Thoughts on 3rd person objective?

RL,

Hi, but I can't make head nor tail of your first paragraph. And I think 3rd person objective is touched upon in several threads in this forum.

RLSMiller said:

In my WIP, I'm mixing with three different 1st person POVs, and a third person objective POV (which later turns out to be a person spying on the protagonists). I use it in 6 out of 24 chapters, generally when two or more of the 1st person POVs are together in the same scene.

I don't see third person objective being mentioned too often, so I was just wondering how people feel about it and whether any of you are using it in your writing.

For those that don't know, it is similar to third person omniscient, except you don't have direct access to the character's thoughts/feelings. Instead, it's fly on the wall - the narrator is like a bystander.

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As is true with all literary techniques, it can work when handled skillfully. Unskillfully, it comes across as a patronizing attitude toward both the novel characters and the reader. I am sure you have handled this POV skillfully.

I don't think there's anything innately wrong with inserting a 3rd person POV into the mix.


Points to watch --

(a) Transferring from POV to POV.
It's always necessary to switch smoothly from head to head.
The reader has to know the switch has happened.
She has to know where she now is.
But it has to be done without a noticeable 'bump'.
Like moving a soufflee in the oven.


(b) Emotional involvement.
If you have no internals for this 3rd person fellow,
if he's just reporting -- 'I saw Julie kill Fred',
and there's no emotional reaction on his part,
this may possibly be less engaging than a more ordinary POV where the reader rejoices and suffers with the character.

Having said there's nothing innately wrong with the structure ...
let me go on to say.

very, very generally speaking
-- and this doesn't apply at all to 'literary works' or 'experimental fiction' --
a writer wants his 'writing technique' to be invisible.

The more complex the technique, the harder it is to make it invisible.

Your somewhat complex and unusual structure might be consciously noticed by the reader.
It might confuse and distract.
It might break the fictive haze.
It might make you need to re-establish the fictive haze with every chapter heading.


So why choose this structure?

Does it make your story move faster?
Does it increase tension?
Does it give the reader better access to your characters' emotions?
Does it draw the reader deep into events?

We choose our organization and structure for dramatic purposes.
(Not to convey information.)
We pick our structure because it's the best way to tell the story.

How is this structure the best way to tell your story?
How does it make your story more engaging and dramatic?

On the downside is the possibiity of confusion and disengagement.
What's the upside?

I think 3rd objective is a difficult pov to pull off. I also think there isn't enough topics/threads on this pov.

To me, I've only written in this pov for the last six months or so and finally feel like I'm getting the hang of it. I just always try and picture myself as a camera. Here are some tips I use for myself:

1. No thoughts, emotion, or motivations are revealed unless through action or dialogue.
2. Remain a detached observer from what the characters think and feel.
3. NEVER enter a character's mind.

I have an entire page of stuff I've written down to remind myself to say true. I can send it too you if you want. Also, read Heminway's "Hills Like White Elephants." That is a great example to go by, though most of it is only dialogue/conversation.

And like you said, I really wish more people would talk about this pov. It's terribly hard to find good info about it. I hope this helps in some way.

I always get back to what JOB said -- why would anyone want this pov? How does it make the story better for the reader?

It strikes me as both an oxymoron (it can't really be objective) and an artificial limitation that prevents an author from using the full range of storytelling tools available by taking restrictions of one form and applying them to a form that doesn't have those restrictions.

When telling a story, there are several options, but let's say you've discarded poems and oral storytelling and short stories and essays and memoirs, so you're pretty much left with choosing between a play (which is written in a style comparable to third person objective) and a novel.

What are the pros and cons of each? A play is "objective," with the author injecting only the externally observable aspects of the story: dialogue and some setting and stage movements. The intent, generally, is that a play will be .... well, played, by actors, who will then transform the play into a visual and emotional presentation, filling in all the blanks left by the playwright.

A novel, on the other hand, is meant to be complete in and of itself, with no actors playing it out, no sets built to provide the scenery, no voice inflections to establish emotions, no special effects. All of those things, instead, are provided by the author in the story itself.

