Thread: how to pick a voice

It goes without saying that the most common forms of western narratives are either told 'third person omniscient' (i.e 'a sudden darkness spread across the city and the people reacted with fear and dread') or 'first person' ('suddenly i found myself plunged into darkness'). it's rare, though becoming more popular for stories to be told in 'second person' ('you heard the lights go out and suddenly feel yourself plunged into a sudden darkness'), though often it seems this is a stylistic choice and as such is not often used for longer work such as novels. rarer still is 'first/second person pluralism' ('we/they heard the lights go out and we/they were suddenly plunged into darkness'). in the latter's case, such a voice is quite commonly used - though rarely for the entirety of a piece of course.

the question i would like to ask then is, when it comes to your work, what factors influence your decision of who's perspective your story should be told from? are you the kind of writer who lets the work make the choice for you, or do you make a deliberate choice? what do you notice about the difference in impact of, say, a first-person narrative over a third-person omniscient narrative?

personally, both applies, but i definitely find it is an issue that comes up when i am about to start a new project. for me, a first-person narrative works better in the following cases:

- my protagonist (or protagonists, if i am telling a story from multiple angles) has a personality that is extremely developed, easy to empathize with (though not necessarily without their flaws) and has a character that is both articulate and distinctive enough to be able to deliver an interesting viewpoint.
- they are present within every scene and their status allows for me to develop other characters as well.
- the story is intended to be highly personal and subjective
- the story is intended to be something of a character study either of the protagonist or of somebody who is closely linked to the protagonist

on the other hand, i find third-person omniscient works a lot better when the story:

- takes place in multiple scenes, in multiple time periods and does not require any bias toward any particular character or group
- involves describing events and actions that would not necessarily be witnessed by anyone in the story - i.e the 'twig snapping in an empty forest' paradox
- requires a high degree of ambiguity and objectivity
- requires distancing, a character to be somewhat unknown to the audience

there are obviously exceptions for all of the above, but as a general rule i find them to be true. what do you think?

I'm rather surprised you did not mention 3rd person limited which is my favorite, probably because that is most of what I read. I also prefer multiple, shifting POV between several (2 or 3) main characters, again because that is most of what I read. Maybe we read different genres. I mostly read and write historical fiction with a few thrillers mixed in as well. I like limited narrator with shifting POV because it lets me share things with the reader that some of the characters do not know. It lets me build suspense, like when the bad guy is plotting his trap but the good guy doesn't know about it yet. The reader knows that something bad is going to happen, then to keep the story from getting predictable, I have to put some kind of plot twist into the story so that it does not turn out exactly the way the reader expected. I never liked reading 1st person so I was never interested in writing that way. I did write one novel-length 2nd person story. So I guess the biggest influence on how I write is what I like reading.

I often let the story-concept decide the point of view. At the moment I am working through what my next large work will be, but one thing I have decided already is that I want it to feature different narrative styles. Overall, I want the story to feel claustrophobic, intensely personal, so I am writing it in Third Person Limited. But there are some scenes, such as one where a video camera is involved, that I want to sound more distant and impersonal, so I am going to write those in Third Person Objective -- the so-called 'camera-eye' perspective.

I love experimenting with point of view and voice. The more I understand these concepts, as well as psychic distance, the richer the art of storytelling becomes. There are so many ways to tell the same story.