Podcast: Understanding Point of View: More Than Just First or Third Person
With anne hawley & Rachelle Ramirez
Ever wondered why some stories pull you in while others keep you at arm's length? The secret might be in the point of view! Join developmental editors Anne Hawley and Rachelle Ramirez as they unpack the art of POV beyond the basic "first person vs third person" debate. Discover why The Hunger Games uses present tense, how True Grit creates humor through narrative distance, and what makes certain POV choices perfect for specific genres. Whether you're writing YA, romance, or historical fiction, this episode will transform how you think about narrative perspective.
Perfect for: ✍️ Fiction writers 📚 Story editors 🎬 Narrative designers 📖 Book lovers
Key topics covered
Why POV is more than just choosing between first and third person
How time, distance, and narrative purpose influence POV choices
The relationship between genre and POV selection
Common challenges with first-person present tense
The concept of narrative distance and its impact on storytelling
Using POV to create irony and humor (featuring examples from True Grit and Huckleberry Finn)
The importance of understanding who your narrator is speaking to and why
Featured book examples
True Grit by Charles Portis
The Merlin Trilogy by Mary Stewart
The Hunger Games
Jane Eyre
The Great Gatsby
Practical takeaway
Study the POV choices in your favorite books to better understand how successful authors handle narrative perspective.
Connect with Anne
Subscribe for weekly writing insights at https://pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
transcript
Anne Hawley: Hello and welcome to the Write Anyway podcast from Pages & Platforms and the Happily Ever Author Club. I'm Anne Hawley, and in today's episode, Rachelle and I discuss the importance of point of view in telling your story. Rachelle and I both trained as developmental editors under Shawn Coyne and the Story Grid Method.
Rachelle specializes in editing memoir. I work with fantasy, romance, and historical fiction authors, and both of us are endlessly interested in the question of point of view and narrative device.
Rachelle Ramirez: Hello, Anne. How are you today?
Anne Hawley: Hi, Rachelle. I'm not too bad. How about you?
Rachelle Ramirez: I'm so excited to talk to you today. Today we're gonna talk about point of view, and I have learned so much from you on this, and I am really just excited first to ask you what the heck is point of view. A lot of people get this confused or you talk about it and they are, you know, their eyes glaze over.
So, first of all, can you put in context what we're talking about?
Anne Hawley: Yeah, I think the first thing to say is what we aren't talking about. Most people, I mean that's a little bit broad, but most writers when they think about point of view tend to say, well, is it first person or third person? And is it present tense or past tense? Those are the entire definition that most people seem to have about point of view.
And both of those things can be important choices, but that's not really what point of view is. You have to go a little bit deeper, and it's a large subject. We're not gonna cover it all today, but the question is, why choose one of those things over another? And a lot of the time I'll, when I'm working with writers, they will say something like, well, I'm writing YA action, adventure, you know, fantasy or something.
And all those are in first person present tense. So that's what I want to do. And that's a perfectly valid reason to write in first person and present tense. I know for the last decade or so, a little bit longer, that's been really popular because of the Hunger Games. There are also people who say, if I open a book and see first person, I won't even read it.
And if that's you, then don't write that. If you think that your reader is ideally someone like you and you don't like first person, or you don't like present tense, then don't write in first person present tense. But there are different genres or sort of marketing categories where it's more popular to use first person.
YA is very commonly done in first person. Women's quote unquote, women's fiction is often in first person. Why is that? When you start reading in first person, you instantly begin to empathize, and become the character. So it's a choice that if you're telling, say your story is a very character driven internal story, say for example, you know, a validation story, a worldview coming of age type of story, first person is often really effective because it draws the reader into that internal point-of-view character's point of view because it is in first person. If you want more scope to change point of view, for example, like a, typically in a romance very often you have alternating points of view between the two lovers. If you were to try to do that, both of them in first person, it's very confusing to the reader.
Like, I just turned the page, new chapter, it still says I, I. Who am I without a header that says, okay, now we are in John's point of view and over here we are in Susan's point of view. So if you're going to use more than one point of view, it's easier to manage in third person.
It's often quite genre specific, what marketing category, who you're marketing to and what's popular now.
Rachelle Ramirez: So other than what person someone's writing in, what else does point of view encompass when we talk about point of view?
Anne Hawley: There's a whole lot of subtlety about distance with point of view. One example that I like to use the first person but generally in the past tense, is the great classic novel True Grit by Charles Portis. I use it a lot as an example because it's extremely well written and it's funny and it's a great little book.
