The verbal camera location depends on the method you choose. Each method has strengths and weaknesses. You can alternate point of view from person to person by changing the POV with each chapter or scene. Don't switch POV characters from sentence to sentence or paragraph to paragraph to avoid “head hopping.”
In most genre fiction, a protagonist viewpoint is preferred, either protagonist only or protagonist as main viewpoint. The antagonist, love interest, friends, and foes may also chime in depending on the needs of your story. You can have an unbiased narrator or the cold eye of an unmanned camera.
Stories have been narrated by friends or observers. Stories are rarely told by the antagonist, but it has been done. Sometimes the protagonist proves to be the antagonist.
Sometimes POV methods are intentionally mixed, but you must carefully edit for random, unintentional shifts. A single method is easiest to follow. There have been stories where the protagonist is written in first person and other characters are written in objective or close third.
There are many opinions about which point of view you should use. Omniscient is the most distancing and first person is the most intimate. You should use whatever works for the story you wish to tell.
First Person: The reader experiences the story through the character’s lens. The verbal camera records from inside the character's mind. The reader is limited by what the protagonist can see, hear, overhear, and know about. The story is influenced by their outlook on things. You are privy to their intimate thoughts. They have to be in every single scene. It uses I, me, and mine. The reader in essence becomes the character.
First Person Subjective: The point of view character is the narrator of the story but rather than relating his experience, he gives his version of someone else’s story. This is told in first person using I, me, and mine. The story is told through his filter and can limit the suspense potential. The verbal camera records through this observer’s eyes. It is limited to what he can see, hear, etc. You cannot explore anyone else’s thoughts unless they voice them. This can be used if you want an unreliable narrator or to mislead the audience.
Modified Objective: This viewpoint character might not know what the other characters are thinking, but will put their own spin on it. This is told in third person using he, she, and they. The point of view character interprets what is happening through the filter of his beliefs and feelings. However, it can be hard to summon the requisite sympathy for the protagonist if the story is told from someone else’s viewpoint.
Second Person: With this viewpoint, the reader becomes the POV character and is referred to as "you." The narrator describes 'you" seeing, hearing, acting, etc. It is often told in present tense. This method is rarely used. It is quirky and can be a turn off. It doesn't work in all genres.
Objective Third Person: The story is told from the viewpoint of a portable verbal camera. It records whatever it sees and hears. Thoughts and feelings are related through actions and dialogue instead of internal narrative and dialogue. It uses he, she, and they. This method allows you to follow different characters and record their interactions. The advantage is you can let the reader in on information the protagonist could not know. This works well in stories where the reader is allowed to see what the antagonist, friends, and foes are up to.
Third Person Close Up: allows you to enter a character’s mind and films like first person, except you use he, she, and they. This is useful when you have multiple point of view characters, but the verbal camera remains tight on each character as they relate their part of the story.
Limited Third Person: is a bridge between third person and omniscient. The camera is off to the side. It picks up what it can see, hear, and experience. It can stand aside as an observer, taking in other people's body language, emotional reactions, interactions, etc. It is not always reliable. In limited third, a writer often inserts something the character misses, You can comment on an expression or behavior going on in the room where the POV character isn't looking. This can sometimes turn into blatant author intrusion. You have to tread the line carefully.
Omniscient: An omniscient narrator knows all, sees all, and reads every mind at any given time. This is done with he, she, and they. The omniscient narrator can offer commentary and opinions and supply information. He never becomes one of the characters. The characters are not aware of the narrator. He is merely there to tell the tale. This method was used in literature from previous centuries. The verbal camera pans the scenes from afar. There are few limitations as to where it can zoom and what it can record. It can distance the reader from the character. Sometimes with this method, the writer “tells” the reader a story, much like reading a book to someone. The challenge is in shifting the vantage point of the verbal camera. The shifts should not be random and should be easy to follow. It can notoriously result in “head hopping.” The other danger with this method is consistency, meaning you stay in this point of view and not veer off into first person or third person close up.
In addition to type of POV, you need to decide how many point of view characters you need. The more often you switch from one narrator to the next, the more you risk diluting the reader's emotional connection to the story.
Shifting between different character POVs allows the reader to know things the protagonist doesn't. This can add to the suspense level. Deciding when and how to shift is a skill worth learning. POVs can be mixed. The protagonist has been written in first person while the other characters are written in third person close up. It requires strict editing.
In the Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver cycles through five first person POV characters: Orleanna Price and her four daughters Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May. It is one of the few stories with that many POVs in one book that I consider successful.
Switching characters does not work in all instances. One of my favorite cozy mystery series written by Ann Purser follows Lois Meade as she meddles in cases while cleaning houses. The author detoured in one book to follow the secondary characters. It was irritating rather than pleasing to find Lois relegated to the dust bin for an entire book.
Shifting the point of view in a series can keep it fresh. Tana French does so successfully in her gripping Dublin Murder Squad mysteries set in Ireland by following a different investigator in each book. In The Woods is narrated by Rob Ryan. The Likeness is narrated by Cassie Maddox and so on. I did something similar in Mythikas Island. Each book in the series is narrated in first person by a different character. In Book 1 it is Diana, Book 2 Persephone, Book 3 Aphrodite, and Book 4 Athena.
If you switch point of view within a series or from chapter to chapter, make sure it adds rather than detracts from the tension.
Breaking the fourth wall is a character intentionally speaking to the reader and was used in 18th and 19th century novels and in some modern Sit-Coms. It works best with comedy and satire.
The biggest problem with any point of view, other than omniscient, is narrator or narrative intrusion, which is when the author interrupts the story to deliver commentary, thoughts, opinions, or information dumps. This can be highly annoying. Omniscient narrators are able to be in everyone’s head at all times. With other POVs, narrator intrusion creates subtle speed bumps in the story’s flow. It removes the verbal camera from the shoulder or the eyes of the POV character to take in action on the stage the POV character isn’t aware of. The speed bumps can be low or high depending on the severity of the intrusion.
We will examine narrator intrusion in depth next week.
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