My struggle with third person POV
Sometimes third just feels a little idk... fake? Or less voice-y and intimate
This is the second piece in a two-part series about point-of-view and tense. Part 1, on first person, is here.
Works Discussed: "Cut" Catherine Lacey | Good Women Halle Hill | Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Gabrielle Zevin | Hurricane Season Fernanda Melchor | Tenth of December George Saunders | Normal People Sally Rooney | Cleopatra & Frankenstein Coco Mellors | If I Close My Eyes Ben Fama | Beautyland Marie-Helene Bertino
There’s a part of me that struggles to buy into the reality of third person, especially when writing it. Like, if I start a short story with “Mary was looking out the window, considering calling her sister,” there’s a voice in my head taunting me, saying, “Oooh, look at you, Kristen, writing your fake ass little stories. What silly made up thing are you going to have Mary do next?”
I don’t have this feeling of fraudulence when I write things in first person. I mean, yes, I still feel like a fraud in the sense that I worry my writing sucks, but I don’t have this embarrassing feeling of making stuff up, even when I am making stuff up entirely, or writing a first person fictional “I” that’s demographically dissimilar to myself.
And I don’t struggle with this as much when reading other people’s third person novels, though I sometimes do with short stories. With novels, I usually adjust, but with short stories it can be harder—the shorter the piece, the quicker I want to be drawn in. A more voice-y or stylized third person helps, as does a third person narrator who acknowledges they’re a storyteller or tells me that a story is about to go down. Yes, weirdly, it is stories that call attention to their own fakery that actually make me believe them more.
Here’s a third-person story I really like, “Cut” by Catherine Lacey, which does just that. This is how it opens:
There’s no good way to say it—Peggy woke up most mornings oddly sore, sore in the general region of her asshole. She felt an acute burn when she used the toilet, and found traces of blood in the crotch of her pajamas. Later—clots. This may be unpleasant to consider, may even be a bad place to begin, but if there were a nicer way to tell this story it wouldn’t be this story.
A great opening. I mean, that first sentence gets your attention, obviously. But I also like how in the paragraph’s last sentence the narrator acknowledges that they’re telling a story (“if there were a nicer way to tell this story it wouldn’t be this story”) and even gets a bit self-conscious about whether they’re beginning the story from a gross or unpleasant place.
Similar things can be accomplished by simply starting with a writerly sentence. It doesn’t have to be something that directly references its own storytelling. For example, I’m in the middle of reading Good Women by Halle Hill and the story “Honest Work” (the only third person story in the collection, the others are in first) starts with this sentence: “Days this bad belonged to Maudette.” I just like the sound and cadence of that sentence. It’s somewhat odd and writerly, but I buy into the story more than if we had just started with what Maudette is doing, which is driving to work.
Does anyone else feel this way or is it only me who has some weird reality problem with the third person?
Getting voice-y with third person omniscient
As both a writer and a reader, one of the most important things to me is voice; sometimes, I think voice is everything. If I like the voice, it doesn’t really matter what the novel is “about” or whether it’s centered around thematic material that aligns with my usual wheelhouse of interests and obsessions. I like to write voice-y too, and for me, it’s simply a lot harder to be voice-y in third person than first. But some writers can do it, in either of the two main types of third person: third person limited and third person omniscient.
I’m actually going to begin with third person omniscient, which, as you probably know, is when a story is told by a godlike narrator who sees and knows all and can jump into any character’s feelings and back stories at any time. It’s less commonly used, because frankly, it’s hard to pull off. Jump around too much and you’ll be head hopping. I’ve always been told head hopping is bad, but until writing this post, I didn’t really question why. Two reasons: one, it is often attempted by a beginning writer whose skill isn’t yet at the level to pull it off, but even if it’s done well, it’s still a technique that calls too much attention to itself. As viewers, we love an ambitious tracking shot, where the camera swiftly travels from character to character, but as readers, I think we are far less into the prose equivalent of that, so if you’re gonna try it, you really better have the technical chops.1
Anyway, you don’t see a ton of third person omniscient going down in today’s novels. I think the main reason to do it is if you plan to make the third person narrator a character. I don’t mean they have to appear in the story (though you could do this too, maybe they have a cameo), I mean that the narrator will occasionally stop their objective narration to editorialize on events, cast judgment about one of the characters’ actions, or, if the action of the novel is happening decades ago, somewhat condescendingly tell you how society was during the time of the novel’s events, like some Boomer uncle ranting about how great life was back in his day.
I hear Middlemarch does this, but I’ve already explained that I’ve never read that, so my contemporary example of third person editorial omniscient is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. The narrator of this recent popular novel primarily stays within the heads of the main characters, Sadie and Sam, but it moves pretty fluidly between their two perspectives, sometimes within the same chapter, and it will occasionally take diversions into the perspective of Marx (the third most important character), and sometimes, if only for a paragraph or two, jump into the perspective of a really small side character. For most of the story, the narrator stays invisible. The focus is on Sam and Sadie’s friendship and working relationship, their relations with others, and the growth of their video game company.
