point of view —

Authors, no matter what language they speak, can write in three points of view; first, second, or third. It seems to me that first and third person is the most common out of all of them when writing. Second person is mostly used for dialogue while in person in real life. When you use ‘I’ throughout the story when not talking or using people’s thoughts, you are using first person. If you choose to use ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘it’ then you are writing in third person.

Some cases, people do use the second person (i.e. you) but it is only common in those dreaded ‘you’ stories. I will bet you that nine tens out of time a typical you story will have squiggles, dashes, or underscores to replace where the main character’s name should be. ‘You’ stories, for some obscure reason, are very popular. I have three stories that are ‘you’ based; two are written in second person and the other is written in third. I recommend using the third person even if you are writing a ‘You’ fan fiction because it’s neater that way. Having random, unnecessary, symbols makes things look off and doesn’t give it a regular book feel. In some ways, that isn’t the goal of the writer but if you have any plans in writing something to be published one day never use the format of a typical ‘You’ fan fiction.

Giving characters names (i.e. OC’s and extras) can be hard at times. First off, you don’t want to use a name that isn’t even in existence. Second, you might want to check to see if the names you choose relate to your story (i.e. Hyunae is a Korean name so it makes sense that your story then takes place mainly in South/North Korea). Lastly, finding a last name/surname/family name isn’t as hard as you think. Seeing as how this site mainly posts Korean related stories, most people chose generic family names (i.e. Song, Park, Lee, Choi, etc.). The OC I use has the surname of Seok, which in actual truth is a common name but when seeing stories previously posted is not. Think outside the box, this can be a tip for those who are application story . You don’t want to seem just as bland and unoriginal as the last person. Be different!

I prefer stories that are written in the third point of view. However, I’m being a bit of a hypocrite because I read stories that use all three points of view, also known as POV’s. Third person is the easiest to understand but also can be seen using the most pronouns (i.e. he, she, it, they, and so on). Using third person, and strictly only third person, can reduce confusion among readers.

Here is a sample of third person writing from a chapter from my own story, ‘The Thirteenth Floor’ which also happens to be a ‘You’ story that is not written in second person …

Changso straightened up and fixed his tie. “Don’t use that tone with me!” he shouted, slapping Youngbae across the face, scraping him with his bulky ring. “Do you know what today is? Today is the anniversary of my parent’s death. Yes, they died on this very day—Halloween Day. I wish to look nice but seeing on how I can’t be happy if you aren’t out of my hair I have to dirty my hands, ruining my effort to look decent.”

“T-They died on Halloween?” Youngbae echoed stupidly.

“Yes, did you not hear me the first time?” Changso leered.

“I did but a part of me was hoping it was just the psycho inside of you talking. You damn bastard let me go.” Youngbae finished.

The Jang brother crossed his arms firmly against his square chest. “I do not wish to do anything of that sort.”

The supposed ‘you’ in this story is not included in the passage above but that is how a third person POV would be written. To give examples of each person I will be rewriting that passage in each POV, excluding the third person seeing as how it is already shown for you, so you can see the difference—even if you already know. It is better to read up on things than to brush it off because you feel you understand what you see.

I’m now going to write it in second person, I’m going backwards in the list of POV’s, and all the differences will be underlined. Because second person uses the word ‘you’ in replacement for the noun ‘I’ and pronouns ‘he, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘etc.’ I will be writing this as if ‘you’ are Youngbae.

Changso straightened up and fixed his tie. “Don’t use that tone with me!” he shouted, slapping you across the face, scraping him with his bulky ring. “Do you know what today is? Today is the anniversary of my parent’s death. Yes, they died on this very day—Halloween Day. I wish to look nice but seeing on how I can’t be happy if you aren’t out of my hair I have to dirty my hands, ruining my effort to look decent.”

“T-They died on Halloween?” you echoed stupidly.

“Yes, did you not hear me the first time?” Changso leered.

“I did but a part of me was hoping it was just the psycho inside of you talking. You damn bastard let me go.” you finished.

The Jang brother crossed his arms firmly against his square chest. “I do not wish to do anything of that sort.”

Not too much different from the original text but you can see that I replaced ‘Youngbae’ every time with the word ‘you’ in order to use the right POV. The first person is the easiest of course, being that it is in the technical ‘you’ POV. It makes you represented by the word ‘I’ no matter if you use Youngbae’s POV or the other character’s, Changso, POV. It should—no, must— have ‘I’ somewhere or else you are not writing in first person.

Changso straightened up and fixed his tie. “Don’t use that tone with me!” he shouted, slapping me across the face, scraping him with his bulky ring. “Do you know what today is? Today is the anniversary of my parent’s death. Yes, they died on this very day—Halloween Day. I wish to look nice but seeing on how I can’t be happy if you aren’t out of my hair I have to dirty my hands, ruining my effort to look decent.”

