Point of view

A listener of my podcast and reader of this blog has a question:

“I have a question regarding point of view. I finished reading a novel by one of my favorite authors. This particular novel has three main characters. For two, she uses first person; but for the other character, she uses third. It didn’t confuse me as a reader, but as an aspiring writer; I feel like I need to know why this was done. I couldn’t find the significance f using a different POV for this character – besides the point that the character was dealing with a lot of pain and in the end, she ended up killing her mother.

What do you think about using different POV’s in your novel? Is there some type of rule out there that this author broke? As I said, this character was fighting through a LOT. Do you think the author switched the POV on her readers because it was easier to tell the story from a third person POV; rather than take us through the characters inner toil from her POV? Or perhaps when dealing with customer going through a lot mentally, it is better to use a third person POV?

I’m not trying to attack the writer; there’s so much I need to learn about writing fiction – so when I see something I’ve never seen before, I just have to ask!

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