The Ultimate Guide to Tense & Point of View | Writing Tips

hey guys it's Jalen and I'm here today with another video so today I'm going to be talking about point of view and how to choose the point of view of your story it feels like it's been a while since I've just sat down and talked writing craft with you guys and so I'm really excited about this because point of view is one of my favorite topics I know that seems weird to care so much of a point of view but I do so I have so much to say this is gonna be a long video I can already guarantee it so settle in my opinion point of view is probably one of the most overlooked elements of writing it's something that is so important and crucial to your story but I think it's something that a lot of people kind of just oversimplify and I say that because I used to I used to basically just be like yeah I'm choosing between first-person and third-person and then I'm choosing past or present as third person present tense didn't really seem like an option so it really felt like I was choosing between three things and I think a lot of people kind of feel that way that point of view is very black-and-white you just choose this or you choose that but it's so complicated but it's also so interesting maybe I'm just a nerd for point of view I just find it so so interesting so I have a lot to say I have made a video on this topic before it has been private advice ed in that video was like so incorrect I said a lot of things that came from that very simplified mindset but I had and then I think a lot of people have because it's how you're taught point-of-view in high school English one of you is so much more complex than that but I hope to bring a bit of a different perspective on it today so to start out I just only get one quick thing out of the way and it's that there is no harder point of view and there is no better point of view there's only what is more difficult for a specific writer and there's only what is better for a specific piece of writing if anyone ever tells you this is the easy point of view this is the hard point of view or this point of view is better they are wrong point of view is a tool with any kind of tool you have to use the one that is best for the specific project the specific thing that you were building for a quick anecdote I'm gonna try to keep this video light on anecdotes but I do have one I very much had this mindset that third person was more difficult and more mature because I heard a lot of people saying that in the writing community and there's a lot of third-person elitism you don't see it happen with first-person it's kind of weird but there's so much third-person elitism and so I really felt that way and so I wrote two pieces for school in third person because I felt like it might be looked down upon by my professors or whoever was marking me if it was first-person and that was not true I just had that misconception and both those pieces should have been in first person and that would have made way more sense and it would have benefited the piece I don't know some people say that first person is annoying it's not theirs poorly written first person might be annoying but there's poorly written third person that might be annoying and the other thing I wanted to say just start this off is you may have been taught that there's first person second person and then three types of third person limited omniscient and objective those point of views do all exist but I'm gonna say something might not make sense at the moment but it's that there are actually infinite point of views point of view is like gender a spectrum one of you is a spectrum and it's not just one spectrum it's on so many different spectrums that I don't even know how I could make a chart or circulate it there's not just whether it's you know first person or third person so how objective the point of view is there's also have psychically closed it is have temporally closest the events there's so much going on basically every single piece the point of view is unique to that piece it might be fall under the umbrella of third person but it's a third person who's always gonna be a little different depending on that specific lens of the story first person is always gonna be a little different depending on how it's set up for that story one of you is kind of like the angle the story it's being seen from so going into what I'm about to talk about keep that in mind going to do the thing that most how to choose your point of view articles videos would do and I'm gonna go over different point of views and I'm gonna explain their benefits qualities drawbacks but that's not really how you choose your point of view so going into this it's gonna be a lot of information I think this is all good information have which is what I'm gonna share it but bear with me talk about how to choose your point of view at the end one of you is that I'm going to be covering our first person at present tense first person retrospective or first person past tense second person present tense second person retrospective third person present tense limited third person past tense limited and third person omniscient I am lumping tents in because it's different like first person I'm present-tense is so different from first person in past tense tense really changes a lot so I'm gonna be discussing tents in this video I thought about doing tents as a separate video but it's just so it's it's an element of point of view let's start with first person present tense which is an experiencing airier so I would say that first person present tense is the most accurate to how we experience life we see ourselves as an eye and we see ourselves in and now um in terms of genre it is kind of the why a standard the reason for that is because in yaa we want a teenage character from a teenage point-of-view not an adult looking back on their teen years almost all yaa that's in first person is in present tense occasionally past tense happens there's there's exceptions to everything but it's just very rare first person present tense has kind of become the why a voice doesn't mean it's reserved for why or why it has to be in it but it's kind of just an industry standard so qualities of this point of view it's very immediate and it's very intimate as a result we're literally with the character as it's happening as they're thinking everything it's almost a stream of consciousness even if you're not writing in a literal stream of consciousness it's kind of almost inherently going to have some qualities of that there's no time