WriT Day - Perspective

Today I want to talk about perspective.

I just finished the book I was reading today. It is titled The Confessions of a D-List Supervillain. My full review will be posted on Simply Stacie, but I do want to talk about one aspect of the book that frustrated me. It was written in the first person perspective and it drove me nuts. I had the hardest time enjoying the story, even though I was intrigued with the meat that was there, because the perspective it was written in was so distracting. I repeatedly found myself wishing that it was written in the third person.

Perspective plays such an important part of the story. It's practically a character in itself, so it's important to get it right.

For those of you who don't know, here are the different options available to writers in regards to perspective found at Wikipedia:

First-Person View

Second-Person View (rare)

Third-Person View

Alternating Person View

Within these views there are different narrative voices. If you're interested you can read about it by following the Wikipedia link above.

With so many options available to you, how do you decide what perspective is the right one for your story?

For me, it's all about trial and error. I'll pick a perspective, start writing, and if the message that I'm trying to portray isn't coming through, it's time to change perspectives. This makes for some major re-writes if I chose the wrong one, but I can't seem to come up with a better way.

Can you help a girl out? How do you pick the perfect perspective?