With the understanding that I've never heard of "JOOTOPIA" (and don't like the sound of it), I'm not sure if we're talking about a story you're writing which incorporates an existing film, or if you're actually writing a screenplay. Since your question is about 3rd person limited, I'll assume it's the former. I'm also assuming that your final sentence above should read, "I would like you to give me an example of how to do this." If Judy is your POV character, you can only describe what she can see, hear, smell, feel, taste or think. If it's too soon to break off the scene and you want to show her parents' reaction, I suggest you have one (or both) of them scream or yell (shaking their heads strikes me as a rather bland reaction to seeing one's daughter being chased by a tiger, especially if she appears to be bleeding), something she can hear even if she can't see them. If you have reasons for not wanting to handle it that way, then your only other choices are either to find a way to elongate the scene and show Jane's parents' reaction in the next scene, or else use 3rd omniscient.
3person When using a limited perspective, can descriptive distance adjustments explain what the POV characters cannot see? If there is a smiling villain behind the main character, it is too hard to finish the scene and start with a short introduction. Should we use a global perspective to describe this? Or, by adjusting the narrative distance, which retreats from a deep perspective, can it be accepted to describe what the main character cannot see?
You seem to have asked this question three times. I would suggest that you delete the excess. My short answer is, no--in third person limited, you can only see what the character can see. What is the purpose of showing the smiling villain? There may be a different way to achieve the same purpose.
I think you are asking a question better answered by writing it and posting your example along with the problem. That said, I believe you are speaking about 3rd person limited narration. In that case, the narrator is able to see things the character might not have. Like a man behind the curtain. The "limit" is on the omniscience of thoughts and feelings - the narrator only knows the one character's mind. https://study.com/academy/lesson/third-person-limited-narrator-definition-examples.html
In third person limited, the narrator only perceives what the character does. A commonly quoted quote from Ursula K. Le Guin: Only what the viewpoint character knows, feels, perceives, thinks, guesses, hopes, remembers, etc., can be told. The reader can infer what other people feel and think only from what the viewpoint character observes.
Since I posted a reference that says different, it seems that the answer is probably that it can be either. But you probably need to choose one or the other.
I'm pretty sure that reference is simply wrong. I've never seen another reference argue that you can, in third person limited, see things that the viewpoint character can't see.
So if you wanted to narrate a story where you only can present the thoughts of one person but otherwise can see what they cannot, what would you call that?
I'd have to come up with a new term. Or I could just call it third person omniscient; third person omniscient can dip into whatever it wants.
Actually, I think what you're describing is third person limited close. Close refers to how the eye of the narrator stays with the character, while limited refers to the extent of the narrator's mind reading.
I disagree. In pretty much every definition of third person limited that I've read, the narrator knows nothing that the character doesn't know. "Close" refers to how close you are in thought and emotion. Less close: Jane opened the door. Andrew had left the place a mess again. Sure, he was upset about his wife, but that was no excuse. Her heart pounded as fury rose and she fantasized about his death. More close: Jane opened the door and stared at the apartment. At the mess. At the chaos. Son of a...she'd kill Andrew. Kill him dead. Cousin or no cousin, pending divorce or no pending divorce, she'd kill him. Maybe by poison. Maybe with wood chipper. He was going to die. The below page has a good series of lines in increasing levels of closeness: https://thewritepractice.com/closer-characters/
I can kind of see where you're coming from. The bit from your reference says: Definition of Third Person Limited In third person limited the narrator only knows the thoughts and feelings of one character. All characters are described using pronouns, such as 'they', 'he', and 'she'. But, one character is closely followed throughout the story, and it is typically a main character. In other words, third person limited is much like when a video camera is placed over the shoulder of a character and the camera follows that person closely throughout a film. We stick with that person and are privy to his or her thoughts and feelings while still seeing everything and everyone around him or her in each scene. However, I think this strays into Omniscient territory. Here's the difference as I see it: 1) When Fred strolled into the sitting room that night, he was delighted to see that somebody—probably Nancy, he hoped—had drawn the curtains, built up the fire, and had left his slippers in front of his chair and his glass of wine and newspaper on the table beside it. He snuggled into the armchair, took a sip of wine, and picked up the paper and rattled it open. He didn't see the smiling man standing behind the picture window's curtain. (If Fred doesn't see the man, we shouldn't either, if you're in strictly Third Person Limited mode. There is nothing wrong with presenting the story this way, but I think it's crossed a line from Limited to Omniscient. Omniscient is more than just feelings and thoughts. It's perspective as well.) 2) When Fred strolled into the sitting room that night, he was delighted to see that somebody—probably Nancy, he hoped—had drawn the curtains, built up the fire, and had left his slippers in front of his chair and his glass of wine and newspaper on the table beside it. He snuggled into the armchair, took a sip of wine, and picked up the paper. Just as he rattled the paper open, he felt the whiff of an unexpected breeze. He lowered the paper, and noticed the drawn curtain was twitching. (This example shows what I think Ursula LeGuin meant, in her quote that @ChickenFreak gave us, above. Again, there isn't anything wrong with this kind of presentation either, but we're more closely in that POV character's head with this example than with the other one.)