And the main character Maddie Ross, is telling her own story. It's in first person, it's very voicey. She has an accent. There's a certain amount of sort of dialect in there 'cause she's from Arkansas in 18, whatever, kind of almost old west sort of feeling. And if you've seen either version of the movie, it's just kind of a western. And part of the joy of that novel is that the first person is funny. There's a lot of humor. It's not necessarily a funny point of view, but it happens to be in this case because she's very earnest and she's telling her story from looking way back on her life as an older woman telling about the adventure she had when she was 15 or something like that,, a young girl.
And she doesn't know that she's revealing all sorts of idiosyncrasies about herself, and she thinks she's the hero of her story and doesn't even realize that the real hero of the story is Rooster Cogburn, the guy, the character played by John Wayne in the old movie in Jeff Bridges in the slightly newer version of the movie.
Kind of an anti-hero, a kind of a criminal who has a bit of a redemption arc. And so the irony and humor that she as a narrator doesn't intend is something that the reader can enjoy. And you had the si similar effect with like Huckleberry Finn, where it's first person, real voicey, a lot of accent, you know, a lot of dialect in there.
And the character doesn't realize how much they're revealing about themselves, their prejudices, the world, their folly, their limited youthful point of view, that the reader can then enjoy. So there's a first person looking back on, let me tell you about my important life. And you're reading it and going, you really thought you were pretty important there, didn't you?
And so there's a lot of enjoyment in that. That isn't always the case. There's a lot of classic first person stories, Jane Eyre, you know, some of the great novels, Victorian novels, where the character is earnestly and seriously telling her own story. And it's very serious and there's very little irony in it, but a lot of pathos, a lot of you, you were just like, oh God, this poor girl, what she's going through.
And it still can help the reader feel very close to the character, but also how far in the future is that first person narrator looking back to tell this story? And how much of that do they reveal? One of my favorite old books from my teenage years were the Merlin Trilogy by Mary Stewart.
And they're in first person, but they start by saying, I am an old man now and back when this happened... he's telling the story from his mythically old age, but as soon as he establishes that sort of first person, here, I am very old, living in a cave, you know, telling you this story about this time many decades in the past, then we drop into those many decades in the past, and it just becomes a kind of a simple past tense narrative. But every once in a while, he'll come back in as the narrator and say, "looking back now I can see that I should have..." You know, something like that. So there's this wisdom of age sort of telling this story.
You can make a lot of choices about what kind of story you're telling and how you want to tell it by how far away the narrator is from the action in the story, whether that's a first person narrator, or a third person.
Rachelle Ramirez: And by far away, do you mean in connection to the protagonist or simply in time, or could it be both?
Anne Hawley: Well, typically the first person narrator is the protagonist of the story. That's typically how that goes. Great Gatsby is an example where the first person narrator is not the main protagonist, but how far away in time is typically the biggest question.
You know, how far back am I, how much wisdom have I gained since the events of this story, which is gonna have something to do with why I am telling the story, right? If it was later that same day, like a diary, like Bridget Jones' diary, she's telling her own story later the same day each day.
She has no wisdom. She hasn't learned anything yet from having drunk too many drinks and smoked too many cigarettes that day. So you just, you're kind of going along with her day by day, whereas Merlin telling the story from vast distance of age, you're getting all of the insight and wisdom of a very wise old wizard. So that choice of how far away in time is a big decision to make. Mattie Ross in True Grit is coming from, you know, having lived her life, having gone through this adventure, having been grievously injured and handicapped by the adventure. And so you don't know all this at the beginning, but that's the perspective from which she's telling this story.
It's been a few years,
Rachelle Ramirez: Meaning the writer there needed to understand fully that this was an older woman writing the story of her younger self and to stay in that perspective. I.
Anne Hawley: Yeah. And I don't think, like, I've never read an interview with Charles Portis that said, this is what I thought about, I don't think it's always a totally conscious choice, but I think as writers, if we do give some conscious thought to why I'm choosing this point of view, it not only deepens the story, but it also helps you be precise in what you can logically describe and explain, versus what couldn't possibly be there because this narrator couldn't possibly know that.
Rachelle Ramirez: Okay.
Anne Hawley: So a choice. For example, the leaving first person behind and taking sort of more of a third person omniscient, where the narrator has the power to know what Anne is thinking and what Rachelle was thinking at the time gives you as the author this huge amount of power to go into this mind and that mind and this time and that time.
And go over here and go over there in a different place. It also gives you this massive problem of choosing which one to move to and why, and how to signal it to the reader. And what does that do for your story? Very often I get a manuscript or a scene from a client where they clearly just, they want to know all things and have access to all information.
And if at this point in the scene, I just need to switch over here and explain to you, the reader, why this is going on. That's not necessarily good storytelling. It's just tempting because, oh, I'm the omniscient narrator, so I have access to all this stuff and I can put it all on the page. Well, you can, but should you, is that good storytelling?
