When she was a freshman at high school my daughter was asked to write a paper (ten pages, double-spaced) on why she thought a certain famous writer had written a book in the first person.
“Weren’t you,” she asked me, “at San Francisco Writers Workshop with this guy?”
I said that our paths had crossed.
“Do you know why he chose the first-person narrator?”
I do actually. Khaled had started The book and he had a little difficulty with the point of view he was going to use. He mentioned that in one of our Tuesday sessions, and someone said that when she had difficulty with the “voice” of a novel (who is telling the story), she would use the first-person narrator, Tamim Ansari (the moderator of SFWW) concurred and the book was told in the first person.
That simple.
This is what actually happens with writing. The labels we invent, the categorizations, and the rules are just buzzwords—they sound cool and are sometimes useful, but not always.
What is exposition? What is a roving point of view? Is it subjective? Who cares? If you can write a few compelling words that make someone say, ‘What happens next?’, you’re good to go. And most of the time, what is easiest works best.
The process should not get in the way of telling the story.
P.S. My daughter wrote the ten pages and, despite my unhelpful answer, got an A.