For more information on point of view or other aspects of writing a story, try my book, What’s Your Story? A Young Person’s Guide to Writing Fiction. Both young writers and adults—especially adults writing for young readers—find it helpful.

If you have been going through the various steps I have suggested, you have gathered many ideas for your story. You are ready to begin writing...or almost. You have one decision still to make. What point of view will you use?

The first part of that question has to do with whose point of view you will be in. Usually the answer to that part of the question is easy. Most likely you’ll want to tell your story from the perspective of your main character. If you have two main characters in mind, then most of the time you need to choose one.

In fact, if you have planned to have two main characters, you probably need to rethink your story to give one character more ownership in the story problem than the other, to make it that character’s story. That will be the one whose point of view you will write in.

There are occasional stories told from the point of view of a side character, someone observing the action, but those are rare. So for now, let’s just assume that your main character is your point of view character.

Now...how do you want to tell the story? With the main character referring to him or herself as I and talking directly to the reader? That is a first person point of view. “I walked down the street, and I saw...”

The other standard way of telling of a story is to use third person, but we’ll talk about third person another time. For now it’s enough to know that writing in third person means that you tell your story through an invisible narrator who refers to your character by name and as he or she. That’s the way most stories are told. “Jason walked down the street, and he saw...”

For this time, though, I’m going to talk only about first person.

In some ways using a first person point of view is the easiest way to tell a story...or at least it seems easy at first. You simply write the story the way you would write a letter or tell a friend about something that has happened to you. The only difference is that this is your character talking, not you.

Another advantage to writing in first person is that a first person voice makes your story feel intimate, as though your readers were actually reading a letter addressed only to them or listening to a friend recount an event.

Another advantage is that, when your character tells his own story, you will probably find it easy to let us know what that character is thinking and feeling, a crucial part of getting us connected to and caring about your character and his story.

Another is that using first person will give your story an aura of “truth.” We are inclined to believe what someone tells us in so intimate a way. Thus first person can be used to good effect when your story might otherwise be hard to accept. “It’s a ghost! I know, because I saw it.”

All that sounds as though first person is the way to go, doesn’t it?

But there are disadvantages to using first person, too. The biggest one is that writers who haven’t had a lot of experience writing fiction are very apt, in first person, to tell their story instead of showing it. They talk about what happened instead of acting it out for us. And your readers won’t be nearly as involved in your story as you need them to be if it is summed up and told to them instead of being dramatized.

It isn’t that a first-person narration can’t move into action as effectively as a third-person one. But you may well find it too easy to talk your story in first person instead of showing it. And if you do, your story won’t be a strong as it needs to be.

Another is that when you write in first person, your narration usually comes out sounding a lot like you. That’s fine if you and your character have much in common. If you are about the same in age, gender, education, ethnic background, etc., you probably don’t have to change your natural voice to make your character believable on the page. If your character is very different from you, though, writing in first person may be difficult. You must make your character sound like herself, not like you.

This is why many adults have difficulty writing through a young character. The younger the character is the harder it can be for someone who has long passed that stage of life to make him sound real. And that is also why most young writers have a hard time making a first-person narrator sound significantly older than they are.

And finally, if the tension of your story comes from having your readers worry about whether or not your character survives, writing in first person gives away your ending. We know, at the very beginning, that your character survived to tell the tale, because that’s exactly what he’s doing!

Sometimes you simply know, without having to think about it, what point of view seems right for your story. Sometimes you may have to try first person and then third to get a feel for what works for you for this particular story.

Just remember, though. One point of view isn’t right and the other wrong. Either first person or third can work very well.

The trick is to decide which one is right for you and for your story.