The use of POV among new writers is often discussed as a matter of preference. As in, which POV do you prefer, 1st or 3rd? There is discussion about which POV is most appropriate for each genre, but often the discussion stops at “I prefer 3rd person.” or “1st person is better for Middle Grade.”
What I don’t see a lot of is a deeper discussion of the power of POV to craft authorial voice. There are some aspects of storytelling that are only possible in certain tenses and POVs. Let’s use a couple of examples to show what I’m talking about.
3rd Omniscient
The townsfolk, who were suspicious and secretive, were most unnerved by the colorful birds that had taken roost overnight.
The narration above is quite whimsical. The distant 3rd POV allows the narrator to make statements about the population being suspicious or secretive. I don’t need to tell you that this is a fantasy story, you already know there is an element of whimsy to it just by the use of voice. A distant 3rd can even be a character in itself. It can have opinions like:
The bartender poured Finn a full flagon of abascus, a rather horrid concoction from the north. In a fit of either bravery or downright foolishness, Finn gulped the whole thing down.
Who thinks abascus is rather horrid? Who thinks Finn is either brave or foolish? The narrator. It’s worth noting, that the more voice you give an omniscient 3rd narrator, the more likely you are to call attention to the fact that the story is not pure reality, that we are hearing a filtered telling of the story through the voice of a character.
3rd Close
Take a look a this example of a close 3rd, which can also make judgements, but does so through the filter of the characters it follows. Here is the first paragraph of The Sorcerer’s Stone:
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.
In this case, it is not necessarily the narrator who thinks that strange or mysterious things are nonsense, this perspective is coming from Mr. and Mrs. Dursley themselves. We don’t have to be in 1st person to have the narration take on the flavor of their thoughts.
1st Person
There are a ton of interesting tools that come along with the use of 1st person POV. For one thing, it’s much easier to characterize the narrator without drawing attention to the unreality of the story. If the narrator is making judgments, using explicit foreshadowing, or using very “voicey” storytelling, the reader can accept this as being filtered through a real person, not an abstract and disembodied narrator.
Unreliable narration is also much easier to accept through a 1st person POV. If an authoritative, distant 3rd tells you that “the fight didn’t really matter” you’re likely to accept this as essentially true. If a 1st person narrator tells you that the “fight didn’t really matter,” you’re much more likely to read into that, and probably assume that the narrator is being false.
How to Choose
I highly recommend looking at the mood you want to set, the genre you’re approaching and your characters before you assume which POV you will be adopting. If you have a compelling, unreliable character whose point of view on the story will add a lot of flavor to its telling, consider putting them in charge. You can mix and match as well. For example, a story might start in 3rd, but include journal entries in 1st. The Night Circus famously had a number of chapters written in 2nd to immerse the reader in the environment and it worked beautifully. Don’t assume that you need to use a certain POV for your age group or genre, use POV as a tool to improve your storytelling.