Point of View (cont.)

In fact, if you have planned to have two main characters, you probably need to rethink your story to give one character more ownership in the story problem than the other, to make it that character’s story. That will be the one you’ll see your story through.

There are occasional stories told from the point of view of a side character, someone observing the action, but those are rare. So for now, let’s just assume that your main character is your one point of view character.

Now...how do you want to tell the story? With the main character referring to him or herself as I and talking directly to the reader? That is a first person point of view. “I walked down the street, and I saw...”

The other standard way of telling of a story is to use third person, but we’ll talk about third person another time. For now it’s enough to know that writing in third person means that you tell your story through an invisible narrator who refers to your character by name and as he or she. That’s the way most stories are told. “Jason walked down the street, and he saw...”