Do you believe there are different expectations for 1st person POV?

There is a difference between an unreliable narrator and an unreliable character. When something is written in third person, readers tend to take it as the truth. In third person, the narrator is not a character and therefore has no stake in the story. I don't know how else to say it.

 

In limited third the narrator is beholden to the character's perspective, reliable or not.

Think about real life, how we lie to ourselves about certain things or have totally different observations of the same events, or conveniently forget particular things.

 

Grrrr.. this is too frustrating for me. Believe whatever you want. I'm stepping away from this discussion.

 

It's not necessary to disagree. And shoot, I respect professors. If I was in the class and it came up on the test, I'd say, sure there's an external narrator. After all, I'd want the A. After all, it's technically true. Now, after my first thirty novels, I have come to understand that as a practical issue, any imagined external influence upon the work is exactly what you need to avoid in close limited third.

Consider what an external influence is. Why do we want it? Who is it? Why is that person there, barging in? If we actually needed the externality, would we not choose what it is and why it is necessary, strategically using the tool? Probably not, for most people. But if we take care to wonder about it, we find we either make that tool yet another intended part of our work or we are winging it, and that's not good.

 

But if you're telling a friend about something that happened to you, or if you're writing about it in your journal, you'll use Me, Myself, and I. The pronouns are a necessary convention of the language. Without them you'd have a very hard time conveying any kind of story.

 

No, I am clearly saying limited third. I definitely do not want to work with what you call 'limited omniscient.' Further, I think the terms are getting muddled here, in that you mention 'close limited' and 'loose limited—I don't want to assume what you mean by those and I am otherwise unsure.

I don't need to 'directly state' what is unreliable about my characters. That's up to the reader to infer from the narrative. A POV can observe little things that go against what he's saying without even realizing it.

 

Things can get confusing, for sure, and don't let terminology bog you down. Let me offer a tiny bit of insight into the terms loose and close limited 3rd. In both cases the most fundamental rule of the road for both loose and close limited 3rd is that only one actor in the book is allowed to think, see, hear, smell, taste or feel. If anybody else does these things they are being reported upon by the narrator (which we assume to be heavily, if not entirely influenced by the viewpoint. I'll not get into that debate again).

Now, most writers go just that far and think they are writing limited 3rd, which they are. Yet, one can do a lot more to show the reader that you are close. Learning basic limited rules is simple (just read above when I said only one person could think, see, hear, smell, taste or feel). It takes about five minutes to learn that. Learning how to truly convince, with every word, that we are completely with that person in every form of the narrative takes years.

Sometimes the writer chooses to be a little loose from the view (usually it isn't a choice, but rather a lack of understanding the depth of skill, but I'll not get into that, either and assume a choice, which is definitely possible).

By loose, imagine a camera and microphone hovering with the viewpoint actor. If the actor has the camera hovering over him and following him along, occasionally settling on the shoulder and on other occasions inside the person so we can directly report thinking, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or feeling, that is loose. The camera wanders, but not so far as to be somewhere else entirely and not be understood to be with that one person exclusively.

By close we mean the camera is inside the actor, for that period of your text or perhaps the entire novel. We are so close as to be 1st person, in a way of thinking.

If the camera loosens to the point of wandering up to an external narrator, (some other entity) where we sense someone else in control, that is usually going to be an omniscient movement. Handing the camera back and forth from the external narrator to the limited viewpoint is limited omniscience. If the viewpoint changes between folks on the ground, such as baton or at sections or at chapter breaks, that is multiple limited.

Thus, four terms, one or more of which you might even find in the same novel: Loose limited 3rd, close limited 3rd, multiple limited 3rd, limited omniscience.

There are tricks to loosen and tricks to tighten. There are reasons to loosen, switch views or otherwise, and there are slip-ups based upon limited skill. The main idea is to do things with intent. As a basic rule of thumb, any time you add a view or depart this planet for an external narrator, you take a hit that has to be justified as measured against what you lose.

Let me go back to my example, to illustrate a little of this:

Close limited 3rd. Notice the phrasing, the choice of words, the attitude, the biases, the things that are focused upon, all belonging to Patrik. He is in complete control of the camera and clearly that lense is in his head:

To be sure, Patrik coveted no quarrel with Befrum. Bedding the man’s wife had been no more than an act of nature, requiring no further comment or encumbrance. He’d intended to not even speak of it, more or less within earshot of town. In fact, by coming down from his room alone, twenty minutes prior, he’d hoped to speed her departure, mayhaps while not drawing too many eyes upon the crime.

Let me loosen. Here we have the basic rule of limited 3rd that only Patrik can think, see, hear, etc., but the language isn't just his, the things we see are not just what he cares about, so while the camera is hovering near him, it's not totally influenced by him and thus not fully in his head:

Patrik had just had ravenous sex with Beulah and was taking a break at a table in the lounge when both she came down the stairs from the bedrooms and her husband walked in the door. The piano player quit and every eye in the place turned to see what happened next. For his part, Patrik seemed to shrink in his chair a bit, but it was likely not necessary because he was not without familiarity with the bar fight. Mayhaps it could be avoided.

Much looser. Seeing things Patrik might not care to notice at the moment. Making some judgements that he might not care to concern himself with at the moment. Not much of his phrasing or word choices. We're not terribly privy to his biases and attitude, other than some narrator kind of telling us about it. That camera is not in him, though it is near him, following him around, reporting on him, and no violation of the things only he is allowed to do.

