I thought I knew, but I might need to switch it. Which is OK, because this is part of a short story, not 2/3 of the way through the novel. That would be awkward.
In the short story, set aboard a ship, the PoV character is Danil, one of the crew. He’s not the most junior, but he’s not one of the critical personnel, either. Nor is he an Elder, part of the unofficial leadership. He might be eventually, but for now he’s mostly content to do his job and learn from others. For the short story, he’s perfect, because the story is about the ship on the move, and something that it and the crew encounters at sea. Danil learns, and so the reader learns, as the story unfolds.
However, the snippet of the story (which might actually not end up in the story), includes an important character who appears later in a novel. Given what is going on, having that person as the PoV character in the snippet might work better for the tone and mood of the piece, which is meditative. It would be the pause in the action in a full novel or longer short story. However, if it is from Willem’s PoV, and older, more experienced character and Elder, I could drop more hints to the reader about the role Willem will later take on in a novel.
For this excerpt/snippet, the PoV isn’t critical to the story working. In other books and short stories, it is vital. Readers plunked into the head of, oh, Gandalf would get a far more confusing picture of events in the Lord of the Rings. He knows too much for readers to learn easily from or to sympathize with. Having the least-experienced character in each chapter as the PoV helps readers discover and learn, and we have more sympathy and understanding as we try to sort out what is going on, and what trouble is waiting where.
If you use a third-omniscient PoV, then it doesn’t matter that much, because the outside narrator is doing the work. First person is probably going to be one of the main characters, because that is who is pushing the plot, unless the story is told by a secondary character observing the main and going along on the adventure. Limited third is where the difficulty might lie.
In the example of my short story and snippet, who is living the story doesn’t matter that much. However, imagine running into a wall with a novel, and discovering that the problem is that the PoV character really needs to be a secondary, or can’t do/be/know what is vital for the story to move. Or isn’t really the protagonist, and it is the protagonist who needs to have the PoV, or your poor readers will be terribly baffled and frustrated (like you are at this moment). Do not scrap the story! Take a deep breath, go into the yard for a primal scream if that will help, walk around the block, chop veggies, or do something else socially acceptable to vent your frustration. Then go back and see what needs to be changed, how, in order for things to make sense with a different PoV character. It might not be as much as it seems, depending on the story and the protagonist. OR you can salvage it by foreshadowing the PoV shift and letting readers guess that something will flip a few chapters in, and making the change there, when the protagonist takes over from the secondary and starts running the story.
Have you had a PoV problem? How did you fix it?
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