Third Person POV Is More Immediate

This advantage of third person point of view is one of the biggies, so listen up good here. It is important that you understand this stuff if you want to handle pov like a pro.

Perhaps the best way to explain why third person is more immediate is to start by looking at it from a first person perspective.

When we read a first person point of view novel, it feels like the character is sitting right there in the room with us, telling us their story first-hand.

Now, that is true - to an extent. But the question you need to ask yourself is this: Who, precisely, is sitting there in the room?

Is it the older and wiser narrator?

Or is it the younger version of themselves called the viewpoint character?

(If you have no idea what I'm going on about, please review the article on First Person Narrative POV.)

The answer, of course, is that it is the narrator sitting there in the room with you.

In 1st person novels like The Catcher in the Rye and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this difference isn't so critical.

The narrator and the viewpoint character in The Catcher in the Rye are virtually the same age - both about 17 (we discover at the end that Holden Caulfield is narrating the novel a short time after the events are over).

Yes, he has been changed by the story's events - meaning there is something of a difference between Holden the narrator and Holden the viewpoint character. But age-wise, there is little difference between them.

The same thing goes for Huckleberry Finn - the narrator and the viewpoint character are both young teenage boys.

But imagine if these novels were narrated not a short time after the events, but several decades later. Instead of teenage boys sitting there in the room with us, telling us their tales, we would have old men called Holden Caulfield and Huckleberry Finn.

We would still hear the intimacy of their "old narrator" voices, but their "young viewpoint character" voices would be clouded by time - and it is their younger voices that we really want to hear.

In short, then, the greater the distance in time between a first person narrator telling a story and the events of the story themselves, the less immediacy the novel has.

(In a third person novel, you don't get this distance, but I'll be coming onto that shortly.)

Now, this distance in time in a first person point of view novel isn't a huge problem, just one to be aware of. And it is possible to overcome it by...

• Writing in the present tense (where the narrator "speaks to us" directly from the here and now).
• Or writing the story in the form of diary entries (which will be written in the past tense, but the distance in time between the events and writing about the events will be very short, probably just a few hours).

Bear in mind, though, that sometimes a lack of immediacy can be a positive thing.

In a novel about a child, for example, it can be grating to read several hundred pages written in a childlike voice. Having the child's adult-self do the narrating, many years after the events are over, allows us to hear the story from a mature grown-up, not an immature kid.

What About Immediacy In a Third Person Novel?

Like I said, there isn't a problem here.

The narrator of a third person novel is not an older version of the viewpoint character (like they are in 1st person fiction), but somebody else entirely - a godlike witness to the events or, if you prefer, a kind of movie camera, recording events as they happen (even though, confusingly, third person novels are mostly written in the past tense).

(Confused? Then review the article explaining the Logic of 3rd Person Narrative POV.)

In other words, 3rd person pov novels feel more immediate, more rooted in the here and now, than a first person novel ever can.

If we hear an adult tell us about their childhood adventures, the events themselves finished years or decades ago. It is difficult to experience the story like it is happening right here and right now.

But if the same child's adventures are told as a third person story, it feels as though they are happening as the story is being told.

Even in a 3rd person historical novel, the story still feels rooted in the present, almost like the reader has been sent back into the past in a time machine and can witness the events at first hand as they occur.

Bottom Line?

With third person prose, you will always sacrifice a little of the intimacy that first person novels excel at.

With first person prose, you lose a little immediacy - more so the greater the distance between the events actually happening and the telling of the events.

Now, neither of these things are necessarily deal-breakers when it comes to deciding which point of view to use. But they are certainly factors to take into consideration.

Next Up: Keep reading for a look at the final advantage of the third person: 3rd Person Point of View Gives the Writer More Freedom...