Third-Person Limited POV

Third-Person Limited Point of View

This note is a summary of part of chapter 7 of Master Class in Fiction Writing (2005) by Adam Sexton. I think he clearly defines this POV, although I am not so sure how well his “rules” are followed, for example, by British writers. Sexton, according to the back cover, “teaches writing at the New School and New York University. He has also written on arts and entertainment for the New York Times, the Village Voice, and the Boston Phoenix.”

The Rules of Third-Person Limited POV

1.     The narrator is restricted to a single character’s perspective. He is forbidden access to other characters’ private thoughts and feelings. The narrator is privy to no more information than the POV character.

2.     This perspective admits only the observations, thoughts and feelings of one character, and in this respect it is like the first-person POV, and they are in many respects interchangeable. The Third-Person POV is equally restricted regarding the information available to the storyteller as is the First-Person POV. In neither case can the narrator read another character’s mind, nor can he know what is going on behind the POV character’s back (unless that character has some way to know).  

3.     The narrator cannot tell things about the POV character that he doesn’t know himself; for example, that he is selfish in little ways, or that he is not as athletic as he thinks. Commentary, interpretation, and judgment would be an intrusion of the narrator into the story.

4.     In first-person POV, the narrator is stuck with the language and syntax of that POV character, because she is the storyteller. However, in the third-person POV perspective, although the narrator has no more information than the POV character, the POV character is not the storyteller—an external narrator is. The result is that the diction and syntax are unrestricted, so the narrator can use any word choice or any sentence structure he wishes to relate the story, provided that he never includes any information unavailable to the POV character. 

a.      A girl’s first day at school told from in first-person POV is restricted to the child’s diction and syntax: I don’t want to go to school. My tummy hurts. I’m scared of the big building. I’m scared of the other boys and girls. 

b.     In third-person POV it is not restricted to the child’s language and capacity to articulate: She dreads going to school, a dread that manifests itself physically as nausea. The public-school building, its façade looming blankly above the sidewalk and lawn before it, oppresses her; the alien faces, voices, gestures of her new  classmates—at least as she has imagined them—intimidate her. 

5.     Although children cannot label states like oppression and intimidation, that doesn’t mean they cannot experience them. The first-person forbids inclusion of such labels; the third-person does not. The example in 4b doesn’t share information unavailable to the girl even though the language used to express that information is beyond her. This capacity of the third-person POV permits a story to be told from the perspective of an animal insofar as an animal can observe, feel and think in some rudimentary way. 

 6.     A third-person POV storyteller may choose to use the language of the POV character (e.g. for the sake of intimacy): She’s doesn’t want to go to school. Her tummy hurts. She’s scared of the big buildings. She’s scared of the other boys and girls. This approach is sometimes referred to as close limited third-person POV.  

7.     A third-person storyteller can use the character’s language and his own with the objective of creating an effect that is intimate and nuanced: Her tummy hurts. She dreads attending school, a dread that manifests itself physically as nausea. She’s scared. Scared of the big building, its facade looming blankly above the sidewalk and lawn before it, oppressing her. Scared of the alien faces, scared of the voices, scared of the gestures of the other boys and girls—at least as she has imagined them. She’s scared and her tummy hurts. 

8.     A storyteller is free to use multiple POVs serially. Only one POV per scene and the above rules apply to that scene. The shift to another POV is signaled by a new scene or chapter. There are never two or more POVs available to the storyteller at any given time.

Structure: Scene and Sequel

Chart: Structure of Scene [cell 1] and Sequel [cells 2 – 4]

This chart is based on Scene & Structure by Jack M. Bickham, a Writer's Digest book and on Randy Ingermanson's blog (http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/writing-the-perfect-scene).

I have set up the grid in the form of Kolb's experiential learning cycle.

1.   ACTION 1.   Goal 2.   Conflict 3.   Disaster	2. REACTION 1.   Feeling 2.   Reflex Action 3.   Conscious Action
4.   DECISION 1.   Choose from Options 2.   Prepare for Action	3.   DILEMMA 1.   Options 2.   Analyze/work through

Dialogue Sandwiching Telling

Sandwich: Getting the Best of Dialogue and Narrative Telling 

In this example we see dialogue surrounding. By inserting narrative it speeds up the telling and allows for more accuracy than the character might use. For example, the character says it was just another mission, “nothing special.” But the narration tells us he was terrified of leaving a man behind. 

"We were on-mission, guarding a house. The brother-in-law of some­body's nephew, one of those things. There was a lot of that stuff there. Still is. Anyway, it was just another mission, nothing special."

The squad bulky with body armour under desert gear. The acrid smell of sweat and the way the clinging dust itched. A silent head count, his hun­dredth of the day, terrified, always, of leaving a man behind: Jones, Camp­bell, Kaye, Frieden, Crist, Flumignan, Borcherts, Paoletti, Rosemoor, and Martinez, ten men. His ten men. Martinez clowning, saying that to really guard the house, they ought to be inside, where the owner was watching the Red Wings on his satellite television. Joining in the laughter, feeling good, the air soft with the approach of sunset, already tasting the ice-cold Gatorade that would be waiting in the chow hall.

Then the sound of the engine. The joking vanishing instantly, re­placed by operational paranoia. They'd moved as a team, weapons fixed, positions good, covering the entrance to the courtyard. He'd led from the front, the first to step onto the winding alley that fronted the place.  [Underlining added.]

"It was an ambulance, an old diesel job with black smoke coming out the back," he said. "I heard a loud pop, sounded like a blown tire."

—from page 175 of At the City’s Edge