Third Person POV: Things to Consider – Part One
Introduction to POV and Third Person Omniscient
Writers of fiction have various technical questions to answer along the way. Whether they tackle these questions before they put pen to paper or during the editing process can differ from writer to writer. But two questions should be asked – and answered – in the writer’s mind before writing a story:
- Who (or in some cases what) is telling the story? In other words, from whose perspective or consciousness are the story’s events being perceived?
- What tense will the story be written in, past, present or (rarely) future?
Of course, authors may choose to vary either the point of view (POV) or the tense, or indeed both, within their novel or story. But there should be a good reason to do this and it must be executed effectively or it can confuse – and ultimately put off – the reader. With short fiction, it is usually a good idea to stick to one POV and one tense, especially with flash fiction which gives you just a few hundred words to play with (such as our latest Flash Fiction Competition). Longer stories can vary the POV and/or tense to great effect, but there needs to be a good reason or it risks alienating the reader.
It’s worth mentioning that there are no definitive ‘right or wrong’ answers in creative writing, it is ultimately up to the author how they write their story. Having said that, certain things will decrease a story’s chances of winning a competition or getting published in a literary journal, and making mistakes or missteps with POV is one of the most obvious (and common) of those things.
In this article (which will be split over two parts), we’ll focus on perspective, or point of view, and, specifically, the one that authors have most commonly utilised over the years: third person. We’ll start with an outline of what third person POV is, and then we’ll look at the different types of third person perspectives, along with a few examples of novels written in these various perspectives. Finally, we’ll consider some of the other choices the author must make, such as psychic distance (which we’ll cover in more detail in another article).
What is the Third Person Point of View?
As Ursula K. Le Guin writes in her fantastic (and concise) book on the craft of writing, Steering the Craft (Mariner Books, 2015), point of view is “the technical term for who is telling the story and what their relation to the story is.” When writing in a third person POV, in simple terms, the story will refer to he, she or they, as opposed to I (which is first person) or you (which is second person, and a lot less common).
For example:
- He spent years trying to get to grips with points of view. (Third person)
- I spent years trying to get to grips with points of view. (First person)
- Clinging to the rig’s stanchion, she made the mistake of looking down. (Third person)
- Clinging to the rig’s stanchion, I forced myself not to look down. (First person)
- Clinging to the rig’s stanchion, the oil workers hadn’t anticipated this turn of events. (Third person plural)
- When it came to the crunch, you couldn’t accept that splashing the teabag with milk before adding hot water was simply wrong. (Second person)
Why Choose Third Person POV?
Writers might opt for the third person perspective for many reasons, but one looms large: freedom. When writing in the third person, the narrator has access to things that they may not have when a story is written in the first person. When writing in first person, the only information that should be given to the reader is that which comes from the viewpoint character.
This means, for instance, when writing in the first person from the POV of a character called Bobby, the narrator can share anything Bobby perceives through their senses, thinks, believes and so on. But the narrator should not, for instance, tell the reader about the expression upon Bobby’s face (unless of course Bobby is looking in a mirror at the time and hence perceives it for himself, but that can come across as a little contrived at times).
In certain forms of third person POV (specifically the omniscient), the narrator has a lot more freedom to zip around like some magic sprite who can see, feel, experience or intuit more or less anything relating to any of the characters, or indeed to information to which none of the characters is aware of (such as a vulture circling above a location in which no characters are present).
As we’ll see in Part Two of this article, however, with some forms of third person POV (limited third person), the narrator is still constrained to the perception, thoughts, dreams etc of one character (sometimes one character at a time). In this way, third person limited POV is not a million miles away from first person POV.
Types of Third Person Perspectives
So you’ve decided on the third person point of view, but that’s far from the end of the story. You still have several decisions to make, the most pressing of which is whether the narrator of your story knows everything about all the characters, or whether their insight is limited to one character, or indeed more than one character (but only one at a time).
Third Person Omniscient
If a story is written in the third person omniscient perspective, the person telling the story – the narrator – will have access to all knowledge, thoughts and feelings of all the characters in the story. This means the narrator will know everything about each of the characters: their complete backstories, what they perceive in any given scene, how they might react based on past experiences, their desires… well, everything.
Of course, the narrator can pick and choose how much of their all-encompassing knowledge they share with the reader. Indeed, if a narrator attempted to share the fears, feelings, perceptions and desires of all the characters in a scene that included, say, five characters, it would almost certainly be a jumbled mess. The last thing the writer wants is to confuse the reader to the point at which they decide to stop reading.
Therefore, one of the key skills of utilising the third person omniscient perspective effectively is deciding the specific quantity and type of information to share with the reader. This can be particularly important if writing a mystery, for instance, when the information (and clues) can be drip-fed in a specific way to keep the reader guessing (but also interested).
