The Final View: Third Individual Omniscient vs. Third Individual Restricted vs. First particular person
As an editor, vision problems are among the most common mistakes that inexperienced writers make, and they immediately undermine the credibility and trust of readers. However, the view is not easy since there are so many to choose from: first person, third person limited, third person omniscient, second person.
What do they mean anyway? And how do you choose the right one for your story?
All stories are written from one perspective. However, if the point of view goes wrong – and believe me, it often goes wrong – you are threatening your trust in your reader and breaking his unbelief.
However, the point of view is easy to master if you use common sense.
This article defines the viewpoint, discusses the most important POVs, explains some of the POV rules and then points out the most important pitfalls that authors make when dealing with this viewpoint.
View definition
The position or POV relates to two things in writing:
- A point of view in a discussion, argument, or nonfiction is an opinion of how you think about a topic.
- In a story, the point of view is the narrator's position in describing events.
In this article, we focus on defining the second point of view. The first definition is helpful for non-fiction authors. For more information, I recommend reading Wikipedia's neutral view.
The point of view comes from the Latin word "punctum visus", which literally means "point view", which indicates that you are showing your point of view there.
I especially like the German word for it, the point of view, translated point of view or where your face shows. Isn't that a good picture for the point of view?
Also note that the point of view is sometimes referred to as “narrative mode”.
Why perspective is so important
Why is the perspective so important?
Because view filters everything in your story. Everything in your story has to come from one perspective.
That is, if you do something wrong, your entire story will be damaged.
For example, I just finished a writing competition for Becoming Writer. I've personally read and rated over ninety stories, and I've found visual errors in about twenty percent of them, including some stories that would have been much higher if only the authors hadn't made the mistakes we'll talk about later.
The worst thing is that these mistakes can be easily avoided if you are aware of them. However, before we look at general point of view errors, let's go through all four types of POV.
The 4 perspectives
Here are the four main POV types in fiction:
- First person point of view. The first person is when "I" tells the story. The character is in the story and tells his experiences directly.
- Second person perspective. The story is told to "you". This POV is not common in fiction, but it is still good to know (it is common in non-fiction).
- Third person perspective, limited. The story is about "he" or "she". This is the most common point of view in commercial fiction. The narrator is outside of the story and tells the experiences of a character.
- Third person perspective, omniscient. The story is still about "he" or "she", but the narrator has full access to the thoughts and experiences of all characters in the story.
I know that you have seen and probably used most of these points of view.
Let's use examples to discuss each of the four types to see how they affect your story. We'll also go through the rules for each type, but first let me explain the big mistake you don't want to make from the point of view:
Don't make this point of view wrong
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Once you've chosen a point of view, stick to it.
Don't start your story in the first person and then switch to the third person. Don't start with a limited third person and then abruptly give your narrator full omniscience.
The guideline that I learned in my first college creative writing class is good:
State the point of view in the first two paragraphs of your story.
And above all, don't change your point of view. Doing so will compromise your reader's trust and can damage the architecture of your story.
Besides thatI recently finished a 7,000-page novel called Worm that uses two points of view – the first person with interludes from the third person – very effectively. By the way, if you are looking for a novel that you can read in the next two to six months, I can only recommend it (here is the link that you can read online for free).
When the author changed his mind for the first time, he almost lost my trust. However, he kept this dual POV consistent over 7,000 pages and made it work.
Regardless of which view you take, be consistent.
First person point of view
From the first person point of view, the narrator is in the story and tells of the events that he or she personally experiences.
Example from the perspective of the first person:
Call me Ishmael. A few years ago – no matter how long – I had little or no money in my handbag and nothing special that interested me on land. I thought I would sail a little and see the watery part of the world.
– Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The first person point of view is one of the most common POVs in fiction. If you haven't read a book from the first person's perspective, you haven't read yet.
What makes this point of view interesting and challenging is that all events in the story are filtered by the narrator and explained in his own voice. This means that the first-person narrative is both biased and incomplete.
