Why Narrative Point of View Matters

Without a mastery of narrative point of view, your chances of succeeding in novel writing take a nosedive. And no, I'm not exaggerating.

Is narrative point of view the most important thing to get right when writing a novel?

Probably not - that accolade is shared equally between the ability to create well-rounded characters that readers care about, and the ability to plot a novel so that the story is compelling and the readers keep turning the pages.

Fail to do either of these things to a high enough standard and publishers will not be interested in your novel, simple as that.

And then there are areas of novel writing - including a mastery of point of view - that, although not quite so critical, serve to separate the good and the great novelists from the merely average ones...

• One of these areas is theme and symbolism. Invest your novel with a rich layer of meaning running beneath the story's surface and you have taken a giant step towards raising your fiction above the ordinary.
• Another area is the quality of the writing. The prose of good and great novelists always reads effortlessly, while that of a merely average writer feels a little forced, a little labored - like they were trying too hard to impress. Give your own prose this effortless, artless feel and you have taken another giant step.
• The final area is this mastery of literary point of view.

Far too many beginners, and even a few published writers, have little sense of how to handle viewpoint in their novels. They make the decision to write in either first person or third person point of view and away they go, never giving viewpoint another thought.

And it shows.

This whole section exploring point of view in literature will tell you everything you need to know to become a master of narrative point of view - and doing that is the third of the giant steps you can take towards becoming a publishable writer.

The good news is that there is nothing especially difficult about achieving this mastery of viewpoint. Unlike some other areas of novel writing - theme, for example - it is actually very logical.

Once you understand the logic, it is simple to apply to your own writing.

But you need to really understand it. And so, if you still have any doubts after reading all the articles in this section, or if there is something you don't quite get, read the articles again. Then again if necessary.

Settling for an incomplete understanding of narrative point of view is like settling for mediocrity, not greatness, for your novel as a whole. And who would want to do that?

Next Step: With the preliminaries out of the way, it is now time to look at the logic of writing a third person narrative...