between the narrative being told in the narrative happening so the character is telling everything as it's happening to them they have no room to reflect on what any of this means you can think about the the impact this will have on the narrative if you just think about your own life think about something kind of major or important that has happened in your life something that happened maybe a year or more than a year ago and think about how you were feeling in that moment and what you perceived in that moment versus how it feels to you now how you see that event now with time passing it just changes how you feel and experience things so much in some ways it makes it less accurate but in some ways time makes it more accurate in the moment you know there's no room for memory to really fault you with what's happening but at the same time you don't have any scope on what's happening there's also the tension of unknown outcome first-person retrospective so first past tense basically means that the character lives first-person present tense you don't know what's going to happen because the only person who we have access to their thoughts is the main character they don't know what happens cuz it hasn't happened yet like the story is elapsing as we're reading it I think one of the reasons why people often say that first-person is annoying which I don't agree with it's cuz they're thinking about first-person present tense which can make the character less sympathetic and the reason for that is because there's no distance the character has no time to reflect the character has no time to think you know but truly on the events that game is a very heightened narrative but there's just no room for retrospective think about all the things that made sense in the moment but as soon as you had even a day's worth of distance you're like oh if I had scope on this maybe that wasn't the best thing to do as they say hindsight's 2020 and the character doesn't have that it can be frustrating because they don't have that even though it is something that's accurate to how we all live one major pitfall of first-person present tense is that it can lead to the inclusion of redundant details so for example let's say you have a scene where the character is sitting in their room and then they get up to walk into the kitchen to get a glass of water since this is just being narrated as it's happening it's harder for the character to self edit things that don't matter at all even the sentence I get up and go to the kitchen probably doesn't even matter it wouldn't make sense to just start in in the kitchen if this is even relevant which I don't see many cases what getting a glass of water would be relevant but doesn't mean it has to happen but just as the writer it's harder to notice these were done in details because they are accurate to the point of view so you have to be very careful on the lookout for redundancy because it's very easy to fall into that pit the melodrama can also be increased again because it everything's happening in the moment everything is so heightened with no room between between the events happening the telling of the events emotions are at an all-time high and this can just make things seem kind of melodramatic another thing to keep in mind is that the language and the diction has to be very accurate to the character and where they are in that moment if you're writing from a child's perspective in present tense the language has to be accurate to that child moment that's why a lot of the time with young characters we see it in past tense because then the character can tell it the intelligence and the diction of an adult even though the story happened when the character was a child it's incredibly psychically close psychic distance is a really important part of a point of view so check out my video on psychic distance I think it will explain a lot I'm not going to go into what it is now but essentially it's just how close the reader feels to the character first person present tense is very psychically close and that can be a great thing that can be a hindrance it just depends on the situation and the effect that you want it's harder to control the structure compared to past tense you know if you were telling a story that happened to you a year ago you can order those events however you want because it's all already happened you hasn't tense the storytelling has to be linear except for flashback like the character can go oh this happened before the start of the story but you almost have to progress through the story linearly because the character is experiencing it that way you know it's also harder to give context it's just much easier in past tense or third-person to contextualize a situation as it's happening it can feel really unnatural to have the character and first-person present tense start to give context it can feel info dumpee it can also cause repetitive sentence structure this is something that happens to a lot of people because of that everything is happening as it's happening you know so you can fall into this pitfall of I end up I walk to the door I open the door and it can just be a lot of I've herb iver by verb a verb this is something you can avoid but it just is something that can happen it's not necessary quality it's just a pitfall it probably has the narrowest scope of any point of view you're kind of locked into this character in this moment none of these things that I'm really saying are always good are always bad it's just dependent on what you want and the effect you want your story to have so let's go into first person in retrospective now so what I mean by first-person retrospective is first-person past tense where time has elapsed between the narrative and the telling of the narrative but this is known to the character you can have stories that are in first-person past tense that aren't retrospective meaning it's like you just a first person present narrative and you put it in past tense first pressure retrospective kind of means you know the character is telling their story that has an impact on it so this is a remembering narrator and this is most accurate to how we remember first-person retrospective means that the character is telling their story and usually it means that they're aware that they're telling the story usually it means they've made a conscious choice to tell the story time between the narrative and the telling of the narrative allows for retrospection kind of to counter what I talked about previously this can increase sympathy for the character you know