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
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.
