Writing Excuses 20.14: Third Person Limited

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Writing Excuses 20.14: Third Person Limited 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-14-third-person-limited

 

Key points: Third person limited. First person, I. Third person, he, she, names, pronouns. Metaphor, the camera. Limited versus omniscient. Moving POVs, head hopping. Slide, don't hop. Inner thoughts or not? Threshold between first person and third person very close, very limited? Internal thoughts. Third person offers separation between narration and character. Third limited close is the default for commercial fiction. Third limited allows shifting POVs and distance more easily than first. First may be more visceral. Distancing words. Some books jump between third and first. Perspective shifts can be useful!

 

[Season 20, Episode 14]

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, guess what? The 2025 Writing Excuses Cruise is over 50% sold out. During this week-long masterclass, I'm going to be leading writers like yourself through a series of workshops designed to give you the tools to take your writing to the next level. Space is limited, but there is still time to secure your spot. We're going to be sailing out of Los Angeles from September 18th through 26. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, this event is your opportunity to learn new skills while exploring the beautiful Mexican Riviera. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or revitalizing your plot, you'll leave more confident in your current story and bolstered by a new set of friends. Join us on board at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 20, Episode 14]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[Erin] Third Person Limited.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Erin] I'm really excited to talk a little bit today about the third person limited point of view as part of our little mini-course, mini-set of episodes on proximity. One of the reasons I'm like most excited about this is I feel like this is one of the terms in writing that is used the most and understood the least.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Like Othello, a moment to learn, a lifetime to master. So I'm...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Going to attempt to explain, like, at its very basic, like, what do we even mean when we say third person limited, and then I'm going to invite all of you to tell me what I'm missing and why I'm wrong.

[Laughter]

[Erin] So I figure… So, on its, like, very basic level, when you use first person, you are using I, you are using, like, the pronoun I to describe everything that is happening. When you use third person, of any type, you use he, she, somebody's name, they… You're using a pronoun that is the third person, that is why it's called third person. So instead of saying, "I watched as all the podcasters stared me down, waiting for me to finish speaking," it would be, "Erin observed the other podcasters as da da da da…" And limited is that you are limited to a specific point of view at any one time. Unlike omniscient, which we will get to in the next episode, you can't see everybody's thoughts all at once. You're sort of following one particular person at any distance that you want. We'll get into that later. But that's what I think of at the very basic. What am I missing? Why am I wrong?

[DongWon] I'm not going to tell you why you're wrong, but I am going to ask you a question.

[Erin] Yes.

[DongWon] Which is, do you think third person limited and third person close are the same thing or is there a distinction between those two things?

[Erin] I would personally say that there is a difference. So I think that you can be at any distance and still be limited. I mean, it's…

[DongWon] I see.

[Erin] At a certain point, it's hard to be limited. Like, if you get… a lot of times, the metaphor we use for third person limited or third person close is the camera.

[DongWon] Right.

[Erin] So it's like you're the camera behind the shoulder of whatever character. But you can be right up on their shoulder or you can actually get a little bit of a distance away. Like…

[DongWon] It's like third person action game versus Mario. It's like that…

[Erin] Yeah. Exactly. [Garbled]

[Howard] Third person limited contains third person close.

[DongWon] Right.

[Erin] Exactly.

[DongWon] But you could be third person limited, but have this 10,000 foot view, where I have no access to Erin's interiority. I can just see her moving through the landscape and…

[Mary Robinette] Right. Raymond Chandler does this a lot.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Like, where your… You're with one character, you only see the things that they see, and the movements that they have, but you have absolutely no access to their thoughts.

[DongWon] Because the interiority of people is a mystery to his… In his books.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[Howard] The example that I use… When I'm trying to explain the difference between limited and omniscient. Erin sat across from the podcasters and Howard looked like he had indigestion. Okay? That's limited because Erin can tell that I'm making a face and she's passing judgment on what my face is. Omniscient would be Erin sat across from the podcasters. Howard was thinking about… And then you state my thought explicitly. Now, we were in Erin's head and then suddenly we're in Howard's head. That's not something Erin can be. We hope.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Yeah. Another example of that… Not necessarily a good one, but it's, like, though Erin sat there, looking at Howard's face and thought that perhaps he'd had indigestion, Howard had had 16 eggs this morning.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] As they worked their way through his system, he hoped that no one would notice.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] He was wrong.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Right. Oh, this is going to make a noise.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So I'm looking forward to when we talk about…

[Howard] That's third person omnivorous.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Oh… Howard. I am looking forward to when we talk about omniscient. But one of the things that I will say with third person limited is that you don't… I think one of the things you're missing potentially is that you can do third person limited and move to different characters' POVs in different scenes. Arguably, you can also move to their POVs within a single scene. It's when you move back and forth that I think you've shifted over to…

[Howard] It's the head hopping.