Then, all of a sudden, you’ll get a paragraph like this:
In 2005, people from the U.S. sent, on average, four hundred sixty text messages a year.
Texts were treated and written more like telegrams than conversations. The brevity lent these early texts an almost poetry.
Sadie and Marx had texted only a couple dozen times during their relationship. They had no need for texting. They were usually together, at work or at home.
Who is offering this opening fact and subsequent opinion on how people texted in 2005? Not any of the characters. Zevin could have easily opened this section with “Sadie and Marx had texted only a couple dozen times during their relationship” but she doesn’t. Clearly, this is the narrator pontificating.
There are other places where this god-like narrator makes themselves known in the novel, and it happens enough times that it’s clearly an intentional choice. Since much of the novel’s setting is in the video game world and industry, my guess is that this voice is meant to mimic the godlike sensation gamers can feel playing video games.2
I get a sense that the narrator of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is its own presence, but it’s still subtle. It’s not particularly very voice-y, nor do I really envision who that narrative entity is.
On the opposite end is Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season (translated by Sophie Hughes), one of my absolute favorite novels of the last five years. I guess you could say Hurricane Season is told in third person omniscient, but really, it’s more appropriate to say that it is a tale told by a raunchy, foul-mouthed entity that can haunt and possess any character at will. Similarly, it’s an understatement to say the narrator jumps from the mind of one character to another, no, Hurricane Season is more like being avalanched with voices, lol. The narrator can move from narrating a character’s actions to quickly inhabiting their speech in something that feels close to first person, and then later speak in the town’s voice in what feels like a first person plural. I can’t really break out an example of this, because it would be as long as this entire post. The novel is told in several sections, none of which break for a single paragraph, and the sentences themselves are manic and long.
Mesha Maren’s review describes the experience of Hurricane Season very well:
Though most of the book is written in a semi-omniscient third person it has the close-to-the-throat feeling of a private confession. The town itself seems to want to vomit out its guilty defense in a torrent as long and muddy as the canal where the body was found.
And here is Gabino Iglesias’ review:
Sentences that take up two or three pages sound like a horrible reading experience, but Melchor pulls it off brilliantly — I never felt lost, or confused by her style, probably because the voices sound like a regular person telling someone a story instead of an author trying to impress readers with literary filigrees.
Both reviews imply that the narration has a lot in common with oral storytelling and I agree. I sort of envisioned the narrator as being a town gossip, someone who likes to lewdly narrate everybody’s business and story, and maybe what she is saying is true and maybe it isn’t.
In general, I think the key to staying as voice-y as possible in third person is imagining who your third person narrator is, even if you’re not envisioning the narrator as an actual character, or even if you’re just picturing them as yourself, the author.
Getting voice-y with third person limited
Third person limited is the more popular mode of third person these days. It’s similar to first person, in that the third person narrator knows only the thoughts and feelings of one character. That limit might not extend to the whole book. Like first person, it might alternate between dual perspectives, or multiple perspectives, but the narrator will generally stay with a single character for a chapter.
Third person limited is a bit more tidy than third person omniscient. I had a harder time finding third person limited examples that have the same humor a first person narrator can have, or that same intimacy between narrator and reader. Most of the third person limited novels I enjoy I’m primarily enjoying for the characters or plot. And if there’s humor, it’s often not coming from the voice, but from situation and dialogue.
The best examples I could think of are well-known stylists, writers whose style transcends whether they’re writing in first or third, and you can find their defining or signature traits across their work, no matter what POV they’re writing in.
George Saunders is one of those writers. Patricia Lockwood said that Saunders' stories work from familiar templates, and names them in the second paragraph of this review. Lockwood, like she does toward the subjects of many of her LRB reviews, shows deep affection for Saunders while also not shying away from thoughtful criticism or cracking a few playful jokes. I want to talk about “Frantic Forty-Car-Pile-Up of an Inner Monologue” which is one template of his she mentions, because it’s a signature part of the Saunders voice, whether he’s writing in first or third person.
Here’s Saunders doing frantic forty-car-pile-up of an inner monologue in first, in “The Semplica-Girl Diaries” a story from Tenth of December:
Because what do we know of other times really? How clothes smelled and carriages sounded? Will future people know, for example, about sound of airplanes going over at night, since airplanes by that time passé? Will future people know sometimes cats fought in night? Because by that time some chemical invented to make cats not fight? Last night dreamed of two demons having sex and found it was only two cats fighting outside window. Will future people be aware of concept of “demons”? Will they find our belief in “demons” quaint? Will “windows” even exist? Interesting to future generations that even sophisticated college grad like me sometimes woke in cold sweat, thinking of demons, believing one possibly under bed? Anyway, what the heck, am not planning on writing encyclopedia, if any future person is reading this, if you want to know what a “demon” was, go look it up, in something called an encyclopedia, if you even still have those!