Probably not . Then you get into this problem of way too much exposition and i'm just the narrator, and dear reader, I'm gonna explain to you everything you need to know before you can even turn the page, you gotta know this, and this. And when you have given yourself permission to write in third person omniscient, it's real tempting to do that, and it's not generally considered good storytelling to overdo that.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. If I hear a client say, well, what the reader needs to know and I say, uhoh, let's talk about that. Do they really need to know it? Is there another way to do it?
So point of view includes who's telling the story, what point in time and is there something else that point of view
Anne Hawley: Yeah. Why. Why is the narrator, who may or may not be a first person character in the story, or may be more distant from the story, why are they telling this story? And that doesn't need to be on the page. In fact, it probably shouldn't be. "Dear reader, I'm telling you this story because ..." They used to do that.
18th century novels sometimes had that kind of device, but we don't do that anymore. But you as the writer, I think need to understand, at least have a feeling for why this narrator, this let's say third person or a first person narrator, is telling their story when they are and who they're telling it to.
One of the things that comes up for me, one of the real limitations of what was very popular with the Hunger Games, and I still see it quite a bit, is that first person present tense. There's a logical problem to me and to some readers, even though it's very immersive, and you're right there.
"Now I'm running and now I'm, you know, shooting my arrow and now I'm..." You know, you are right in it. It's like, who's she talking to? How does she have time to stop and describe all this? I always personally have a little problem with that first person present tense thing because is she running around with her phone, dictating this whole story while she's having this adventure?
But it was very popular because it's very immersive and yet I find there is kind of a logic problem
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah, I think that's more common in YA, for good reason. Kids are carrying their phones around and recording things as they go. The media they're consuming is somebody carrying their phone around and recording. I am doing. And that might be influencing it.
Anne Hawley: that, that could very well be, and also there's that sort of immediacy of self involvement with a younger character where I'm just like, I'm so busy learning to live life, that I am thinking, I'm narrating to myself all the time. And that is not, I mean, I am far from being a young adult and I still narrate my own life to myself in my head.
So it's not an unrealistic thing to do, but it does pose kind of a logic problem when you ask yourself, why is this narrator telling the story when they are, to who, you know, who are they talking to? Who are they explaining themselves to?
Rachelle Ramirez: And why is it important that the author has a general idea of who the narrator is telling the story to? Does it change what that particular narrator might be sharing?
Anne Hawley: Yeah, I think the best way to think about it is, let's say you agree to meet somebody in person for the first time. Let's take it out of a dating situation. Let's just say, you know, you've met someone online. You say, well, I'm gonna be in town. Maybe we could meet for coffee. Okay, so you've maybe exchanged a few Facebook posts or tweets or Bluesky, whatever.
And so you sit down with that person and you decide how much to reveal about yourself, how much to ask about them, what kind of exchange you're gonna have. And you probably aren't going to explain, for example, your whole past, but you might go more into detail about your own story or past because it's in an area that you know you both have in common, because that's why you're meeting.
So you're both writers. That's what I'm always meeting with writers. So you're both writers, so you talk about writing and you talk about your writing experience or what you are working on, but you probably wouldn't maybe talk that much about your. I don't know, your knitting or your cooking or your bike riding or your exercise regimen or something?
But if you were meeting someone because you were both in the same yoga class and hey, you know, would you like to go grab a cup of coffee? You might then be talking about more about your yoga or other exercise things that you do, or a different studio you used to belong to, or what city you moved from and what it was like in the other city, that type of thing.
So what you as a real live person would choose to say in a conversation with this person would be different than if it was in a conversation with that person. If you extract that back to, I the author am writing the story from the perspective of a narrator who is talking to somebody, telling the story to somebody, that same consideration of what would they say to that person, is she telling the story to her mother? Or to her daughter, for example. Very different things you might reveal in those situations. Is she talking to a future generation, way down the line? She talking to someone she mentored? All of that is it's worth thinking about as the author of the story.
I don't think it needs to be explicit on the page, but here's why it matters on a line to line basis. When you, as the author, feel the temptation to just put a little more exposition because I the author, I'm talking to you, the reader, and you need to understand, it's like step back and say, would that narrator reveal those things to that narratee, that person that they're talking to, or telling the story to, that audience, at this point, in those words?
And the more you can sharpen that and say, this is the only thing they would say, they would withhold this. This would never be on the page, the better your reader's experience, the clearer your reader's experience will be. They will be following a single line of narration, and a single story, and you are trusting the reader to, come on, follow along. You're listening in on this conversation. I'm not gonna turn to you and explain it to you, but I want you to be able to follow this if you were listening, like you're sitting in the next seat on the airplane and you're listening to this conversation, can you follow this story?
Rachelle Ramirez: So there's a narrator and there's an author, and the narrator is generally more of a character
Anne Hawley: It can be.
