h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think your message - that each point of view has its hazards - fits well with the stuff on points of view we did in my creative writing course.

First person is intimate and immediate - we identify with the narrator and see everything through his/her eyes. But it means that the writer can't cover anything the narrator doesn't know - unless you have more than one narrator, or the story is told in retrospect. (Eg in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' young Scout knows more than she would as a child, because the story is told by Scout as an adult, looking back.)

In third person limited you can follow one character, and show their thoughts and feelings, but you can draw back a bit and show a wider scene. This gives you lots of choices, because you can follow one character for one scene, then move to another. But there is a kind of ghostly narrator who we can become aware of.

In third person omniscient, the writer is God. This gives the writer the advantage of being able to move from one person's head to another at will, and to step back to give the wider perspective. A lot of nineteenth century writers wrote like this - and the piece from the Scarlet Letter is an example. If the God like author gives an authorial overview, it can get preachy. Most modern writers don't do this, but without an authorial overvew, constantly swapping point of view can get confusing.

Lots of writers cheat and use a mixture!

Good points, all. Thanks for sharing them!

What you said about narrators and what they do reminded me of something by Kurt Vonnegut, but as usual, all his wonderful stuff runs together in my head. Aha - it's 'Breakfast of Champions':

http://www.booksbooksbooks.ru/download/Vonnegut_Breakfast_of_Champions_pdf.pdf

In this (to me, delightful) book, Vonnegut sticks us with a very intrusive narrator. The New York Times reviewer wasn't happy:

http://www.nytimes.com/1973/05/03/books/vonnegut-breakfast.html

I'm suspecting the reviewer didn't quite get it. Or maybe I didn't, who knows? So it goes, as Vonnegut always said.

Vonnegut's narrator knows WAY too much about his characters. It's TMI, all the way. Then he lets us in on (bogus) personal details about himself, at which point, I believe, you are supposed to realise that the narrator is also a fictional character.

Oh, I had another thought (Treppenwitz alert):

What do you think about the narrator in Ian MacEwen's 'Atonement'? She's unreliable to a T, but the mixture of POV and narration is fascinating.

You've just given me some new books to put on my reading list!

I haven't read 'Atonement'. I've read 'Enduring Love', which I quite liked, and 'On Chesil Beach', which I didn't think amounted to much.

I'm still doing my creative writing course and, as part of that, we had to choose a book by a 'Special Author'. I chose Rose Tremain's 'Trespass'. That's third person limited, but there is at least one passage which sneaks into ominiscient author.

I'll have to look up Rose Tremain. I'm not familiar with her.

I'll tell you one of my favourite British authors. Pat Barker.

I haven't read any Pat Barker either.
More to read!