I don’t understand all the tenses…
No worries, let’s clear this up.
POV, point of view, is the perspective from which the story is told to us. It is characterized by three things: person, distance, and tense.
Person
POV can be first person, second person, or third person.
First person
First person uses pronoun I. The protagonist is directly telling you a story.
I glanced over the rail. The waters of Koeg churned below, dark brown from silt.
I would probably survive it. Probably.
I stumbled to the other side of the bridge, as if avoiding Lecke. He showed no sign of noticing me.
Twenty feet. Ten. Five.
The world snapped into terrifying clarity.
We passed each other on the opposite sides of the bridge like two ships in the night.
I spun around and charged at him, swinging my rock.
He must’ve sensed me coming because he turned, but not fast enough. My rock connected with his skull. Lecke stumbled. I leaped at him and thrust my hands under his cloak. My fingers clutched thick canvas, and something inside it made a metallic clink.
Second Person
Second person uses you/yours. It is very rarely used in commercial fiction. When it happens, it’s usually employed in small doses for a specific effect.
You step into the ring. The lights rush to you, twisting. The world tilts, suddenly off balance. You spin within the radiance… No. No, it is the light that’s spinning. The Universe rotates around you, while you are steady, immovable, the center of the cosmic gyroscope.
Music pours into your ears, a triumphant fanfare. Nebulae rush toward you in a riot of color, stars glimmer like brilliant gems, planets dazzle, tempting you with their secrets.
The music reaches a crescendo and clarity comes, painfully apparent. You glimpse a pattern within the stars as they slide into place. It clicks, unlocking a secret part within you. Power floods you.
You blink and find yourself standing on the ice. An alien sky stretches above you, dark and endless. Exhaustion washes over you. You’re at once elated and yet drained. You’ve wrenched another secret from the Universe, and yet you mourn the loss of mystery and do not know why.
Third Person
Third person uses he/she/they/it.
Roman pushed the bowl toward the anchutka. The beast scurried over with surprising quickness and lapped at the milk. He got a better look at the wing. The leathery membrane hung in shreds. Something with big teeth must’ve gotten a hold of it.
A movement made him turn. Layla stood behind him, wrapped in a bed sheet and clutching the baseball bat he kept by the door.
“What is it…” Layla saw the anchutka. Her eyes went wide, and she shrieked.
The anchutka jumped, choked on the milk, and vomited a half-eaten mouse on the floor in a fit of panic.
Great.
“Kill it! Kill it!”
Roman walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s fine. It’s harmless.”
Majority of modern fiction is written either in the first or third person, which brings us to the second POV characteristic.
Distance
POV can be tight or loose and limited or unlimited. An unlimited third person POV is called omniscient.
- Tight POV means the author is sticking very closely to the character and we know the character’s thoughts. We are deep in.
- Limited POV means the author is sticking to a single character per scene.
- Omniscient POV allows the writer to head-hop in the narrative, often showing the same scene from various viewpoints.
When we just started out as writers, and my English wasn’t quite as good, I once accidentally called omniscient POV omnipotent POV in a group chat with other writers, and they made fun of me. I still remember that. :insert smiley:
The best way to think about omniscient is that the story is told by a narrator rather than a character, someone outside of the storyline who knows all and sees all. You see this a lot in classics. Some writers who typically used omniscient: Jane Austin, Frank Herbert, Patrick Rothfuss. We’re going to use Dune for our example:
Damn that Jessica! the Reverend Mother thought. If only she’d borne us a girl as she was ordered to do!
Jessica stopped three paces from the chair, dropped a small curtsy, a gentle flick of left hand along the line of her skirt. Paul gave the short bow his dancing master had taught—the one used “when in doubt of another’s station.”
The nuances of Paul’s greeting were not lost on the Reverend Mother. She said: “He’s a cautious one, Jessica.”
Jessica’s hand went to Paul’s shoulder, tightened there. For a heartbeat, fear pulsed through her palm. Then she had herself under control. “Thus he has been taught, Your Reverence.”