It occurs to me that another element of third person limited and closeness is, I believe, the extent to which you can go to digressions that the viewpoint character isn't actually thinking about. Jane opened the door and stared at her apartment. She'd spent countless hours fixing up that apartment--obsessive lunchtimes looking at paint chips, Saturdays at antique shops, painting parties, floor refinishing parties, and finally the victorious housewarming party. It was clear that to Andrew, it might as well be a trashcan. In this (hurriedly-written) moment, the narrator is giving us specific facts that Jane does know, but she's probably not thinking about those specific facts in this moment. She's feeling emotions about the apartment, but she's probably not actually thinking about, for example, those paint chips of the past. So to me, here we're distant--we're not tied tightly to Jane's thoughts of the moment. We're distant for the purpose of getting close, because we want to convey Jane's emotions, but IMO the actual narrative distance is fairly distant. But I'd still call this third person limited.
It hardly matters who is right (if anyone, this didn't come down a mountain on a stone), if the OP or anyone else wants to write from the POV of the character's guardian angel, or if you write the equivalent of first person with "she" instead of "I". Either is equally legit. But I do think "close" is a particular thing, not just an adjective of degree. However, the more reference material I look at the clearer it is that people aren't using any terminology consistently. Many references refer to only Limited and Omni, others remember to include Objective and a few mention Close - though some of those use Close like Limited. There is no reason that the narrator's knowledge of a character's mind has to be chained to their eyes, especially when you consider that Objective also lacks a naturally fixed eyeline. But if it did, you'd call it Third Person Objective Close. And there's no reason you couldn't write in Omniscient Close as well. Just think of it as voiceover vs. camera angle. Omniscient Close: "Julia pushes through the door and started at the man she spies in her kitchen. Mind racing: No one is supposed to be here! The friendly smile he shows her masks deadly intent." Limited Distant: "Julia's heels on the stairs grew louder as she neared the kitchen and the man waiting there. He turns toward the doorway as she pushes through it, offering a broad smile. Her mind racing: No one is supposed to be here!" In the first example we only see what Julie sees (close), but the narrator tells us something about the man that Julie can't know about his intent (omniscient). And in the second the view is from a vantage in the room that Julia has not yet reach (distant), but we only know her thoughts and reactions and nothing about what the man thinks (limited). So while you can use the terms as you wish, if you use Omni/Limited as knowledge and Limited/Distant as camera angle it allows us to better describe POV than gluing the narrator's eyes and knowledge together in a way that makes the above examples impossible to label. Omni/Distant, Omni/Close, Objective/Distant, Objective/Close, Limited/Distant, Limited/Close. By the same token, First Person can also range in perspective and knowledge in similar ways depending on weather the narrator is speaking about what they knew at the time vs. know now that the story is in their past.
Both of your examples seem to be pretty clearly omniscient. And you can use the terms as you wish, unless you wish to engage in discussion with other writers.
The first example only takes place from Julia's eyes. The narrator can't tell us about the man until Julia sees him (close), yet the narrator knows both of their thoughts/futures. The second example uses a sightline fixed to the kitchen (distant from Julia) , but the narrator only knows Julia's mind and not the man's (limited). It is clearly not from her eyes, but we're only given her limited knowledge. I'm speaking to a writer right now, and we are discussing the problems of POVs that get confused when different people use the terms differently - as is clear from the links offered so far. I'm just suggesting that some labels better describe the options than others. You are taking the POV that your way is write because... well, because that's how you have been taught to use them. Not because you have a definitive reference like a dictionary. Here's yet another take on what distant and close means: https://www.writingforums.com/threads/158495-Third-Person-Characterization-Distant-vs-Close Everyone learns these things from different sources and adopts their understanding from them. I'm just pointing out that some ways prevent you from being able to label some situations accurately, as in my examples. Or consider how you would talk about Objective without having close/distant as options. "Limited Objective" doesn't make any more sense than "Omniscient Objective".
