Point of View – Subjective, Objective or Omniscient
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When using Third Person point of view, there is another aspect to consider – Subjective (aka Limited), Objective, and Omniscient. This describes whose head you can look into, in essence.
Third Person Limited
In Subjective or Limited point of view, the reader can only see and know the thoughts and inner emotions of the point of view character. The reader is “limited” to the thoughts of just one character. For all other characters in the scene, the reader can only see what they say or do and doesn’t know the other characters’ inner thoughts.
For an example let’s use Little Red Riding Hood again.
Little Red Riding Hood opened the door to Grandma’s room and stepped inside. She sniffed lightly. There was a strange smell in the room that she didn’t like. She squinted at Grandma. Why was the room so dark?
“Hello, my dear. Come closer.” Grandma patted the bedspread beside her.
Grandma’s voice was huskier than normal. Well, she was sick, after all.
Little Red moved closer to the bed until she could see Grandma. What was wrong with Grandma’s eyes?
“What big eyes you have today, Grandma.”
“All the better to see you with, my dear.”
In this scene, the reader gets several inner thoughts from Red Riding Hood – she doesn’t like the smell in the room, she wonders why it is dark and she thinks there is something wrong with Grandma’s eyes. In contrast, you don’t get any of Grandma’s/The Wolf’s thoughts; all you see and hear from Grandma Wolf are the things that he says or does.
In Limited Point of View you only see one character’s thoughts and emotions. For all other characters, you only observe their outer actions and words.
Third Person Objective
Objective point of view means that the reader doesn’t see any character’s inner thoughts and feelings, not even those of the point of view character. Instead, the reader is only witness to outer actions and dialogue. Think of this as using a movie camera to record an event. A camera can’t record the thoughts or feelings of a person, only what they say, do or display with expressions on their face or body language.
Using Little Red:
Little Red Riding Hood opened the door to Grandma’s room and stepped inside. She sniffed lightly. She squinted at Grandma.
“Hello, my dear. Come closer.” Grandma patted the bedspread beside her.
Little Red moved closer to the bed. “What big eyes you have today, Grandma.”
“All the better to see you with, my dear.”
In this example, we’ve lost all of Red’s thoughts and observations about the room and her Grandma. We can only see what physically happens and hear what is actually said.
Third Person Omniscient
Omniscient point of view means that the reader is privy to every character’s inner thoughts and feelings.
Back to Little Red:
Little Red Riding Hood opened the door to Grandma’s room and stepped inside. She sniffed lightly. There was a strange smell in the room that she didn’t like. She squinted at Grandma. Why was the room so dark?
“Hello, my dear. Come closer.” The Wolf patted the bedspread beside him. The girl needed to be closer so she couldn’t avoid the attack. The wolf’s mouth watered in anticipation of this juicy snack.
Grandma’s voice was huskier than normal. Well, she was sick, after all.
Little Red moved closer to the bed until she could see Grandma. What was wrong with Grandma’s eyes?
“What big eyes you have today, Grandma.”
Drat, the girl sounded suspicious. He would have to quickly reassure her so she didn’t leave. “All the better to see you with, my dear.”
In Omniscient point of view, the reader gets the thoughts and feelings of both characters in the scene. In addition to Red’s uneasiness about the smell and the darkness, the reader learns about the wolf’s anticipation of the attack and his desire to calm the fears of Little Red so he can attack and eat her.
Omniscient point of view allows the reader to dip in and out of each characters’ thoughts.
Question for You
Do you favor a particular style of Third Person point of view in your writing? Tell us about it in the comments.
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3 comments
@joechummer on January 28, 2010 at 2:26 am
I've always found Omniscient POVs to be very distracting and really hard to follow: Whose head are we in NOW, and is there a REASON we're there other than to fill space on a page? A trap beginning writers often fall into is believing that every character's viewpoint in a scene is essential for the reader to know and understand. In actuality, the most important POV in any given scene is from the character who is either A) the most affected by the change in the scene or B) the one who is enacting the biggest change in the scene (and remember: "change" is the most important thing that denotes a scene. If something doesn't change by the end of the scene, the scene is unnecessary).
With 1st person or 3rd person Limited/Subjective POVs, the reader has a singular anchor to the scene: the narrator in 1st, the POV character in 3rd. You get to understand this character and can see their frame of reference. This character may not necessarily be the protagonist in the given scene, but their viewpoint is currently the most important one.
With Omniscient POV, the relentless head hopping may provide for some measure of dramatic irony (although there are much more effective ways of doing so), but you lose your anchor to the scene (or even the whole story), as suddenly you're in a crowd of competing voices with completely different (or even contradicting) frames of reference. Learning what everyone is thinking at any given moment not only kills some of the suspense (in the above example, we know Granny is actually the wolf), but it is ultimately confusing and time consuming.
If you write a scene in a limited 3rd person POV, you get a lot of narrative about the character's thought processes, and depending on the detail involved, that can lead to a lot of page real estate. If you then dip into everyone's head, then multiply how much you would have written for just ONE 3rd person character and apply that the the character in your scene. Case in point: the Omniscient example in the article above is the longest of the three.
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jjrobinson on June 9, 2011 at 8:54 pm
hi