#third person

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Depict, Don’t Report

The old adage of “show, don’t tell” is most applicable to third person narration, because it is here that writers most often make the mistake of reporting events in an especially monotonous fashion rather than illustrating them. Utilizing a variety of sentence structure, intentional vocabulary, and engaging pace/tone is the key to pulling your reader into the story rather than simply dictating a series of events. Third person point of view can make it difficult for a reader to connect intimately with the story, as the more objective voice or subtlety of the narrator’s bias can translate in a less personal manner than first person. It’s imperative to receive feedback on how well your use of alternative methods is drawing the reader into the story throughout.

Including Backstory & Context

Backstory is more convenient with third person POV, because you’re not limited to the knowledge of a single character. (Of course, this is assuming that you’re writing in third person omniscient, rather than limited. There will be a follow-up article all about limited POV in the near future, but for the purpose of this article, this focuses on omniscience.) You can utilize information, memories, and backstory of your entire cast or world, and furthermore give your reader insights into the characters’ actions or world building that they would not have in first person. Take advantage of this allowance to create a rich narrative with clear connections between characters, plot points, and information.

Developing Secondary Characters

The ability to further develop secondary characters is a major advantage of utilizing third person narration, because you are not so limited in the scope of information being revealed to the reader. You can shift the focus of the narrative to situations that solely involve characters other than your protagonist, and this offers the unique perspectives of characters outside or on the periphery of the main conflict. You can develop subplots more efficiently, offer the reader information your protagonist isn’t aware of to create suspense, and enrich your world outside of their limited perspective. This makes third person an optimal point of view to utilize when telling a particularly complex story or one that is set in a quite complicated world.

Distinctive Voice

When one is writing in the third person, it can be easy to fall into the habit of filling the pages with paragraphs of unnecessary description in order to achieve goals of length or in emulation of a particular writing style. This is often also the result of maintaining a needlessly objective narration. It is reasonable to write in the third person with a particular slant or bias. It gives the narrator their own voice, and makes the writing more engaging. Not just in the way of an unreliable narrator, where the bias in narration distorts or exaggerates the essence of the plot. You as the writer or narrator should have a voice that is just as distinctive as any character would have, although it’s generally agreed that a third person narration should be more subtle than a first person narration.

Practice & Adjustment

Third person point of view can be difficult to get accustomed to. It is a more impersonal style of writing. When writing about intimate or meaningful messages/events/characters, it can feel more natural to adhere to a first person perspective, even if third person better serves the story overall. It’s important that you actively practice if you’re unfamiliar with writing an entire story in third person. Getting used to approaching certain events or depicting certain emotions from a third person perspective is immeasurably helpful to the process of creating an engaging story. It can also help to practice thinking about events from that perspective if you’re prone to switching perspectives reflexively when you’re trying to articulate emotion or tone, which is a struggle I see often with new attempts at this POV.

Common Struggles

~ When dealing with multiple characters that have they/them pronouns, what’s a good way to keep the reader from getting mixed up? I assume that you would want to try and rely on a different sentence structure that allows you to clarify whom you’re referring to with context clues, rather than pronouns. It may seem less clear or accessible, but it’s very possible to write in a way where each sentence doesn’t start with “he said, she said, they said”. It’s also important that you master the way in which you write about each individual character. This will help your reader to correctly anticipate who you’re writing about and when.

~ When writing third person POV, how do you write multiple people’s emotions and perspectives at the same time? Focus on how they express their emotions rather than communicating exactly what they’re feeling and why. If the reader needs to comprehend the ins and outs of their thought process, perhaps third person isn’t suitable for the story.

~ And if lots of people with the same pronouns are in the same scene, what are useful ways to distinguish between the characters without using their names all the time? Clarify who you are referring to whenever “the camera moves”. When the focus shifts in space rather than subject, you must signal to the reader that this has happened. The use of dialogue tags is not an efficient way to do this, and many writers will often make the mistake of leaning too heavily on them. Instead, give your characters “stage business”, or an activity that they’re engaging with while dialogue is happening, and when they become the center of attention, refer back to the activity in a subtle way. Move the camera. Although, it is important to note that you rarely need so much dialogue in a scene to communicate information to the reader that you would get lost in the crowd of involved characters. Consider what you could better share through description and action, rather than dialogue.

