First-Person Point of View

In first person, a character tells the story using I and me.

Point of view is who is telling the story. In first-person point of view, the narrator is a character inside the story, and they use words like I, me, my, and we. Example: 'I pressed my ear against the door. My heart was pounding. What were they whispering about? ' Because the narrator is a character, we only know what they see, think, and feel. We can't hear the whispers unless the narrator does.

This makes first person feel personal and close, almost like reading a diary. It also means the narrator might misunderstand things or not know the whole truth. To identify first person, look for I and me outside of quotation marks. Inside quotation marks, any character can say 'I', so that alone doesn't make the story first person.

• 1A first-person narrator is a character in the story.
• 2Look for I, me, and my outside quotation marks.
• 3We only know what the narrator knows.