A Close Third

Third person point of view(POV) is the most common POV for fiction. Third-person means the narrator is telling a story about some third person (i.e., not you or themselves). Although the days of narration are mostly long behind us, the art and craft of telling a story in third person remains one of the most important skills a writer can master.


A good third-person POV is intimate We may or may not know the thoughts of the character ("limited" if we do not hear their thoughts), but we know their attitude. We see everything through their lens, hovering just behind their ear, along for the ride.


But how do you do it?


If you’re like most writers, your third-person goes something like this: “Amanda walked to the store. She saw the children playing in the sprinklers. From behind her, she smelled the sweet scent of freshly baked cookies. She thought about how much she liked cookies, and how she could use one right about now.”


Using the senses: check. Active construction: check.


“So what’s wrong with that?” you ask.


And I answer with another question: while you’re reading this, where are YOU? You’re with Amanda, sure. But if this were a movie, where is the camera?


It’s somewhere else, looking at Amanda.


Well, heck, if I wanted to watch a movie, I’d go rent one.


No. I want to be IN Amanda. I want to experience her life. I want to be the hero, darn it!


So now, how do we get intimate with Amanda? (Look, I know you are all laughing behind your hands at the double entendre, but focus, grasshoppers, this is important.)


We do it by eliminating as many references to Amanda as we can. We do it by pretending we’re writing a Holodeck program: we can influence the world, but not Amanda. We can react to her, but we can’t make her do anything.


So here’s how it goes. First sentence: “Amanda walked to the store.” How can we make this sentence about her surroundings? Is Amanda tired? Is she happy? We don’t know, so let’s pick one: happy. This influences how she perceives her surroundings.


"The concrete passed underfoot like gray treadmill.” “The miles unspooled behind her.” “The world bounced with her every step, as if jumping for joy.”


Ok, but we haven’t gotten to the store, right? Ah, now you see a major point: showing uses up more words than telling. It “unpacks” the narrative, and brings out experience. And that’s what makes a third-person perspective intimate: the reader becomes the main character, just as completely as in first or the rarely-used second person. So go out there and take the camera out of the sky, or off the ground. Nestle it right behind your POV-character’s ear, and record the sights and sounds from there. Try to limit the number of times you reference your character at all. Let the inanimate objects do the work instead of some distant narrator.