Whether you’re writing an article, a cooking recipe or a full-length novel, perspective is one of the most important thing to consider.

Writing is more than just telling a story or giving an opinion, it’s how you write that directs the experience of the reader.In order to understand what perspective to use (if you haven’t started out knowing that already) you need to know a couple of basic things:

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1. Audience – Who is it aimed at? You don’t need to obsess about this but is it a teenage paranormal fantasy book or a factual book or a how-to guide. Who’s going to be reading it?

2. Genre – This is tied in with audience. Is it horror, fantasy, science-fiction/speculative fiction? If you’re writing a horror for adults it should undoubtably be much more frightening or dark than a teenage horror book, although there is a fine line between teenage and adult fiction.

3. Narrative – There are several different narrative techniques you can approach which I will detail in my next post. These include 1st Person, 2nd Person and 3rd Person narrative as well as past tense, present tense and future tense and formal and informal. I’ll spend more time in my next post explaining the differences and usages.

4. Forget Everything I Just Said! – There are no set rules for writing only ideas. Don’t focus too much on details at first. Sometimes you’ll do all the above without even realising it.