Third in many ways is simpler to write in, and can still be very powerful and evocative. It does add a bit of distance that first simply cannot, due to being direct perspective. It is all in how you structure your story, and the vocabulary you use. No matter which POV you're writing, you will always have 'Voice' in it. It comes down to your unique style, vocabulary options, and sentence structure. Everything you write is 'you', as you have created it, not the other way around.
If you see yourself as the MC, or are in some way trying to impersonate them, then, yes, first person makes the most sense. But using third person is completely natural. In fact the vast majority of people we would refer to in the third person. Third person is in a sense the most neutral perspective; you can write about anyone and anything that way. But, sure, the third person perspective absolutely imperfect. First person is great for some things, and occasionally feels so natural precisely because it creates a more singular focus. Everything has to lead back to the narrator in such a story. That excludes most things which happen, which can be a problem, but it also means specificity. Specificity leads to connection, which is a useful literary tool. We as humans also like specificity for its own sake. It's interesting to get to know about those events and thoughts we don't usually get to. Again, you could refer to the exact same things in the third perspective, but it can be a little bit more work, and occasionally require a little bit more of the author and/or reader.
I respect your opinion on this, of course, but I honestly could not agree less. I find it interesting how we can all see things so differently. Unless you're talking about scope and word-count, then I'm starting to understand. Again, I just can't get on board with this. I know I'm sounding negative here and appear to have a big downer on third, but it's worth mentioning that I'm persevering with my WIP written in third (and thoroughly enjoying the experience). But, I'm totally baffled at how you can say third is completely natural. How is it natural? To use your comparison, we do not use third to talk about other people. If there is a comparison (and I've made the same one myself) we use first. When we tell others about the day we've had, we'll say "I did this... Then I saw Jan... I was so excited about the new job... I was so nervous about the interview, but feel it went well." And yes, we mention other people in as much as "Bill looked a little down today... Jan was wearing that new dress..." But never do we talk about what these other people were thinking, or how they were feeling inside. Why? Because we can't possibly know (unless they tell us). And therein lies my problems with a third-person POV. It's anything but natural.
I would argue that some people do tell stories, complete with thoughts and feelings, in the third person. But it may be an art that's fading away. Third person past tense feels natural to me mainly because I've read hundreds of novels written that way.
I mean, I do. When I come home from work I'll often say to my husband something along these lines: "So I was in a meeting with Ted, Fred and Jane. Ted told Jed that he was late on a project, and oh my God Jed was pissed. I mean, he was so angry! And then Jane felt so bad for Jed that she tried to intervene. Ted got pissed off himself and turned on Jane. Poor Jane was so taken aback that she started to cry! I don'r need any of my co-workers to tell me when they're angry, feeling sympathetic, or shocked by something. They tell me by the words they use, body language, facial expression, tone of voice, etc. And I know my characters even better than I know my characters, so I don't at all have a problem with talking about their feelings even though I'm not experiencing them personally. I know my close POV characters so well it's like I have access to their thoughts and feelings. Which I actually do, because I created those thoughts and feelings. I'm not saying that there's a right or a wrong way, but that's how my writing brain works. What feels unnatural to me is to write (since my POV characters are always men), "I shaved my face and then took a leak in the urinal before going about my day." Uh, no, I didn't do any of that and never will. And I don't think I could ever write explicit m/m sex in first person; to me that just seems so weird to talk about "my aching/throbbing/needy {insert body part here I don't have}."
For novels and longer things I write, I always use an almighty, omnipresent narrator. I could mention the character's thoughts, the day he saw his first corpse, the other character's thoughts, the year before, the year ahead of them; what's to come, the owl in the tree, everything. I love intriguing, strange, eerie writing styles. To me, first person limits itself too much. I love throwing in patterns, references, repeated phrases, a look into the past that the characters don't know, only the narrator does. To me, omnipresent is just more easier to work with.
Well, I've got one of those! Just not a few other anatomical parts that are frequently featured in my sex scenes.
When considering fictional characters, we don't really know how they feel, and so we're left with the same kind of second guessing we do IRL when referring to other people's emotions. Just because we don't know as much about someone's emotional state, or what they think, or even what they've done, it's not automatically any less natural. In fact the natural thing is the uncertainty. If the idea is that as an author and a reader the character is a some person other than themself, then third person is the most authentic choice. In the end it's one person describing another based simply on their knowledge of them and use of their reason to try to understand their motives and future actions. Even an omniscient narrator doesn't really change that. It's still a different person describing another to the best of their ability. This is essentially what literature is: One person (the author) describing other people (the characters) to a third party (the reader). NOTE: I don't want to come across as anti-first person. To me they are equally valid and natural. I personally tend to prefer to both read and write third person, but that's not without a lot of exceptions, and often I don't even really notice, but that's by the by. I'm just chiming in with my two cents.
I was mulling over this a bit more, and I guess the best way to explain my approach to close third is this. While I'm not a practicing Christian, I do believe in God. (If you have religious arguments please take them to the Debate Room). I believe that God, as my creator and were they to choose to have interest, would know exactly what I'm feeling at any moment. And when it comes to my characters, I am God.
I think you've missed the point. I was making the comparison between how we write fiction in a first-person voice, and how we tell others in the real world what kind of day we've had. My argument is that they're the same, in as much as we use the 'I' pronoun and can only observe and make assumptions about others. @Laurin Kelly - shows how sometimes we discuss our day with others in a voice which is more akin to a third-person narrative, but in her example she only uses the distant third-person voice. What about the close third-person voice, where we display characters' thoughts and memories? That's something we cannot do in real life, so I still fail to see how so many consider third the more 'natural' of the two.
