Notes

If a story is told from the point of view of a character in the story, it is told in the first person. You can identify first person by the use of I, we, or us with the narration. Other times someone outside the action of the story is relating the information. If the narrator is not participating in the story itself, and is using pronouns like he or she, then it is probably told in a third-person point of view.

Another aspect of point of view is what the narrative relates to the audience about the other characters' thoughts and feelings. The Latin root omni means all, as with a dinosaur who is omnivorous and eats both plants and animals. The root word sci means "to know," as used in the word science. So the word omniscient means all-knowing, and an omniscient storyteller knows everything that each character is thinking and feeling. If, however, the storyteller can only relate the emotions of some of the characters, the point of view is called limited omniscient. To summarize:
First person= I or we; me or us
Third person = he, she, it, or they; him, her, or their
Omniscient means knowing all the characters' thoughts and feelings
Limited omniscient means knowing a limited number of characters' thoughts and feelings

The main difference in narration styles usually depends on whether story is driven by the plot or characters, or whether it is a novel or short story. Third person narration takes longer to write and to develop because the characters have to act, react, and interact in order for the audience to fully understand what is happening to them. Third person narrators take the work out of it because there's someone to tell the audience what is happening.

Different points of view help create different tones in a story. The tone, or the writer's attitude toward the characters, can distinguish between positive characters (the good guys) and negative characters (the bad guys) in a story. Tone is something not directly stated in a story; a reader needs to infer the tone based on the point of view, the dialogue, and the actions of the characters.

Tone is not the same as the mood of a story. Mood is the term used to describe the feeling evoked by a piece of writing. When you read a Gothic short story, does the story evoke a sense of terror or suspense? When you read a humorous story, do you find yourself smiling? This is the mood. You determine tone, on the other hand, by understanding the author's opinion of the characters or events in a story. It might help to think of tone as the back ground color of the work. It’s what you "see" when you read the story. The tone and mood can conflict. There's a genre of movies called "black comedy" or "dark comedy" that have conflicting mood and tone. These are movies that have a dark or chilling mood, but add comedy to lighten the tone. Such titles that fall under the "black comedy" genre are Heathers, Beetlejuice, or even the animated series South Park.