9 min read - published 14 July 2026
When I first learned about Point of View (POV) I thought I understood the basics:
But even when the ‘person’ of the POV is identified, there are other aspects of POV to decide.
Narrative tense: Is the narrator telling a story which happened in the distant past, or just now, or is happening as they speak?
Actions described in past tense can nevertheless feel immediate:
Her heart a drumbeat against her ribs, she said, “Will you come closer?”
Lord of the Abyss by Nalini Singh
Narrator identity: Is the narrator telling the story as the protagonist, or a direct witness, or someone who heard the story from someone else?
If it is the protagonist, they can directly narrate their thoughts and emotions.
Words like a knife thrust, angled up deftly between the ribs. He sat blinking. Pain would come later.
The Scent of a Woman by Peggy Nicholson
Audience: To whom is the narrator telling the story? Why is the narrator telling this story to this audience? How should they speak to their audience?
The famous Reader, I married him, in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is shocking because an outranked governess should say, He married me. The whole book is a passionate expression of emotions from a person who was not allowed to feel such emotions in the masculine hierarchy of 1847.
This contrasts with the objective tone of writers like Ernest Hemingway in his short story Hills Like White Elephants where only facts are described and strong emotions are hidden in the subtext, as was expected of strong men in the 1920s.
Alternating POV: Different narrators tell different parts of the story.
It can be very illuminating and indeed, enjoyable, to read about relationships from the points of view of the different characters.
TACMOT: ...her meaning is clear. I claim you both.
TARA: My meaning is clear—Boys: play nice.
BRAX: Without words, she’d just issued the clear command: “Don’t kill him.”
Won by an Alien (Stolen by an Alien Book 3) by Amanda Milo
Reliability: Even a narrator telling a story as honestly as possible must have blind spots. They cannot be everywhere at once, and even in a scene where they are present they cannot see and understand everything.
A limited point of view is colored by the narrator’s character, experience, and beliefs.
My mate, the resonance of my khui, my new reason for existing, has just planted her tiny, strange foot in my chest and kicked. It’s almost as if she does not want to mate.
Ice Planet Barbarians (Ice Planet Barbarians Book 1) by Ruby Dixon
Voice: Is the narrator talking to him/herself or to the reader? How conscious are they that they are telling a story?
In deep point of view the reader is carried along the character’s thoughts and emotions.
“It was better because it wasn’t raining yet, though the clouds were dense and opaque.” Note that the main character is not trying to describe the weather to the reader, she is musing about how the weather affects her.
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
The deepest point of view recognized so far is stream-of-consciousness writing which uses an internal voice which breaks literary conventions in an attempt to accurately narrate the character’s train of thought.
The ideas were Sally’s, of course—but very soon she was just as excited—read Plato in bed before breakfast; read Morris; read Shelley by the hour.
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
First person point of view was an obvious medium for deep point of view because it helped characterize the narrator and it forced authors to limit the story to the character’s experiences, aligning the reader with the narrator’s thoughts and emotions.
I have heard Charlotte Brontë cited as one of the first English authors to use first person point of view. This is not true at all. Some of the earliest English novels were written in the first person, such as The Pilgrim’s Progress introduction (1678), Oroonoko (1688), Robinson Crusoe (1719), Pamela (1740), and the hilarious and extremely bawdy Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne whose instalments started in 1759.
The problem with writing fiction in the first person is that it is the telling of a direct lie. Very religious writers like Charlotte’s own sister Emily Brontë softened the sin by having a narrator tell a story which ‘had been told to them’. This distancing of the narrator from the story helped Brontë’s narrator tell the truly shocking events of Wuthering Heights which the appalled reader had to piece together. So although the story was told in the first person, it was not told by any main character and the characters’ emotional behavior had to show their emotions.
What Charlotte Brontë is lauded for is her psychologically powerful narration. It was not so much her first person point of view, but the depth of her first person point of view, which was innovative.
In this she was preceded by Jane Austen’s heroines. Despite generally using the third person point of view, Austen described the agonized doubts and passions of her heroines so intimately that readers empathized strongly with them.
As Austen and Brontë demonstrated, deep POV is limited to one character’s thoughts and feelings at the time.
The narrator has an individual voice and world view. The reader watches the events of the story from a camera behind the narrator’s eyes and feels the emotions and reads the thoughts of the character as they happen.
First person or third person? It can be either. Some readers feel a story told in the first person is more immediate and emotional and real because a known character is directly telling them a story. Others are more aware there is already an author telling them a story and they accept the third person narration as being the closest type of point of view because a story is being told directly to them by an author who is staying invisible.
Past tense or present tense? It can be either. Orson Scott Card called the past tense the tense of truth because it is describing actions that are complete and therefore more real. Others note that first person present tense is common for young adult novels, forcing intimacy and immediacy on readers. Reading about experiences as they happen requires strong concentration.
I thought deep point of view could get no deeper until I read Finley Fenn’s novels. Instead of writing from the point of view of the senses, thoughts and emotions of her main characters, in that order, Fenn prioritizes their emotions. It’s really powerful storytelling, and very skilled, because every action has to be narrated through the lens of the emotion of the POV character.
For example, in her compelling work Sins of the Orc, we experience the story through Kesst’s emotions. Instead of saying a character woke, the reader experiences the wakening:
And that certainty was still there when Kesst’s hazy wakefulness slowly returned, a long time later. Because Eft was still here, still lying close and warm...
