Point of view is the vantage point from which a story is presented: where the narrator stands, how much that narrator can see and know, and whose mind the reader enters.
Where the term comes from
Merriam-Webster defines point of view as a position or perspective from which something is considered or evaluated, and dates the phrase to 1793. In fiction the idea narrows. Britannica describes it as the vantage point from which a story is presented. Its two main third-person options are the omniscient view, which offers a panoramic look at both actions and inner feelings, and the limited view, which stays with one character who is not omniscient and usually sees events only in part. The writing center at Oregon State University treats the choice as a matter of strategy: the storyteller asks which perspective will be most satisfying for the audience, and a limited narrator can stay close to a character's private thoughts or keep a distance and report only the facts.
An example
Tobias Wren is sorting parcels at a village post office when a letter arrives addressed to his late mother. In first person: "I held the envelope by one corner, as if it might still be warm." In third-person limited: "Tobias held the envelope by one corner and tried to remember why his mother had never mentioned Lisbon." In omniscient: "Tobias held the envelope by one corner. Across the counter Mrs. Adeyemi was already guessing what it held, and far away the sender had begun to regret posting it." Same moment, three different books. The choice decides what the reader can learn and what can stay hidden. In the first two versions nobody can tell us what Mrs. Adeyemi suspects.
Common mistakes
- Choosing a viewpoint by habit instead of asking what the story needs the reader to know and not know.
- Letting a narrator report something they could not have seen, such as what another character is thinking or what happens in a room they never entered.
- Changing the distance without meaning to, so one page sits inside a character's thoughts and the next reads like a camera report.
How to check your manuscript
Write one line for each scene naming whose viewpoint it uses and in which person. Then read each scene and mark every thought, sensation and fact. For each mark, ask whether the viewpoint character could know it at that moment. Anything that fails either needs to move to a character who could know it, or to be shown through what the viewpoint character can observe. Then read a few paragraphs aloud and notice whether the narration stays as close to the character on page ten as on page one. If your book has several viewpoint characters, make sure each one has a reason to hold the camera. The entries on first-person point of view, third-person limited and the omniscient narrator go through each option in more detail.
In Musael, every scene on the plan board carries a point of view field, so a quick scan shows who holds the viewpoint in each part of the book and where it changes.