[Mary Robinette] Omniscient. Yeah. Which is not a flaw. It's just a different mode. But I'm thinking specifically of a scene in Ender's Game where the camera arrives with Ender into a scene, and then Ender leaves… We're still in the scene, there's no scene break, but we stay with Bean's character. So it's a through scene, there's no scene break, but it is still third person limited even though we haven't done that hard break.

[DongWon] I love when you do a little bit of that sliding from one POV to another and then back without dropping into omniscient…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Without dropping into the head hopping. There's an example, I think, of… From one of Robert Jackson Bennett's books, the first… Foundryside. Where a character is like sneaking into a facility, and we just slide into the guard's POV for a minute and see them sneaking past from the guard's POV and then slide back to the protagonist again. It never feels omniscient, it never feels like we're knowing more than, like, what the individual characters experience. But that fluidity that you can have in limited I think is really, really fun.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think that in that case, for me, what's happening is that he has gone to a different scene…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But has chosen to do what I call a through scene as opposed to a scene break.

 

[Erin] So, follow-up question on this, because I think, like, head hopping… A lot of times when people say head hopping, they're talking about being in omniscient and going from one character to the other in a somewhat frantic way in which you don't know who you're even following or what's happening. But head hopping can also be used if you switch, like, abruptly from one limited perspective to another. I've seen that critique used for that as well. How do you make it feel like a slide and not a hop? Like, how do you actually make it feel like it's been passed off in an effective way that you can follow versus that you're like jarring the audience?

[DongWon] I really think about it in filmic terms, and I think about sightlines. Right? So the example I just gave of moving from the thief to the guard and back is because you have the thief, the thief's looking, sees the guard, now we're in the guard, guard does their thing, thief sneaks by, guard notices something has passed, and then now we're back in the thief. Right? So you need a handoff transition every time you're going to make that slide as literally thinking for me about the camera moving with the perspective of the reader.

[Mary Robinette] I have a similar framing. For me, it's about thresholds.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Which is, I think the same thing as the sightlines that it is about. For me, the distinction between that and omniscient is that there is a reason that both characters are not actually in the same place at the same time. Like, the example that I gave where one character literally leaves the room and the camera stays with where we are. Whereas in omniscient, you would be able to visit everybody's head within, who's in a single room. And you would be sign posting, and now we're going over to this person. Jane Austen does this… I mean, she was extremely good, which is why her works are still classics. But there's this one scene where two characters believe that they're having the same conversation and they're having different conversations. You only know that they're having different conversations because she goes from one character to the other and she sign posts by telling us whose head she's going into before we get the thought, but it is all within one thing, and then she also comments on other things that are outside of that room that none of the characters would have access to. So, for me, it's all about what the characters have access to and the thresholds that we cross.

 

[Dan] I'm wondering as well if… This goes back to our discussion of close and far perspective. But the closer the perspective is, the more it's going to feel like head hopping, because you are getting more of those inner thoughts. You're getting more of that internality. Whereas in this case with the guard watching for the thief, you're not getting a really deep examination of who they are as a person.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It's also, I want to say that this is going back, this is a fashion thing. In science fiction and fantasy, it is in fashion to either use first person or third limited. But when you go over to romance, often you do get POVs… You do get back and forth between the two POVs. I'm going to back away from what I had said earlier about that not being third limited, because it usually only two characters. The hero and the heroine, or the hero and hero, depending on the… Which slash we're in. But often you do get both of their POVs within a single scene. It's just that in science fiction and fantasy, at some point, people decided that this was bad and they put a label on it called head hopping as opposed to controlling point of view, even if you are limiting yourself to only two people. It's still a limitation, it's still not an omniscient because you're not giving the reader access to any information that those two characters don't have.

[Dan] Well, I think it's worth pointing out that this is one of those cases where anything you can make work, works.

[Mary Robinette] Absolutely. Yeah.

[Dan] Right. Like, just because the label has been given that certain aspects of this are good or bad, if you can make it work, then it works. If you can just… Excuse me… If you can jump between heads, between characters, even if it's head hopping, as long as the reader is always very clear about what's going on and they know whose head they're in and they know what perspective they're getting, then it works.

[Howard] Yeah, I don't… I don't personally use head hopping as a way to denigrate anything. I say… Unless I'm saying you're trying to do third person limited, third person close, and I think you may be unintentionally head hopping, just to describe what's going on. But I think you can head hop on purpose and make it work very well.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. We'll talk about how to do that when we get to omniscient for sure.

[Erin] Erin had another thought, but realized that it was time for the podcast to take a break.