a character can go I did this thing and I recognized that it was the wrong choice and that can make them very sympathetic and it can also decrease melodrama because everything isn't being told in that extremely heightened way which sometimes that's good first-person present tense it feels very overwhelming and sometimes that's great I really like that effect in certain cases past tense feels a lot quieter present tense feels a lot louder everything is you know the TEC characters taking life as it comes to them and that's loud they're not sitting down quietly and going well now I'm gonna tell my story structure is quite flexible here because the character knows everything that has happened and so they can tell the story in whatever order they want you can also really benefit from the narrative frame so there's this question in a first-person retrospective which is why are they telling the story and why are they telling it now can also tell a young person's story with mature language it's why we see a lot of books like we see a lot of adult fiction with young protagonists written in this point of view it's harder to a stream of consciousness just because it's more meditative it's more methodical you know it's still very psychically close to the character but you're not as temporally closed so there's distance in terms of time but there's not really distance in terms of psychology because it's still first-person the character here is always unreliable I would say that this is the most unreliable point of view and I would also say that every single time you're writing in first-person retrospective that character is unreliable might vary you know more sometimes less but always unreliable because even if your character is trying to tell their story to the best of their ability as accurately as they can we simply don't remember a hundred percent accurately you know memory excuse things so inherently this character is unreliable same with present tense but maybe less so because present tense the character has less control over how they tell the story it's just kind of a download of their thoughts whereas in first-person retrospective that character has more control over how the story is told so that character can consciously lie about things if you want a character who consciously lies about the events this is probably the best point of view to illustrate that even in my current novel the main character is telling the story to the best of her ability like she's really trying but she still has pretty strong biases that reflect how she ends up ultimately telling the story this doesn't mean that it's better but I would say that this is the most complex one of you there's just so much to consider you have to think about why they're telling the story who they're telling it to why they're telling it now what affects the time that has elapsed from the telling from the events and they're telling what effect that has had on their memory just there's so much to consider you have to basically think about two timelines where the character is now when they're telling it and where they were at the time and everything that happened in the middle and all the effect it has on everything I would say that this point of view also can have a big effect on the theme point of view doesn't always have an effect on the theme but I would say in first-person retrospective it often does because the character is consciously telling a story that can say a lot like really in this case the point of view is is the narrative it's so part of the narrative and in that way it could be part of the theme like I'll use my own novel as an example but I'm in awe I'm currently writing first-person retrospective and the main character is kind of telling her story because her story has already been told by other people in a completely incorrect way and so now years after this has all happened she's kind of saying okay it's time for me to set the record straight let's move into second person I'm not gonna go super in-depth on second person because I'm gonna do a whole video on second person the thing I will say about second person is that it's such a specific point of view that if you are using it the reason for using it is probably so specific to your specific story if you are gonna use second person you should know why you're using it it might be for a reason about two lists it might be for something else but it's so specific that it's almost always just because the story could not be told in any other way second person present tense is similar in some ways to first-person present tense a lot of those qualities overlap it's also an experiencing narrator usually what this point of view means is that the character is dissociating from the events while they are happening it could mean other things this is kind of the most common one second person retrospective is very similar to first-person retrospective in a lot of qualities it's also a remembering narrator typically this point of view means that the character is is retelling their story to themselves in a lot of ways it's technically quite similar to first-person but it's just something that requires very specific uses it's often used to show pain or guilt like I feel so guilty I can't even acknowledge that it was me or the events were so painful that I can't even acknowledge it was me but that doesn't mean that anytime a story is paying for involves guilt it has to be in second person you know really like second person to be honest but I'm not gonna go through a super long list of qualities because it's it's kind of so different every time it's used so now let's get into third person and we'll start with present tense because we've been going to present tense first third person present tense is not super common but I really like it I will admit I think it's a really cool point of view because I think it has a really unique stamp I think it has some very specific interesting qualities that I really like and I've written quite a few short stories in this so it's not super common has a very unique sound which immediately gives the story a unique tone because the reader probably isn't super used to it what I think is interesting about this tense and point of view is that it combines the intimacy and immediacy of present tense with the distance of third-person so it ends up being kind of jarring you're not expecting to get this intimate immediacy with this kind of removal we're not used to that and so it's almost a little jarring in a good way because it's in present tense we're getting the