The Figure Problem: Part Two

Last time, we discussed the Figure Problem—what it is, and why it is a problem. We specifically examined situations in which a writer introduces their first character as a nameless “figure” in the distance. But the Figure Problem doesn’t only crop up at the beginning of a story or chapter. Take a look at this example:

     Jaimee moved through the subway station, careful not to jostle anyone or attract attention to herself in any way. Fortunately, most of the busy commuters were too distracted to notice some drably-dressed teenager. She moved into the crowd waiting for the train’s doors to open, and allowed the press of bodies to push her up against the people nearest the train. Those people pushed her back absentmindedly, not noticing when her hands slipped into their pockets and purses. When the doors opened, Jaimee let the crowd carry her onto the train and then slipped out the doors on the other side. She glanced over her shoulder with a smirk; no one had noticed a thing.

     When she looked back at the platform, she paused. A figure stood by the stairs that led up to the street—a tall, lanky woman with bleached-blonde hair and skin so tanned that it was beginning to look like a crumpled, damp brown paper bag. The woman wore huge, bug-eyed sunglasses and a black-and-white striped sundress that seemed a few sizes too small, even for her skinny figure. Her garish red lipstick matched her shiny red heels, which tapped loudly on the cement of the platform as she toddled up to Jaimee with a predatory snarl.

     “Hello, mother,” Jaimee said, sighing.

     “What do you think you’re doing?” her mother hissed.

The format of the Figure Problem is here—first, we see a “figure,” and then we’re given a progressively-increasing amount of detail about its appearance and behavior before we finally find out who the figure is. The major difference between this example and last time’s example is the perspective.

Last time, our example started in a vague, third-person omniscient perspective and then eventually jumped into the point of view of the “figure.” This time, we’re in the perspective of another character viewing the figure. Since we’re already in third-person limited from Jaimee’s point of view, we don’t jump to the mother’s point of view at the end.

This perspective change actually solves many of the problems from last time. We avoid the slow, drawn-out beginning and the awkwardness of not being inside the head of the “figure” when there was no reason not to be. However, the new problem that is introduced is a perspective error.

Perspective Errors with the Figure Problem

Remember how third-person limited perspective works? Everything the audience sees should come through Jaimee; we should essentially be riding in her head and seeing what she experiences and thinks. Jaimee wouldn’t look at her own mother, whom she obviously recognizes, and think, “Huh, there’s a woman with bleached-blonde hair, etc.” She would look at the woman and think, “There’s my mother.” Describing the appearance of some “figure” without identifying the person's relationship to the perspective character implies that the character doesn’t have a relationship with the person.

The only reasons to not give the name of a person your perspective character meets are these:

1. If they don’t know one another and your perspective character doesn’t have a name to assign to the person.

2. If the perspective character cannot see, hear, etc., well enough to identify the other person as someone they know.

These rules also apply to other perspectives. In first-person, we're also in the character's head, so we should see things as they see. In third-person omniscient, you can give even more information than the characters have, but you certainly shouldn't be giving less except in rare circumstances.

However, there’s another perspective error to watch out for here. Let’s take our example from before and adapt it to fit the second reason to not give a character’s name:

     When she looked back at the platform, she paused. A figure stood in the shadows by the stairs that led up to the street, watching her. Jaimee squinted through the darkness and could just make out a few details—the figure was a tall, lanky woman with bleached-blonde hair. She wore huge, bug-eyed sunglasses and a black-and-white striped sundress that seemed a few sizes too small, even for her skinny figure. Her garish red lipstick matched her shiny red heels, which tapped loudly on the cement of the platform as she toddled out of the shadows with a predatory snarl.

     “Hello, mother,” Jaimee said, sighing.

     “What do you think you’re doing?” her mother hissed.

With some shadows added to the scene, forcing Jaimee to squint in order to make out details, it now makes sense that she wouldn’t recognize her mother right away. This gives us justification to describe other details of the mother’s appearance before actually identifying her as Jaimee’s mother. So what’s the problem?

We were told that Jaimee couldn’t make out who the figure was, and then a moment later, she calls the woman “mother.” But when did she identify the mysterious woman as her mother? It wasn’t at the moment she spoke—she’d obviously already discerned the figure’s identity at that point. At some point, Jaimee realized that this woman was her mother, and we didn’t see it happen; but we should have, because we’re in her head.

This usually happens because the author doesn’t want to spoil the reveal; an author writing this section probably feels like the line “Hello, mother” has a certain oomph to it that would be lost if the reader already knew that the figure was Jaimee’s mother, even if they only found out a moment before. As in yesterday’s example, however, this is unnecessary. Not every bit of information has to be “revealed.” There’s no real reason to hide that this is Jaimee’s mother for the sake of that line.

Or the writer could be trying to cut out superfluous lines and didn’t feel it was necessary to tell us that Jaimee recognized her mother. In some situations, that might be permissible, but I wouldn’t recommend it in this instance (or most instances, for that matter). Jaimee was specifically trying to figure out who the woman in the shadows was—skipping over the moment of realization isn’t a good idea.

A perspective-error-free version of our original example might look like this:

     When she looked back at the platform, she paused. A figure stood in the shadows by the stairs that led up to the street, watching her. Jaimee squinted through the darkness and could just make out a few details—the figure was a tall, lanky woman with bleached-blonde hair. She wore huge, bug-eyed sunglasses and a black-and-white striped sundress that seemed a few sizes too small, even for her skinny figure. Jaimee winced. It was her mom.

