Batter my heart, third-person omniscient god
Unicorn Mask print by Matty8080
What is your preferred point of view? Your go-to voice when you write, if you write, or the one you’re happiest to see when you open a new book? Can you use second-person without feeling like a wanker? Do you love “I” for its accessibility, its steadfastness, its immediacy–the narrative fuzzy bedroom slippers ever at the foot of your crafty little bed? Because I can be “me” but “not-me,” whereas you is always only you, and third-person, well, forget it. That actually starts to feel like work.
Limited omniscience, editorial omniscience. Do you pay attention to such delineations as you read, or does point-of-view work best when it’s hardly noticed, when it simply funnels you into and through the story? Do you think Henry James ever committed a point-of-view violation? Do such “violations” even exist anymore, or can they be argued away by an author’s tenets of style?
I’m thinking recently about effort. The difficult text, and the difficult creating. When does a work feel fussy, overdressed, too meted out? When can such qualities “work”? When do these decisions–about point-of-view, about tense–feel like decisions, rather than inevitabilites? We like, some of us, having to wrestle with our books, go a few rounds before tapping out and letting the work take us…but we also like the love-at-first-sentence. And these things of course are not mutually exclusive.
I speculate a lot about the author’s experience when I’m reading. When something reads effortlessly, I might picture fingers moving confidently over some spotless keyboard sooner than I picture the 3am buzzard-stance over the carrion-computer. But of course I know that fluidity, fluency, vertigo, whatever you want to call it, is usually hard won. It’s not an inverse relationship, for a million reasons–difficulty/effort/lack thereof are of course subjective, yes, but also, often what gets wrought with a lot of pain and guts gets read that way, too. Often, reading is an invitation to suffer, to co-suffer, and to co-create the habitat of suffering. Not just, of course, in terms of content, but more pertinently here, in terms of form.
The notion of reading as escape? I don’t know. From some books, reality is the escape.
(I really have been reading Henry James again. For the obdurate fastidiousness. Which can be comforting, among other things. And I’m generally suspicious of comfort. And besides all of the other big books we could name that might perform some of these ideas, I’d like to nod hard at Kathryn Davis’s Hell and Lynda Barry’s Cruddy.)
Tags: difficulty, effort, Henry James, Kathryn Davis, Lynda Barry, point-of-view
I like this post. I’m glad you’ll be posting such intelligent questions regularly. Welcome!
First person. Because movies can’t do it in the same way. Because it’s more flavorful. Because like an ass, James Wood pretty much entirely ignored it in “How Fiction Works.”
And because most of my favorite books are in first person. Lolita, American Psycho, A Sport and a Pastime, The Magus…
Kyle, thank you. Nick, right on.
I used to feel some compulsion to try and alternate points of view when I wrote, out of some misplaced sense of wanting to be well-rounded or something. Most stories announce themselves to me in first person. But once in a while, a tableau appears, and I can only describe it from somewhere near the back row.
Yeah, the book itself dictates it of course. One of my books is in first person and the other in third, so… not married to it. But it’s the default.
I write from all three points of view regularly but there is a very soft spot in my heart for the second person. I just love how the second person can be sort of “this is your life,” or it can be accusatory in tone or it can be wistful and I know all these things can be accomplished in first or third POV but there’s a really interesting investment involved in the second person. I’ve been threatening to start a magazine called Second Person for years now. I am pretty into it.
It’s pretty late, and I need to sleep, so I’ll just try to quickly tackle this first question: What is your preferred point of view?
POV should compliment a narrative’s moral strategy and should be the best one to ensure that your Reader will stay with the ride throughout the story. Writing should be able to accommodate all POV in any given story but, again, I think it has everything to do with what you’re trying to accomplish.
What’s most important for a reader “not to know” inside the universe you’re writing? What’s most important that needs to be known?
I write mostly in first person, but a fair amount in third person. Oddly, I feel like the voices is extremely different between those two, not sure why.
I like a third that is both very distant and very close. But I’m not sure I’m good at this. Some people like it a lot when I do it. Many do not.
The two I seem stuck in are first-person perversions of the dramatic monologue, and a third-person omniscient that makes flagrant use of its omniscience.