character's thoughts as they're tonight but because it's third-person the character isn't choosing to tell their story you know they the first person it's like we've been invited in by the character you know in past tense usually that means the character is like really choosing this health story they've invited us in in the third person they haven't they're not even using an eye so they don't know they have an audience and so it almost feels like we're we're listening in to a story that we shouldn't and I feel like it almost is slightly uncomfortable in a way that I like in a good way it's like it feels like a breach of privacy like the character isn't consenting to us hearing or knowing about this but yet here we are there's no retrospection so you lose that and the character also can't really be knowingly unreliable so when I talk about an unreliable character I kind of grouped them into two categories a knowingly unreliable character and and unknowingly so unknowingly unreliable character would be a character who is consciously lying about the events it's consciously they know that what they're saying is fake news whereas an unknowingly unreliable character might be a character who say has amnesia or just can't interpret things correctly but they don't know that so they're telling the story the way they believe it to be true but it's not actually true say character who is hallucinating they don't know they're hallucinating they think this is real so when they share that it's it's reliable to them in third person present tense you can't really have a knowingly unreliable character a character can't really lie in third person because the storytelling is not a conscious choice in first-person retrospective it is a conscious choice the character can consciously lie in the third person it's like we've tapped into their brain they don't really know that a story is being told so even if they wouldn't be a reliable person they can't filter their thoughts through lies it's it's it's hard to explain I hope that makes sense for why you can't have a consciously unreliable character in third person I don't know if that makes sense but I hope it does so that's the personal person tense I think it's really fun I've enjoyed playing around with it so now let's go to third-person past tense limited this is limited I'm gonna talk about auditions I don't know what a limited point of view is basically it means that we are only in one character's minds at a time so we can only know what this character knows you can have multiple point of views but it's one at a time usually we'd say one per scene let's talk through person past tense limited this is kind of a pretty standard point of view that you probably are pretty familiar with I think the thing about this point of view it's just it's unobtrusive like we don't really notice it it's the point of view we probably noticed the least because it doesn't it's just not in your face it's not flashy it's ideal for multiple point of views probably the ideal for multiple point of views um you can write multiple point of views and whatever you want but usually it's easiest and makes most sense in third person limited you also in third person especially in past tense you have the ability to control the psychic distance just a little more in first-person you can't really escape the fact that you're in the mind really close all the time in third person limited you might want to stay close but you can shift in and out a little and it just gives you that little bit of freedom again the character can't be knowingly unreliable but it also this point of view works well for a character who wouldn't be able to tell their story in first-person say a character who would actually beat you unreliable to tell the story in first-person and so they need third person to tell the story the thing about this the point of view the way to see it's kind of just like a helping hand you know it's like this spirit has kind of just attached itself to the character and it's now telling their story for them but the character usually doesn't know that there's a story being told it's quite cinematic like we're looking at the character rather than through their eyes it kind of feels more like watching a movie then being told a story like one on one it's not as close as first-person this doesn't mean that you can't the reader can't connect as closely to the character because they fully can but just in terms of psychic distance it's simply not as close you can get almost as close that you can get just this much you can get so close to the character never as close first-person is really the closest you can be I explain that more of my video in the psychic distance it so this isn't a bad thing you can still be very close the can still connect fully with this character there's just always going to be that tiny sliver of distance because it's simply because it's not an eye I would say that it's again easier to contextualise and organize the structure similarly to first-person retrospective but here the structure is in no way reliant on how the character perceives their story that third-person spirit who is essentially the character but not like they can order this story however they want if you want full freedom on how to structure your story third-person gives it to you I would say that this is the point of view that gives you the most freedom it gives you the most scope and it just is the least mass to it you know like in first-person you have to deal with all this stuff about your character psychology and what that would mean and what they're thinking and why they're telling this and it becomes a big part of the theme in third person limited like you just don't have that I would say that third person limited is rarely part of the theme like rarely does this really impact the theme of the story and again that's not a bad thing sometimes you just have a lot going on you don't need the point of view to add more mess to that you know probably the point of view that readers will notice the less it's like the most under the radar kind of point of view um and then the final what I'm gonna talk about is third-person omniscient I'm gonna talk about it as a past test thing I've never seen it done in present tense but you can do anything it's actually pretty common like I think we often say that it's not common but it's actually fairly common once you start looking for it you'll notice it in quite a lot of places but it just can be done kind of subtly so omniscient means that the narrator has access to anything that