The first-person narrative is unique for writing
There is no first person in film or theater – although voice-over and mockumentary interviews like those in The Office and Modern Family provide a level of first-person narration in film and television for the third person.
In fact, the very first novels were written in the first person, modeled on popular magazines and autobiographies.
The position of the first person is limited
First-person narrators cannot be everywhere at the same time and therefore cannot cover all sides of the story. They tell their story, not necessarily the story.
The first person point of view is biased
In ego novels, the reader almost always sympathizes with an ego narrator, even if the narrator is an antihero with big mistakes.
For this reason, of course, we love the first-person narrative because it is permeated with the personality of the character and his unique perspective on the world.
Unreliable narrator. Some novelists use the limitations of the first-person narrative to surprise the reader. This technique is called an unreliable narrator. The audience discovers that the version of the narrator's events cannot be trusted.
For example, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl juxtaposes two unreliable storytellers, each relating their contradicting version of events, one through typical stories and one through diary entries.
Other interesting uses of the first-person narrative:
- The classic novel Heart of Darkness is actually a first-person narrative within a first-person narrative. The narrator literally tells the story that Charles Marlow tells of his journey up the Congo while sitting in the port of England.
- William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom is told from the first person point of view by Quentin Compson; However, most of the story is a third-person account by Thomas Sutpen, his grandfather, as told by Rosa Coldfield to Quentin. Yes, it's as complicated as it sounds!
- Salman Rushdie's award-winning midnight children are told in the first person, but spend most of the first several hundred pages describing the narrator's ancestors in the third person. It's still the first person, just a first-person narrator, to tell a story about someone else.
2 big mistakes that authors make from the first person point of view
When writing in first person, there are two main mistakes that authors make:
1. The narrator is not personable. Your protagonist doesn't have to be a cliché hero. It doesn't even have to be good. However, it must be interesting. The audience won't stay for 300 pages and hear a character they don't like. This is one reason why antiheroes are great first-person narrators. They may not be perfect morally, but they are almost always interesting.
2. The narrator tells but doesn't show. The danger with the first person is that you spend too much time in your character's head and explain what he thinks and how he feels in the situation. You can mention the character's mood, but don't forget that the trust and attention of your readers depends on what your character does and not what he thinks.
Second person point of view
Although it's not often used in fiction – it's used regularly in nonfiction, lyrics, and even video games – POV is still easy to understand for the second person.
From this point of view, the narrator tells the experience of another character called "you". In this way you become the protagonist, you carry the plot and your destiny determines the story.
We wrote elsewhere about why you should try writing in the second person, but in short, we like the second person because it:
- Draws the reader into the storyline
- Make history personal
- Surprises the reader
- Broaden your writing skills
Here is an example of the second person perspective:
You have friends who actually take care of you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them lately. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you can tidy it up a little you don't want to invite anyone.
– Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
Novels that use the second person point of view. The second person point of view is not used often, but there are some notable examples.
Do you remember the Choose Your Own Adventure series? If you've ever read one of these novels where you can decide the character's fate (unfortunately I always killed my character), you've read the second person's story.
Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney's best-selling breakout about New York nightlife and the drug scene in the 1980s, is probably the most popular example of a second-person novel.
However, there are many experimental novels and short stories that use the second person, and writers such as William Faulkner, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Albert Camus played with the style.
Break the fourth wall. In William Shakespeare's plays, a character sometimes turns to the audience and speaks directly to them. "If we insulted shadows," Puck says in a midsummer night's dream, "you think, but this and everything is fixed that you only slept here while these visions appeared."
This technique of speaking directly to the audience or the reader is called breaking the fourth wall (the other three walls are the scene of the story). In other words, this allows the author to briefly use the second person in a first or third person story.
It makes a lot of fun! You should try it.
Third person perspective
In the third person, the narrator is outside of the story and tells the experiences of a character. The central figure is not the narrator. In fact, the narrator is not present in the story at all.