What does she fear? Paul wondered.
Do you see how Herbert head-hops between the characters? The narrator is giving us information that a single character couldn’t possibly know. This is a tight omniscient.
Tight third
A gunmetal grey BMW iX slid closer to the curb, whisper quiet as only electric vehicles could be. The rear passenger window rolled down, revealing a woman’s face. She was quite beautiful in a quiet way. Light brown eyes, flecked with gold and framed by naturally long eyelashes. A lovely face. Chestnut hair, braided in a kind of updo that would have been too soft and romantic for the HR trio in the conference room.
She’d changed her hair color. It suited her better. Her usual blonde always felt soulless somehow. Too cold.
She tilted her head. “May I offer you a ride?”
“Do we know each other?”
She smiled without parting her lips. “Not closely, but it’s about to rain and your office is at least 20 minutes away.”
Oh. She knew. How?
We are very firmly in Augustine’s head. We see what he sees and hear what he hears. We know his thoughts but not anybody else’s.
Omniscient
A gunmetal grey BMW iX slid closer to the curb, whisper quiet as only electric vehicles could be. The rear passenger window rolled down, revealing a woman’s face. She was quite beautiful in a quiet way. Light brown eyes, flecked with gold and framed by naturally long eyelashes. A lovely face. Chestnut hair, braided in a kind of updo that would have been too soft and romantic for the HR trio in the conference room.
She’d changed her hair color. It suited her better. Her usual blonde always felt soulless somehow. Too cold.
Diana tilted her head. A familiar scent fluttered to her, tugging on her senses. How fortunate. Her guess had been right, and now she was absurdly proud of herself.
“May I offer you a ride?” she asked.
The woman in front of her looked puzzled. “Do we know each other?”
Oh really, this was delicious, Diana decided. She smiled without parting her lips. “Not closely, but it’s about to rain and your office is at least 20 minutes away.”
We know what Augustine is thinking, we know what Diana is thinking, and we see the scene from multiple viewpoints.
These are not hard categories, but a spectrum, meaning that POV doesn’t have to automatically sort into one or the other category, but can be somewhere in between. It might help to think of it as turning the dial to zoom in. You can zoom all the way into the character, zoom out some, or zoom out all the way.
Omniscient is not my favorite for a number of reasons. We are going to leave it here and stick with tighter POV for the next examples as we work through tenses.
Tense
The POV can be in past, present, or future tense. Future tense is almost never used.
Past Tense
I tossed Slayer on the bed, never taking my eyes off of him, and put the maps on the sheets.
“Back away, three steps.”
We stepped back in unison, he to the middle of the room, and I to the wall by the chair.
“On three. One,” he said, bending forward like a runner. “Two.”
He lunged for the maps. I grabbed the chair and hit him with it. He went down. I hit him again to make sure he stayed that way, stepped over him, and picked up the maps. “I win.” Now if only the room would stop spinning, I’d be all set.
He groaned and a torrent of obscenities burst from him.
“Your problem is, you underestimate me because I’m a woman.” I nudged him with my foot. “Hood’s name?”
“Bolgor the Shepherd, of the Fomoire.”
Mist swirled and he vanished.
In the comments to the previous post, someone made a very astute observation that reading past tense is like listening to a friend tell you a story about something they’ve done. The events already happened, so everything is in past tense.
Present Tense
I toss Slayer on the bed, never taking my eyes off of him, and put the maps on the sheets.
“Back away, three steps.”
We step back in unison, he to the middle of the room, and I to the wall by the chair.
“On three. One,” he says, bending forward like a runner. “Two.”
He lunges for the maps. I grab the chair and hit him with it. He goes down. I hit him again to make sure he stays that way, step over him, and pick up the maps. “I win.” Now if only the room stops spinning, I will be all set.
He groans and a torrent of obscenities bursts from him.
“Your problem is, you underestimate me because I’m a woman.” I nudge him with my foot. “Hood’s name?”
“Bolgor the Shepherd, of the Fomoire.”
