Close Third Person Point of View
Posted under: As a writer, one of the most fundamental choices you need to make with regards to your projects is point of view.
The point of view (or PoV) that you write in can change the tone and readability of your writing drastically.
The PoV you choose is a lot like … deciding where to set up a Psychic Camera. You, the writer, are only allowed to write what your Psychic Camera can pick up.
Narrator
For convenience sake, I’m going to call the “person we are following around” the “narrator” for this post. Whoever is tied to your Psychic Camera is your Narrator.
Don’t Skull-Hop
Skull-hopping within a single scene is bad*, mmkay?
Skull hopping is when “the person we are following around” suddenly changes and we are treated to thoughts, feelings, or reactions that our narrator would have absolutely know way of knowing. In effect, we have multiple narrators.
“If it was such a simple request, why not do it yourself?” Melanie sank lower in the kitchen chair, setting her chin. She really hated it when her mother got all het up about nothing. She’d gone out and picked up the stupid milk, hadn’t she?
“I thought that since you had the afternoon off, it wouldn’t be too much to ask that you get a gallon of milk so I can make breakfast for you tomorrow.” Edith took another drag of her cigarette. Every day, she vowed to stop smoking, and every day, Melanie gave her plenty of reasons to pull out another cancer stick. That girl would be the death of her.
It’s jarring. Who should we care about? Melanie would know nothing about her mother’s vows to stop smoking and her mother wouldn’t consider her own behavior to be “het up about nothing”.
Back to our Psychic Camera – as a writer, we just detached the camera from Melanie’s shoulder and then slapped it on Edith’s shoulder in the middle of the scene. That’s bad mojo. Our readers need to be able to trust us, and they can’t do that if we keep changing the narrator on them all willy nilly.
First Person
A common choice for PoV is First Person.
“It’s just MILK, mother. What difference does it make?” I dropped the offending jug of the wrong percentage of cow drippings to the table.
“I,” declared my mother with fully dramatic lip-curling, “am on a diet! It matters!”
First person is written as though the narrator is actually the person telling the story.
The Psychic Camera is installed inside their head. At that range, it has full access to all of the person’s thoughts, emotions, and experiences. The emotions, thoughts, and experiences of OTHER people are all filtered through the Narrator’s eyes and biases. All the narrator can do is GUESS at the motivations of the bizarre behaviors of the people around them.
Much like we have to do in our own lives. =]
Third Person
Another common choice for PoV is Third Person. (What happened to Second Person? Don’t ask me, I’m not the one who numbered the things)
(EDIT : I know there’s actually a second person. My attempt at humor here clearly missed the mark, so I apologize if it was confusing. Second person is “You do this and then you do that.” I find it incredibly jarring and I can’t imagine enjoying a novel written that way).
Great. Now she was going to be treated to an hour long diatrabe on health, using the crap science her mother picked up from those giggling harpies she met with at the salon every week. Melanie had done her own research about health. Using actual science from actual scientific journals to back it up. For a brief moment, she was tempted to respond with a lesson on macro-nutrients and the difference between carbohydrates and protein, but the urge passed. Her mother never listened to her.
Instead, she stood. The sound of the chair legs grating against the linoleum floor silenced her mother just long enough for her to say, “I’ve decided to become a vegan.”
Third person is written as if the narrator is watching the scene. Instead of “I” “me” and “my”, Third Person has “she” “him” and “hers”.
Our Psychic camera is OUTSIDE the narrator’s head, floating near them like a balloon on a string.
How Long Is Your String?
The TRICK comes in when you realize that there are different depths even within the Third Person umbrella.
Very distant third person gives a piece a vastly different feel.
Little did Melanie know it, but those fateful words were the last ones her mother ever heard.
The most distant third person (the Psychic Camera Balloon is on a very, VERY long string) comes across feeling more like a voice over from an old TV show.
On the other end of the spectrum is my personal favorite, the CLOSE Third Person Point of View (see, your faith in my ability to title my blog posts has been rewarded!).