~ How do you make sure you don’t use too many pronouns in a paragraph to refer to a certain character? Consider whether your descriptive style is too procedural. Natural writing flows without an abundance of clarifying pronouns, and if you start every sentence in a paragraph with “she did this, she saw that, she noticed, she heard, she felt” your writing will fall flat. Experiment with sentence structure, descriptive style, and perspective in your writing. At a certain point, your reader should be in a groove where they can keep up with who you’re referring to, even through context clues having to do with a large cast in the same scene.

~ How do I maintain momentum and clarity when writing in third person limited POV? For those who may not know, third person limitation is the narration of a single character’s perspective (at a time, if the story focuses on multiple characters). This point of view can be tricky because the limitation requires you to differentiate what each character knows and when they become aware of things that may already be known by other point of view characters.

The best advice I can give when attempting this is to be very diligent in keeping your characters’ stories and inner monologues straight. Keep track of who knows what, when they found (or will find) out, and refer to this timeline regularly as your story progresses. It’s also worth your time to strategize with your key pieces of information. If your reader has already learned this information through another character’s perspective, then reviewing this through the eyes of another must be illuminating in a different way, or the process of the other characters’ discoveries of what we already know must add to the suspense/emotional build/payoff. Pieces of information are the fireworks of your story, and you need to release or repeat them with great care for the greater show.

Other Resources

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#writing #writeblr #writing advice #writing tips #writing resources #resources for writers #writing reference #writing help #writespo #writing inspiration #writing motivation #inspiration #motivation #third person #perspective #point of view #narration

@wordsnstuff

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 16:00:31

Summary: When five teens completed a mysterious ritual, they decided to ignore the changes it wrought. Now, five years later It’s time to face reality.

——

“I’m so sorry,” the man says, hands falling away from her neck. He buries his face in them so that only his red beard peaks out. “I just don’t know how to kill you.”

Ashlyn gasps for air. She can feel the imprint of his fingers along her throat and each steady beat of her heart rings loud in her ears. “Understandable,” she wheezes. “I myself am somewhat at a loss.”

She’s not sure how long she’s been in this warehouse. A few hours at least, likely more. The windows are covered with cardboard and the damp smell of mildew tells her that they’ve been covered for a long time. No sunlight peeks through, no outside sounds, no indications of time passing at all. When the assassin had first brought her here, she’d assumed it’d be the last thing she’d ever see. Twenty-years-old and dead with soggy cardboard the last thing she sees.

Now, surrounded by shocking cables, bent knives, and shattered clubs, she feels her irritation at her attempted assassination slip into pity.

“Maybe fire?” she suggests. It’s a strange sort of lunacy to suggest her own mechanism of murder. But something in her had shifted after the assassin - Dylan? Dexter? - pressed a stake to her heart, raised a mallet with his other hand, and shattered the wood rather than plunge it into her chest. “Fire usually feels hot to me.”

“I tried that,” the assassin says. He climbs off of her and throws himself into the wooden chair she’d been tied to when he’d tried slitting her throat. “Right after the electricity knocked you out. You wouldn’t catch.”

“That’s weird,” she says. The rafters above her looks just as sodden as the room smells. “Did the flame go out or…?”

“Just sorta flickered,” he says, waving his hand once before closing it into a fist. He tips his head back, eyes closed, and presses his fist to his chest. “What sort of creature doesn’t burn?”

That’s what I’d like to know, she thinks. Out loud, she says, “Would you believe I’m not a vampire now?”

“Yes.” He sits up to glare down at her. “But you’re something and that something is still part of the coven. It’s my job to eliminate all members of the coven so we are not leaving here until you’re dead!”

Since he hasn’t been wildly successful in that direction, she can’t bring herself to be too upset. “Hurrah,” Ashlyn says, pumping a fist in the air. She closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to see his reddening face. “That’s the spirit.”

Silence rises around them. She breathes deeply, feeling every ache and contusion in her body, and listens to water drip on the other side of the room. There are probably rats in here. She bets that there are a lot of rats that will feast on her body once this man figures out how to—

The assassin’s breath hitches. He sniffles. His breath hitches again.

Ashlyn opens her eyes. “Are you crying?”

“No!” The assassin sniffs and frantically scrubs at his face. “I’m not!”

Ashlyn sits up painfully. Her ribs aren’t broken, but certainly not for lack of trying. The assassin is twisted away from her, hunched over his knees with his hands over his face again. “Hey, listen. Dylan, listen to me.”

“It’s Dexter.”

Damn. She only had two names to choose from and she guessed wrong. She recovers quickly. “Dexter. Don’t be upset!” She reaches out to pat his knees. “You are doing a wonderful job killing me.”

Dexter blows his nose on his flannel. “Really?”