I think where perhaps we diverge is that I see a major distinction between relaying stories about people in real life who actually exist, and ones who are inhabited by fictional characters whose thoughts and memories I actually have access to because I created them. That's what feels natural to me, I think, as well as @ChickenFreak's point that most books I've read and enjoyed are written in close third.
You know that it hampers your workflow, yet you stick to it. It's like dealing with that person that has to drink or smoke weed before leaving the house. Or has a ritual to go through before rolling a bowling ball.
Ah! I think I need to make it clear I don't respond to tough love. Here's hoping you don't work in Mental Health
1/ Yes, essentially. 1st POV: I walked down the street, looking contemptuously at the women in their short skirts and sleeveless tops. Whores! Close 3rd: He walked down the street, looking contemptuously at the women in their short skirts and sleeveless tops. Whores! Distant 3rd: He walked down the street, looking contemptuously at the women in their short skirts and sleeveless tops. They looked like prostitutes to him. Or: He walked down the street, looking contemptuously at the women in their short skirts and sleeveless tops. Whores, he thought.
@Shadowfax - Thanks. That's helped show me I naturally write in close 3rd (when I dare to write in 3rd at all, that is)
Now, not to throw a spanner in the works, but... Don't let yourself get too frustrated when you feel you've got a grasp of the whole thing and then read a book that seems to make a liar of us all. Example: I just finished the last of The Expanse books in my possession, Babylon's Ashes by James S. A. Corey. Great books. Love them. The writers (two guys writing under one pen name) had their successes and their opportunities as regards their execution of close 3rd person limited with chapters alternating the POV character. Success was in the form of being very disciplined as regards only ever giving us information, senses, feelings, engagements, etc. from the given POV character of that chapter and also of making use of the narrative directly for these things, as pointed out by @Shadowfax, in the examples given in his last post. Opportunities came in the form of a somewhat flat, uniform 'voice' for most of the characters. As was pointed out in a different thread by @Homer Potvin, yes, everyone in those books seems gifted with an enviably dry wit and a penchant for having an oh-so perfectly clever, snarky little line ready to deploy at a moment's notice. In contrast I'm now re-reading The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan. This books (the first of a trilogy) is also close 3rd person limited with chapters alternation the POV characters, but I would say that Morgan shows less discipline in sticking to the letter of the POV. It's not quite as close. There are long swaths of exposition that feel very 3rd person distant and sometimes verging on omniscient because the POV character meanders off to give us information that's not really in-the-moment. I would still classify it as close 3rd person limited, but just not as disciplined as the prior books I just finished. His success in these books is that, other than everyone being spectacularly potty mouthed, the alternating POV characters, from chapter to chapter, have a much more successful execution of having more distinct voices, in their dialogue, and also in the manner of the narrative that we accept as really being a reflection of the POV character when we're in close 3rd person. So, maybe add to your set of lenses as you engage these things and decide what's what, the simple idea that sometimes it's just a matter of how successfully the author stuck to Thing X.
@Wreybies That's a lot to get my head around for someone so unpractised in 3rd person writing. I'm not sure what you're saying about Morgan being less disciplined, or how exposition can be distant. So far I've stuck firmly in close 3rd. Any details regarding other characters have come from the MC's observations. I'm getting to the point now where I need to think about hopping over to my antagonist, but I'm dreading it. I don't want to get in his head, or at least I don't think I do, but fear he'll come across as flat and 2d if I don't. In a nutshell I want the comfort of close 3rd, with the advantage of being able to bulk up the novel's word count with a distant 3rd POV from a second character. Hopping heads also has plot ramifications. Do I want to keep my reader informed of the baddie's movements? Won't that spoil the tension? If by some miracle I ever get this finished, and by an even bigger miracle manage to stay with a single POV, I will be changing it over to first-person during the re-writes and editing process.
Only if it's relevant. If you have multiple POV's the last thing you want to do is fall into the habit of "checking in" with each POV just for the hell of it. That's called narrative drag and it will seriously fuck up your day if you're not careful. My last book ended up with probably 30k words worth of unnecessary check-backs on the editing room floor. In my opinion, the worst thing anyone can do in writing is throw good words and bad ideas in the hope of justifying their existence. Your best bet, depending on style, is to shift whenever you reach a part of the story that is best told from the perspective of one character instead another (I think you said you only wanted to follow the antag for little bits at a time, right?). If you need to catch the reader up on what a character had been doing in a lengthy gap between POVs, a few bits of narrative summary should do the trick. Of course, if you have two balanced POV's then alternating chapters isn't the worse idea, provided that each can pull their weight. The Expanse, as Wrey mentioned, is a bit weird. The first book falls into a habit where the POV switches every chapter during long, continuous scenes where both characters are together. I mean, they are standing side by side doing the exact same things while we bounce between them. I thought that was a bit unnecessary, especially since neither character had a voice/presence/perspective that was dramatically different from the other. It would have been one thing if each character possessed opposite agendas. That would have opened the door for misdirection, dramatic irony, cross-purposes, etc. But they didn't.
But wouldn't that be like suddenly being privy to the movements of someone away from the MC, when up to that point I've only divulged what the MC has witnessed? At least if I change the POV to that of the antagonist, I'd be taking the reader with me.
I meant you can summarize what the antag has been up to from his own POV when you get back to him if there's been a long layoff.
