The key to point of view is how the character sees herself

It’s easy, because it’s just first person, second person (which is never to be used), third person. Pick one. Write.

But it’s more complicated than that, because they branch into alternatives, and the rules can be broken effectively. Third person can be omniscient, change from character to character through the course of the story, or confine itself to one character. The narrator can tell only externals, like a camera, or can give every beat of the protagonist’s heart — or anything in between.

There’s a time element: the story is happening now; or we’re in the past, but right on the heels of the action. Or maybe the character is looking back just from the end of the story or is an old man recalling what happened in his youth. All these decisions will change the story.

First person puts the reader into the action. The reader is more likely to identify with a character recounting his own story. The protagonist’s “I” becomes my “I.” The first challenge to first person is that the reader knows everything the character knows — neither more nor less — so there are some barriers to suspense or surprise. Second, the voice needs to be able to carry the narrative.

Third person can be as close in as first person. Henry James called this point of view “central consciousness”; it can be a useful shorthand for “close-in third person.” This POV is not quite as inviting as first person, but there’s also not as much risk of the voice becoming annoying or boring before the book is done.

Both first person and central consciousness help the writer do what novels do better than  other forms or story-telling: convey emotional content. By setting the reader firmly inside the viewpoint character’s skin, the writer gives the reader a vicarious experience he can’t get from film, audio, or stage play. We come out the other side having experienced someone else’s life.

What makes it tricky is that the writer is then confined to what the POV character knows and is thinking about at any given time. Whether in first or third person, the POV character is unlikely to think, “I have brown hair and green eyes,” or “My brother, whose name is Fred, works at a hardware store.” Nor will he think of himself as a shadowy figure wandering over a distant plain. It’s the writer’s challenge to really enter the character’s mind as she thinks, “My roots need touching up again,” or to drive with her to pick up her brother at the hardware store, or to get behind shadowy figure’s eyes and understand how he feels about the lonely plain.

The writer also has to avoid language that’s inappropriate to the character. If the first-person POV character is an eight-year-old girl from the American Deep South, the narrative will be her voice through and through. There’s more leeway in third person, but even there, only an ironic narrator (like the voiceover in A Christmas Story) could describe her experience in the diction or a sophisticated Northern adult.

I’ve read a lot of fiction — and written a good deal of it myself — where the point of view is unclear or slippery. Sometimes it comes from an inept handling of omniscient, the most difficult POV to pull off.

The problem is, the reader must identify with somebody in order to follow the story. Every time you change point of view,  you release your grip on the reader’s attention, even if it’s only to switch hands. At that point, you run the risk that the reader will get up and do something else — and perhaps never come back. Deftly handled, a POV switch won’t lose a reader. If the switches are too frequent, they certainly will. If the reader comes to think he’s investing an emotional investment in a character without the possibility of any payoff — that is, if the time lag before catching up with a POV character in a multi-POV story is too long — you may have a “throw the book against the wall” moment.

Sometimes the best way to decide on point of view is to write several different versions of a scene. Even if your first instinct was correct, exploring the action from inside a different character’s head can give you insights that will give richer scene — and story.