Surprisingly to some, there is more than one way of writing in the ‘third person’ and many writers draw clear dividing lines between the approaches.
In a previous article, A matter of perspective in storytelling, I took a quick look at comparing 1st and 3rd person perspectives when writing stories. Here, I go a little further, considering and playing with the third-person viewpoint in a little more detail.
Omnificent privilege
Imagine being able to see everything, hear everything and know everything. Imagine being able to throw your gaze across time from the long past to the distant future. That is the ultimate power of a third-person narrator, a god-like storyteller to whom all is known and can be reviled as required. For many, this power is addictive. Writers don’t want to give it up (frankly, it can be less work!) and readers bask in the security of the divine knowledge imparted to them.
Want to add a back story? Easy! Do it anytime you want. Want to quickly switch between events happening in one town and another? Well, simples! Do it in a flash!
Of course, the pure breadth of vision here can be its own undoing. It can be difficult not to reveal things too soon. Also, looking down from such great heights with your magic eye has the tendency to lose focus and intimacy with your subject character.
Stalking your character
This approach is usually called ‘third person limited‘, but I often think of it as simply being in Stalker Mode. Here, the author tends to stick exclusively to a single viewpoint and we only know and experience the world through the eyes and feelings of our selected character.
In some respects, this is quite similar to a full-on first-person approach, with the author equally intimately entwined with the character’s thought processes and reactions. Clearly though, a third-person narrator adds a different type of context to the character’s actions and behaviours: Arguably, you have a narrator who can be more relied upon to be objective, honest and less prone to hide things. However, it’s exactly for this reason that I prefer to write in the first person! I like my character’s biases to shine through a bit, for the reader to sense when something is being withheld.
Another good thing about first-person over third-person limited? When you mess up in the third person, it is there forever, and you have to work with it in subsequent books. In first-person my character can simply say “Well, I got that one wrong!”
Ah, the joys of writing experience!
Mixing and matching
Of course, you can do both. Take the big picture and then drop down to stalk an individual character before jumping back into the heavens. This approach, whether intended or not, is often what naturally happens and is in many respects the beauty of being in third-person mode. Readers are used to this and very happy with it. The flexibility it provides to writers is simply awesome!
The biggest problem I find here is to be able to put the breaks on being god-like and pull yourself down to knowing only what the character you are focussing on knows. Sometimes your character seems to know more than she should simply because you forget to go ‘limited’.
And finally … first-person stalker mode
So many ways to mix and match! In this approach I consider writing in first-person but literally following another character around every step of the way. It’s double intimate and gets around the danger of becoming accidentally ‘unlimited’ because the narrator never assumes a god-like position. We are inside one head but not two, so we don’t get to know everything our target knows in real-time. Things get revealed bit by bit. Here is an example:
The moment Arnold left the gym, I got out of my old Ford and started down the street after him. Geeeesh, he was big, and he walked like a boss! He stopped to pull a newspaper from the stand – I’d figure out which one later but I was betting it was either sports or Wall Street – and then carried on East down 27th. At the subway entrance, he paused to look around. He even glanced back, but I’m no rookie. I kept walking, even managed an “excuse me” as I stepped around his giant frame and went down the steps. A glance at the polished tiles told me he was coming down after me, so now I had to follow from the front. That’s hard, even for someone like me, but I guessed right that he was heading for the Blue Line. Yup, luck! Just where the Hell was he going? Earlier I’d head him tell Smithy that he had to visit Squinty, whoever the Hell that was. I felt I was getting closer, because people like Arnold don’t waste their time doing social visits for deadbeats. On the Southbound he sat stoney-faced, dark thoughts pounding uselessly on the inside of that steel-hard face. But his eyes were future-seeing a murder.
Oh, I was going to learn eveything about you and all your dirtly little secrets, big guy.
Want to mix further and do this from a god-like perspective? Easy! Sit yourself (first-person character) in a surveillance centre with a hundred CCTV screens and follow him, and a whole load of other things, from there.
Conclusion
Writing is freedom! Have fun.
