There Are More than Five POVs

Lincoln Michel · 22 Jun 2026 · countercraft.substack.com ↗

3 korrents from this piece

Lincoln Michel did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
The traditional five-part POV taxonomy is organized around grammatical person rather than narrative effect.

Their wordsIt's not that the categories are wrong exactly. But they are rooted more in grammar than narrative.
Our reading
A first-person 'I' narrator and a collective 'we' narrative voice produce dramatically different narrative effects.

Their wordsNarratively, there is a dramatic difference between an "I" narrator and a collective "we" narrative voice.
Our reading
Third-person objective narration alienates readers because withholding interiority removes the window characters normally provide into a story.

Their wordsIt's a cold mode. Most readers recoil at it. Characters are our windows into a story, and third-person objective narrators are opaque windows.