Treasure Tuesday: Left to Write - POV: Third Person Limited

This came up in an online writer's group I'm in, so I thought I would address it for writers out there and for you people who want to be writers once your life perfectly aligns with all your hopes and dreams. For those who aren't writers but are thinking of being writers and those who somehow missed the lesson in English class because you were busy figuring out plans of escape to attend a rock concert - a quick overview. 1st Person - uses the words "I" and "me" from the main character. This is my personal favorite way of writing. "I went to the store and picked up Covid." "I am convinced that Suzi, the fire breathing vampire, is actually a pussy cat in disguise." "I've got tears in my ears from lying on my back and crying". "My books tend to be in first person." 2nd Person - uses the word "you". Few books are written in "you" form. However, songs often are. Letters are often in you form. We speak in you form. "Did you get to the museum to see the skeleton of the jackalopian reptile?" "You left me and now the world is gray and dreary and it's all your fault I can't get out of bed." Or this one... "If you travel north – or actually northwest, because traveling straight north will land you in the ocean - on the main highway of Vancouver Island and drive past Nanaimo, you will eventually come upon the tourist town of Marina Colleen." (opening line to Thimble Fingers). 3rd Person Omniscient - uses the words "she/he" "her/his" and refers to the character by name. This is when the narrator knows everyone and everything. The narrator can tell the story from all the directions and be in everyone's mind at once. Fairy tales are written like this. A Series of Unfortunate Events is written this way (although Lemony Snicket takes this even further by inserting himself into the narrative). There is a distance between the reader and the action. You watch it like a movie and often there isn't a main character. This is also how scripts are written. 3rd Person Limited - uses the words "she/he "her/his" and refers to the character by name. This is the most common way of writing and in my experience the most tricky. In 3rd person limited you are telling the story through the main characters eyes. Now, you can have several characters that you tell the story through but - here's the tricky part - you can't just jump around doing this as easily as you can in omniscient. And so this is what we're going to talk about. If you treat 3rd person limited like first person, you are less likely to go wrong. You cannot say anything that your main character doesn't know. It is entirely through their eyes. If your character doesn't know it, see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, or smell it, then it can't be written down. Let's say you are telling the story though Nellie's eyes and now Shane walks in the room. You can't say "Shane was in pain from the muscle he pulled last week," because now you're suddenly in Shane's perspective and not Nellie's. You can say, "Nellie could see by the way Shane was limping that his pulled muscle still hurt." Or maybe she doesn't know about the pulled muscle. She could instead say, "Why are you limping?" and then he can reply, "I pulled a muscle last week while dancing the rhumba and twirling a baton." You can't just suddenly jump into the head of the new character and tell their life story or why they are in the room or what they are thinking. Why they are there, has to come out in conversation or through the knowledge of the first character. If you want to get into Shane's head, what you can do, is take a break. It could be a new section or a new chapter, but you can switch your attention to the new character then and show things through his/her eyes. So you create a break, and then you could say "Shane's pulled muscle leg hurt so much he wanted to scream the entire house to the ground, but instead he smiled and said, "Hi Nellie. What's shaking?" But again, you can't just suddenly jump back into Nellie's head. This is actually called head jumping and it can be off putting to your reader who is following along with one train of thought and is suddenly pulled into another without warning. Most writers choose this way of writing so they can tell the story from different perspectives. And frankly many readers don't like reading first person. I have no idea why. If someone could explain it to me, that would be great. I was once reading "The Red Tent" which is told through the perspective of Dinah, Jacob's daughter in the bible. Near the end of the book, suddenly the story of Dinah's brother Joseph (of the many colored coat) is inserted. But the problem was - there was no way for Dinah to know this story at the time it's put in place. Word has not come to her. Joseph is not telling her this. She hasn't even seen Joseph. No one else is telling her. It just appears out of nowhere without explanation. I tend to avoid third person limited. I like first person. And if I want to tell the story from different perspectives, I'll have several first persons - Roses & Daisies is like this all the way through the book where I have seven first persons, and there's a section of Rumplestiltskein's that does this as well when I switch from my main character Maren, to her daughter Grace because there's a key circumstance where we have to get Grace's point of view and her mother isn't around. I've also used first person and third person omniscient - an unpublished book of mine is like this. I have again several first persons but when they gather I used the third person omniscient so the reader can see and feel the entire scene. Hopefully you'll get to read that book soon. In Thimble Fingers, I started off with second person and then quickly switch to first. But when I switch point of view, it is always at a break. Usually a chapter break. So if you can take your third person limited, and switch it to first person, and read it and it makes sense - then you've done it right. It's a great way to catch when you've gotten out of the character. So there's your exercise. If you have written in third person limited, read it replacing all the pronouns and times when you refer to your character by name, with "I" and "me". It will be easier to see where you accidently slipped into another character's point of view. Do this with each of your characters in the story. Happy writing, reading - and oh yeah - downloading my brilliant prose.

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Did I mention that I have a book called Thimble Fingers?

Did I mention that right now, for a limited time, it's free?

Did I also mention that although it starts off in second person it quickly switches to first person and you get to see EVERYTHING through Katherine's eyes, even when she's wearing an eye eye patch. (You'll have to read it to find out why Katherine ends up with an eye eye patch and what exactly an eye eye patch is.) Here's the link to it. While you're picking it up, look at my other books. A cup of coffee can set you back more so for less than that you can have hours of fun! Thimble Fingers