Sometimes I’ll write in standard first-person narrative, but I don’t know if I’ve ever been satisfied with anything I did in that mode.
Hi, Kristen! I’ve done all three, but I really hate first person. I hate the limitations of it. I like to be god, running around panning and getting tight shots and wide shots.
I write mostly in third, but a fair amount in first, and feel exactly the same as you. In general, I think that when I compose/revise in first person it feels more “pulled-in,” like the steering’s a little tighter, or something. Is that how it is for you?
I think it’s this way for me because generally when I’m writing in first and exploring from one person’s point of view things feel more immediately limiting (in good ways). I am in one person’s head.
When I write in third, I sometimes struggle with making up my mind about how close/far the third is going to get; it ranges quite a bit before it feels out its shape. “Looser” steering.
I like this post. I’m glad you’ll be posting such intelligent questions regularly. Welcome!
First person. Because movies can’t do it in the same way. Because it’s more flavorful. Because like an ass, James Wood pretty much entirely ignored it in “How Fiction Works.”
And because most of my favorite books are in first person. Lolita, American Psycho, A Sport and a Pastime, The Magus…
Kyle, thank you. Nick, right on.
I used to feel some compulsion to try and alternate points of view when I wrote, out of some misplaced sense of wanting to be well-rounded or something. Most stories announce themselves to me in first person. But once in a while, a tableau appears, and I can only describe it from somewhere near the back row.
Yeah, the book itself dictates it of course. One of my books is in first person and the other in third, so… not married to it. But it’s the default.
I write from all three points of view regularly but there is a very soft spot in my heart for the second person. I just love how the second person can be sort of “this is your life,” or it can be accusatory in tone or it can be wistful and I know all these things can be accomplished in first or third POV but there’s a really interesting investment involved in the second person. I’ve been threatening to start a magazine called Second Person for years now. I am pretty into it.
Many writers who prefer the third person seem to because it allows them to “feed” information to the reader that the characters don’t have. But some of the most interesting third person writing occurs precisely when the third person narrator isn’t omniscient. Third person POV where the writer is unreliable, mentally unstable, or not in possession of all the facts, for example. The Benjy section in The Sound and the Fury is an example of an attempt to do away with the distinction between first and third person. Benjy possesses no subject-object, subjective-objective distinction, so he tells a third person story from a first person POV. (He also lacks the chronological sense and the ability to understand action-consequences). On the other hand, reliability does not always have to be suspect (at least for the author’s purposes) in the first person POV.
I write mostly in first person, but a fair amount in third person. Oddly, I feel like the voices is extremely different between those two, not sure why.
I like a third that is both very distant and very close. But I’m not sure I’m good at this. Some people like it a lot when I do it. Many do not.
The two I seem stuck in are first-person perversions of the dramatic monologue, and a third-person omniscient that makes flagrant use of its omniscience.
Sometimes I’ll write in standard first-person narrative, but I don’t know if I’ve ever been satisfied with anything I did in that mode.
Hi, Kristen! I’ve done all three, but I really hate first person. I hate the limitations of it. I like to be god, running around panning and getting tight shots and wide shots.
I write mostly in third, but a fair amount in first, and feel exactly the same as you. In general, I think that when I compose/revise in first person it feels more “pulled-in,” like the steering’s a little tighter, or something. Is that how it is for you?
I think it’s this way for me because generally when I’m writing in first and exploring from one person’s point of view things feel more immediately limiting (in good ways). I am in one person’s head.
When I write in third, I sometimes struggle with making up my mind about how close/far the third is going to get; it ranges quite a bit before it feels out its shape. “Looser” steering.
I think third person is often just a thinly disguised, nebbishy first person, a narrator who’s some kind of know-it-all voyeur pervert. That narrator is always a character in the story, no matter how hard he tries not to be. I can’t ever manage to make him disappear.
Having that narrator be plain-old me — like this me (waving hello) who’s typing at you right now — sometimes works, but it tends to drag me towards non-fiction or memoir. And I talk about myself too much anyway.
First person works great for me because it always feels easiest to let a character introduce and explain themselves, rather than describing their limp and their ascot and what car they drive.
In the thing I’m writing now there’s also a great deal of second-person ’cause there’s an actual second person being spoken to. I wonder which person the reader will get behind.