Her mother’s blue-shadowed eyelids widened and twitched. FINALLY! I’ve finally said something that made it through the thick layers of cigarette smoke, perfume, makeup, and drama to reach her!
Melanie’s smile faded when her mother’s right hand reached up to clutch at her chest, long vinyl fingernails looking more like talons than ever before.
“Mom?” Melanie stepped forward, alarm sending fingers of ice down her spine. “Mom, stop that! It isn’t funny!” She stepped forward and caught her mother just before she collapsed, the still-burning cigarette falling to land on Melanie’s arm. She didn’t even notice the pain, her eyes tracing her mother’s too-pale features as she lowered her to the floor.
Hands shaking, Melanie slid her cellphone from her pocket and dialed 9-1-1. Please, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please be okay. I’ll get the right kind of milk, I swear, just be okay.
The string on this particular Psychic Camera Balloon is so short that it’s pretty much attached to the side of her skull. It has a lot of the ELEMENTS of first person, while still maintaining just a little bit of distance.
Why Third Person
If I like Close Third Person so much, why not just write in First Person?
With First Person, you should not skull hop between scenes, either.
The reader gets to know who “I” am. They associate the “I” in this book with that narrator.
With Third Person, the writer is allowed more freedom to have multiple narrators in a single book. Much less confusing to go from “he” to “she” than from “I” to “I”.
There are other, more subtle reasons as well, but they are less concrete. Sometimes, I find myself irritated with “I” narrators who think and feel in ways that are so different than my own. It’s almost as if there’s a tiny voice in the back of my head throwing popcorn at the screen of my mental image of the book, shouting, “No I don’t! I would never! Stop telling me what to think or feel!” Additionally, even close Third Person allows more leeway than first person with regards to things the writer can point out or take note of.
Dangers of Third Person
One of the biggest dangers of Third Person is a wild string.
You must control how far you allow your Psychic Camera to drift throughout every scene in the project. And by “control” I mean “staple that sucker down”. Don’t allow drift between Close and Distant Third Person. I know they’re both technically “Third Person”, but it’s dizzying and confusing for a reader to be batted around like a balloon on a string. Establish the depth of your Point of View early and stick to it.
A Trick
A trick for writing in Close Third Person is to first write the piece in FIRST person, and then go through and edit it. You may end up doing more than simple word replacement (“I” to “She”) but your end result will feel more consistent – you’ll have “stapled” your Psychic Camera Balloon to the side of your character’s head.
Sitting in that bland, plastic waiting room, all I could think about was that stupid milk. This was all the milk’s fault.
I knew that was stupid. It wasn’t really the milk’s fault, but it felt good to blame someone. Better by far than it would feel to think about what the doctor had just told me. Better still than to have to call others and let them know.
“I wish I’d never even bought that stupid milk! I’d give anything to take it back” I said, covering my eyes with my hands.
“Is that so?” purred a low voice.
I looked up, startled to find a tiny man, no larger than my hand, seated on my armrest. He wore a smart green suit with a green felt bowler hat, a tiny wooden pipe held in one hand.
“What…who?”
“I grant wishes, dearie, but only for a price.” He grinned then, lifting the pipe to bite down on the stem with crooked, yellow teeth.
“What kind of price?” I asked.
turns into
Sitting in that bland, plastic waiting room, all Melanie could think about was that stupid milk. This is all the milk’s fault.
She knew that was stupid. It wasn’t really the milk’s fault, but it felt good to blame someone. Better by far than it would feel to think about what the doctor had just told her. Better still than to have to call others and let them know.
“I wish I’d never even bought that stupid milk! I’d give anything to take it back” she said, covering her eyes with her hands.
“Is that so?” purred a low voice.
Melanie looked up, startled to find a tiny man, no larger than her hand, seated on her armrest. He wore a smart green suit with a green felt bowler hat, a tiny wooden pipe held in one hand.
“What…who?”