they want to share so any character's thoughts at any period of time so basically you just you have the entire entire scope and history of the universe at your fingertips the biggest scope possible unlimited scope and a lot of the time writers do use it but they do it so subtly you don't notice where the story 98% of the time is following one character so you really feel like it's limited like some books that are in third-person omniscient Bel Canto by Ann Patchett I think fates and furious by Lauren Groff like those are both in third-person omniscient but you don't really notice it like the especially fates in Furies you kind of feel like that book isn't limited but it actually is omniscient I recently read girls burn brighter by Shobha Rao and that book was actually omniscient point of view because we kept seeing things that the characters didn't know but it was just so subtle and so brief that you feel like you're in limited it's also the most formal feeling point of view I would say no those are kind of the main point of views and their qualities there are others that are very specific so there's like first-person collective which is a we there's a first-person referral which is an i and you so the main character is I and one other character is you I really like that point if it's like my favorite point of view it doesn't really have a formal name I just call it first-person referral a book that does that sadness is a white bird memorial ruffman's occur and also third-person objective which is when you probably learned about an English class which is where then the narrator is a camera that has access to no one's thoughts now that we've talked about all that let me say my thesis which is it might seem like the way to choose the point of view is to then look at these qualities and think about which qualities you want but ultimately it's a lot simpler than that quite simply point of view is what the story is the same story in a different point of view it's just a different story because it's just that same story being told from a different angle sometimes a story really works best in one point of view sometimes it could work in a range of the point of view what you think communicates the story best and has the effect that you want it to have you know I think we talked a lot about the objective quality as a point of view but they can't be ignore that different point of views look different and they sound different and they feel different and sometimes that's what you base your decision on sometimes it's like the story feels this way so that's the point of view I'm gonna use but what I mean about the point of view being what the story is is that point of view is the form of the story so the story is its point of view if your story is a character talking to themselves in its second person if your story is a character looking back on their life and telling their story then it just is first-person or a perspective if what the story is is the character's narrative as they live it just it is first person present hence what the story is is like almost inherent to the point of view does that make sense like this is expansive like it's hard to wrap your mind around but I think once it clicks there's all these technicalities but once you can wrap your mind around the fact that point of view is quite simply what story is that is the thing that will answer your question what point of you should I write the same so a couple of things that you might want to ask yourself when kind of thinking what is my story okay so what have you is what story is what what is my story here are some questions to consider why is the story being told and who is telling the story why are they telling their story why now who are they telling their story to and in what manner so are they writing it down are they just replaying it in their head are they telling it to someone else in an actual letter they're gonna send verbally or just they're telling the story in their mind but it's geared to someone um do they have an own audience you could have a first-person narrative where the character knows that someone is reading their story or you could have a first-person narrative where the character doesn't know but someone's reading their story and that's that's very different how reliable are they these are all things to consider that might steer you towards that question of what is the story and we can all take a deep breath that's point of view for you folks I hope this was interesting I hope you guys learned something in point of view like I could talk about point of view until the cows come home like forever and since I live in a city that cows never come home which makes this analogy even more accurate this would be very limited by the fact that I would basically write anything in third-person past tense or first-person present tense like that's just that was natural for me first personal present tense was very natural for me because I grew up reading a lot of why a once you kind of sort this all out in your mind the fact that point of view is just completely amorphous and you can mold it into whatever you want you can create like whatever point of view you need like there's a novel and planning that's like second person from a ghost's point of view so like the main character is you but the narrator is a ghost who is I now it's like okay point of view is whatever the story needs whatever the story is and this is the story is so this is gonna be this weird freakin thing that's all anyways guys thank you so much for watching this extremely long video where I had more to say than a person should ever have to say on this topic it's actually really simple these are the kinds of things I think about welcome to my brain so thank you guys so much for watching if you have any questions you can always send me ask don't tell' more and i'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: ShaelinWrites

Views: 16,378

Rating: 4.9202771 out of 5

Keywords: writer, writing, author, novelist, creative writing, writetube, writetuber, writing advice, how to write a book, how to write a novel, writing vlog, creative writing degree, books, nanowrimo, authortube, writing tip, point of view, POV, 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person, limited point of view, omniscient point of view, omniscient, present tense, past tense, how to pick a point of view, how to choose point of view, first person, second person, third person

Id: P87GYxwoQUE

Length: 28min 58sec (1738 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 25 2019