How to use the third-person limited point of view
Last week, I was reading Tress of the Emerald Sea when a single sentence stopped me cold. Brandon Sanderson described a sunset not as beautiful, but through the eyes of a vicious pirate captain who saw herself as "a celestial executioner, sent to make certain the day rightly expired." This is the true power of third-person limited point of view (POV). As fantasy and sci-fi writers, we have this incredible tool at our disposal, yet many of us graze its surface.
Today, I'll show you how to wield the third-person limited POV like Sanderson does, turning simple descriptions into powerful character moments.
Descriptions use diverse character perspectives.
Here's that passage I described above:
> She drank the water from her cup, then dangled it from her index finger, staring toward the sun. As if she were a celestial executioner, sent to make certain the day rightly expired.
Here lies the true strength of the third-person limited POV. The narrator describes characters and objects from the perspective of the character being described or the character who perceives them. Not only is it entertaining, it creates a lot of characterization. In this passage, it reinforces the pirate captain as a dangerous person, who the main character cannot trust.
There's a subtle bit of exposition going on here, calling attention to the captain's insistent habit of drinking water. This all happens without breaking immersion, keeping us close to Tress throughout the scene. Brandon Sanderson is a master at doing this. It's a big part of the reason the characters feel so vivid in his novels.
How to choose POV according to Brandon Sanderson.
How do you choose which POV to use?
Genre conventions offer a suitable starting point.. In the hyper saturated modern state of publishing, readers of genre fiction like to binge read. By meeting their expectations, your book will be more familiar and easier for them to read. Conventions exist within genres for valid reasons, discussed later.
The first-person present tense dominates YA and Romance markets today, which are the two biggest markets in fiction. As readers of YA grow up, they may continue to prefer this style. Which is one explanation I've heard for the shift in Romance from first-person past tense to first-person present tense.
For Science Fiction & Fantasy written for adults, the third-person limited POV is the most common. Using the omniscient third-person POV has almost completely gone out of style.)
Several reasons explain why authors write science fiction and fantasy in the third-person limited:
Character views zoom, as needed. (e.g. zoom out for the fight scene, zoom in for an emotional character moment.)
Writing the character's name makes it easier for the reader when you have multiple POVs and lots of characters
It's easier to include worldbuilding details in the third-person without breaking immersion
Naturally, exceptions apply. Use a different POV if it serves your story. Let's take the popular series "The Murderbot Diaries." This is a Science Fiction series about a rogue security cyborg, written in the first-person past-tense POV.
These books depict scenes like this:
Murderbot evaluates the threat level of a situation
Then he makes a quip about how he'd much rather be watching TV or how stupid humans are
The threat unfolds and Murderbot dispatches them with his sweet robot moves
Murderbot's core loop features both apathy and capability, which the first-person perspective highlights well. It's also a 1 POV character in a novella length story which helps by limiting the scope. These are not epic space operas, they're stories about 1 person's journey.
Tips and Tricks for the third limited close POV.
Readers will come to your story bundled with expectations learned from reading hundreds of novels. Breaking any convention will create distance between the reader and your story. If you choose to do it, ensure you have a compelling rationale. Let's go over some of these implicit expectations readers.
A scene should have a single character as the focal point. You can't be jumping between heads. The interiority will come from 1 character for 1 scene. When changing perspectives, there should be a scene break or a new chapter.
The purpose of interiority is to give interesting character reactions to a situation. This isn't effective exposition or worldbuilding. In Science Fiction & Fantasy, secondary or tertiary characters deliver worldbuilding exposition dumps via dialogue. Audiences have more tolerance for exposition when it's coming from an interesting new character. It's handy to have a "newbie" character to make these scenes feel more organic. The real skill is to avoid info dumps, if possible.
So the next time you introduce a character, describe the character how they would describe themselves. Or if you're describing an object external to a character, figure out who is perceiving the object, then describe it as they would. It's amazing how much this improves descriptions.