“I grant wishes, dearie, but only for a price.” He grinned then, lifting the pipe to bite down on the stem with crooked, yellow teeth.
“What kind of price?” she asked.
YMMV*
Everyone has their own preference, as a writer AND as a reader, for the PoV they enjoy.
What’s your favorite? (Either to write or to read)
* Skull Hopping CAN be acceptable if the Point of View chosen is a very distant one – an omniscient narrator might be able to “taste” each of the personalities in a scene and lift out knowledge of what’s happening. In my highly biased opinion, this is FAR less fun to read than when an author sticks to a single narrator per scene.
* Your Mileage May Vary
… I seriously thought I was the only person who had tantrums when the first-person-I did and thought stupid things I wouldn’t be caught dead near. I’ve certainly never heard anyone else describe it so perfectly, or do anything other than give me blank looks when I try to explain WHY I have a knee-jerk dislike of first person narratives.
I love you so much right now…
.-= Marianne´s last blog ..The MMO of the Future =-.
@Marianne
*clings* I’ve had the same experience!! *laughs* Oh, the looks of bemused horror when I try to explain why first person bugs me so often.
I greatly prefer, in writing and reading, third person. Can’t even tell you why. I think it feels like I’m not getting enough of the story if I have to see it from only one person’s POV.
As a side note, second person would be “you” as opposed to “I” or “he/she/it”. It’s out there, but not terribly useful in most literary applications. (I’m guessing you know this already and your comment about skipping second was just way funnier, but I still had to throw the comment in there!)
.-= Lauren´s last blog ..Happy Independence Day! =-.
@Lauren
I’ll confess I didn’t know it offhand, but I did look it up before I posted to make sure it was something worth being flippant about. *grins*
.-= Tami´s last blog ..Close Third Person Point of View =-.
I love this post! Especially the reasons why First Person can be irritating. I can enjoy it in a short story, but novel are a whole other animal. There are very few I can enjoy in that POV, Jane Eyre and The Great Gatsby being the few exceptions, because it becomes almost impossible not to impose your own reactions to the events as the story continues.
Unfortunately, it seems to be the POV of choice for YA contemporary novels and it often sets my teeth on edge. I remember how unsettling it was to be a teenager, I don’t need to spend 200+ pages wanting to smack the crap out of a self-absorbed twit who can’t see the forest for the trees.
@Bre
I’ll bet those who are currently teenagers like it. But yeah, I totally agree.
As far as “things like PoV” that are popular but drive me totally up the wall, Present Tense KILLS ME.
It’s so ridiculously difficult to do correctly (so that it’s not painfully obvious) – I really don’t know why it’s as popular as it is. First person present tense is (usually) so hard for me to lose myself in that it might as well be written in all caps, too.
.-= Tami´s last blog ..Close Third Person Point of View =-.
Second person narration exists, it’s just awkward. It’s mostly used in Choose Your Own Adventure books. (I used to love those things!)
@Camelai
Every once in a while, someone thinks they’re up to the task and writes a whole novel in it.
It’s like watching a tiny clown car collide with a pie delivery van. You already know how it’s going to turn out.
.-= Tami´s last blog ..Quick Fix or Right Thing =-.
Guilty as charged of too-frequent skull-hopping. ^_^;
But I want your opinion on something – yes, it is certainly bad form to skull-hop (I love that term!) within a paragraph, but how about if there are clear distinctions? For example, either chapter by chapter switches (Ch 1 is Mary, Ch 2 Bob, and so on) or by clear markers within the text (my favorite being the elipsis … )?
As two other commenters have already pointed out, second person exists, but is awkward and distinctly unsettling in a novel form. It reads like a bad ’80s text adventure game.
You walk into a dark room. You see exits north, west, and east. You see a table with a potion. What do you want to do?
a) Drink potion.
b) Leave through the north exit.
c) Put down this creepy book and read Harry Potter again.
.-= Charlie Hills´s last blog ..Enough Wasn’t Enough =-.
