Lesson overview

Introduction
Story - Narrative
Middle years and up
point of view
first person
second person
third person
audience narrator character relationship
perspective
character knowledge
narrator knowledge
objective
subjective
limited
alternating
omniscient
grammatical point of view
pronouns
narrative distance
psychological distance
point of view character
character perception
describing character emotion
describing secondary characters
multiple point of view characters
story scope
god perspective
authorial omniscience
fourth wall
narrator persona
narrator audience interaction
levels of intimacy
pov
There's more to point of view than grammatical first/second/third person. In this lesson we consider three types of people involved in any story—audience, narrator, and characters—and we show how point of view defines the relationship between these three entities, especially with regard to who knows what. We use a variety of text snippets to explore a range of points of view: third person limited objective, subjective, alternating, omniscient, second person, and first person. And we go beyond pronoun selection to explore the narrative opportunities and limitations of each approach. The lesson contains 10 writing exercises and takes approximately 2-4 hours to complete. It will suit older middle years audiences and up, however there is so much room for discussion that teacher support is highly recommended.