Here I'm going to talk about the pros and cons of first and third person pov. On top of that I will also talk about tenses, past and present. But first a callback to the read your writing chapter. Always read through your writing before publishing. You want to make sure that you always write in the correct tense. It's an easy mistake to make so just do a quick check.
We're going to start with pov. Which pov do you want to write from? What information do you want your reader to get? How do you want your reader to view the world? These are all important questions to ask when choosing pov. There is one more important one though. Who is telling the story?
So let's start with the pros and cons. What are they? With first person we get to see the world through the eyes of the character. We notice what they would notice. We get an intimate understanding of their thoughts and feelings. At the same time they are never fully reliable. You only get to see the world through their perspective, whether or not it is correct. You are also limited to letting your reader know things that they would know, unless you change who's perspective your reader's see for a section or chapter. That can add a lot of great tension though, as their information is limited. We can peel the onion so to say through what they think and notice.
There are two types of third person. Limited and omniscient. Limited third person is a little better in terms of knowing things compared to first person. In general the narrator is someone following the character as they go about their story. You can have it from knowing their thoughts and emotions to nothing at all, just what is happening and what they are doing. How detached or attached do you want readers to your character? Use that question to determine the distance you write from your character. This is something that comes down to experience though, so it will take time to figure out how much info you want to give about the character. Omniscient is a completely different beast. You'll find this mostly in stories older than 40 years. It's a very difficult way to write and it isn't very popular anymore. In this the narrator knows everything: the world, the characters past, their emotions. It is a lot of information to condense. It's also mostly used in more literary books, think moby dick.
Something that will help you determine the pov is asking who's telling the story. Is it the character? If so when are they telling the story from? The reason we are getting the story is because someone is telling it to us. In the case of first person it's the character telling the story sometime later. Why are they telling the story and why did they start it where they did? First person is written in past tense when it comes to novels. In short stories though, between 2000-10000 words, you will have a moment of telling. Where you catch up to the point where the story is being told from. It could be them literally telling the story. Or it could be them remembering how they got to that point. The tense then shifts to the present. In short it's when you let the reader in on why the story is being told.
If you want to write in the present tense third person pov is your best bet. I won't talk about omniscient as I have no experience writing it. Again who is telling the story? Think about it. Is it a semi omniscient narrator? Or is it some random person who saw the whole story and is telling it, this is more for short stories. If your publishing here it's likely a semi omniscient narrator. Here you will be able to describe whatever you want in each scene, make sure it actually adds to the story though. With this pov you have the choice of whether you let the narrator know what's happening in the characters head. That's up to you and the vibe you want. If you don't want them to know their thoughts how can you have them them know them through body language? If you do then how often do you directly reveal thoughts? When do you just summarize their thoughts? Sometimes we don't need to know every thought the character had in the last five pages. We just need a one paragraph summary.
That's really everything. Remember to leave a chapter comment for any writing or grammar related questions. I'll directly respond if it's short and make a chapter if it's more complicated.