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, guess what? The 2025 Writing Excuses Cruise is over 50% sold out. During this week-long masterclass, I'm going to be leading writers like yourself through a series of workshops designed to give you the tools to take your writing to the next level. Space is limited, but there is still time to secure your spot. We're going to be sailing out of Los Angeles from September 18th through 26. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, this event is your opportunity to learn new skills while exploring the beautiful Mexican Riviera. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or revitalizing your plot, you'll leave more confident in your current story and bolstered by a new set of friends. Join us on board at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

[Erin] All right. Back now, because one thing we talked about earlier… I think we're talking a lot about… In talking about head hopping and the difference between limited and omniscient, we're talking a little bit about, I think, slightly more distanced…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] One of the questions I now have is what is the difference, like, what is the threshold, other than the use of pronouns between first-person and third person very close, very limited? Like, is there something that for you distinguishes it or could you take a first-person piece, turn all the I's to she's and not have to change anything else in order to make that story work?

[Mary Robinette] No.

[Laughter]

[Erin] All right. Well, there we go.

[Dan] Next question?

[Mary Robinette] Yes, because I've done it. I've had pieces that I wrote, originally in third person and moved to first, and I've had pieces that I've written in first person and moved to third. The biggest thing for me is that in first person, the degree to which I get the character's thoughts is significantly higher than it is in third. I have… Like you can get away with it for part of a scene, sometimes even a full scene, but there are times when, in first person, if I do not get the character's full emotional reaction, I will feel cheated as a reader. Because that's one of the things I sign up for when I'm in first person is to be all the way in that character's head. Whereas third person, I am okay with selective access to their head. Sometimes I get a direct thought, which is either written in quotes or italics. So these are the words that exactly are what the character is thinking. Sometimes it is free indirect speech, which is where the character's thought has just been transported into being part of the narration. So, like, instead of saying Mary Robinette sat in the podcast and thought I have to remember I have to pack my luggage during our break, I would do something more like Mary Robinette sat in the podcast. She needed to remember that she had to pack her luggage during her break. And I would just put it into part of the narration. But, it does create a little bit of a… More of a distance, and that form is one of the differences between first and third is that being all the way into the character's head.

[Howard] For me, one of the big differences between first and third, beyond… I mean, everything that you've said tracks beautifully. But if I'm in third limited, it's usually because I want to follow two or more characters. And the high bar for me for third limited is for each of those narrative voices to sound different. Whereas, in first person, your narrator should sound fairly consistent, unless the character undergoes some really huge change that reaches all the way into their voice. Whereas in third limited, I like to be able to tell whose scene it is. By halfway through the book, I want to be able to tell whose scene it is without you telling me their name. Because the voice… I'm now familiar enough with that voice that you've telegraphed it to me.

 

[Mary Robinette] I will say the other thing that I thought about as you were talking is that one of the tools that third limited offers me that I do not get from first-person is that I have a contrast between the narration and the character. Which can be an extremely powerful tool sometimes. Especially when you've got a character that is lying to themselves or lying… That… Or is on a journey that they haven't yet figured out that they're on. That sometimes I can let the reader in on what that is in ways that I cannot do in first person.

 

[DongWon] So, I think third limited close is sort of the default voice for commercial fiction these days. Right? In a lot of ways… There's a ton of first-person, that's rising in certain sectors, you still see third omniscient, but, like, what we think of as transparent prose, what we think of as like the dominant voice in adult commercial fiction tends to be this third limited perspective. Especially fairly close in. I think this is kind of driven by a lot of the visual media we consume. Movies are like this, videogames are like this, it's just like your… Because we don't actually know what the character's thinking, you're just like write up on them, and sort of observing the world as they go through it as the camera follows them, literally in the case of a TV show. I think that has really sort of shaped how we think of it. And because of some of the things you're saying, of having the ability to have the narration come in and the narrator have a different perspective than the character, but still be very close to one or a very small number of characters, kind of gives the easiest lift in terms of communicating a lot of information to the reader using the fewest tools possible. That requires the least sort of, like, mental weights. There's always a… I talked about this a little bit on the last episode, but there is a little bit of a mental lift when reading first-person for a lot of readers. That, I think, is a very small threshold that people can cross, but they're sometimes reluctant to. But it's… The use of third person limited close, I think, if you're looking for where's my default starting point, it's a really useful one to at least try that and sort of see if that solves any perspective problems you're having, and then expand out from there into, oh, wait, maybe this should be first-person. I need more interiority, or I want that deep subjectivity of the character or I'm feeling really claustrophobic, maybe I should step back in omniscient and expand out more from their. But starting with third close, really, I think, is a great default position to start from.

