Craft Glossary · term

POV types

← Craft Glossary · Point of View, Setting & World

Plain English: Whose consciousness mediates the story, and at what distance.

• First person ("I"): maximum intimacy and voice; limited to one knower; risks "I"-fatigue.
• Second person ("you"): rare, hypnotic, hard to sustain.
• Third limited / close third: "she", anchored to one head per scene; the modern default —

intimacy of first with the flexibility of third (pairs with free indirect style).

• Third omniscient: a narrator who knows all heads and facts; powerful for scope, easy to

turn cold and distant; out of fashion but not wrong.

• Distance runs on a slider from deep (inside the skull, the character's diction) to

distant (a camera overhead). You can glide along it deliberately within a scene.

Rule: Choose a POV and distance that serve the book's intimacy needs, and hold it consistently within a scene. RELIC is sole close-third on Priya — the co-stars never get the camera.

Fail: See Head-hopping below.

Arjuna Badger Press · Craft Library

Glossary · Doctrine · Anti-patterns · Triptych form · LLM tells

← Back to glossary