hand, first person is a terrific voice to use if you are hiding information.

Consider Poe's "Tell Tale Heart." This is a perfect example of a story that requires first person for its impact. The narrator is plainly insane: "TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story." What gives the story its tremendous energy is that the character doesn't think that he's insane. You could tell the same events with the more objective third person voice, but you would lose the uncanny appeal of the story, which is the detailed, methodical, even logical recounting of the POV characters description of why he killed a man and hid him under the floorboards. Of course, the first person POV means Poe skips over things other people might find important in a story--we don't know what the POV character looks like, we don't know his name, we know almost nothing of his life beyond the night of the murder. All we have are his voice and his story... and that's all that is needed to craft what may be one of the most successful stories ever written.

An interesting excercise would be to take a familiar fairy tale--say the story of Chicken Little--and tell it from four or five different points of view and tenses.
Every voice has its advantages and disadvantages. Eventually you can learn to make these work for you.

By the by, it is certainly possible to write multiple POV stories in first person, and several of the conventional methods of writing a first person story lend themselves well to this (for instance, the series of letters to an interested party). If I'm writing a story in letters both parties are sending to a mutual friend, then--if one of the POV characters happens to die--I can simply continue the story with the other character's letters.

As for 2nd Timothy, Paul is in prison awaiting execution, but he isn't actually executed during the narrative (and it isn't really a narrative at all--he barely mentions his own circumstances). The same is true of 2nd Peter...except that it is Peter rather than Paul telling things (which are again not a narrative).

I'm not talking about writing as a cancer patient who will evenutally die. Rather, I'm talking about a man that will die shortly after he stops writing. Perhaps like Peter and Paul he is on death row, scheduled to be executed at 7 AM on July 12, and the narrative ends at 6:10 AM on July 12 when the guards show up with the priest.

But I suppose my point is fairly self-evident.

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This brings up a question. When you're writing in the first person, do you have to assume that person himself knows he's writing? Does the narrator need to know he's telling a story?

This should probably be written in the present tense, of course. A lot of the action would have to take place in the mind -- hence, the story would have to be radically interior and psychological. You couldn't write, "I go downstairs to confront Mary." Rather, you'd have to write. "Damn that Mary. I can't believe she did that. Where the hell is she at? I see her in the kitchen, munching on some Fritos like nothing happened. Damn her."

If the fact of the two-story house is important in a story told in this way, then you'd have to find a way to let the reader know without the narrator consciously reflecting on going up and down stairs. This wouldn't really be that hard. I grew up in a two-story house. Sometimes I didn't think much about it, other times I did. Espeically when Dad told me to go upstairs and turn the lights out in my bedroom.

So I suppose my question is this: is it possible to tell a story in the first person in such a way that the reader more or less feels as if he is participting in the narrator's life?

If people can read the story and then later say, was that in first person? Huh. You know you have done it.

Can I explain how to do it--most likely not without sounding like an arrogant pompous donkey's rear. I can do it.

Let me try--you have to avoid any communication with the reader--IE my trouble began on Monday morning--blah blah--then the reader is being talked to.

Avoid descriptions of things the character would not describe--the room he's lived in for ten years. (Now this does not count if the room is suddenly changed, but that change has to have something to do with moving the plot of the story.

Avoid knowledge the I character Couldn't have.

It's a balance of wording and description told from a single tight POV. I think you need to read a lot of first person, good and bad to figure out how to do it well.

But when you are starting to get serious about writing so that other people can and will read it, start by learning to write in Third Person Limited Omniscient. This is the easiest form to master, and it also has the virtue of being the easiest for the reader to understand.

Unless you are writing an autobiographical account of your own experiences, First Person is very difficult to do well. You don't just have the issues of dealing with writing as writing, you also have the whole thing of creating a fictional narrator to narrate the fictional events in a fictional voice.

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Can I write a story, in two different POVs? I want to write 90% of the story in first Person, or 3rd subjective, then focus on a different character from an omniscent limited POV.

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Yes.

If you haven't read it, I would recommend you read The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; its available for free download from ibiblio.org I think. If memory serves (and its been a fair few years since I read it myself, so I could be totally mixed up her) that's a story told in 1st person from two different viewpoints, and it is generally regarded as a classic.

First person: I walked out to my car and found that some weirdo had crapped on the hood. Man, was I po'd about that.

Omni limited is knowing only one character's thoughts and views--which to me is the same as limited third, but with the added bouns that some all knowing (the author) can put thoughts in about that character)--we can get things like: John walked out the door, happy as can be. Debbie walked down the street he sure did love the way her blond hair shone in the sun. If only he had known that asking her on a date would be the end of it all.

3rd subjective-- the story is told in third person but from the POV of a single character, or several characters in turn Susan left her office at 3pm and went to the bakery to get her daily bread. She bought five loaves. (new chapter) John answered the phone, it was Sally at the bakery telling him about that Susan had bought five lovas of bread. He was angry that Susan had gone off her low carb diet again.

Ok, dumb examples--they are meant to be.

So this is how I see the three main POV choices:

first person; the story is told in first person from one character’s POV

third person subjective; the story is told in third person, but from the POV of a single character, or several characters in turn.

omniscient: the narrator possesses a God-like overview of the story and can enter into any of the characters’ consciousness or render observations that the character is not aware of.

NO WHERE did I advocate having your character look directly in the mirror and make a bland boring descriptive sentence that is totally out of place. It can be done throughout the course of a story or scene if done creatively. The point is, it can be done.

I still must say that I disagree that we do not notice our appearance, even the "normal" things. Color of eyes can determine color of an outfit, to best set them off. Height is an issue that affects clothes we wear and sometimes a person's self-esteem and can be worked in that way, or as a view that person has of an event that a taller person would see very differently. Even being terminally "normal" can come out in a variety of ways, and saying something like that is a description in and of itself (maybe not a good one, but it IS a description).

I just feel that we are shorting ourselves creatively to make a blanket statement that we do not notice how we look, as we really all do and it would not take much to get a great description in using 1st person POV, WITHOUT using a mirror or any reflective surface whatsoever.

For instance:

Oh, yeah. I guess this was supposed to be a POV thread, wasn't it? We seem to have gotten a bit off topic.