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Yes, you're the author of your novel - but are you the one telling the story? If the answer is yes, then maybe you're doing it wrong! The Point of View (or POV) you choose for your story is one of the first decisions you have to make when starting your novel.

Jane Austen was definitely the one telling the story in her novels. She wrote as if she was a ghostly observer, able to flit around to any of her characters and describe what they were doing. That's known as the "Omniscient" Point of View and it was common then - but it's rare nowadays. If you are writing in Omniscient, you should rethink - modern editors don't like it.

Pick up any modern novel and read the first few paragraphs. Chances are, the writer is using his skill to make you feel you're seeing the story through the eyes of one character. If it's well done, you feel as though you're inside the character's head. That's clever, because once you start identifying with that person, you become involved in the story and you want to go on reading.

That's why modern fiction is all about Point of View (POV). Most novels are now written from the point of view of one or more of the main protagonists.

You can do this in a couple of ways. The simplest way is to choose one character, then write the whole book in first person, i.e. "I walked into the room, I did this, I did that". The snag with this option is that you can only write what your character sees or hears. If something is going on that you'd like your reader to know, but your character isn't there or doesn't hear about it - bad luck.

That's why so many stories are written in third person, which means that the author chooses to be different characters in different scenes. This has to be approached with caution, because if you overdo it (which is called "head-hopping", you can totally confuse your poor reader!

A good rule of thumb when you're starting out, is to pick one character at the start of each scene, and stay inside that person's head for the whole scene. Once you get more confident, you can try switching POV once in the middle. If you find yourself switching POV's more than once during a single scene, then you're probably overdoing it.

When I say "pick one character", I mean decide which character you're going to be, then really immerse yourself in that personality. Write the scene using his vocabulary (including slang), and refer to other characters by the nicknames he would use. Describe the other characters' actions as he would see them. Don't

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