Graphic by Peg Ihinger
Tight-third-person is currently one of the most common choices for viewpoint, particularly in genre fiction. It has a lot of advantages. It’s very character-focused, almost as much as first-person. It allows for more narrative flexibility than first person. It makes it easy to switch viewpoints without confusing anyone if the writer wants a multiple viewpoint structure.
There are, of course, also disadvantages. The writer is limited to what the viewpoint character knows at any given time. This, in turn, can seriously limit what the reader knows about the thoughts and motivations of other characters, especially if the viewpoint character is…a bit socially inept or not very good with people. (This can be either a bug or a feature–in a murder mystery, for instance, it is often desirable to be less than candid about what non-viewpoint characters are thinking.)
One of the major disadvantages I’ve been running into lately is that it is much easier for a tight-third-person viewpoint character to disappear during certain parts of a story than it is for a first-person viewpoint character. The first-person character is always right there, in the voice of all the narrative, all the description, everything that does or doesn’t get noticed. My first-person characters are always commenting in their heads on what they think about what they see and what other characters are doing and saying. They wonder why the carpets haven’t been replaced, or where that odd bug came from. They complain mentally about not liking Aunt Amelia’s lima beans, or about how that clumsy swordsman almost hit them by accident. They comment on and react to almost everything.
My tight-third characters don’t do that as much, but they still do it. Except when they suddenly don’t. And I’ve noticed two things recently: first, that this seems to be something that happens to quite a few authors, and second, that it seems to happen to different authors in different places, depending on how much they have to concentrate on what’s going on in a particular scene.
For me, my tight-third viewpoint character often disappears into the woodwork when I’m writing one of those scenes where a million characters are all talking at once. Crowd scenes and council scenes. I’m so busy concentrating on making sure that everybody gets a chance to talk or do things without bogging the scene down that the viewpoint character’s inner voice and emotional reactions get lost in the shuffle. It’s as if I suddenly shift into camera-eye third-person, so that I don’t have to fuss over my POV’s inner monolog and emotional reactions. I have to go back and layer the viewpoint character in during the second draft.
Among the other writers who seem to have a similar thing going on, one seems to lose track of the viewpoint character’s inner voice when they are in an intense dialog. Another writer I know suddenly switches to an almost academic tone whenever they want to convey background information about people or places the POV is encountering, even when the POV obviously knows these things and could tell us (readers) for themself. A third writer’s viewpoint switches from internal to external/objective the minute the action starts. A fourth’s viewpoint character vanishes whenever some plot-important new people or places arrive on scene for the first time.
I see three possible reasons for this: 1) The writer finds a particular kind of scene to be consistently challenging, and always has to concentrate really hard on getting all the various aspects of that sort of scene down on paper in a satisfactory manner. In the process, they lose track of the viewpoint character’s voice, thoughts, and reactions to what is going on, even if the viewpoint character is an active participant in the scene and not just an observer. 2) The writer finds a certain type of scene really conducive to getting on a roll, and they get so busy putting down the key action/dialog/descriptive elements as fast as possible that they lose track of the viewpoint character’s voice, etc. 3) The writer has no idea how to write this particular type of thing from a tight-third-person viewpoint.
Number 3 is a matter of noticing where the viewpoint is getting lost and then figuring out how other writers handle the problem. Sometimes, it only takes the noticing part, because the writer already knows how to do it, they just got into the habit of avoiding it for these bits a long time ago.
I’m not sure there is any way to keep either of the other two things from happening, so those require after-the-fact revision. Scenes that are challenging or that require significant concentration are going to happen from time to time, and may not be all that predictable. Scenes where one gets on a roll are something every writer I know wishes would happen, preferably as often as possible. If they need a little revision after that first white-hot draft, it’s really a small price to pay.
Knowing that one’s viewpoint character tends to disappear sometimes makes it easier to add back those internal reactions and comments in a revisions pass. I’ve also found that once I’ve realized which scenes I tend to do this in, I’m more aware of it in the first draft. Even if I don’t want to slow down just to get that viewpoint character’s voice back, I can leave myself a note to “Check viewpoint in this part.” for my first revision pass. And fairly often, just being aware that “Oh, yeah, this is one of those $%*#@ crowd scenes–I need to remember my viewpoint character” is enough that I’ll get at least a few reactions in on the first pass.
Sometimes it is simply a matter of rephrasing something or adding a few words. “George snickered quietly at the wizard’s shocked expression” instead of “The wizard looked shocked.” Or “Every Centaurian she’d ever met was paranoid about dust bunnies. Something to do with the weather on their home planet, she thought” rather than “Most Galactics do not understand the Centaurians’ fear of dust clumps, which results from the environment of Beta Centauri III.”
I used to have a similar problem that went something like this: come up with interesting character > interesting character is more interesting when seen from the outside > add a different character to be the POV > viewpoint character has no personality aside from being a pair of eyes to observe the first character through.
I think I’ve gotten better about this over the years, but it’s still tempting to fall into sometimes.
A fourth possibility is that the character really is someone who shifts into being a neutral observer under certain circumstances, putting his thoughts and emotions on hold and becoming a living camera that provides a camera-eye POV. In a council scene, for example, he might be too busy concentrating on who was saying what to come up with any internal dialog of his own.
After an entire book in tight third from Ryan’s point of view–including the scene where he and Zara meet for the first time–I’m writing from Zara’s point of view, and she is showing a regrettable tendency to guess or notice Ryan’s reactions instead of supplying her own. (It’s better when he’s offstage, for obvious reasons.)
