Most stories are written from a point of view of either a narrator outside a story or a character in the story. A story’s point of view is all about who is telling the story or whose thoughts we are reading about.
In this lesson, I will help you learn how to identify between two different types of point of view, first person point of view and third person point of view.
When an author writes in the first-person point of view, the story, or passage, will be told as if we are listening to the thoughts and words of a character that is in the story. Here is an example:
When the storm began to roll in, I ran inside my house, and closed all the windows. My little brother looked up at me with a hint of fear in his eyes, so I held him close as the wind howled all around our house.
This passage is written as if we can see inside the mind of a character in the story, so we say that it is written in the first-person point of view. Some clues that help to identify this are the words being used. When the storyteller uses words such as me, my, we, our, and I, it helps us to know that the passage is written in the first-person.
Stories that are told in the third-person point of view are NOT being told by a character in the story. Instead, the words of the story indicate that the author or writer of the story is the one speaking and thinking. It will seem as if we are viewing the story from their mind. Here is the same passage from before written in the third-person point of view:
When the storm began to roll in, Katie ran inside her house and closed all the windows. Her little brother looked up a her with a hint of fear in his eyes, so she held him close as the wind howled all around their house.
As you read, you can hear how the person telling the story is, in fact, NOT part of the story. It is not Katie or her brother telling us what is happening. When the person telling the story is outside of the story, we say that the story is being told in the third person point of view. Some words that help us to see this are, her, his, she, and their.
