Narrative Point of View:

The narrative mode (also known as the mode of narration) is the set of methods the author of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical story uses to convey the plot to the audience.

Narrative point of view:
Narrative point of view (also point-of-view or viewpoint) describes from which grammatical person's perspective of the story is perceived.

First-person view:
The first-person narrative makes it necessary that the narrator is also a character within his or her own story, so that the narrator reveals the plot by referring to this viewpoint character as "I" (or, when plural, "we"). Oftentimes, the first-person narrative is used as a way to directly convey the deeply internal, otherwise unspoken thoughts of the narrator. Frequently, the narrator's story revolves around him-/herself as the protagonist and allows this protagonist/narrator character's inner thoughts to be conveyed openly to the audience, even if not to any of the other characters. It also allows that character to be further developed through his/her own style in telling the story.

First-person narrations may be told like third-person ones, with a person experiencing the story without being aware that they are actually conveying their experiences to an audience; on the other hand, the narrator may be conscious of telling the story to a given audience, perhaps at a given place and time, for a given reason. In extreme cases, the first-person narration may be told as a story within a story, with the narrator appearing as a character in the story. First-person narration is used somewhat frequently. Although the first-person narrator is usually also the protagonist of his/her own story, this is not always true (for example in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the first-person narrator is Nick Carraway and not the title character Jay Gatsby himself).

The first-person narrator also may or may not be the focal character.

The narrator can be the protagonist (e.g., Gulliver in Gulliver's Travels), someone very close to him who is privy to his thoughts and actions (Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes), or an ancillary character who has little to do with the action of the story (the character Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby).

A narrator can even be a character relating the story second-hand. The first person narrator is the type most obviously distinct from the author. It is a character in the work, who must follow all of the rules of being a character, even during its duties as narrator. For it to know anything, it must experience it with its senses, or be told about it. It can interject its own thoughts and opinions, but not those of any other character, unless clearly told about those thoughts.

Second-person view
Probably the rarest mode in literature (though quite common in song lyrics) is the second-person narrative mode, in which the narrator refers to one of the characters as "you", therefore making the audience member feel as if he or she is a character within the story. The second-person narrative mode is often paired with the first-person narrative mode in which the narrator makes emotional comparisons between the thoughts, actions, and feelings of "you" versus "I". Often the narrator is therefore also a character in his or her story, in which case it would technically still be employing the first-person narrative mode.

"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might become clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not. A small voice inside you insists that this epidemic lack of clarity is a result of too much of that already."
Second-person narration can be a difficult style to manage. But when it is done well, this type of narration allows (or forces) the reader to imagine him or herself within the action of the novel. One possible (and frequently exploited) effect of the second-person is a strong accusatory tone, which can be achieved if the narrator condemns or expresses strong feelings about the actions of the focal character (“you”). This technique can also be used effectively to place the reader in unfamiliar, disturbing, or exciting situations. For example, in his novel Complicity, Iain Banks uses the second-person in the chapters dealing with the actions of a murderer.

Third-person view
Third-person narration provides the greatest flexibility to the author and thus is the most commonly used narrative mode in literature. In the third-person narrative mode, each and every character is referred to by the narrator as "he", "she", "it", or "they", but never as "I" or "we" (first-person), or "you" (second-person). In third-person narrative, it is necessary that the narrator is merely an unspecified entity or uninvolved person that conveys the story, but not a character of any kind within the story being told. Third-person singular (he/she) is overwhelmingly the most common type of third-person narrative, although there have been successful uses of the third-person plural (they), as in Maxine Swann's short story "Flower Children." Even more common, however, is to see singular and plural used together in one story, at different times, depending upon the number of people being referred to at a given moment in the plot. Sometimes in third-person narratives, a character would refer to himself in the third-person e.g., "(Character name) would like to come with you".

The third-person modes are usually categorized along two axes. The first is the subjectivity/objectivity axis, with "subjective" narration describing one or more character's feelings and thoughts, while "objective" narration does not describe the feelings or thoughts of any characters. The second axis is between "omniscient" and "limited," a distinction that refers to the knowledge available to the narrator. An omniscient narrator has omniscient knowledge of time, people, places and events; a limited narrator, in contrast, may know absolutely everything about a single character and every piece of knowledge in that character's mind, but it is "limited" to that character—that is, it cannot describe things unknown to the focal character.

Multiple-person view
Not too rare is the multiple person narrative mode. Sometimes, an author will use multiple narrators, usually all of them storytelling in the first person. In stories in which it is important to get different characters' views on a single matter, such as in mystery novels, multiple narrators may be developed. The use of multiple narrators also helps describe separate events that occur at the same time in different locations. William Faulkner's novels As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury are told from multiple points of view, in the first and third person, respectively, although the latter uses a less conventional chronology.

Alternating person view
While the general rule is for novels to adopt a single approach to point of view throughout, there are exceptions. Many stories, especially in literature, alternate between the first and third person. In this case, an author will move back and forth between a more omniscient third-person narrator to a more personal first-person narrator. Often, a narrator using the first person will try to be more objective by also employing the third person for important action scenes, especially those in which he/she is not directly involved or in scenes where he/she is not present to have viewed the events in first person.

Narrative voice
The narrative voice describes how the story is conveyed (for example, by "viewing" a character's thought processes, by reading a letter written for someone, by a retelling of a character's experiences, etc.).

Stream-of-consciousness voice
A stream of consciousness gives the (almost always first-person) narrator's perspective by attempting to replicate the thought processes (as opposed to simply the actions and spoken words) of the narrative character. Often, interior monologues and inner desires or motivations, as well as pieces of incomplete thoughts, are expressed to the audience (but not necessarily to other characters). Examples include the multiple narrators' feelings in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, the character Offred's often fragmented thoughts in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and the development of the narrator's nightmarish experience in Queen's hit song, Bohemian Rhapsody.

Narrative tense
The narrative tense or narrative time determines the grammatical tense of the story; whether in the past, present, or future.

Past tense
The most common in literature and story-telling; the events of the plot occurred sometime before the current moment or the time at which the narrative was constructed or expressed to an audience. (e.g. "They were going home. They had found their way and were ready to celebrate.")

Present tense
The events of the plot occur or are occurring now—at the current moment—in real-time. (e.g. "They go home. They find their way and are ready to celebrate.")

Future tense
Extremely rare in literature; the event of the plot will occur soon or eventually; often, these upcoming events are described in a way that makes it seem like the narrators uncannily know (or believe they know) the future. Some future-tense stories have a prophetic feel. (e.g. "They will be going home. They will have found their way and will be ready to celebrate.")

Examples:
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1st person

“Animal Farm” by George Orwell
3rd person