In Part I and II, we looked at the persons involved in a novel and the voice used in the writing. For a quick recap:
Persons
Author
Narrator
Character (or characters)
Voices
First person
Third-person limited
Third-person omniscient
Now we can finally get back to the original questions on POV.
As noted at the very beginning of this series, POV is defined as “through whose eyes and ears the reader witnesses the scene.” The author writes the story, the narrator tells the story, and the character experiences the story. Through which character does the reader experience any given scene? That’s the POV character. Might be in first- or third-person voice, and might be filtered through a separate narrator or witnessed directly through a first-person narrator-character. Might have one single POV for the entire book, or there might be 42 POVs.
In first-person voice, the character and the narrator are the same person (most of the time – more on this in a minute). Usuall…
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