So, if a novel is written in third person objective (and, again, I have trouble with the whole idea of a novel being "objective," b/c every word choice, even if it's about something that can be observed, is a subjective judgment, often with emotional undertones -- did someone walk, walk fast, walk very fast, run, sprint, etc.?), the story has neither the benefits of a play (with actors filling in some of the gaps) or the benefits of a novel (with the full story on the page).

If stories are meant to be emotional and cathartic (which I think is true of all stories, regardless of format, and the very reason we crave them so much), why in heaven's name would the story be better if the author chooses not to use all the storytelling tools available to explore the emotions? That's where I get stuck. Just can't imagine how it's possibly better to be "objective" in a medium that's raison d'etre is to wallow in the subjective.

JD

If the 3rd person is spying on the 1st person POVs, it doesn't make much sense to me that 3rd person objective is the most effective took here. After all, even a spy colors his/her observations with personal commentary and that's what makes the observations so interesting. I mean, is this POV in the form of a report? Without reading your work I have no way to specifically address how it's working, but for me I'd consider making that 3rd person objective into a fourth 1st person just for the interest factor.

A note on POV-jumping. *shudders* As a reader, I absolutely hate it. It's very difficult to pull off well. If your POV gets muddled just once, you lose the rest of the story. Careful with it.

Good luck.

In that context, it appears that the 3rd person may not work, you're 3 protaganists are in first person, so you change the narrator for each of those three (Like Stephen King's Rose Madder, you have the female character as one narrator and the male as the other) but I'm thinking, if there is a spy observing, what is the purpose of the 3rd person, the rest of the writing is through the eyes of the characters and then suddenly the writer has a voice through a 3rd person narrator, I'd probably expect the spy to speak, if it's in the past tense, one of the protaganists narrates if they ever know the whole story. But it still depends, as anything can work if it is skillfully done, I'd make a short chapter where this occurs and see what people think of it - it may work.

JanDarby said:

I always get back to what JOB said -- why would anyone want this pov? How does it make the story better for the reader?

It strikes me as both an oxymoron (it can't really be objective) and an artificial limitation that prevents an author from using the full range of storytelling tools available by taking restrictions of one form and applying them to a form that doesn't have those restrictions.

When telling a story, there are several options, but let's say you've discarded poems and oral storytelling and short stories and essays and memoirs, so you're pretty much left with choosing between a play (which is written in a style comparable to third person objective) and a novel.

What are the pros and cons of each? A play is "objective," with the author injecting only the externally observable aspects of the story: dialogue and some setting and stage movements. The intent, generally, is that a play will be .... well, played, by actors, who will then transform the play into a visual and emotional presentation, filling in all the blanks left by the playwright.

A novel, on the other hand, is meant to be complete in and of itself, with no actors playing it out, no sets built to provide the scenery, no voice inflections to establish emotions, no special effects. All of those things, instead, are provided by the author in the story itself.

So, if a novel is written in third person objective (and, again, I have trouble with the whole idea of a novel being "objective," b/c every word choice, even if it's about something that can be observed, is a subjective judgment, often with emotional undertones -- did someone walk, walk fast, walk very fast, run, sprint, etc.?), the story has neither the benefits of a play (with actors filling in some of the gaps) or the benefits of a novel (with the full story on the page).

If stories are meant to be emotional and cathartic (which I think is true of all stories, regardless of format, and the very reason we crave them so much), why in heaven's name would the story be better if the author chooses not to use all the storytelling tools available to explore the emotions? That's where I get stuck. Just can't imagine how it's possibly better to be "objective" in a medium that's raison d'etre is to wallow in the subjective.

JD

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My WIP, a YA Fantasy Adventure, is in 3rd Person Objective.

I think you're taking "objective" too literally. In this instance, it doesn't mean the author is a dispassionate observer of the action, it means the author is not climbing into the head of any character and telling the story from inside. Instead, the author uses the characters' actions and, to a lesser extent, their dialog to reveal them.

Each scene of my WIP is told from a specific character's POV, but I do not enter that character's head or anyone else's. 3rd Person Objective is not about treating all characters equally or handling them at equal distance, it's about allowing them to express themselves to the reader as the reader would encounter them in life. In that way, I think it's a fallacy to believe 3rd Person Objective stunts or curtails emotional involvement and attachment of the reader. We do not know the interior of anyone else's head as we go through life, but that doesn't stop us from forming close, in the best cases deep, relationships with other people.

