I’ve heard the term “limited omniscient” bandied around a couple of times, but it seems to mean contradictory things depending on who’s using it, so I’m waiting until a consensus definition appears before I worry about using it. Sometimes the writer’s “camera” sits on one particular viewpoint character’s shoulder sometimes it’s further away, or changes focus but it always shows only what is happening from the outside.ģ) Omniscient viewpoint, in which the narrator is an invisible character who knows everything that has ever happened or will ever happen and everything that anyone is thinking or feeling, and who can report as much or as little of this as seems appropriate. The writer just describes expressions and actions, provides dialog and tone of voice – the stuff that a camera or observer could see, and nothing more. ![]() In camera-eye third person, the narrator does not give the reader anyone’s thoughts or emotions. The only way for the reader to find out the other characters’ emotions is for the viewpoint character to guess or infer them from what those characters say and do.Ģ) Camera-eye third person (also known as third-person objective, observer-in-the-corner, third-person-impersonal, fly-on-the-wall, third person indirect, camera-on-the-shoulder, and, probably, also a bunch of other things). This is the viewpoint where the writer sticks with a single viewpoint character, providing his/her thoughts and emotions directly. ![]() ![]() My three categories are: 1) Tight third person (also known as intimate third-person, third-person-personal, limited third person, third person subjective, and probably a bunch of other stuff). So I break the third person viewpoint up into three general sub-categories, and lump the rest of the distinctions under “voice,” where I don’t have to worry about them so much. Maybe they’re helpful if you’re analyzing stuff after it’s written, but I’ve never found them to be much help while I’m writing. I personally find most of those fine distinctions to be pretty useless from a writer’s perspective. Some references will tell you that there is only ever the omniscient narrator (but sometimes the narrator chooses to focus on only one character) others will split things up into dozens of fine distinctions, depending on whether the narrative voice matches the character’s voice, how much of the character’s thoughts are or aren’t shown, whether the narrator is explicit, and a bunch of other things. The worst part of it is, neither the terminology nor the ways of dividing up the third person viewpoint are standardized. There are seemingly an infinite number of ways to do it, because third-person viewpoint has a very broad range, from what I call “tight third person,” where the writer not only sticks with a single character’s point of view, but also provides his/her thoughts and emotions (and only that one viewpoint character’s thoughts and emotions), to the broad sweep of omniscient viewpoint that can dip into anyone’s thoughts at any time or tell the reader things that are going on elsewhere, that happened in the past, or that will happen in the future. Third person viewpoint, taken as a whole, is probably the most commonly used viewpoint in fiction. ![]() As I’ve said before, the terms “viewpoint” and “point of view” can mean two different things: either the viewpoint character or the type of viewpoint (first, second, or third-person).
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