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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25605
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25605
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

First of all, don't confuse point of view with person. You can write in the third person and still tell the story from one character's point of view.

Second, third person is the normal mode of storytelling. All this stuff about limited vs. omniscient is largely a distraction. It is an analytical scheme used to classify the POV at various points of a story. Unfortunately what tends to happens with analytical categories it that people tend to turn them into prescriptions, and then they become puritanical about them and start insisting that a work must be in a single category from beginning to end.

This is all bunk, and you would be well served to forget all about it and just write your story in the third person in the way that seem most natural to you.

Sometimes when a story is not working, an analysis of the story may reveal that the way POV is used in that particular story is not working, and those categories might be useful for describing what is going wrong. But in no way does that mean that every story that uses POV in the same way will not work, or that any general rules for what you must do with POV can be derived from the failure of POV in one particular work.

Fill your head with your story and write it down as it comes to you. Until you have real mastery of story craft, don't mess with any fancy literary techniques, or mess with restricted persons or POV.

Original score: 5