Advantages of Third Person Point of View

The four advantages of third person point of view I want to talk about are...

1. Third Person Point of View Is More Objective
2. Third Person Is Less Claustrophobic
3. Third Person Is More Immediate
4. Third Person Gives a Writer More Freedom

The first two advantages are relatively minor ones. The second two are the biggies.

And remember: As I showed in the article looking at the Advantages of First Person Point of View, what at first glance seems like a great reason for using a particular viewpoint is rarely so black-and-white on closer examination.

Third Person Point of View is More Objective

The best way to explain this is to start by showing that first person point of view is subjective.

Which of us, when talking about ourselves and our adventures, gives a truly accurate account?

We exaggerate the facts, or twist them slightly to cast ourselves in a better light. We leave out other facts altogether, ones which somehow spoil the story we are trying to tell. We perhaps even invent some "facts."

In short, we act as first person storytellers, turning reality into fiction to both tell a more entertaining tale and to make ourselves the hero of the tale.

Of course, we do this very subtly, so that it hardly seems we are deviating from the truth at all, but we do it all the same, whether we admit it (or are even aware of it) or not.

And a first person narrator in a novel does exactly the same thing, only not half so subtly - and it is this that makes first person point of view subjective.

Third person point of view, on the other hand, is objective.

Why? Because the narrator and the viewpoint character are two different people, meaning that the narrator can say things about the viewpoint character that the viewpoint character probably wouldn't admit to themselves.

(For more on this difference between narrators and viewpoint characters, please see the article explaining Third Person Narrative POV.)

Here is another way of putting it...

• If I tell you all about myself in the 1st person, I am unlikely to give you a warts-and-all picture. I'll leave out the bad points and concentrate on the good points instead.
• But if someone who knows me tells you all about me (3rd person point of view), the portrait they paint will be far more accurate and probably far less flattering.

(Not that I have many bad points, you understand. Come to think of it, I'm a perfect human being with no faults at all - but then I would say that, wouldn't I.)

To illustrate, a first person narrator might write a line like this...

A third person narrator, however, could be more honest...

The question is, which is best: third person objectivity or first person subjectivity?

And the answer, as ever in novel writing, is that it depends on the story you want to tell and the effect you want to create.

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for example, we see everything through Huck's first person, subjective eyes. It is charming and funny and works wonderfully well, but we take some of the things he tells us with a large pinch of salt.

So if Mark Twain had been going for a different kind of novel - a more serious character study, perhaps, or a less comic and more dramatic account of a boy's raft trip with a runaway slave - he probably would have opted to write a third person point of view novel.

Now for the next advantage...

Third Person Point of View Is Less Claustrophobic

Being stuck in the same character's skin from the first word to the last can make a novel feel claustrophobic, like going to a party and being stuck with the same person all night.

Notice, though, that I said can make a novel claustrophobic...

• Being stuck with the same person at a party is great if they happen to be charming and witty and have a whole bunch of fascinating tales to tell.
• If they are not quite so charming or witty, however, or their tales not quite so compelling, we will happily spend a little time with them but not the whole evening.

And it is exactly the same thing with a novel.

I don't want to give the impression here that all great fictional characters need to be so obviously engaging as a Huckleberry Finn.

Great characters can be shy, laconic, introspective, depressive, serious - you name it. So long as they are charismatic with it, you have the makings of a perfect central character - just not necessarily one the readers will want to spend every moment with.

Now, in most third person point of view novels, claustrophobia isn't an issue...

• You have the option of telling a third person novel from several viewpoints (in the form of a Multiple Viewpoint Novel.
• And even if you use only one viewpoint character, you can occasionally remove the camera from behind their eyes and view them from the outside, as it were.

The only circumstance under which a third person pov novel can be as claustrophobic as a first person pov novel is when you keep the camera behind the viewpoint character's eyes throughout. (This is known as 3rd Person "Character" Point of View.)

If you do keep the camera behind the central character's eyes throughout, and if your central character isn't as obviously engaging as a Holden Caulfield or a Huckleberry Finn, you can consider "toning down" the character, maybe giving them a lighter side - a self-deprecating sense of humour, perhaps - thereby making them better company for the long journey ahead.

Keep reading for the next advantage of third person point of view: Third Person Is More Immediate...