So you know what style you want to write in. If you choose first person or third-person limited as your point of view, this chapter will give some tips if you have multiple points of view. This style is growing in popularity, especially on Wattpad. It also allows you the ease of showing multiple characters' thoughts and emotions without the danger of head-hopping.
So, let's discuss who should be a point-of-view in your book. There's a rise in popularity of a "dual lead" in fiction (think Elend and Vin in Mistborn, or Ben Solo and Rey in Star Wars), and it rose to mimic the multiple points of view found in film. Your lead (or leads) should always have a point of view.
I won't set a limit on the amount of POV characters you can have in your book. However, keep in mind that readers are expecting each POV character to have an arc. This means that if you choose to have five points of view in your work, you'll need to be prepared to deal with five character journeys. (Take it from someone who's writing four points of view in Starwalker: it's harder than it looks). If you want to experiment, I strongly advise choosing two to start out with, and building your way up with different projects.
In third-person limited or first person, you only get one point of view per chapter or per scene. Choosing the point of view wisely per chapter or scene is crucial. In general, you should choose the point of view that's most pivotal to the character's conflict or arc. If the scene overlaps with Susie's character arc, choose her point of view instead of Josh's. And if both characters walk away from the conflict changed - as is the case with Starwalker whenever Shadow Weaver and Micah interact - don't be afraid to slow down and have the "beta" character thinking about what happened.
Aside from this, choose the point of view that seems most interesting to explore for that scene. There's nothing wrong with experimenting - I changed many points of view during Alura. Don't be afraid to do that if it makes the scene stronger.
Finally, I'd like to offer some advice on formatting. Often in new books, I'll see a heading that says "John's POV", or worse, "John POV", or doubly worse, "john pov"Â at the top. None of these look professional in the eyes of most readers, and these headings never appear in published books.
You do have a couple of options, however. First, you could hire a graphic designer on Wattpad to make you graphics for the character headers. (This should only be used if the change is on a chapter-by-chapter basis, in my view - a header for each scene may give the reader whiplash.) I'll discuss more about etiquette when talking to graphic designers later on, but that's one way to do it.
Another option is to just not have a header. If you do this, you'll need to make the point of view clear within the first paragraph. You may worry that your readers won't know whose point of view it is. Remember: your readers aren't dumb. They observe more than you realize, and if you make it clear in the scene whose thoughts are being iterated, they will understand.
In the next chapter, I'll conclude with some rookie mistakes that come with characterization. If you're interested in knowing whether your character is a Perfect Plum or a Negative Nancy, stay tuned for the conclusion to this part on characters!