Mist swirls and he vanishes.
Present tense shows action as it unfolds. It has a more immediate feeling to it, because everything is happening as we read.
Most of the fiction we read today is written in past or present tense. Each has advantages and disadvantages. For example, note the last line. “He vanished” has a feeling of completeness about it. It feels fast. He vanished, poof, gone. “He vanishes,” however, can be read as “he fades out,” as in prolonged vanishing, not instant. Chances are, readers will pass right over it, while writers will sit there for a few seconds, staring at it and pondering whether adding “in a blink” would fix it.
Future Tense
Future tense is almost never used, because the action hasn’t happened yet. It reads awkward and hypothetical and is typically used in small doses to achieve a specific feeling. The non-italic portion in the text below is written in the future tense.
When life backs you into a corner and offers you no escape, when your friends, your lover, and your family abandon you, when you’re at the end of your rope, panicked, alone, and losing your mind, you know you’d give anything to make your problems go away. Then, desperate and eager, you will come to Unicorn Lane, seeking salvation in its magics and secrets. You’ll do anything, pay any price. Unicorn Lane will take you in, shroud you in its power, fix your problems, and exact its price. And then you will learn what “anything” really means.
To reiterate, POV, or point of view, refers to the perspective from which a story is narrated. It is characterized by three metrics: person, distance, and tense. Most commercial fiction is written in either past or present tense and in either first or third person. However, other types of POV are sometimes used for stylistic effect in the narrative.
Now you know as much about POV as a creative writing student. I will leave you with this thought: rules are rules for a reason. They are meant to be followed, but they are also meant to be broken.
WARCHILD
by Karin Lowachee
- Finalist for the 2003 Prix Aurora Award for Best Long-Form Work in English in Canada
- Finalist for the 2003 Philip K. Dick Award
- One of the Year’s Best SF Novels, from SF Chronicle, 2003
- Locus Recommended Reading, First Novel and Best of 2002 selection
- Winner of the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest
You didn’t see their faces from where you hid behind the maintenance grate. Smoke worked its fingers through the tiny holes and stroked under your nose and over your eyes, forcing you to stifle breaths, to blink, and to cry. Foot-steps followed everywhere that smoke went on the deck— heavy, violent footsteps—and everywhere they went, shouts went with them. Screams. Pulse fire.
You hardly knew what to listen for, where that one voice you wanted to hear so badly could be among all the other voices that rose and fell on the other side of your screen. Your shelter. Your cowardice.
But your parents had told you to hide if something like this happened. There’d been drills, even in the middle of your sleepshift, so you knew when the klaxon wailed and Daddy and Mama went for their guns and ushered you into the secret compartment in the floor that you were doing what was right, what you were told to do. Pirates or aliens or the Warboy could attack Mukudori and you had to stay hidden, just in case, just like you practiced. Daddy and Mama would come back and get you when the klaxon stopped and they’d say you did good, Jos. Daddy would call you his brave soldier boy, and you would believe it. When they lifted you out of that hiding place and smiled at you so proud, you didn’t feel like an eight-year-old at all.
But they hadn’t come back to the secret compartment. The little yellow light in there winked as if something was wrong with it, on-off, on-off, until you shut your eyes and just listened. But you were under the skin of the ship, like Daddy said, and it was quiet. You didn’t hear outside, and outside couldn’t hear you. It kept you safe. It was too dark so you opened your eyes and looked up, touched the light, touched the rough walls, but time went away with every yellow blink and nobody came. It got too warm, as if somebody had shut the air vents.
You waited until your legs were numb from sitting in that small space and Mama and Daddy didn’t come back. Everywhere was silence and you were too scared to move your fingers and unhook the latch that would open a way into the bedroom. But eventually you had to.
