Point of View and Plot

         Every single book I have read about writing has emphasized just how important point of view is. There's first person, third person, omniscient, and even head-hopping, where you jump from person to person. I decided to go with third person for my book. It just seemed like the easiest one for me to do. I felt like it would be too difficult to do first person my first time out, and it just seemed to easy for me to get sloppy using omniscient, where the writer can pretty much just reveal whatever he/she wants to the readers. Third person was a good way to keep myself in line. 
         I didn't know just how important point of view could be to the development of a novel until I actually went to write one. In my first chapter, I started from the point of view of the Lady Clariss, who is in the midst of a small... insanity, shall we say. However, at one point, I thought that it would be interesting to show the reaction of the household staff to her behavior. I had a couple of good lines expressing the thoughts of the young maid who had just run into the room to find her mistress going mad.
     Problem: I'd already written a few paragraphs from Lady Clariss' point of view, and I was determined to write just one point of view for each chapter. I couldn't just jump in and out of the then-nameless young maids head. So, I decided to the maid's thoughts on the situation.
       However, the more I thought about it, it seemed like a better idea to use the maid's point of view to show what was going on. Lady Clariss was a bit out of her head, and on top of that, she's wasn't a likable character at all. I didn't want to stick the reader inside her head for an entire chapter. It would have just been a string of incoherent thoughts of a selfish and slightly sadistic madwoman. That didn't seem at all like an enjoyable reading experience. 
      So, I decided to go with the maid's point of view. First, I had to give her a name. On a whim, I went with Vixa. Just unusual enough for a fantasy novel without going over the top, I think. I started writing from her viewpoint, and the more I wrote, the more I got to know her. The more I liked her. 
     My protagonist, Liam, still needed a bit of a backstory. I didn't know how to get him out of the house of an aristocrat as a baby to growing up on the streets while not letting him know of his roots. At the same time, I needed to make his birthparents thoroughly unlikable. Since Vixa was so conveniently present in the scene, I decided to use her to take him away as a baby (it wasn't exactly a kidnapping. It was more like a rescue after the Liam's parents  attempted to kill him. Yes, as a baby). 
       Vixa could have dropped him off at an orphanage or a church or something. But, my society was ruled by a tyrant that controlled the society's main religion. Tyrants generally don't allocate funds for orphanages. So, no orphanage or church. That just left adoptive parents. Vixa was taking him, I thought, so why not her as an adoptive parent. 
       Thus, Vixa became a significant character in the book while Lady Clariss' role was minimized. Her addition completely changed Liam's backstory. I am so much more pleased with Liam as a protagonist that I was before. He was so bland before Vixa came along, and I didn't really know what to do with his personality. Vixa, as a character, gave Liam a parent to love and be influenced by, which added a depth to him that he hadn't had before I threw Vixa into the mix. Plus, since she died before the main part of the story (there is a fifteen year gap between the first and second chapters), Liam can grieve over her a bit throughout the story. Instant character depth. 
       So, the point of all this? Point of view is really, really important when developing a novel. It makes some characters important and others not so much.  The plot changed entirely because of the point of view that I chose. So, I suppose the lesson here is, pay attention to point of view. It matters.