Kesst is concerned with analysing his lover’s emotions:
Eft whispered now, more tentative than before, or perhaps even ashamed.
This type of storytelling adds nuance to the emotions being described, and describes the doubts and perceptiveness of the narrator as well. Interestingly, the past tense of truth is teamed with the word now, changing a perception into an experience.
“And the vow is... all it needs?” Eft asked now, his voice unmistakably uncertain
The use of the adjective unmistakably is redundant in terms of description – Eft’s words and pause are clearly uncertain. But it’s not redundant at all from the point of view of Kesst’s emotions. The fact that Kesst modifies the description shows us he is carefully analyzing his lover’s tone of voice. Kesst is narrating story events from the point of view of his emotions.
It’s very emotional narration.
I suppose some writing critics might simply classify this literary device as the stream-of-conscious point of view which was popularized by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Finley Fenn uses the conventions of this style of writing, which of course is merely breaking the conventions:
And oh gods, how had it come to this, how could she have prevented this, no, forward, no—
The Governess and the Orc by Finley Fenn
Alma fought for air, for words, but there was nothing, nothing. Nothing but Drafli, oh gods, leaning down over her, with murderous, terrifying rage screaming through his eyes.
The Maid and the Orcs by Finley Fenn
Jule stared at it for what felt like an age, while her heartbeat seemed to hammer more wildly with every breath she took. Where was Grimarr? Why had he shackled her? Had he—had he planned to do this when he’d told her to sleep? When she’d said he would hold her?
The Lady and the Orc by Finley Fenn
Until finally, the year after Scall had passed, she’d become unwittingly entangled in an orc-related mess, and thereby had discovered...
"Do you have any proof of the orcs trespassing?” Louisa loudly asked, over that deeply disorienting thought.
The Widow and the Orcs by Finley Fenn
Rosa’s gasp of shock was instinctive, appalled—but there was heat in it, too, and hunger, and perhaps even relief.
The Librarian and the Orc by Finley Fenn
...she squeezed her eyes shut at the flash of memory, and the accompanying surge of nausea in her gut. Just a job. The next thing. One month, and then the sea.
The Governess and the Orc by Finley Fenn
A decisive, gut-churning little snap.
Daisy froze, her heart thundering, and her hands frantically scrabbled upwards, groping for her neck. And clutching against—
The ring. The hard, smooth metal ring, circled snug around her neck. Like... a choker. A collar.
The Artist and the Orc by Finley Fenn
But it's more than that. Finley always uses her syntax sins to focus on the character’s emotions.
There was a muffled laugh behind them—Thrak, perhaps—but Nat didn’t look back, and only pulled Ella down the corridor beside him.
The Heiress and the Orc by Finley Fenn
It sounded almost like a vow, like a—a pledge. A pledge he’d sworn, to force others to speak truth. And surely he’d known this for years, even all those years ago when they’d run together in the forest, and he’d never once spoken of it.
Natt had lied. He’d used his magic on Ella, making her speak truth to him, while he himself had lied. Again, and again, and again.
The Heiress and the Orc by Finley Fenn
Gone, gone, because Tryggr was staggering backwards, whipping his head back and forth, dragging his hands against his hair. And Eben was already following, desperate and instinctive, his hand reaching out, just needing it back, please, please—
“No, Ka-esh,” Tryggr hissed, sharp and low, almost a bark. “I said, no!”
It was as if he’d struck Eben across the face, and Eben froze, stunned, mortified, as ice kicked and cracked in his belly. No? No?
Tryggred by the Orc by Finley Fenn
He gave a wry chuckle, his hand sliding with obvious approval against her bare back, because he knew he had her, the bastard.
The Heiress and the Orc by Finley Fenn
And gods, it felt like her skin was crawling, like her body wanted to leap clean out of it—and Simon’s glance toward her held longer this time, perhaps seeing more than she might have wished. “Mayhap no,” he said slowly.
The Duchess and the Orc by Finley Fenn
And what was that look on his face, was it anger, judgement, contempt—but Kitty was nodding, pained and desperate, and obeying. Holding Thrain’s strange, shimmering gaze as she fought to breathe, to say it aloud, where it could never be taken back...
The Beauty and the Orcs by Finley Fenn
The difference between stream of consciousness writing and Finley Fenn's writing, to me, is that stream-of-consciousness writers concentrate on a character’s thought processes while Fenn concentrates on a characters’ emotional processes.
One could say Fenn uses an emotional stream of consciousness point of view but because stream of consciousness writing is focused on thoughts first and foremost, I prefer to say she is using an emotional deep point of view.
Despite the majority of images being a very dejected Sam who is overwhelmed with his responsibilities at Aussie Guards, this is a very happy article!
I found it thrilling to identify a new writing technique, especially one that is so powerful for romance writers. It seems to have eventually cheered up Sam too.
Having raved about this wonderful new way of writing, I now have to admit I have not used it yet.
My Aussie Guards series is about Sam, an Australian returned serviceman who is working hard to rejoin society and help his wounded mates (friends! In Australia, mates are friends).
He shares his ironic observations in a typical laconic Australian style. A deep emotional point of view would not suit him at all. In a spirit of sympathy, I let him hide his emotions and be a tough Aussie bloke. Which is difficult during sexually-charged situations. But he manages.
I hope you enjoyed considering this aspect of writing, even if you don't agree with my classification of it.
Cheers for reading!
