What can you do, how can you use them?
Let's start with what point of views there are.
First of all, the first person. Often with a bad reputation, this POV is often seen in Fanfiction, Romance and YA books in general.
Secondly is the second person. I have like zero experience with that POV, so I won't talk about it. It is difficult to pull it off, that is all I know.
Last but not least, third person. Which is more of a spectrum of which I will explain the two extremes.
Let's start with the first person. I rarely write in that one, partly due to a common problem. Many people struggle how to describe characters, especially the POV character's looks. You may have read a scene in which a character looks into a mirror and describes their looks?
The first person narrator narrates the story from their own perspective. Either as it happens - they have limited knowledge and may be an unreliable narrator* - or they tell the reader something from the past, then they may have hindsight and can add info they hadn't back then.
The reader only knows that the narrator - often the main character - knows, thinks, smells, hears or sees. Or in case it is a Star Wars fic, senses with the force.
As we are in a character's head, we know them deeply, which can be used that we like that character a lof or hate them, depends on the characterization. But in general, we understand and sympathize most easily with this type of narrator.
If you write first person, you need to filter the events though a lense, you need to consider a character's knowledge.
They are easily spotted by the use of 'I', 'me', and 'my'. I often ditch to read works as soon as I see an I in the narration.
Like I said, I'll skip the second person narration. I can't imagine how you narrate a story mainly using the pronoun 'you'.
Now the third person, we'll start with the omniscient or all knowing narrator.
This narrator is not visible to the story, they are outside of it and observe from the outside. Like the classification says, they are all knowing. They know the characters thoughts, feelings and the background of the story.
These narrators may comment on the characters behavior, on coming events or the writing itself. Yes, these narrators can break the forth wall, perfect for a Deadpool Fanfiction.
Because the narrator observes, they are more neutral and distanced that first person or single perspective narration.
Then there is a more limited variant of the third person narrator, the third person limited narrator.
While the omniscient narrator pays attention to all characters, this narrator is limited to a limited number of characters they hoover over. They can only access this characters knowledge and sensations, but they are not identical to the character.
Similar to the first person narration, we sympathize more easily with the character we are the most told about.
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Absolute Fanfiction Writing Advice
FanfictionI wrote and read Fanfiction for five years. In these five years, I learned many things. But these is still a lot to learn for me. To celebrate my five year anniversary, I want to collect said knowledge. While not all is stuff I learned over the last...