Eventually you had to find out why Daddy and Mama hadn’t come back like they always did at the end of drills. They never forgot. Daddy would brush off your bottom and ruffle your hair while Mama locked the guns back in the cabinet. They thought you didn’t know how to open it. But you did. You thought of that cabinet as you finally crept out of the compartment and made a run for the other side of your bed. You peeked above the rumpled covers but there wasn’t anybody in the room and you couldn’t hear anybody in the outer room either. So you climbed over your bed and then over your parents’ and ran to the outer room so you could take the comp chair and use it to get to the cabinet. Quick before somebody came in.
You stood on the chair and poked the right numbers that you’d seen Daddy and Mama use, then the green button, and waited. The cabinet comp beeped, then the lights behind the buttons glowed green and you grabbed the handle and tugged. A rack of guns. You couldn’t remember exactly how to use them but you probably could figure it out. You’d seen Daddy and Mama use them on the firing range. Daddy and Mama were good with guns, even though they were engineers. Everybody old enough had to be good with guns, Daddy said, because of the war. Nobody could predict aliens or the symps like the Warboy, and merchants like Mukudori could get caught between some Hub battleship and a strit one, you just never knew. And pirates were worse. Pirates liked to take hostages.
WARCHILD, only the first part of which is in the second person, has just been reissued and is available on Kindle Unlimited and in paperback.
Synopsis
Eight-year-old Jos Musey knows little beyond the safe haven of his family aboard the merchant ship Mukudori — until a ruthless pirate destroys his world, slaughtering the adults and enslaving the children. Jos endures a year of terror only to fall into the hands of Earth’s alien enemies, far beyond human space. Trained by an inscrutable warrior, Jos becomes weaponized against his own people. Now every new friendship or complicated loyalty might lead to a lethal betrayal, and Jos must choose if he should follow the man who saved him…or save himself.
You can find more about Karin Lowachee at her website, karinlowachee.com.
First?
Congratulations!
Thank you so much for the detailed explanation. It really helped me understand the tenses.
I so appreciate your taking the time for these kinds of posts as I always learn something. 😊
+1!
Good explanation again, but scary story at the end..
So interesting! Thanks!
And then you have If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler… thanks for the breakdown of tenses and POV! Very insightful, as always.
Thank you for this, it was so helpful!!!
For a non-writer, this explanation was fascinating. I had no idea! But it may be why I’m drawn to some fiction writers more than others. Thank you!
Love Dune by Frank Herbert! Thanks for including his books!
which book is the example for present tense is from? i feel like i’ve read this portion but can’t remember.
Magic Burns, Kate Daniels volume 2 🙂- it’s reworked to present tense to show the difference. The original is in past tense above.
thanks for all the explanations. Second person is used all the time in Support pages. interesting use in Warchild but for me it feels to close to tech writing or help files.
Thank you for the explanation. I have to admit, I was surprised by your last example. I’ve read Warchild years ago and never noticed the tense change, it works so well. Great book and great examples.
I have read the Warchild trilogy, and they are excellent.
I want to read or re-read every novel that the snippets are associated with. 🙂
Can I just say this was a really well written post? You explained each concept well, used examples that each in their own right were very entertaining stories and finally left us with an example in Warchild of how one could use present tense first person (hope I got that right) — both styles I normally hate and won’t read. I am now deep into Warchild and enjoying it tremendously. Thank you!
My problem is I tend to switch tenses in the middle of a paragraph. Don’t know where or how I picked up that glitch, but I find myself doing it all the time.
Fascinating; thank you!
That teased bit with Roman is just evil. Did something get written that I missed? 🙂
I think you may have missed this gorgeous snippet 😻 https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/a-bit-more-of-roman/
Wow! I -did- miss it. I’m so glad I asked. Thank you!
Also, thank you for this post on writing. It clarified things nicely. 🙂
Mod R if you sigh and drool too much with Roman, the cookie avatar might melt. 😁
🤪 Worth it!
Ooo, I love that snippet. I’m so interested now! That bit after she screams is hilarious.
Thank you! My pet peeve is reading books (that I suspect are poorly edited/proofread) where one or more of those things switch suddenly, sometimes in the same sentence! I read very quickly, but nothing brings it to a screeching halt like an abrupt change in tense, word misuse, or funky punctuation. “Wait, what?! What exactly did the author mean to say here?”