“Oh yeah,” she says. It’s sort of gross how wet his jeans are with her blood so she quits patting his knee. “Honestly? Ten out of ten. If I were a normal person or even a normal vampire, I’d be dead several times over.”

“You would be, wouldn’t you?” Dexter looks cheered by the thought. “I’ve used that stake on ten vamps. It’s never failed me before.”

“It’s definitely my fault that it failed now,” she assures. Her cracked ribs are nearly healed. She leans on one hand as casually as she can and keeps her expression even when her fingers brush the hilt of one of Dexter’s abandoned knives. “You’ve proven yourself a very capable vampire hunter.”

“I’ve already killed all of your coven members,” Dexter says. He ticks them off on his fingers. “Maybell, Roger, Kassius and Adelaide. Bomb, fire, stake and stake again. That’s just this week!” He puffs his chest out. “You’re right. I’m doing a really good job.”

Ashlyn’s glad he’s not looking at her as he lists her fallen coven members. She slowly palms the knife. “That’s right, you did. They were really strong too. But you’re stronger, right?”

Dexter shoots to his feet. “I am! My family’s been stronger than vampires for generations. Hundreds have laid dead at my feet!”

“Overcome!” She cheers as he looks boldly into the middle distance. She brings her legs under her as quietly as she can. “Vanquished! Conquered!”

“Exactly!” He twists back to look down at her, a crazed look in his eye. “And you’re next!”

“I think the fuck not,” she says, surges to her feet, and plunges the knife right in his throat.

———-.

Ashlyn stomps into the apartment with blood still dripping from her hems. “Really?” She can hear the TV on in the living room and stalks right for it, slamming the door behind her. “A bomb?”

Maybell peeks over the couch. Her green eyes are distinctly guilty under her heavy bangs.. “Oh, hey, Ashlyn. You, uh, met Dexter?”

Roger, in the process of plugging in the Xbox, doesn’t look guilty at all. “How’d he kill you? I set a mannequin on fire and he legit thought it was me.”

“I pity let him stab me,” Adelaide says, twirling her auburn hair and lounging in the arm chair. Her eyes are glued to the romance novel in her hand. “After the gun failed.”

Kassius, sitting at her feet, raises his hand for a high five. “Same!”

Adelaide high fives him without looking, before turning the page of her book.

“He held me captive for eight hours,” Ashlyn seethes.

Roger whistles. “That’s commitment to the bit.” He tosses a controller to Maybell with supernatural speed. “I think I played with him for about an hour tops.”

“Thirty minutes,” Maybell says. The screen loads with Mario Party. “I call being Princess Peach!”

“I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear,” Ashlyn says. She rounds the couch so she can stand in front of the TV. Her roommates all protest, but she ignores them easily. “I was held captive against my will for eight hours while a madman proclaiming himself to be a vampire hunter tried to kill me.” When they continue to stare at her, she waves a hand at her bloody clothes. “And failed! Repeatedly!”

“You didn’t pretend to die?” Adelaide asks, surprised. She rests her book on her chest. “That’s kind of mean, Ashlyn. He was really trying.”

“He’s got a wife and kids,” Kassius says. He shrugs when Adelaide raises an inquiring eyebrow. “I overheard him on the phone with them after he staked me.”

“Aw,” Maybell says. She smiles. “That’s so cute. Little vampire hunters!”

“He had a wife and kids,” Ashlyn says waspishly. “Back before I stabbed him in his stupid, murderous throat.”

Her roommates gasp. Roger presses a hand over his mouth. “Ashlyn, how could you?”

“Easily,” Ashlyn snaps. When they all continue to glare at her, she throws her hands up in the air. “Am I taking crazy pills? It doesn’t concern you guys at all that we, apparently, can’t die?”

“Good thing we can’t,” Adelaide mutters, “or else you’d have to worry about your immortal soul after killing Dexter.”

“He was trying to kill me!” Ashlyn doesn’t know why she ever thought living with these three was a good idea. Nostalgia from their childhoods growing up on the same street? An early warning sign of lunacy? “He was failing! I got stabbed, electrocuted, strangled, choked—“

“Geez,” Roger says, impressed. “He really went all out on you.”

“What’s the difference between choked and strangled?” Kassius asks Adelaide. Adelaide shrugs.

“”It’s also sort of an issue that we got mistaken as vampires by an actual vampire hunter,” Ashlyn continues. “Like, a real vampire hunter. One with lots of kills.”

Maybell frowns. “That is kind of weird. We totally go out in daylight and everything.”