Rachelle Ramirez: than the author themselves sitting down to write. And what do I wanna share with the reader.
Anne Hawley: Yeah. When I bring this question up and it's not commonly understood and it's subtle to talk about, but when I bring it up , you know, who's your narrator and who are they talking to? It's like, well, it's me. I'm the author and I'm talking to the reader.
Well, no, you're not. You're not talking directly to the reader because the reader... is the reader in the room with you right now? No, the reader doesn't exist when you're writing the story. You can imagine it and that who are you imagining your reader is? That's getting closer to who your narratee is.
But no, you are not talking to your reader. I'm talking to you right now, but we're not writing a story. As soon as I start telling a story, something changes.
But that idea, well, no, it's just me talking to the reader. No, you're not. You need to think a little bit deeper into even if it's third person, it's not first person, it's not actually a character on the page, there's still somebody who is not you, the author, that you've imagined telling this story. Because for example if I'm writing a historical novel and I think I am telling the story to the reader, then I'm going to have all kinds of ideas about that period in history that nobody in that period of history would have, because they're in it.
So for example, vocabulary, words that I would choose to have the character think or say, or the narration contain. For example, I am not going to set something in the early 19th century and have the characters or the narrator say something like, okay. Because that word did not exist. So that's me not being me, that's me putting a narrator in between me and the reader who is speaking in early 19th century ish language, for example.
Rachelle Ramirez: Right. I think that's one of the things that you did really well in your novel Restraint, which was give the narrator a voice of the time period that your story was placed in. So the language matched up. We weren't jumping from narrator to dialogue with big jumps in feeling like time period.
So it really set the time and space.
Anne Hawley: Yeah. And I, that was important to me in that novel. I think it's always important, even though it's not, might not be as obvious as, okay, now we're going back 200 years in time and we're going to use language in a slightly different way to convey a different time period.
Even if you are setting a novel right now, today. What's today, May 8th, 2025? It's going to be very specific and you wouldn't even know certain things three months ago that you now know today. So that choice of who's telling it and when, can really determine what you do and don't put on the page.
Rachelle Ramirez: So to clarify, point of view would be who's telling the story from what point in time? Who are,
Anne Hawley: space to sometimes distance, like how far away, was it long ago and far away, right?
Rachelle Ramirez: Who are they telling the story to, and why are they telling the story to that person?
Anne Hawley: Right. Who's telling the story to whom? From what distance and space and time and why, what's their purpose in telling this story? And all of those things will help you as the author decide what doesn't belong on the page and what rightfully can come into the narration into the dialogue.
And one of the things that we didn't really get to it, but if you decide to write in first person, one of the great constraints of first person that can be really creative, especially if you're gonna tell the whole story from that one character's point of view, is that you can only give what that character would know, would have experienced, what they can see and hear. And anything that happens outside of their experience, the character, the point of view, the first person narrator character, and the reader, can only find out about it at the same time. The reader can never know anything that the first person character doesn't know at the time they're telling the story.
Rachelle Ramirez: And are willing to share. So it could be an unrun,
Anne Hawley: are willing to share. Right.
So that's where that ironic voice comes in. What's the famous phrase? The unreliable narrator is often the first person narrator who do, who is either fibbing or or kind of finessing the story, or kind of cleaning it up a little bit.
And you can have a lot of fun with letting them accidentally drop something that they didn't mean to tell the reader.
And there can be a lot of irony in that for the reader. Often. It's quite humorous, like in Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer.
Rachelle Ramirez: Well, I think that clarifies what point of view is, and a little bit on, you know, what are some of the challenges in manuscripts. I'd love to have you back on to discuss specifically the, challenges you see most commonly in manuscripts and potentially how to solve them? I'd love to have you back for that.
Anne Hawley: that would be fun, and I just would like to encourage people. It's really hard for some writers to make themselves do this, but if you're concerned about your point of view and some of this feels kind of confusing, go get your favorite books that you loved, that inspired you to become a writer in the first place, and just open the first page and read and like really think about what that author was doing with that point of view. Do a little studying. I'm not saying nerd out completely, but it really, it's okay to just get a book off your shelf, open it up or off your Kindle or wherever and read analytically a little bit, just a page or two and say, what are they doing here? Is it present tense? Why is that? Why did I like that so much? And that can just be super helpful to your line by line writing,
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. And you'll probably see a pattern in your favorite books , which will speak to probably likely what you're writing something similar to what you love, so
Anne Hawley: Well that's what you should do is write like what you love.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. Well thank you so much for talking with me today. I really appreciate it.
Anne Hawley: Anytime. See you soon.
You can find my queer historical love story, Restraint, on Amazon.
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And that's it for this episode of the Write Anyway podcast, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.