Writing from Whose Point of View?

One of the things you will need to decide before you write a short story or a novel is whose point of view it will be told from? Who is the narrator?

Some stories are told as if the narrator is speaking. 'I woke up and found I'd turned into a frog.' This is a first person narrative. The difficulty with this is that you can only write what the narrator would actually know or see.

An omniscient third person narrator is more common. This is it is told from the point of view of someone looking on at what is happening, but (like God) this narrator knows everything so can explain what various characters are thinking and feeling.

A third person narrator with a limited point of view is quite useful, even with a more restricted knowledge and understanding compared with that of an omniscient narrator.

It's also possible to have a second person narrator, where the narrator speaks directly to someone all the time. 'You were standing at the market stall sniffing the mangos when I first saw you. You looked so exotic in your red and gold robes...' This is very unusual though and would be extremely difficult to carry off unless you were quite an experienced writer.

The next time you look at a short story or a novel, spend a few minutes figuring out whose point of view the story is told from, and whether it uses a first person, second person, third person omniscient or third person limited point of view narrator.