Writing in First Person

Question: If you are writing in first person, from the point-of-view of the main character, how do you write what's happening with other characters who the POV character can't see or hear?


Answer: Exactly.

The short answer is that you can't.

In first person narration, you are limited to describing what the main character perceives, thinks, or feels. You cannot describe what other characters think or feel. You can only describe what other characters do if the main character sees or hears them doing it.

So if you want to describe in your story what characters are doing when the main character isn't looking, you must turn to one of these options...

1. Get really clever about finding ways for the main character to observe all the key events or find out about them somehow . Maybe the MC views recordings or photos. Maybe he eavesdrops. Maybe characters tell them what they did, or what they saw other people do. Maybe the main character has to read a newspaper or look up stuff online. Lots of stories have the main character doing things like this. At any rate, with a single POV character, the reader can only find out about events as the main character finds out about them (or perhaps remembers them).

2. Use multiple POV characters. Switching to another character's point-of-view temporarily will allow the reader to witness events that the main character knows nothing about. (The name for this is "dramatic irony.") Maybe you only need to introduce another POV character for one key scene -- a prologue, for instance. Or maybe you develop a subplot involving a second character that will weave throughout the book. Some books use half a dozen POV characters. Of course, the trade off is that the more POV characters you have, the less close a connection the reader will have with your main character.

3. Use an omniscient narrator instead. This lets you move around freely in the story world, showing the reader things that are happening outside the main character's perception. The cost is that your reader may not feel as intimate a connection with any the main character. The reader's experience may be one of looking at the characters rather than being one of the characters.

All of these options can work. You just have to decide which is best for your story and how you want the reader to experience it.

But don't underestimate the power of getting clever.

Best of luck.

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