An example of a limited third person perspective:
A breeze whirled through the manicured hedges of Privet Drive, which lay quietly and neatly under the sky, the very last place where amazing things were to be expected. Harry Potter rolled into his blanket without waking up. A small hand closed the letter next to him and he continued to sleep without knowing that he was special, without knowing that he was famous … He couldn't know that at that moment people were meeting secretly across the country , holding up her glasses and saying with muffled voices: "To Harry Potter – the boy who lived!"
– Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
There are two types of this view:
Third person omniscient
The narrator has full access to all the thoughts and experiences of all characters in the story.
Third Party Limited
The narrator has little, if any, access to the thoughts and experiences of the characters in the story, often only to one character.
However, this distinction is messy and somewhat artificial. Complete omniscience in novels is rare – it is almost always limited in some way – if only because the human mind does not like to deal with all thoughts and emotions of several people at the same time.
The most important consideration from a third person perspective is the following:
How omniscient will you be? How deep will you go into your character's thoughts? Will you read her thoughts frequently and deeply on every occasion? Or will you rarely, if ever, immerse yourself in your feelings?
To see this question in action, imagine a couple having an argument. Tina wants Fred to go to the store to pick up the coriander that she forgot for the food she cooks. Fred is frustrated that she didn't ask him to pick up the cilantro on the way home from the office before putting on his "homey" clothes (AKA boxer shorts).
If the narrator is completely omniscient, do you analyze both Fred and Tina's emotions during each back and forth?
"Do you want to eat? If you do that, you have to get coriander instead of acting like a rotten pig," said Tina, thinking I can't believe I married this idiot. At least he had a six-pack back then, not that hairy belly.
"Find out, Tina. I'm tired of rushing to the store every time you forget something, ”said Fred. He felt the anger pulsate through his big belly.
The alternation between the emotions of several characters can cause whiplash to a reader, especially if this pattern continues over several pages and with more than two characters. This is an example of an omniscient narrator who may find it a little too convenient to explain the characters' inner workings.
"Show, don't tell," we are told. Sharing all the emotions of all of your characters can become a distraction. It can even destroy any tension you have built up.
Drama requires puzzles. If the reader knows the emotions of each character all the time, there is no place for drama.
How do you deal well with omniscient third parties?
Many editors and many famous authors deal with this by showing the thoughts and feelings of only one character per scene or chapter.
For example, George R. R. Martin uses "viewpoint" characters, which he always has full access to. He will write a full chapter from their perspective before moving on to the next point of view. For the rest of the cast, he stays out of their heads.
This is an effective guideline, if not a strict rule, and I would recommend it to any lead author who experiments with third-party narratives. Overall, the principle that should be shown should not be your guide.
The third person's greatest omniscient viewpoint error
The biggest mistake writers constantly make in third person is Bounce head. If you switch between the points of view too quickly or dive into the heads of too many characters at the same time, there is a danger that the editors will call this "head hopping".
If the narrator changes from one character's thoughts to another's thoughts too quickly, this can shake the reader and break the intimacy with the main character of the scene.
We wrote about how you can get away with headhopping elsewhere, but it's a good idea to avoid having more than one character in your mind per scene or chapter.
What point of view will you use?
Please note that these distances should be viewed as areas and not as accurate calculations. A third-person narrator might be closer to the reader than a first-person narrator.
There is no best point of view. If you are just starting out, I would encourage you to use either the limited first or third person perspective as these are easy to understand.
However, that shouldn't stop you from experimenting.
Whatever you choose, be consistent. Avoid the mistakes I mentioned from every point of view.
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And above all, have fun.
What about you? What four points of view did you use in your letter? Share in the comments.
WORK OUT
From a perspective you have never used before, write a short story about a teenager who has just discovered that he or she has superpowers. Be sure to avoid the POV errors listed in the article above.
Write for fifteen minutes. When your time is up, post your practice in the comment section. And when you post, please give feedback to your co-writers.
Have fun writing!
Joe Bunting