We can go farther with that camera and actually hand it to someone else up in the sky, making it omniscient:

Patrik had just had ravenous sex with Beulah and was apparently taking a break at a table in the lounge. Meanwhile, the married woman stepped out of her room as if she had not a care in the world. Just as clueless, her husband chose that moment to come a looking, barging into the bar's main swinging door and glancing about for his errant wife. This was the most unlikely of events, to be sure, testified to by how Patrik swallowed hard and tried his best to become part of his chair. The piano player quit. Things were never good when a piano player quit, especially hereabouts. Whether Patrik knew that or not could not be discerned by his steady gaze, though. For that we'll have to pay a visit to the man, sit down at his table and share an ale. Nobody dared do such a thing, however. For a fact, every eye in the place had turned to see what was going to happen next.
(Now for the handoff baton):
Patrik shrank in his chair a bit, but it was likely not necessary because he was not without familiarity with the bar fight and had to know it was inevitable Mayhaps it could be avoided, though, he was thinking. Where the hell did I get this kind of luck? Son of a bitch. Even the smell of her perfume on his shirt lingered about with every sniff.

Notice the handoff from omniscient to limited, thus limited omniscience.

 

A drone

A ghost drone, that can move inside people's heads when needed. In fact, I would refer to it all the time, whether in someone's head or out, as a ghost drone or invisible drone, because you wouldn't see it while it's filming, no matter where it wanders.

I just find that a very convenient way to imagine it, because drones have both a camera and a microphone on board and we're quite familiar with them.

And I like your explanation of close and loose third. That helps to understand them.

 

I think it's a common enough term, so I'm not really directing this criticism at you, but I take issue with the oxymoron. Omniscience by definition cannot be limited. It's just omniscience. Having multiple limited viewpoints in one book broken up by scene/chapter is just that: multiple limited POVs. There is no longer a narrator, but narrators. This is exemplified best when the farm boy and the computer programmer POVs have different ways of seeing things. A single narrator would have one way of seeing things.

If Patrick can sense those things happening (the mistress coming down the stairs, husband comes in, eyes being upon Patrick), it's still limited third. Those things would absolutely still concern him given his situation. Otherwise it's omniscient that's simply favouring that character at the moment.

No, that's just omniscience. That's the narrator view 'the camera' picking and choosing what to follow. Just because it is limited for some portions of the story does not make it a hybrid in the sense. After all, to borrow your analogy, a camera lens can only contain so much at one particular time.

Well the disclaimer here is that this is largely a disagreement over terminology, which is hardly going to reflect matters of practise. Regardless, I appreciate the effort of your post and hope you don't take my stubbornness as being belligerently dismissive.

 

Certainly true. The term limited omniscience means that you are fully, completely, thoroughly and exclusively omniscient. Until your omniscient actor hands the view down to an actor. At that point it becomes fully limited (for the time those rules apply). Case in point, my example again, which is fully, 100% omniscient but at the very end of it the omniscient view hands the view down to the limited actor and off we go. It's a really common form of writing, used by people like King and Rowling. The Stand is a great example of a strong external narrator who then hands off for 90% of the chapter belonging completely to the viewpoint actor. In the case of that book it's also multi, given each chapter features a different viewpoint actor.

Patrik had just had ravenous sex with Beulah and was apparently taking a break at a table in the lounge. Meanwhile, the married woman stepped out of her room as if she had not a care in the world. Just as clueless, her husband chose that moment to come a looking, barging into the bar's main swinging door and glancing about for his errant wife. This was the most unlikely of events, to be sure, testified to by how Patrik swallowed hard and tried his best to become part of his chair. The piano player quit. Things were never good when a piano player quit, especially hereabouts. Whether Patrik knew that or not could not be discerned by his steady gaze, though. For that we'll have to pay a visit to the man, sit down at his table and share an ale. Nobody dared do such a thing, however. For a fact, every eye in the place had turned to see what was going to happen next.

Patrik shrank in his chair a bit, but it was likely not necessary because he was not without familiarity with the bar fight and had to know it was inevitable

The handoff by baton:
Mayhaps it could be avoided, though, he was thinking,

Now, totally in limited view, Patrik:
here the hell did I get this kind of luck? Son of a bitch. Even the smell of her perfume on his shirt lingered about with every sniff.

From this point on, our limited view is Patrik until the external narrator chooses to grab it back. It isn't mixed, in this particular omniscience form of viewpoint management, but rather, one viewpoint form then the next viewpoint form, each in separate spaces.

If, however, we simply have a narrator choose to dive into an actor's head for a moment (either head hopping or with some other form of control over the chaos), it is just another form of omniscience, and limited really doesn't apply.

It is also worth stating that how omniscience is worked varies a lot, and with lots of validity to many different approaches. This is just one of the more common forms.

Your comment about it being largely semantics is also spot-on because I have read sources that call regular, plain old limited, omniscient limited, which I find really nasty and leaving us with zero wiggle room on defining much else.

 

I'm a chronic hair-splitter...

The author having the ability to 'choose to grab it back' mid scene is what makes it merely omniscient, though. In meta terms, it is still unlimited. The author could waffle between omniscient and limited from paragraph to paragraph, or sentence to sentence, making the text fundamentally omniscient third even if it locks in on one character from time to time. In other words, if it's going to zoom out at any moment, then it's not limited in any real sense. The omniscient narrator knows everything, and that includes the particular experience of one or more characters. It's AND, rather than OR.

Again, the lens focusing on a particular thing doesn't mean the camera man's scope is limited to that thing. It's just what he decided to focus on at that point. If the author follows the rule that a POV can only change from scene to scene, however, the camera man's scope is indeed limited and the reader knows to expect that.

I definitely agree there are many approaches. And your method of codifying it seems to work well for you and others.