Writing in Third Person Point of View

Third Person Limited, Subjecitve and Third Person Omniscient

Mar 15, 2009

The most highly used third person points of view in writing are third person subjective/limited and third person omniscient. How do these two points of view differ?

Should your novel’s point of view be subjective or objective? It helps to review the definition of the words. The definition of subjective is “perceiving or taking place in a person’s mind instead of the external world.” In contrast, objective is defined as “undistorted by emotion or personal bias.”

Third Person Subjective

Third person subjective or limited is the most commonly used point of view. It is similar to first person, as the thoughts and feelings of the main character are filtered through a single character's perception.

Third person subjective and limited mean essentially the same thing, though "limited" often refers to the entire book being written in only one viewpoint rather than having more than one main character.

What Does the Subjective Mean?

First person and third person subjective are both “limited” points of view. While in first person the character may say “I saw, I heard, I felt”, in third person the same character’s thoughts and emotions would be revealed by the pronouns “he” or “she” as in “he saw, he heard, he felt.”

A subjective or limited point of view means that the observations in the book are always limited to what the main character would realistically observe, think, or experience. The viewpoint character cannot know about or comment upon events that occur outside of his normal range of thought and vision.

The story is told entirely by the character’s point of view and the narrator does not jump in and interpret events for the reader or the character.

Many books are written in third person subjective/ multiple viewpoint. In third person subjective/multiple viewpoint the story may be told by more than one character. Each individual point of view is strictly told from that character’s perspective.

What are the advantages of writing in third person subjective point of view? Displaying thoughts and feelings bring the reader much closer to the character than other points of view.

Third Person Subjective (limited viewpoint)

Third Person Omniscient and Third Person Objective

Many of the classics are written in an omniscient point of view. In third person omniscient, the all-knowing narrator is outside looking in on the characters, able to jump in and add thoughts and observations about the characters at will. In third person omniscient, the narrator can also be everywhere at once and can interpret events that are not limited to a single character’s realm of observation. “On the other side of Chicago, a fire was burning” would be acceptable in the omniscient point of view, in the subjective point of view the character would actually have to experience a firsthand view of the fire or hear about it from another character in order for the event to be introduced to the story.

Third Person Omniscient:

What is the Difference Between Third Person Omniscient and Third Person Objective?

A story told in the objective point of view is totally undistorted by any emotion or personal bias. Unlike third person omniscient, the narrator does not jump in and interpret events. Few fiction novels are written in third person objective because it distances the characters from the reader.

Third Person Objective:

A tight, focused story that centers around one or two main characters would be best presented in third person subjective. For a larger cast of characters, the omniscient point of view may work better.

The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing. Editors of Writer's Digest Books, 2002.

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