On December 16, 2023, Kasie and Rex took on the 3rd person narrator. Here are the show notes:

Theme for the day

Third Person Narrators

Agenda

• Quick Catch Up
• What is a 3rd person narrator
• Strengths and Weaknesses of the 3rd POV
• How to decide if 3rd POV is right for you

Listen to the podcast

Segment 1

Couple of paired episodes last week and this one. Last week we took on first person narrators. Some good discussion (if I do say so myself) on collective first person (we, us) and the limitations of the first person narrator, including the establishment of unreliability.

This week we take on the other point of view (POV) – third person. This is all those stories with the “he she they” characters. Increasingly we see a desire for “close” third so we’ll unpack that and help you identify third person when you see it.

BUT FIRST! Next week is listener appreciation week and we’ll be joined in studio by a couple of fans of us and the show. Our moms! Well, it’s Rex’s mom and my mother-in-law but she’s been my Mama for 20+ years so we’ll call her mom, too. If you want to weigh in on the show, complete this feedback form.

As always, Write On SC is grateful for the support of the South Carolina Writers Association. We have accepted the organization’s patronage this year and it’s helped us pay our bills and keep the lights on as they say. Thank you, SCWA for supporting the show and promoting our efforts to make better writers (and readers!) out of the audience on 100.7 The Point and our podcast audience, too.

Let’s get to it: What is a 3rd person narrator?

The narrator is the one telling the story and while sometimes the story is through the character’s eyes (1st person), a LOT of times, it’s more like a camera perched on one (or more) character’s shoulder observing what’s happening.

Back in Episode 83: Who’s Story is this Anyway? We talked about the different POVs. So we’ll borrow some from that. That was during COVID so we mighta been a little kooky. But then, before that, in Episode 56, way back in 2019, we also talked about this POV thing. So we’ll borrow some from then, too. I even did this was back on Episode 3 with my cousin Preston, who, not for nothin, now has a PhD in Literature and teaches out at Stanford. Back then I think he was still an undergrad.

So the primary advantage of third person is distance. Imagine reading all of Harry Potter’s books living in that kid’s head. Yikes. Third person lets the narrator tell the story, follow the character, but keep enough distance that we’re not bogged down with the internal monologue of our (likely) troubled protagonist.

What are some books that do a good third person?

So Fight Club is a third-person narrator which might surprise you if you know (spoiler) that the main character (whose name we never learn) spends most of the story battling his alter ego, Tyler Durden. IMPORTANT LESSON – so I went looking for examples of 3rd person narrators and found this link with lists of example books. It said “Fight Club” and I thought, “noooo…” so I pulled it off my shelf and sure enough, Fight Club is first person. Which I knew because some of you know I wrote my master’s thesis on Fight Club.

So what’s the lesson? Some bloggers are lying to you. Like this one. They have The Great Gatsby as an example of a third person omniscient point of view. ABSURD.

Segment 2

Third person narrators come in three styles:

Totally removed from the story, but a character nonetheless – this type of narrator comments on the actions of the story, editorializes if you will. This was popular in the American Literature of Henry James’ era. Think The Portrait of a Lady:

“The prospect made her heart beat and her cheeks burn, as I say, in advance; there were moments when, in her wish to avoid an open rapture, she found herself wishing Ralph would start even at the risk.”

The “I” in the passage is never part of the story, but only reporting on the story from some distance though we don’t really know what that distance is or how they come to know what Isabel thinks or feels.

Totally removed from the story and not offering commentary at all. Removed as much as possible. This is the Hemingway-era style. From To Have and Have Not:

“The man, Harry Morgan, believed this sound was in his own belly and it seemed to him now that his belly was big as a lake and that it sloshed on both shores at once.”

The narrator knows what Harry Morgan thinks but doesn’t insert his own thoughts on the story.

Tightly attached to the main character. 

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is Coriolanus Snow’s story predating The Hunger Games series and we only ever see scenes with Coriolanus in them. That’s what we mean by close it means that the main POV character is in every scene of the book.

“As Coriolanus watched Lucy Gray Baird take the stage, he felt a stab of uneasiness. Could she be mentally unstable? There was something vaguely familiar but disturbing about her.”

His thought about her being unstable is his thought, but we don’t get the italics of direct inner monologue. Not until he talks to himself:

Put down the gun, he told himself, but his hands refused to cooperate. All she has is a knife. A big knife. The best he could manage was to sling the gun onto his back.

Segment 3

The strengths of the 3rd person narrator:

• Avoid the possibility of people being turned off by or annoyed by the main character’s internal monologue.
• Avoid the exhaustion of being totally along for the ride with everything the character thinks and feels.
• Able to shift POVs by chapter or section of the story – name the chapters and follow a different character for each one like Martin does in Song of Ice and Fire.
• Able to see things the main character maybe doesn’t see. Unless you’re in close, then you’ll only see what he sees.

The weaknesses of the 3rd person narrator:

• There can be less connection with the character – readers are watching, observing, but not necessarily feeling.
• Depending on the number of characters, the reader could get confused or be so disconnected as to not keep up with the story. (Example: Anna Karenina)

Segment 4

So how do you decide? Borrowing from Episode 83:

Here’s one blog of advice. Highlights: Who’s carrying the camera? When we think about choosing who will tell the story we need to ask “Who’s story is it?” Here’s another blog of 7 steps to choosing: 

• choose the level of knowledge you want your narrator to have, 
• choose what point in time you’re writing about, and 
• how many narrators you will have.