“T-They died on Halloween?” I echoed stupidly.

“Yes, did you not hear me the first time?” Changso leered.

“I did but a part of me was hoping it was just the psycho inside of you talking. You damn bastard let me go.” I finished.

The Jang brother crossed his arms firmly against his square chest. “I do not wish to do anything of that sort.”

In the past I’ve read stories that supposedly use a character’s POV but instead of using the noun ‘I’ they use pronouns. It befuddles me because writing in first person, to me, is by far the easiest. I’ll let you know now, I am a freshman in high school and POV is one of the quickest things you can learn in the English language aside from tenses possibly, with the exception of irregular verbs. This is once what I saw supposedly written in Kim Kibum’s POV …

He sighed and turned to Taemin, comforting him.

Letting you know, I’m not picking on anyone nor am I using someone’s actual text. It was just an example. I underlined ‘He’ because that’s wrong, completely and utterly wrong! It should say ‘I’ where the pronoun ‘He’ is. The word ‘him’ is alright because it doesn’t refer to Kibum but Taemin. Do your best and try avoid mistakes like that because it’s just a disgrace shameful. The writing above isn’t first person but third. If you are writing in someone’s POV then it has to be first POV.

Another thing, never capitalize nouns—except proper nouns. Nouns can be described by a person, place, thing, or idea. Ideas in my opinion should not be classified as a noun but I don’t make the rules of grammar. Notice, I spelt grammar with an –ar ending and not an –er ending. I’ve seen people do that before and it’s just amazing how bad their spelling is.

Examples of nouns:

Person—Yong Junhyung, Bang Minsoo

Place—Seoul, Tokyo

Thing—dog, chair

Idea—hatred, several

From what I understand an idea is considered an abstract noun which typically refers to abstract ideas or concepts. Don’t quote me on this (meaning, don’t repeat) I’m almost one hundred percent positive that feelings can fall under the category abstract nouns, which in turn then makes it an idea.

If you choose to use the third person only nouns and pronouns will be used or else you’re writing in the wrong person. Pronouns are used to avoid direct indication of who you are speaking about. For example, if I was talking to Junhyung and later on someone asked me what we were talking about I could reply, ‘He and I are just planning on seeing a movie together with Beast’. The word ‘he’ would be referring to Junhyung.

The use of first person can get sloppy. When writers use the first person either use only that person’s POV or indicate when you are changing it. If you don’t, and say you’re writing a 9PM story (which I do not ship at all), and you have a tendency to switch POV’s because there are so many of them in all doing so without mentioning who’s POV you are using can—and most likely will—confuse who is reading it. Alone there are nine SNSD members and six 2PM members. If I read a story like that where POV is changed and not indicated I’m not going to struggle to figure out whose POV is currently active.

If, and when, you do change POV and indicate it don’t make the font so small nobody can see it! If you write a story in Junhyung’s POV (which is first person) all the way through, say nineteen chapters, you don’t have to write that it’s in his POV every chapter. As long as readers can figure it out once that’s all they need. Don’t make the small alert that POV is changing a part of the text, like right above a line of text. Separate it somehow with cool symbols that aren’t really distracting or even center align it.

Before I forget don’t ever do this: center align your chapter(s)’ text. It is wrong! Have you ever seen a book that had its words centered? If it’s a poem, alright that’s fine, but if you’re making an actual story (or oneshot) don’t center the text. Any story I see with text centered that isn’t the Forward/Description I immediately find another story to read.

As a conclusion I’m going to give you two short little charts that will hopefully help you to understand how to write in each POV correctly. And remember, these are just the basics, I’m not covering everything. The first chart is as follows: POV. The second chart is the tenses, something that might come in handy when writing. Of course because they are irregular verbs the way you write some things may not be written exactly the same as other verbs (being that verbs are the words that change tense).

Tenses are hard to explain and will most likely take more than just a single chapter to explain them properly because when I learned tenses in sixth grade I had some issues with them. The basic tenses (past, present, future) are easy but when you start to use the perfect tense(s), that’s when it gets difficult. If you want to know more about tenses always look it up online or ask an English teacher, they should know. Just don’t use Wikipedia, not because it isn’t resourceful but because it’s confusing. On their page for grammatical tenses they use old English terms which is a rarity to see in an English/Literature text book.

Real quick (I know I said it was the end) is a list comparing regular verbs to irregular ones. It’s a small table because I don’t know too many of them off the top of my head. I’m not a dictionary after all I’m just a tutorial/tip writer.

I’m sure that you see the word ‘book’ on there. Book is a noun as well as a verb, depending on the use which can be determined by context. When you book someone, it’s typically when you put them in jail. If you’ve ever heard of the phrase, “Book ‘em,” it means that person is going to jail or the juvenile detention center. The past tense of book would be ‘booked’ and the future ‘booking’. The others I’m not going to explain because I’m done—for now.