Now, here’s Saunders doing frantic forty-car-pile-up of an inner monologue in third, in “Victory Lap” also from Tenth of December:
Was she special? Did she consider herself special? Oh, gosh, she didn’t know. In the history of the world many had been more special than her. Helen Keller had been awesome; Mother Teresa was amazing; Mrs. Roosevelt was quite chipper in spite of her husband, who was handicapped, which, in addition, she had been gay, with those big old teeth, long before such time as being gay and First Lady was even conceptual. She, Alison, could not hope to compete in the category of those ladies. Not yet, anyway!
Lol. On the flip side is Sally Rooney, who would probably avoid her characters having manic interior monologues like the plague. Think of how her voice and writing style are typically described—sparse, austere, understated, and maybe even a bit cold. No one would accuse her writing of being lyrical and I think she’d prefer it that way. Those qualities of her writing exist whether she’s writing first (Conversations with Friends) or third (Normal People). I actually think those qualities in her voice shine stronger in Normal People.
I don’t think it hurts that both George Saunders and Sally Rooney are famous writers, and therefore additional “voice” is generated by literally hearing their voices when I read. Also here’s one Saunders template Lockwood didn’t include: Guy-has-a-restraint-put-on-his-language-and-this-results-in-unique-sentence-construction-that’s-both-funny-and-sad. This is actually my favorite type of Saunders story. Examples include the weird shorthand the diarist uses in the previously quoted “The Semplica-Girl Diaries” or the reprogrammed mind of Elliott Spencer in “Elliott Spencer.” I can’t imagine that technique done in anything but first person. So, maybe my argument here is falling apart. After all this, my favorites are still in first.
Mix up third person with sections in other POVs or formats
Another way to break out of third person narration is to literally mix it up with another POV. As I mentioned earlier, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is primarily third-person omniscient, but there is a show-stopping section that switches to second person, which many people cite as the most heartbreaking part.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors also does this. Most of the novel is told in a rotating limited third, following Cleo and Frank and several other supporting characters, but never really calling attention to itself. And then this character Eleanor comes along, who is written in first person and in very stylized fragments.3 A risky move, but it works, and what I think is most impressive about this novel is how you actually end up rooting for this other woman, who is arriving midway through the book and essentially comes between the two title characters.
You can also break up your third person voice with epistolary documents. Ben Fama’s If I Close My Eyes is told in third person limited and follows the protagonist Jesse for the entire novel, but that’s broken up by text message exchanges, gossip columns, script field notes, and The New York Times Night Out-style profiles. These all contribute to the novel’s Hollywood fame-obsessed setting, where actual celebrities make cameos and even appear in scenes as significant secondary characters.
I hope these examples have been helpful, if, like me, you struggle with writing third person because it feels fake, less voice-y, less intimate, or any other reason. Here’s this post’s TLDR:
Lean into the fakery of third person. Let the reader know you’re telling a story by either directly referencing that it’s a story, or using another writerly device of artifice.
Picture who your third person narrator is, or at least imagine their characteristics. Are they a chatty, town gossip? A supernatural entity? Or are they you, the author?
Be such a strong and consistent stylist that your third person by default is voice-y
Break up your third person with some first, second, or epistolary documents
I say all this, but like most advice, it’s easier to give than follow yourself. What do you think are the most interesting examples of novels written in third person?
。:˚ ༘♡⋆。Misc. links。.。∞♡* ⋆。
I’m currently reading Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland, which is told in third-person present omniscient—a unique POV and tense! It centers around Adina, a young girl who may also be an extraterrestrial. So far, the narration closely follows only Adina, but it’s editorial omniscient because the narrator also places Adina’s life in the wider context of human history. I recommend Marie-Helene Bertino’s Otherppl with Brad Listi episode. She talks about switching the novel’s POV from first to third. I also like her transparency about writing rejections and her point that, unlike more traditional jobs, writers never really reach an age of retirement.
To be honest, I’m often not that into it in film or television either. I feel like I watch episodes of The Bear and want to scream, ‘OK, I get it, you did this in one take!’
I don’t really consider Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow to be a book about video games. It’s mostly about people who love to work, and feel most comfortable when working. It’s also about how in America, as in gaming, we divide the world into winners and losers. And what’s the point of that? In the end, we all lose and reach the inevitable game over.
I’ve seen reviews compare the fragmented Eleanor chapters to everybody from Lorrie Moore to Patricia Lockwood to Jenny Offill, but c’mon, the main inspiration is Mary Robison’s brilliant Why Did I Ever.