+1,000
Thank you! This makes it all very clear! 😁
I had a long (and interesting) discussion with my YA daughter after yesterday’s post. She hates (and won’t read) anything written in Second Person, while some of the YA books I have read and loved lately are written in Second Person (not that I thought about that or was even consciously aware of it while reading them.) We both tried to explain the differences to each other, but neither of us came up with good examples….I will have to share this with her.
Having said that, I still just like what I like, tenses (etc) be damned. And of course, that means I will always happily read HA works regardless of POV, tense, what have you!
💕💕
Thank you for the explanation , and all the examples. 📚
Thanks so much. You just explained why I’ve never been able to read some authors. It’s not their story but the way it’s written. I never learned this in high school English. ❤️
I remember Sarah MacLean’s podcast discussing head hopping in romance novels. One author, Lisa Kleypas maybe, increases the speed of her head-hopping as the sex scene, um, progresses. Not something I’d ever noticed. Very interesting and technical stuff!
Ilona,
That was really complex and fascinating how the mood and immediacy can change. “You” were right there with the little boy, for example. I wish the book were available in audio. Many thanks.
This is off topic, I know, but I would love to hear your thoughts on “Virtual Voice”. There are a lot of new stories on Audible that use it, and I don’t want to harm the authors if listening to them will deprive them, or voice actors, of a living. How do you feel about it?
I believe very strongly that audio performances should be voiced by real people. I am against using virtual voice in favor of actors.
However, I would also support a virtual voice app for visually impaired which could allow people who have difficulty reading experience books in audio when no other option is available.
Thanks, Ilona, that’s how I feel about it. If we boycott Audible’s Virtual Voice audios, Maybe they will get the point that we don’t want them.
Roman is sooo sleeping with the wrong woman
Hear, HEAR!
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😎
lol, made my day
One of my pet peeves is the phrase, “the music reached a crescendo.”
Crescendo isn’t an end point, it’s an action: “The music crescendoed to an unsustainable volume.”
I’ve been known to be pedantic.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/crescendo
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crescendo
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/crescendo
Language is flexible and ever evolving. 🙂 While a musician may view crescendo as a very specific action, to reach a crescendo is an established phrase in the general usage.
I read Warchild years ago now I have read it again.
I wasn’t familiar with the distance terms – thanks for that! I like first and third person, am very partial to past tense, and am flexible where distance is concerned except in cases where it’s so tight that pages upon pages are spent on the inner monologue of thoughts and feelings.
+1 on Roman being with the wrong woman. And a few others mentioned being fast readers and the jarring nature of inconsistencies in writing. I relate and agree. It’s like a flat tire in the middle of a journey. Love these posts!
I just had to say, thank you for the extra bit in the Augustine/Diana snippet!!! Just that extra glimpse into the Hidden Legacy world made me SO happy!! Maybe if you can’t do Arabella’s book(s) right now, you could do one on Augustine?!? 💕🙏🌸 In any case, grateful for this right now!
+1, I was surprised this was not brought up more.
Very informative, thank you for posting this =) I would love sometime for you to explain what is meant by ” showing me or telling me” I see this frequently in book reviews and do not understand what it means.
Showing demonstrates action, while telling describes the character’s conclusion.
My stomach rumbled. – showing.
I was hungry. – telling.
Generally showing makes for a more engaging narrative. But written fiction is not a movie, and so some telling is necessary. 🙂
Roman pushed the bowl toward the anchutka. The beast scurried over with surprising quickness and lapped at the milk. He got a better look at the wing. The leathery membrane hung in shreds. Something with big teeth must’ve gotten a hold of it.
Everything but the last sentence is showing. The last sentence is telling.
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is written almost entirely in second person, and it’s utterly baffling until near the end when you find out *why*. And then it’s just brilliant.
Yes!! It feels weird and unsettling on a first read, but on a reread it all makes sense and is just *chef kiss*
Wow! That really helps. Thanks!
