Katherine Min
POINT OF VIEW IS A TRICKY BUSINESS FOR FICTION WRIT-ers. Whether a story is told in the first person (“I could not kill the monster in the forest until I had slain the monster in me”), the second person (“You are not the kind of person who would kill a monster in the forest”), or the third (“He was a raging lunatic with an obsession for monsters”), not to mention all the variants of psychic distance (“He, Behemoth, would kill them all!” or “The monster in the forest seemed quiet now, but in eleven days he would wreak havoc on Schenectady”), the right point of view is perhaps the most crucial element in a piece of fiction. It encompasses almost all of the other elements: voice, character, tone, scene, setting, time, structure, and plot.
Because point of view is so tricky, such a complicated and arduous concept, it's best to approach it playfully at first. To convey the intricacies of POV, I like to start with nonhumans. This is not entirely capricious; the differences between a chicken narration and a human one are more cleanly delineated, allowing writers to see more obviously what each POV requires.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Write a paragraph or two from the POV of the chicken. You may use first-, second-, or third-chicken. How would she or he answer this question?
Write a paragraph or two from the POV of anyone else who might know the answer to this question. First-, second-, or third-person. Anyone but the chicken.