The “skull-hopping” POV (or third person omniscient) is more typical of older, epic fantasies. Lord of the Rings comes to mind. :) With large, sprawling plot lines and large casts of characters, this POV offers a unique method to keep the reader involved on multiple levels while avoiding the feeling that it’s 72 characters vs. you in the world.
Your preferred POV (or third person limited) is great for all the reasons you mention. You get to watch the story unravel for a particular character, without actually having to be the character. It’s popular because of its usefulness and effectiveness.
I may even give it a try someday.
.-= Charlie Hills´s last blog ..Enough Wasn’t Enough =-.
@Wilder
Doing it between scenes or with a visible scene break is perfectly valid, and one of the benefits of using third person.
It’s when it’s within scenes, with no break that it’s jarring. =]
@Charlie
Does Lord of the Rings skull hop within a single scene, even? (Yes, yes, I lose geek cred for not having read them, but I prefer books that don’t ask me to work or slog in order to procure my entertainment.)
Okay, within a single scene? Not that I can recall. (Don’t worry about not reading it: I’ve read it enough times myself to make up for you.) But I do see your point now.
That said, there isn’t much “skull-peering” at all. In a typical scene you have a lot of dialog (some of it fairly lengthy), a lot of description, a bit of narration, then it moves right on to the next. There are very few passages that dig directly into character’s thoughts. That is, you would be hard pressed to find anything like:
“I wish this ring had never come to me!” cried Frodo. He looked down at the gold resting in his palm and wondered what he had done to deserve this fate. He wondered not if this were a gift but instead a punishment. He even began to think Gandalf foisted this upon him on purpose.
“Too bad, Frodo, it’s yours now. Suck it up, my good gentlehobbit,” replied Gandalf. Gandalf wondered if Frodo were secretly thinking he did this to Frodo on purpose.
Instead, it’s far more frequent to have the thoughts and exposition as part of the out loud dialog. The above might be more accurately rendered as:
“I wish this ring had never come to me!” cried Frodo. “What have I done to deserve this–this thing of gold, so small and yet so powerful. Others might consider such a thing a gift, but it feels more like a punishment to me.” He turned a suspicious eye to Gandalf, “Why, if I didn’t know any better, I might think you made sure this ring would find its way to me a-purpose!”
“Too bad, Frodo, it’s yours now. Suck it up, my good gentlehobbit,” replied Gandalf. “I did not do this to you on purpose, even if you believe such a thing were even possible. Nay! Don’t look at me like that! Now go get your umbrella. It’s a long walk to Mount Doom and it might rain along the way.”
.-= Charlie Hills´s last blog ..Enough Wasn’t Enough =-.
@Charlie
/seriousface
I would pay good money to hear Gandalf tell Frodo to “suck it up”.
*giggles*
Superb examples, my good man.
.-= Tami´s last blog ..Travel and eReaders =-.
I am doing an intro to fiction writing class and apparently there is a 2nd person Second Person – “you” Works to involve the reader, almost as a character. Not trying to be a smart allec, just thought I would share.
@Gene
I know you’re not trying to be a smart alec, but apparently I need to be a little less cute with my blog posts. Thank you for pointing it out – had I been unaware of it, I would have appreciated the nudge.
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Edna O’Brian, the Irish novelist, wrote a memoir entirely in the second person, and it worked very well and though the entire book without becoming tiresome, as second person often does. In writing of herself as a very young child, she was able to say more about her state of being and comprehension than she could have in any other voice. For example: “You creep up to your parent’s closed door and put your eye to the keyhole, and you see on the bed the tray with the empty tea pot and the remnants of bread sliced as thin as a handkerchief….” or something to that effect, but in other words, with “you” she is able to give us the small child and the small child’s world.
I’m not sure, regardless of how well written or received a book might be, that I could enjoy a second person point of view. I am getting better about first person, but even the increasingly-popular present tense throws me as a reader.
Maybe I’m just a stick in the mud. =]
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