So a while back I suggested to Janra that I might be willing to write a piece on points of view in fiction. This is the beginnings of an outline of such a thing. Comments are welcome.

I've been working on this novel, and in the course of writing isolated scenes I've tried a number of voices & narrator styles, and I may try some more. Those who've read the manuscript pointed out that it kind of jumps around.

So here are a few points of narrative view I have thought of:

• First person. Lets you explore the feelings & thoughts of one character with great intimacy, but leaves you closed out of the heads of all the others. This is particularly fun with unreliable characters, for example in An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears, or the Alexandria Quartet of Laurence Durrell.

• Third person immanent. Similar to first person in that the narrator follows one character around looking over hir shoulder, as it were. This allows for some distance from the main character, but not very much.

• Third person distant. Like being another character, perhaps disembodied, in the room with the other, stated, characters. Great for describing action, and you can perhaps comment (at some distance) on the unrevealed thoughts and/or feelings of more than one character. But it's kind of confusing.

• Various exotica, like second person. I once did a romantic short story with genders unspecified, and finessed the 3rd person pronoun gender problem by doing it in 1st and 2nd person. This smacks of writing exercise unless it's very well done.

• Some sequence of the above. Example: Some of the Parts by T. Cooper. There are 4 main characters who kind of drift through their lives and interlocking relationships; 3 are told in the 1st person and a forth in the 3rd person. It's probably best to confine one's narrator switches to the occasional chapter boundary.

I'll write more as time permits. So what do people think? Is it worth writing more along these lines?