But I would like to improve my third personage. It’s not a bad thing, I’m just bad at it.
Wanker. I prefer wanker.
Many writers who prefer the third person seem to because it allows them to “feed” information to the reader that the characters don’t have. But some of the most interesting third person writing occurs precisely when the third person narrator isn’t omniscient. Third person POV where the writer is unreliable, mentally unstable, or not in possession of all the facts, for example. The Benjy section in The Sound and the Fury is an example of an attempt to do away with the distinction between first and third person. Benjy possesses no subject-object, subjective-objective distinction, so he tells a third person story from a first person POV. (He also lacks the chronological sense and the ability to understand action-consequences). On the other hand, reliability does not always have to be suspect (at least for the author’s purposes) in the first person POV.
I think third person is often just a thinly disguised, nebbishy first person, a narrator who’s some kind of know-it-all voyeur pervert. That narrator is always a character in the story, no matter how hard he tries not to be. I can’t ever manage to make him disappear.
Having that narrator be plain-old me — like this me (waving hello) who’s typing at you right now — sometimes works, but it tends to drag me towards non-fiction or memoir. And I talk about myself too much anyway.
First person works great for me because it always feels easiest to let a character introduce and explain themselves, rather than describing their limp and their ascot and what car they drive.
In the thing I’m writing now there’s also a great deal of second-person ’cause there’s an actual second person being spoken to. I wonder which person the reader will get behind.
But I would like to improve my third personage. It’s not a bad thing, I’m just bad at it.
Wanker. I prefer wanker.
i’ve been on a first person plural kick for years, can’t shake it, no matter how hard i try.
i’ve been on a first person plural kick for years, can’t shake it, no matter how hard i try.
I’ve enjoyed reading these responses. And how you all looked while you wrote them.
i knew that wasn’t a real window washer. it was you…
i do feel that there is somehow something more “mature” or “accomplished” about writing in close third / this is problematic probably
voicey omniscience and plural first are fun
i wrote 268 words about this for the american short fiction blog, so here’s something on my mind: thom jones does an amazing job of close third in “I Want To Live!” / it sort of challenges the idea of first person’s emotional intimacy / the story is way more emotionally alive (yuk yuk) for being in close third / thom jones does cool stuff with close third in both his collections, tho the second seems to give way to first a lot more
I’ve enjoyed reading these responses. And how you all looked while you wrote them.
i do feel that there is somehow something more “mature” or “accomplished” about writing in close third / this is problematic probably
voicey omniscience and plural first are fun
i wrote 268 words about this for the american short fiction blog, so here’s something on my mind: thom jones does an amazing job of close third in “I Want To Live!” / it sort of challenges the idea of first person’s emotional intimacy / the story is way more emotionally alive (yuk yuk) for being in close third / thom jones does cool stuff with close third in both his collections, tho the second seems to give way to first a lot more
I like close third-person. Of course, as several people have mentioned, it all depends on the story and character. When I go through several awful drafts of a third-person story, that’s a good sign it’s supposed to be in first person.
I do like how some authors can shift in and out of narrative modes. Jose Saramago does a neat thing in BLINDNESS where he’ll shift from very close third-person, to omniscient, to second or first or first plural. Very smooth.
I like close third-person. Of course, as several people have mentioned, it all depends on the story and character. When I go through several awful drafts of a third-person story, that’s a good sign it’s supposed to be in first person.
I do like how some authors can shift in and out of narrative modes. Jose Saramago does a neat thing in BLINDNESS where he’ll shift from very close third-person, to omniscient, to second or first or first plural. Very smooth.
Cut my eye a few weeks ago and had to be lead around walgreens for medicine. read Blindness the next day. Reminded me of Cormac’s THe Road, onl better.
Blindness was the shit. Although not at Walgreens cuz that was difficult.
Cut my eye a few weeks ago and had to be lead around walgreens for medicine. read Blindness the next day. Reminded me of Cormac’s THe Road, onl better.
Blindness was the shit. Although not at Walgreens cuz that was difficult.
[…] but I was very impressed by the narrative control of this new story. It’s written in the “close third-person,” where the narrative voice is contained entirely by one consciousness, except it’s […]