Finally, I would say 3rd Person Objective puts story at the forefront, which is where it should be, in my opinion. I'm not a big fan of swimming inside a character's head; being told his thoughts and feelings on anything and everything, having his history of pain and tragedy heaped onto the page as he recalls it. Neither do I enjoy an author's attempts to dazzle me with metaphors, his thesaurus, or the history of Slovakia disguised as a character's childhood. I'd much rather the totality of a character's experiences play out on the plot and reveal themselves through his actions. I don't use dialog tags for the same reason. It forces action to the fore to show the story, not tell it.

Action is character, and character is story.

When it comes down to it, I'm not a big 3rd Person Limited fan at all. I think it leads to lazy writing and the crutches of telling and head hopping. Of course, in the right hands, I'm sure it leads to Great Art, but that still doesn't make me a fan of the style. If I want to get into someone's head, I'll write (or read) 1st Person.

Anything else reads too much like writing.

-Jason

RLSMiller said:

It's difficult to explain.

Bearing in mind it's YA fantasy, the first person characters aren't being spied on intentionally - rather, there is a comatose fourth character who has basically been receiving these images/dreams of their lives. He is not conscious enough to make decisions, hence the objectivity.

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Okay, fair enough. It would be a difficult jump for me to make, however, that the comatose character is that objective. Ummm....how to explain.

Okay, let's try this. If a character who is comatose is still conscious enough to register these occurrences, he is conscious enough to comment on them. He's just incapable of expressing those opinions. There is a huge school of thought on the consciousness of the comatose. If the character is just lying there and devoid of all thought, then what possible purpose could there be for him to *spy* on the others? It would be boring; it would be like a piece of furniture commenting. If, on the other hand, he is mentally commenting on their actions (say it's his only form of amusement, for example) that, to me, is infinitely more interesting.

Hope that made sense. Good luck.

I'll be very interested to read it then. It sounds like a huge challenge. I hope you pull it off.

Good luck.

See, this is where it gets weird, b/c I agree with the stuff you like and dislike, the stuff you consider good and bad writing, but I don't see how third person "objective" is the answer or is an improvement. Just b/c some authors abuse the tool of internal monologue/feelings, doesn't mean the tool itself should be banned from the toolbox.

I'm not a big fan of swimming inside a character's head; being told his thoughts and feelings on anything and everything, having his history of pain and tragedy heaped onto the page as he recalls it.

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Agreed. That's third limited, badly done, with telling and authorial intrusion and all sorts of horrible writing.

Neither do I enjoy an author's attempts to dazzle me with metaphors, his thesaurus, or the history of Slovakia disguised as a character's childhood.

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Agreed. I'm way too literal-minded to have any appreciation for metaphors, and they usually violate POV anyway, b/c they're not the way the POV character would think. So, in that case, again, it's third limited, badly done.

I'd much rather the totality of a character's experiences play out on the plot and reveal themselves through his actions.

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So would I. But that doesn't explain why it's good to establish a prohibition against ever sharing the POV character's thoughts/feelings, since you're sharing them indirectly anyway in the choice of what they notice and how they describe it.

And how do you handle things that simply are, by their very nature, internal? The POV character looks down, sees that his arm is bleeding. Okay, that's objective and external, so that's fine. Does he feel pain? A little or a lot? Sharp or dull? And then what? He does something. He crumples to the ground. He grits his teeth. He laughs. He cries. He screams. He shrugs. Okay, and all of those can get across to the reader certain aspects of what's going on, but not necessarily the full picture.

Let's say, in one version, the POV character is in shock, and adrenaline has kicked in, and he's not even feeling the pain, despite seeing the blood. So he races forward to chase the bad guy, not even noticing that he's slowing down as his body starts to shut down. It's not a struggle for him, he's just continuing on his original course, unaware that there's even a significant problem.

Now, compare that to a situation where it DOES hurt. He's in excruciating pain. His actions, though, are exactly the same. He races forward to chase the bad guy, because otherwise the bad guy will kill his daughter. His actions, on the surface, are the same, but there's a fundamental difference in that he NOTICES the pain, and he NOTICES that he's slowing down. But he keeps going, because he's got a strong motivation and he's just that kinda' guy.

Don't those two situations tell slightly different stories, if we know what he's feeling/thinking? And don't we care about the two versions of the character differently, depending on what we know about that internal stuff? How is it better for the reader, not just to avoid using internalizations as a cheap and easy way to avoid the harder work of showing, but to go all the way to exclude internalizations entirely? That's where I can't see the benefit. Sometimes the story is richer for a brief insight into the character's head, when kept relevant and grounded in the now of the story.

JD, who can't believe she's arguing for the emotional/internal stuff, b/c that's the stuff she has trouble writing herself.

JanDarby said:

See, this is where it gets weird, b/c I agree with the stuff you like and dislike, the stuff you consider good and bad writing, but I don't see how third person "objective" is the answer or is an improvement. Just b/c some authors abuse the tool of internal monologue/feelings, doesn't mean the tool itself should be banned from the toolbox.

So would I. But that doesn't explain why it's good to establish a prohibition against ever sharing the POV character's thoughts/feelings, since you're sharing them indirectly anyway in the choice of what they notice and how they describe it.

Let's say, in one version, the POV character is in shock, and adrenaline has kicked in, and he's not even feeling the pain, despite seeing the blood. So he races forward to chase the bad guy, not even noticing that he's slowing down as his body starts to shut down. It's not a struggle for him, he's just continuing on his original course, unaware that there's even a significant problem.

Now, compare that to a situation where it DOES hurt. He's in excruciating pain. His actions, though, are exactly the same. He races forward to chase the bad guy, because otherwise the bad guy will kill his daughter. His actions, on the surface, are the same, but there's a fundamental difference in that he NOTICES the pain, and he NOTICES that he's slowing down. But he keeps going, because he's got a strong motivation and he's just that kinda' guy.

Don't those two situations tell slightly different stories, if we know what he's feeling/thinking? And don't we care about the two versions of the character differently, depending on what we know about that internal stuff? How is it better for the reader, not just to avoid using internalizations as a cheap and easy way to avoid the harder work of showing, but to go all the way to exclude internalizations entirely? That's where I can't see the benefit. Sometimes the story is richer for a brief insight into the character's head, when kept relevant and grounded in the now of the story.

JD, who can't believe she's arguing for the emotional/internal stuff, b/c that's the stuff she has trouble writing herself.

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Addressing the first paragraph, you didn't find the answer to why 3rd Person Objective is an improvement over anything else because it wasn't there. I responded to your initial post because I felt you were casting 3rd Person Objective in a negative light (something you did again by placing quotes around objective in your response) and sought to explain the validity of the choice. That's all it, as all POV, is, a choice. You intimated you didn't understand why anyone would make that choice, I told you why I did.

As to your examples, I would hope by the time the injured hero lopes off after the villain, the reader would be well acquainted by what kind of guy he is through the totality of his preceding actions. To me, the chase is the thing in that example, not the pain. After all, pain or not, what makes the hero the hero is his pursuit of the villain, come what may. If the author feels it necessary to the story to underscore the hero's pain, that can be done without going into his head to hear him think, "Bugger all, this REAlly hurts."

It's choice, it's style, and it's going to vary from writer to writer and reader to reader. I'm not a 3rd Person Limited Fan, you are, and so it goes.

-Jason

Objective

I like objective POV. When it's done well, it can be very powerful. But it is tough to pull off, especially in a long work. Objective means you can't get inside anyone's head. and that's tough. It's stage play POV.

Maybe the most famous example of objective POV is Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants. http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~conreys/101files/Otherfolders/Hillslikewhitepg.html

But, honestly, I think keeping the comatose patient a secret until the end may be an even bigger problem. If you do this, may sure clues and hints are planted along the way. If a reader says, "Oh, I should have seen that coming" you did a good job. But if you simply spring something like this on a reader with no foreshadowing, it's more likely to make the reader really angry.