Day 16: Preferred POV in a story

pacificngal asked me about my preferred POV in a story, reading or writing, and I foolishly didn't ask her if she meant first/third person, or characters, so I'll just babble a bit and hope I hit what she was looking for (or, if I don't, that she'll poke me!)

I definitely prefer writing in third person - it's been a looong time since I wrote first person, even in original fic - and usually in limited third person from just one character in the story. In fanfic reading, first person isn't my thing at all, I think because it's much more in that person's head and somehow it never quite gets close enough to how I hear that person to work for me. Original fic is different, though anything longer than a few thousand words I prefer third person - and definitely for sex scenes.

My preference by character pov... in Stargate, John Sheppard, Cadman, Lorne, Keller, in Numb3rs, Colby Granger, in H5-0, McGarrett or Kono, in Firefly Inara or Zoe, in Avengers, Clint Barton... I don't know what conclusions, if any, you can draw from that list, but there we have it.

Do other people decide who's pov the story will be from in advance, or just see what happens? The story I'm writing now, and the one I just submitted, the prompter requested a specific pov, which was unusual for me, especially since neither one is someone I write all that often, but generally, I'm not much of a planner when it comes to writing, I just get an idea for a first line and go from there. Doesn't always work, but pretty often for me, and also skips conveniently over 'who's head am I writing in?' so I don't think I have anything wildly exciting to say about how I decide, unless it's because I know it's a story about that person, like my Avengers reverse bang, or a lot of my Cam/John stories, which tend to be as much about John as the pairing.

So there we have it. Now you all talk about point of view characters :)