What is this POV called?

That's third person present tense. I haven't seen it much at all; third person past ("Vanessa knew her lover was truly gone") and first person present ("I know my lover is truly gone") are from what I can tell the standards.

It's not as common, but it's not completely unheard of. But, it needs to be better written than that example, for sure.

It's third-person present tense, though impossible to tell from that short sample whether the POV is meant to be third-person limited (where the story is told from inside the character, showing only what they know or experience) or omniscient, with an external narrator.

Some people don't mind present tense, but I loathe it when it's longer than a scene for emphasize. Kinda like italics. A book in present tense is like a book in italics for me. That's why I can't enjoy the otherwise lovely writing of Charles Stross for example.

But all this is still better than second person, whatever tense

JCornelius said:

But all this is still better than second person, whatever tense

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You clearly never grew up with the Choose Your Own Adventure series, the adventures with multiple endings that predated computer text-based games and which could provide hours or days of entertainment to a child. It is an oversight you might regret, but do you regret it enough to use the professor's prototype time machine, after his warnings and cryptic disappearance... possibly through the doorway leading to the dark corridor beyond the lab?

If you use the machine anyway, turn to page 25.

If you leave well enough alone, turn to page 32.

If you wander into the dark corridor without a light despite warnings about grues, turn to page 50.



Seriously, I've heard tell that there are a (very) few instances outside CYOA-type books where writers have attempted second-person POV and pulled it off... but unless you're That Writer with That Story, it's probably not that great.

As for me, I don't mind present tense, but generally prefer it be used first person close. It creates an immediacy, a this-is-happening-as-I-read sense, that to my mind pairs best with the intimacy of first close. Though I've honestly yet to reject a book based on POV alone.

Ramsay said:

I'm sorry, but I had no idea where to put this. It's just one of those little things that nags at and that I've wondered about for a while. What do you call this point-of-view?


"She enters the room. She looks around and feels desolate. Vanessa knows that her lover is truly gone, but that is okay with her. She never liked him, anyway."


I've seen a few novels written like this, and honestly, I don't like it. I just can't in to the character. I feel like the author is putting a wall between me and the character.

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The pov is limited third, most likely, with a middling to greater narrative distance, though there's not enough there to be sure. It could be omniscient third. It's sort of unusual to use present tense with omniscient third or at a greater narrative distance with limited third, since the point is to give the reader the sense of being privy to the character's thoughts, feelings and perceptions as they occur.

Present tense is often used in conjunction with a deeper narrative in limited third or first. Many feel it adds to that feeling of immersion, but not all feel it's needed (you can write deep in past tense too), and not all readers like present tense. It can take some getting used to for those of us who grew up reading when the overwhelming majority of novels (of whatever pov) were written in past tense.

JCornelius said:

Some people don't mind present tense, but I loathe it when it's longer than a scene for emphasize. Kinda like italics. A book in present tense is like a book in italics for me. That's why I can't enjoy the otherwise lovely writing of Charles Stross for example.

But all this is still better than second person, whatever tense

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NK Jemisin's The Fifth Season is in second person, and it won the Hugo for best novel in 2016 and is pretty popular. There are other books in second too, but that narrative viewpoint is rare enough that it really takes getting used to for most people. I have trouble getting pulled in by it too.

JCornelius said:

But all this is still better than second person, whatever tense

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One of my favorite novels by one of my favorite living authors, Nocturnes For The King Of Naples by Edmund White, is in second person. In fact, it was the very first novel I'd read in this POV.

I can't speak for the entire book, but my problem with the passage is that so many of the sentences are structured as "She does X, Y or Z." This will be problematic in past tense, third person too (or in first person if every sentence starts with "I"). It's likely more noticeable, though, in present tense, since that sentence structure tends to call attention to the tense more than some might.

I'd find it hard to read too if the entire book was written like that. There's some filtering that could be changed, for instance. I don't know the book or writer, though, so I can't second guess why they made the choices they did.

POV should disappear after the first chapter or so. Meaning, that if you're halfway through a book and still conscious of the fact that it's in 1st or 3rd, rather than just reading the story, the POV isn't executed very well.

Think of it like an accent in a movie. If you're an hour in and still jarred every time the guy from Ohio speaks with a Welsh accent, then his accent isn't very good.

It's a tool, and should help put people into the story, not bump them out of it.

Ramsay said:

"She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather. It is 1941. Another war has begun. She has left a note for Leonard, and another one for Vanessa. She walks purposefully toward the river, certain of what she'll do, but even now she is almost distracted....She pauses, watching the sheep, and the sky, then walks on."

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That looks like it could be using the objective POV. The "narrator" is basically a camera that records what it sees but it doesn't go inside the heads of any characters.

I find the prose style in that sample to be like nails on a chalkboard. I wouldn't make it through a page.

Yeah. There's various ways to do the present tense. I wrote a novella trilogy that switches between 1st and 3rd (although we eventually learn that the chapters in 3rd are actually being narrated by the 1st person narrator, but are things she has visions of but isn't present for in body) and it's all in present tense. (Except for the prologue which is in 1st person past tense because it is... in the past.) But for my 3rd present tense it looks more like this.

Mrs. Hayney's dog finds the bodies. He worries a shoe off, with a bit of foot still melded to it, and brings it back to the yard. She ain't happy about it. Not when she thinks it's just some piece of trash he's dragged up on her porch. And then she sees those bones, the little ones that make up a person's toes, stickin' out between the charred rubber sole and the flaky vinyl upper, and she goes all hysterical.

Screams like she was the one been burned up, staggering 'round and flapping her hands. “Jesus. Sweet Jesus.” She pauses, takes another look at the shoe, just to assure herself that it ain't just full of mud and sticks.

It isn't.

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But, I run into a lot of folks who tell me they don't like present tense (1st or 3rd) and that I shouldn't write it because it doesn't sell. And that's just not true. So. Every POV has specific things that are harder to do than others. Present tense can be more difficult to carry the narrative without being really repetitive with the sentence structure.