That’s omniscient. More than one character’s thoughts. Also omniscient. Re using the terms differently, you seem to be the one using them differently. There’s no law that you can’t take commonly used terms and redefine them, but it doesn’t strike me as useful. This seems to be the same thing I’ve been saying. Distant/close being about physical distance was your idea, I believe.
I think film and screenwriting might have different rules, but for writing fiction, you conventionally dont want to imagine the action through a camera, but through the eyes of a character. While there may be cause to break the limited view point, it is one of the rules where you have to have a lot of clout or people will think you don’t know what you are doing.
If both of those are objective, what are these: "Julia pushes through the door and started at the man she spies in her kitchen. His smile is polite but is only returned by her widening eyes." "Julia's heels on the stairs grew louder as she neared the kitchen and the man waiting there. He turns toward the doorway as she pushes through it, offering a broad smile. Julia feels her eyes widen." In neither case do we have the thoughts/feeling/futures of either character. In the first case the vantage is Julia's, in the second case the interior of the kitchen prior to Julia's arrival. In terms of God-like narrative knowledge, both are Objective, but only one has a vantage that is locked to a character. You called my first examples both Omniscient because (I think) one had Omniscient thoughts with "Limited" vantage and the second had Limited thoughts (Julia's only) and an "Omniscient-like" vantage. What do you call these scenes which both have Objective thoughts (none), but one offers a vantage not tied to a character? Is the second one no longer Objective? Or do writers not use Third Person Objective? Now take it back to the OP. He asked whether you can write from only one person's thoughts but reveal things the character wouldn't be able to see, which is what my second example in the earlier post is. Is that truly Omniscient given the limitations in whose thoughts we are privy to? Or is it simply incorrect and shouldn't be written that way because it isn't consistent in POV?
The examples are a bit confusing - I'm assuming the verb tense shifts are inadvertent, but if they were deliberate I missed the effect they were designed to produce. Beyond that... I think there's often confusion between "Omniscient" and "head-hopping". The first is viewed as a valid style, while the second is generally seen as a fault, but it's not always crystal clear whether a passage is one or the other, especially when the passage is quite short, as in your examples. I've resolved this distinction at least to my own satisfaction by saying that omniscient POV should have a discernible narrative voice that is NOT the voice of one of the characters. In the case of "Objective", I generally understand that in contrast to "Close" or "Deep" POV - objective never goes inside a character's head or experience, while close rarely/never leaves the character's head or experience... with that in mind, I can see your first example as possibly being objective, but your second NOT being objective (because Julia feels her eyes widen). I think some authors have used Objective POV to good effect, but I think it's very difficult to do well. It eliminates one of the great strengths written fiction has over filmed fiction - movies are great at showing what characters are doing, but not nearly as good at explaining why they do it, while novels have the advantage of being able to tell readers all about the characters' thoughts without using awkward voice-overs or whatever.
If you read the opening to Harry Potter, you can see the author starting in a fairly distant 3rd person POV and then zooming in to limited for most of the rest of the book (with a few other chapters started in distant, I think...?). I'd say it works, there, but I'm not sure I can think of examples of authors zooming OUT from limited third to a more distant POV...
I screwed up - it shouldn't say "feels her eyes widen", but "Julia's eyes widen". Sorry, I can no longer edit it. The second is not supposed to have any internal information, just vantage.
You mean omniscient, right? I'm looking at these as if you had been able to correct the "Julia feels". With that done, they might be objective, but I don't know. I dislike objective and haven't familiarized myself with the nuances and where they cross the line. Does the judgement "polite" flirt with the line? I don't know. Well, if you were forced to label it with some already accepted term, I think you'd have to call it omniscient, because with omniscient you can choose whatever you please--take what you want, leave what you want behind. It is, IMO, "incorrect" for any other POV label, because it violates the rules of every other one that I know.
With all respect, if you don't feel familiar with things like Objective to weigh in, why are you being so rigid as to what these labels do or don't mean? I'm just trying to bring a little rigor to a very ill defined topic. (And to be clear, I used "polite smile" as an objective categorization of a kind of expression, rather than a revelation of the person's feelings in giving that smile.)
It's not "things" like Objective, it's....Objective. I don't write in Objective, so I haven't done a lot of brain-straining about where I see the lines crossing. And you seem to be trying to "bring" rigor to a topic that is actually quite well defined. You found one source that seems to be, well, wrong, and you seem to have sort of imprinted on that source. That doesn't mean that the topic is ill defined.