[Erin] I love all that, and I think it's interesting for me to hear, because I think one of the reasons I asked the question is I actually find when I write that my third person limited is fairly close to first. Like I…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I believe, I do a lot of third person limited that has, like, full interiority… And in case we've never said what we mean by interiority, it's, like, how much are you getting from inside the character's mind. My third person limited often uses the same cadences of thought that first-person would use. Like, the same… There's usually not a lot of distinction. So I was like, well, why do… What is the difference? For me, and I love everything that y'all have said and I also… For me, I'm thinking that some of it has to do with is there something… Like, is there ever a time when I'm going to want to go into another character, which I cannot do in first easily. For some reason, I find it harder to switch from one character to another in first, because first is very immersive, until I come out of it. It's like… Feels like a lot of work, like it's something you can do maybe chapter to chapter, but it's harder to do, like, scene to scene. Is there ever a time when I'm going to want to pull back the distance to explain something or note something even for a moment that the character wouldn't fully get into? Or is it, like, my intent is for you to feel like the character is being observed versus experienced? That one's a hard one, because I feel like it's very like… I, you just… It's like… You just know, like, when you know… Like pornography… When you know it when you see it. But… The infamous Supreme Court case said that. So it's, like, I'm thinking about, like, is it… Yeah, it's like is it sometimes when I want you to feel like you're within this character's mind or do I want you to feel like you are just a fly on their shoulder being like, oh, my gosh, what is this character getting themselves into, even if you're close enough to hear them whisper every thought to you?

[Howard] And to eat the crumbs off their shoulder if you're a little [garbled]

[Laughter]

 

[Mary Robinette] Like the one that I took from third into first, one of the things that I was playing with in that one was… I had a character who had PTSD and I knew that I was going to be dealing with some flashbacks and not, like, a brief insertion into the middle of a scene, but a full on, like, confusion dementia sequence. Being all the way in their head so that I wasn't… As they are disassociating… It was just… It was conveying the sensation of disassociating in first person is significantly easier than it is in third. Because that distance, that narrative distance, already exists because I'm observing the person, distancing it further… It's not as visceral when you distance it further. So when I got to those scenes where he's disassociating, I wrote it as if it was third person, but used the I, so… And I used all of the reporting words that we try to avoid in third person… Like, I noticed that I was, I watched my body do this thing. And that was a technique and a tool that I could only use in first person.

[Erin] I love that you called out the… Those distancing… I call them distancing words, like watched, looked, she looked at versus just saying, like, what the person actually saw. Because I think that's a really interesting… They have their absolute place.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, there's a time in which you want to be calling attention to the act of seeing. Whether it is disassociation or somebody who is, like, at the wall of a party and all that they are doing, noticing, is the action that they are taking.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. A spy is going to be… I watched this.

[Erin] Exactly. But somebody who's not a spy, you might be, like, well… The watching brings one more layer between you and the actual thing that's going on. Which I think is such a fun thing to play with. And another thing where I think, like head hopping, sometimes people will say this doesn't work, and I think what they really mean or should say is this has its place. Is this the place for it?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[Dan] I just want to jump in really quick and point out that I have seen books, very successfully jump between third and first.

[Yes, yup]

[Dan] One of my favorite books is House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, which is about half and half. The way that she makes that work and makes it always obvious what you're hearing and what you're listening to is, it is… The first person is one specific character. Every scene that does not have that character in it is third person.

 

[DongWon] Yeah. In general, when it comes to these POV conversations, again, we're giving you tools, not rules...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Is the thing to remember. I think a lot of people get so prescriptive when it comes to talking about whether using third person limited, are you… It's like your third person limited close, and then you go, you come out for a second, and they're like, oh, no, you broke POV. You can't do that. I'm like, what are you talking about? If it worked in the scene, it worked in the scene.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You know what I mean? I'm not going to remember two chapters later that, like, you stepped 10 feet away from the character for one moment. Or, like what Dan's saying, in terms of mixing first person and third person, that's absolutely a thing that you can do. You can even jump to omniscient for a second, and then drop…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Back to third person limited. I think what we're giving you are ways in which you can use proximity to your character's perspective as tools. I encourage you to find exciting ways to use those tools, moment to moment, rather than book to book.

[Erin] And… I know we're running a little long, but I just want to… I love this point, so I just want to underline it, that some of the things that I've seen that are extremely effective in scenes are when perspective shifts.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] If you suddenly pull back the camera, like, all of a sudden, you're saying something. Like, if you're doing it on purpose, you're doing it intentionally, there's something you want us to see from further away. If you're a little bit further away and you suddenly, like, kind of zoom in to one character's perspective, maybe it's because they're having a moment of deep emotion where that's the only thing that the story can contain at that moment.

 

[Erin] And that brings us to the homework. Which is to take a scene that you've written and write it in the closest third person limited you can possibly stand. Get right up in there. Then write it again at a slightly more distance, but still limited third person. Look at those two scenes side-by-side, and then say, what did I do differently in one than the other? What did I emphasize? Figure out from that which perspective you want to use when actually writing the scene.

 

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.