I think it won’t be in the book, but I should write that meeting scene from Zara’s POV too, and make it very emphatically Zara. And in the book 1/book 2 POV transition, I should also rewrite the transition scene from Kay to Ryan–they are structurally parallel–emphatically from Ryan’s POV. It might help with some perspective issues in the early chapters of 2.
Haven’t often realized I needed to write a scene that definitely isn’t in the book. Thanks for the insight!
I once criticized a story where the viewpoint character was watching a destructive mob from a rooftop, and he vanished.
I once described it online and was told that that meant the viewpoint was the wrong character. *sigh*. Leaving aside that breaking viewpoint for one scene is folly, there is the little matter that no one else actually could see the mob and its actions as a whole, so no other character was feasible.
Probably a better solution, if a given project constantly wants to show each bit from the “best” POV and never settles on one character, would be omni. It’s a bit out of fashion and I know if I were to try it, I’d need to work extra hard; but it’s tailor-made for this.
Tolkien has one tiny scene from the point of view of *a random fox that sees the hobbits in the woods*. I think even for the “bestseller third” where you switch POV very freely, that’s probably too much; better be omni (as indeed, overall, it is).
I didn’t think I’d have anything to contribute here, because I only use third-person in short stuff. I love the immersiveness of first person.
But is there any “vanishing first person” out there? I can’t think of any offhand.
@ KWJ —
At that point, it would become camera-eye, I think. If possibly from a videocam held by only one cameraperson, who might move around.
Any other sensory data than sight and sound — touch, smell, taste — would put the viewpoint back inside a person, even without their thoughts.
Ta, L.
That makes sense.
I had some vague recollection of the “I” in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ frame stories for Tarzan and the first Barsoom novels – but a frame story viewpoint disappearing surely doesn’t count.
It seems intuitively obvious to me that if you can have this problem in very tight third, you can have it in first as well. I’d think it would involve sliding into narrating stuff in a flat encyclopedia mode when the first-person POV should be reacting: as Lois says, sliding into camera-eye would do it too.
Le Guin says in _Steering the Craft_ that the omni narrator can look at the bowl of fruit but can’t taste it, and Lois sees to be saying the same: but why? Why can you be a disembodied eye but not a disembodied tongue? Is it mainly because film does “disembodied” sight and hearing but not the other senses?
Camera 3rd might be disembodied sight and hearing, although that almost seems to be taking ‘what a camera captures’ too seriously.
I don’t have the context for Le Guin’s idea, but:
As far as omniscient-ish perspective goes, my guess is that ‘tasting’ the fruit implies getting too close to it (plus it is more visceral, but aren’t we supposed to employ the senses?) The bowl of fruit is precisely in its place. Tasting the fruit or touching the fruit seems to imply you are where it is, as well. Noting that the fruit is on the table, even seeing that it is purple, doesn’t place you at a vantage point, so you can continue to pretend you aren’t a particular character. Likewise, you don’t have to be directly under a tree to hear it fall in a forest.
But then, you aren’t just an observer imbibing the scene from somewhere– you are specifically placed in it. So sight and audio don’t pinpoint the observer down as much as taste or touch do. So they let you to maintain the illusion of being separate, I guess.
In this framework, you might be able to describe ‘felt’ sensations, but they would have to be pervasive of the scene, like the wind or the chill in the air, not touching skin. (Although, yes, hot and cold are relative….) Scent, and, at a dump, even ‘tasted’ scent, can also be ambient, in which case they should be allowed.
That way, you don’t have an actual location or identity. But touching the rose– not allowed for the disembodied narrator. Apparently.
And another point… which of these items depend on the physiology or psychology of the observer? All of them, even sight and sound; so the exercise may be a bit silly.
Still, I prefer learning rules when they let me do or express more, more so than learning rules to carefully confine my style.
I get that clarity, precision, and care are desirable, and I can see how playing POVs by the rulebook might help with that, but this doesn’t make me super enthusiastic.
Now, you might be able to talk about how ripe and sweet this particular batch of pears is, if you’re a chatty narrator 3rd person narrator. Or in omniscient, when someone tastes the fruit, maybe you can indicate what flavor they find or anticipate (and maybe even avoid ‘head-hopping’ transgressions while doing it).
ps
(Now, if you are writing camera-eye as if you really are controlling a movie’s cameras, then you viewpoint really has a particular location, so even though omni isn’t as cold as camera-eye, strict camera-eye might not be entirely ‘disembodied.’)
…
pps
(Per your first paragraph… perhaps your character is sliding into exposition when they should be reacting… but they are writing that scene as ‘what happened’ and not ‘what happens’ and are storytelling rather than living the story with you? But that’s perhaps not the mainstream use of 1st person voice in practice.)
Omni ought to be able to do smell, too. “The tavern stank of urine and rotting beer.”
Tolkien has the parenthetical description of cram in The Hobbit: (If you want to know what cram is, I can only say that I don’t know the recipe; but it is biscuitish, keeps good indefinitely, is supposed to be sustaining, and is certainly not entertaining, being in fact very uninteresting except as a chewing exercise. It was made by the Lake-men for long journeys.)
And Lieutenant Hornblower has a limited-omni narrator that follows Bush & his thoughts, but also comments on things Bush doesn’t think, thus getting around a not-very-perceptive viewpoint character.