It should be mentioned that whatever the chosen POV, the writer will of course have access to the backstory, thoughts, dreams and perceptions of all their characters. But in first person or third person limited (as we’ll see shortly), the writer (narrator) only shares the information that fits with their chosen POV, i.e. they never share something that would “break” the POV.
The third person omniscient narrator is almost always anonymous, as opposed to being a named character/narrator. And this narrator has not only access to everything each character sees, hears, smells, and so on, but also what they think, where they went to school, their favourite foods, their views on electric cars or anything else.
Examples of Novels Written in Third Person Omniscient

- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Advantages and Disadvantages of Third Person the Omniscient Perspective
One of the biggest advantages of the third person omniscient point of view is the freedom it affords the writer. Given that the narrator knows everything there is to know about each of the characters – including things that the characters themselves might not know – the author has a completely blank canvas in terms of what they choose to share with the reader.
This can be beneficial in many circumstances, not least when there is a complex world that needs to be communicated, a process that might be better served by viewing things by communicating the insights, experiences and perceptions of multiple characters (as opposed to just one in first person, or third person limited).
Note that a similar effect can be achieved by using third person limited (see below), but this tends to be from one character’s perspective for a whole scene or chapter. Third person omniscient, in contrast, could have multiple viewpoints within the same scene or chapter without “breaking POV”.
On the flip side, one of the main pitfalls of third person omniscient POV is the potential to confuse the reader. A confused reader is unlikely to carry on reading a story, so even if you tie all the loose ends together in a fabulous climax, the reader may never get that far. Regularly flipping from one character’s “head” to another (often termed “head hopping”) can be disorientating, unless handled carefully. It also often means none of the characters is given enough attention by the narrator for the reader to truly care about them (though this is not always the case).
Note that sometimes people think of third person POV as being objective and first person POV as being subjective. While this can be true, it is not necessarily the case. When third person POV is at its most objective, where the narrator doesn’t delve deeply into the characters’ emotions or perceptions, it is known as third person objective (or sometimes third person dramatic). We’ll outline this “fly on the wall” perspective in PART TWO of this article.
In contrast, both third person omniscient and third person limited can – and often should – dig deep into the characters’ psyches and can be very subjective. How close or deep the author burrows into their characters is a matter of psychic distance, which we’ll cover briefly at the end of PART TWO of this article and in more detail in a future one.
Third Person Omniscient – Exercise
Pick out a novel from your bookshelf (or e-reader) that’s written in the first person POV. Pick a paragraph at random and re-write it in third person omniscient. The rewritten version should incorporate information that the character who initially told the story would not have been aware of (for example, their own appearance).
If you don’t have a book or story to hand, have a read of A Ruler of Men by O. Henry (published in Everybody’s Magazine in August, 1906 and available from Project Gutenburg for free as it is in the public domain). You can choose your own excerpt to rewrite, or opt for the opening paragraphs:
“I walked the streets of the City of Insolence, thirsting for the sight of a stranger face. For the City is a desert of familiar types as thick and alike as the grains in a sand-storm; and you grow to hate them as you do a friend who is always by you, or one of your own kin.
And my desire was granted, for I saw near a corner of Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street, a little flaxen-haired man with a face like a scaly-bark hickory-nut, selling to a fast-gathering crowd a tool that omnigeneously proclaimed itself a can-opener, a screw-driver, a button-hook, a nail-file, a shoe-horn, a watch-guard, a potato-peeler, and an ornament to any gentleman’s key-ring.
And then a stall-fed cop shoved himself through the congregation of customers. The vender, plainly used to having his seasons of trade thus abruptly curtailed, closed his satchel and slipped like a weasel through the opposite segment of the circle. The crowd scurried aimlessly away like ants from a disturbed crumb. The cop, suddenly becoming oblivious of the earth and its inhabitants, stood still, swelling his bulk and putting his club through an intricate drill of twirls. I hurried after Kansas Bill Bowers, and caught him by an arm.”
There’s no need to send us your efforts, it’s just for fun. But it will hopefully give you a good idea of the possibilities (and limitations) of the third person omniscient POV.
Further Reading
We’ve been deliberately brief in this article, but if you would like to explore POV in greater depth, here are some recommended sources:
- Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, by Ursula K. Le Guin (Mariner Books, 2015)
- On Editing: How to edit your novel the professional way, by Helen Corner-Bryant and Kathryn Price (John Murray Learning, 2018)
- Characters and Viewpoint, by Orson Scott Card (Writer’s Digest Books, 1999)
- How to Write Stories that Win Contests, a writing course run by Globe Soup, available to purchase HERE
Part two of the article will be posted soon.