“I thought we were vampires,” Ashlyn says. She feels tired all of a sudden. She sinks to the floor, uncaring of the blood that gets on the carpet. After the ritual, she doubts they get their deposit back. “I was really, really hoping that we’d just be vampires.” The other three exchange a long look. Ashlyn feels her temper snap to life. “What?”

“Nothing!” Maybell fidgets on the couch. Ever since their stupid, teenage-mistake ritual, she’s been more restless, always tugging at her clothes and kicking her feet. “It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“You had expectations?” Maybell asks. Her lips twitch as if she’s resisting a smile. “We read mysterious, untranslated Latin in a drunken ritual and you had expectations for what would happen?”

“Ashlyn’s always been an optimist,” Adelaide tells Kassius.

“Ashlyn’s always been an idiot,” Kassius mutters.

“At least I’m not the idiot who brought the ritual home from the library!” Ashlyn buries her face in her hands. Then, when the dried blood rubs against her skin, she roughly rubs her palms against the cleanest part of her shirt. “Now we have no idea what we are, we can’t die, I’ve killed a man—“

“Yeah, that’s kind of fucked,” Roger says. “He had kids.”

“He was trying to kill me!” Ashlyn screeches. To her horror, she feels tears prick at the corners of her eyes. “Guys, please don’t tell me I’m alone here. I am freaking out. What did we do to ourselves? What have we become?”

“Hey,” Maybell says. She slides off the couch and crawls over to Ashlyn. It’s like they’re kids again, ducking under the low door of the tree house. She wraps her arms around Ashlyn. “Sh, don’t cry! We didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Kassius is on his knees, torn between going to Ashlyn’s side and refusing to take responsibility for her tears. “We’re still alive, Ash. We’re still us.”

“But we don’t know how long it’ll stay that way,” Ashlyn sobs. She wipes at her tears. They haven’t talked about that night, not really. At first it was because they didn’t believe anything had happened. Then, she thinks, it’s because they refused to admit anything had changed. They were just kids and then they were moving out and then they were here. “When— when the ritual finished, I felt something. I felt an energy inside of my chest. I-it changed me. Changed us.”

Maybell hugs her tighter, conveying without words that she remembers. Ashlyn feels a knot in her chest ease even as the tears continue to pour down her face. She didn’t imagine it. They changed and this fiasco with Dexter has highlighted those changes in a very real way.

“It’s like we’re kids again,” Ashlyn whispers. “Just— without any control. I hate it. I hate it.”

“Oh geez,” Roger says. He rubs a hand over his face and then slides to the floor as well. “Ashlyn. Look at me.” When she refuses to, he reaches for her hand. “Look at me.”

She looks up to find his face only a foot away. For the first time in a long time, his eyes are serious. She swallows, hard. “What?”

“We are not helpless here,” Roger says. He sits back on his heels. “I’m sorry we’ve been taking this so lightly. I don’t think any of us haven’t had the same thoughts you’ve had. We’re all worried. We’re all scared. We’re in this together, okay?”

Wordlessly, Ashlyn nods.

“He’s right,” Adelaide says. She’s the only one not on the floor, but she’s set her book aside and her full attention is on them. That’s as good as being part of the group hug forming for her. “We aren’t helpless. We may not know what the ritual was, but we can change that. We have the book. We have our memories of that night. Just four years ago, right? It’s still fresh. There are answers out there. We can find them. Together.”

“Together,” Maybell says firmly.

“I don’t know,” Kassius says, “I kinda wanted to enjoy being immortal for a while—ouch!”

Roger rubs the spot on the back of Kassius’ head he just slapped. “Together,” he says. He smiles at Ashlyn. “Like always.”

Ashlyn feels a lonely, scared part of her ease in that moment. The day she’s had, the torture, the murder, all seems to fade away. She has her friends with her, finally on the same side. “Together.”

Maybe she’s glad she roomed with her childhood friends after all.

“Of course,” Kassius says, “we should probably send Dexter’s wife some flowers first.”

This time, Ashlyn hits him first.

—–

Thanks for reading! I love writing scenes with loooots of characters so this was a fun exercise for me! there’s something about a pack of new adults roaming around with immortal ritual-related consequences that appeals to me!

I post all my stories a week ahead on Patreon! Read next week’s story there now :)

Summary: You don’t ever want to be the main character. In your town, that’s deadly. Someone has to warn the new kid. He’s really, really cool.

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#my writing #the ritual #third person #ashlyn is at her snapping point #kassius wants to chill