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All Fictions

The document discusses the different types of point of view in fiction, including first person protagonist, first person observer, third person omniscient, and third person dramatic. It provides examples of each type of point of view and explains the differences between an internal narrator that can share thoughts versus an external narrator limited to observable details.

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19 views1 page

All Fictions

The document discusses the different types of point of view in fiction, including first person protagonist, first person observer, third person omniscient, and third person dramatic. It provides examples of each type of point of view and explains the differences between an internal narrator that can share thoughts versus an external narrator limited to observable details.

Uploaded by

jji
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Elements of Fiction http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/hhecht/the elements of fiction.

htm

Consider HAL’s name. Add one letter to each of the letters in his name. Change the H to I, the A to
B, and the L to M. When you realize how close HAL is to IBM, the first response is disbelief. But
clearly the closeness of the names is either an absolute accident or an intentional choice. As much as
we are startled by the latter, we probably agree that the odds against the former—it being an
accident—are astronomical.

Somebody thought that up. Or maybe a computer.

POINT OF VIEW
Point of View is the “narrative point of view,” how the story is told—more specifically, who tells it.

There are two distinctly different types of point of view and each of those two types has two
variations.

In the First Person point of view, the story is told by a character within the story, a character using
the first person pronoun, I.

If the narrator is the main character, the point of view is first person protagonist. Mark Twain lets
Huck Finn narrate his own story in this point of view.

If the narrator is a secondary character, the point of view is first person observer. Arthur Conan
Doyle lets Sherlock Holmes’ friend Dr. Watson tell the Sherlock Holmes story. Doyle frequently gets
credit for telling detective stories this way, but Edgar Allan Poe perfected the technique half a century
earlier.

In the Third Person point of view, the story is not told by a character but by an “invisible author,”
using the third person pronoun (he, she, or it) to tell the story. Instead of Huck Finn speaking directly
to us, “My name’s Huckleberry Finn” and telling us “I killed a pig and spread the blood around so
people would think I’d been killed”, the third person narrator would say: He killed a pig and spread
the blood…..

If the third person narrator gives us the thoughts of characters (He wondered where he’d lost his
baseball glove), then he is a third person omniscient (all knowing) narrator.

If the third person narrator only gives us information which could be recorded by a camera and
microphone (no thoughts), then he is a third person dramatic narrator.

In summary, then, here are the types of point of view:

First Person Narrator


Protagonist
Observer

Third Person Narrator


Omniscient

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