Please leave in the replies belowanyquestionsorthoughts you have on creating/writing characters who are very far away from your own reality, in ways such as gender, sexuality, race, class, personality, values, etc.
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.
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Linked to this post is a free google slides document I’ve designed for the purposes of character and plot development. You can use this in several ways, including:
Making a copy to your google drive and editing it digitally
Downloading as a Microsoft powerpoint document
Editing in google slides and then downloading as a printable PDF
This document includes technical instructions and guides to the planning models I integrated. The included pages are:
