a question for writers or anyone else

[rinhail]

The other day me and my sister had a disagreement about the linguistics of third person point-of-view. Is it acceptable to write from one characters perspective in the form of third person point-of-view? I believe you can (one of my fanfics is written in that way) but my sister refuses to agree. She believes if it's from one characters perspective

Comments

[varices]

Yes, you can write in third-person but still not be "seeing in their eyes." First person places you within the head of the narrator only--we can only see from their perspective. There is such a thing called third-person limited which focuses on one character, or a set of characters, and seeing from only their situation. Quite a few books can do this. An example of this would be The Dragonbone Chair, and even the Foreigner series by C.J. Cherryh assumes us in the perspective and viewpoint of Bren Cameron but not within the first person. We are allowed to get into the head of the character and see things from his perspective but his alone. We see when a character interacts it is, "Bren Cameron thought, Bren Cameron sawMany books do this when they wish to provide more context outside of the character but still be limited to one or two characters rather than multiple. We are in the third view point but we are not omniscient, etc, in all regards. This third person limited started becoming popular during the time of Modernism when we were

[varices]

Just in case she still doesn't believe you here are some quotes from the Foreigner series by C.J. Cherryh. The quote shows that we are seeing from one man's view point, in this case Bren Cameron's though it is not specified, but is written in third person

[rinhail]

Thank you for confirming this. I told her, but like a typical stubborn kid, she refuses to admit we were right. She's a smart kid, I'm sure she understands that we're right, but like I said she's stubborn as hell.

[varices]

You are quite welcome. Nowadays, a good chunk of people write in this "person." It is actually harder for me to find just normal third person anymore since post-modernism likes to re-index and mix a bunch of different styles together. It can be hard to see just a straight view (unless it's first person).