2nd Person reads like a description a game master might give you describing the world or events you cannot see.
Wow. So much great information. Thanks!
I really like when you write in other characters POV about the main character and the scene. It gives us a different view of what’s happening . For example in Andrea’s book Gun Metal Magic, you gave us her point of view in the same scenes from Magic Gifts.
Wow. Thank you for the in-depth explanation of POV – the examples really helped.
Such an intense read! Will have to check it out.
I’m trying to figure out why second person feels so wrong to read. I think it is because of the way I process self.
First person is fun to read because I am a ghost inside the character’s head. Still aware of myself but experiencing things with them as they happen. Able to analyze and comment on decisions/feelings independent from them.
Third person is great because I get to know many characters as individuals, seeing their personal stories but with the distance of knowing all this is happening to them not me/I. When the big bad happens I can take a breath, step away and know that this tragedy is not mine.
Second person forces me to be the character, and do/feel ways I personally might not. It requires forgetting self and replacing it with the character. It is not something I am comfortable doing.
This also reminds me of a section from Terry Pratchett’s Hat Full of Sky “First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.”
I just read that page today! I’m on a wee Tiff kick recently, ye ken 😁
It’s on my permanent list of rereads too! Every so often you need a bit of the Wee Free Men in your life.
So well-put. ITA with all of the above, except that I haven’t got around to rereading that series this year. But I was thinking of that passage within the past week, for reasons I don’t recall. (Right now it’s all wilderness survival stories, YA and adult.)
all this with a roman snippet included!
joy!
j
Thank you so much, Ilona. And despite my intense dislike of second person storytelling, I may have to invest in a copy of Warchild!
Roman Roman Roman… Roman?
Roman!!
I appreciate how this explanation of PoV is probably going to stick with me quite a bit better than other explanations I’ve read before. Using characters and stories I like helps to drive the differences and abilities of the different methods home very nicely 🙂
Great explanations; thank you. Anne Leckie wrote The Raven Tower in 2nd person. It was very weird for a while but worked very well by the end.
Sometimes I think your blog should be required reading for AP English students. They would love it and learn so much!!!
Thanks for this!
That was an amazing post. Thank you so much for the creative writing lesson. And for the examples both from your work and others. Really appreciate when you do these kind of posts. Hope you like doing them!
Thank you for the lovely and accessible lesson. I love that you’ve highlighted the War Child Mosaic series. The author was really lovely when she found my review on instagram.
It is kinder fun – I can’t read a book in present tense in Danish, but have no problem with it in English.
Prefer Past tense though.
The same with first person XD
It did make my bookclub laugh, so not all bad to admit being weirdly wired.
The main place I see 2nd person POV is reader-insert fanfiction. It’s an interesting way to read and I imagine for the writers it takes a bit of practice to do it well.
The other one that comes to mind – actually 2nd person future tense! – was in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, in some chapters used to frame the main story which is in 1st person present (if I recall correctly, it’s been a few years). I won’t spoil but it works well for the story.
Thank you! I loved this deep dive into POVs
Thank you so much. This is really very helpful!
I really enjoyed your post about points of view. I remember the big stuff from English class, but appreciated your filling in the rest.
Not pertinent to the POV information, but would it be impertinent of me if I mentioned adding a dramatis personae? Old age and so many books leave me completely confused as to who is whom and where s/he may fall in the book.
Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to your new series and, assuming these will be all new characters, I will start my own list on a postit.
Just wanted to say like the teacup pictures on the latest two posts.
I have no idea where to put this but I literally stumbled upon this, click I don’t know what and up it popped, adorable post and wanted to share. I am sure House Andrews will love it.
https://harazhandmade.indiemade.com/
Thanks, Denise! ☺️
House Andrews did indeed love it and shared it with the Horde previously, but a reminder is always welcome https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/are-you-famous-yet/
Oh, my! Now I want to read the book!
A brilliant explanation, thank you very much!
This was awesome! Thanks!