Literary Point of View - Mixing It Up

The only remaining thing to say about literary point of view is this: you don't have to stick to using only one viewpoint choice in a novel. It's like I have said elsewhere on this site: the novel writing rules are there for a reason, but they are also there to be broken...

• So if you want to use first person and third person points of view in your novel, there is nothing to stop you.

• Or if you think you could tell a great tale written half in the omniscient point of view and half in, I don't know, first person future, go for it.

If it works, it works. And if it doesn't, you can always reshape it into a more traditional form later.

Of course, I couldn't recommend such extreme choices - in fact, I would strongly advise against them - but it is your creation, and mixing different viewpoint choices is at least an option you might want to consider.

A more sensible way to combine viewpoints than the extreme examples quoted above is to stick with one traditional viewpoint for the bulk of the novel, and then to introduce elements of a more avant garde literary point of view in small doses.

• For example, you could write what is ostensibly a third person point of view novel but write the odd chapter in the epistolary viewpoint - that is, an exchange of letters (or perhaps e-mails) between one character and another.

• Or you could write a more or less "standard" first person novel, but then write a couple of chapters - fantasy sequences, perhaps, in which the narrator imagines life not as it is, but as he would like it to be - in the third person.

As always, though, you should never do these things just for the sake of doing something different.

Point of view in literature, at the end of the day, is simply a way of telling a story in the most effective way possible. If your story doesn't call for anything out of the ordinary, don't do anything out of the ordinary. If it does, be brave and go for it.

Either way, you need a complete understanding of viewpoint before you begin, because only with that will you manage to handle literary point of view like a master.