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 construct well-rounded characters that readers care about.
• The ability to construct compelling plots.

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 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. 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 your prose. The prose of good and great novelists always reads effortlessly, while that of a merely average writer feels a little forced, a little laboured - 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, as you have probably guessed, is the 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 choose to write either in the first person or the third person and away they go, never giving point of view another thought. And it shows.

The good news is that there is nothing especially difficult about achieving this mastery of point of view. Unlike some other areas of novel writing, it is actually very logical. Once you understand the logic, it is simple to apply to your own writing.

How do you learn the logic? This whole section on Point of View will get you started. But for an in-depth guide to choosing a point of view to use in your novel, and then using that point of view like a professional writer, you will need my Ultimate Guide to Novel Writing.

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