     Her mom toddled out of the shadows with a predatory snarl. Her garish red lipstick matched her shiny red heels, which tapped loudly on the cement of the platform.

     “Hello, mother,” Jaimee said, sighing.

     “What do you think you’re doing?” her mom hissed.

A Final Note

Before you go, there is one more element of the Figure Problem that I should mention: 

The word “figure” is extremely vague and nondescript. It gives the reader almost no useful information. Think about it: how often can you see a “figure” without being able to identify more descriptive characteristics? You could probably tell a figure’s gender from a distance; at the very least, you could tell that it was a human, a person. You might be able to tell their relative age—whether they’re a child or an adult. If you can be more descriptive, then do it! Only resort to something as vague as “figure” if you absolutely must.

The Figure Problem: Part One

     The scene begins. Wind blows across a harsh desert, or maybe rain is falling on a dreary city alleyway, or perhaps sun is shining through gaps in the leaves of a peaceful green forest. Wherever the story is taking place, a figure appears in the distance. The figure is stumbling, or hurrying, or strolling; maybe we’re told that the figure is lost, or avoiding being seen, or is relaxing. They could be panting, or mumbling, or whistling. Slowly, the view dials in on the figure. It looks to be male, or female, or perhaps neither. We’re told the figure has a ragged beard, or a dark hat and trenchcoat, or metallic skin. Gradually, we get more and more details about the appearance and behavior of the figure. Perhaps we’re expressly told that the figure has survived a plane crash, or is a cat burglar on the way to a job, or is an oddly-built android; after this point, the “figure” might begin to be referred to as the survivor, the thief, or the android. Whoever they are, the figure keeps moving, and more details of their appearance and what they’re doing are gradually revealed.

     Finally, after anywhere from several paragraphs to several pages, we find out the name of the figure—maybe they meet someone else who calls them by name, or maybe the writer simply felt that this would be a good point to reveal it. From this point on, they cease to be the “figure,” the “survivor,” the “thief,” or the “android.” They are called by name for the rest of the story, whether they’re the protagonist, a side character, or a temporary, otherwise-unimportant vessel to carry us to the actual plot.

If you have been writing for any length of time, then you’ve probably written some variation of this scene. Everyone does, at some point or another, and I do mean everyone. It’s almost always a bad idea.

Why is this a problem?

Because it is slow, distant from the character, and usually distant from the plot; put those together, and you’ve got a whole basket of boring. And being boring is the worst sin a piece of purported entertainment can commit.

Slow: Usually, not much is happening while the “figure” walks across the screen for us to admire. Why? Because it is difficult to blend description and action, so the writer is getting all of that pesky description out of the way before they actually get to the action. That’s an adequate workaround, but it would be a better idea to start closer to the action and learn to work in shorter, quicker bits of description along the way. We’ll go over tips for doing that well at a later date.

Distant from the character: Why don’t we know the character’s name? There is almost never a good reason—new writers simply withhold information out of habit, trying to give every bit of info through some sort of “reveal.” This isn’t a movie; we don’t need to zoom in from an establishing shot, drawing closer and closer to the figure until we suddenly get their name and jump inside their head to start finding out what they’re thinking about what they’re doing and the things around them. That just doubles up on the slowness of the piece—first, we spend pages setting the scene, and then we have to sit through the character thinking about everything that we’ve just seen, forcing us to go over it all again? Just put us in their head and give us their name right from the start. Help us know them through their actions and how they perceive their surroundings, and it will be more interesting.

Distant from the plot: All of this scene-setting isn’t the plot, it’s a gradual meander toward the plot. But your readers already approached the story—they bought your book or borrowed it from a friend or looked up your story where it’s available online. Don’t languish in non-action because you’re so impressed with your breathtaking powers of description. Your readers picked up a story, so just get to it.

As I mentioned before, almost every writer has done this at some early point of their career, usually well before they got published. I did this on multiple occasions before someone pointed out to me why it was a problem. Ask an author sometime; they’ll probably know about the Figure Problem (though not necessarily by that name) and will be able to remember when they did it themselves. So don’t feel bad if your current masterpiece begins this way—you’re in good company.

In this post, we discuss how the Figure Problem can become even worse.

Perspective Errors: Too Little Information

            A knock at the door awoke Sally. She squinted against the light coming through the window and groaned, pulling her warm blanket over her head. But the knock came again, louder and longer this time. With a sigh, she pulled herself out of bed, keeping her blanket wrapped around her shoulders for warmth.

            She opened the door again mid-knock, and found Beth standing there with her fist still raised.

            “It’s about time,” Beth said with a frown, lowering her hand. “Go get dressed, we’re going for a drive.”

            “What?” Sally grumbled. “Why would we do that?”

            Beth folded her arms. “It’s about the Grimoire.”

            Sally blinked, suddenly alert. “The Grimoire? What happened?”

            “We can’t talk about it here,” Jacob said from beside Beth. “Just get ready.”

I’m sure you noticed the problem at the end of that passage—if Jacob was standing next to Beth that whole time, why wasn’t he mentioned when Sally first opened the door? This is another common type of perspective error, when the author fails to share every important thing that the perspective character knows or can sense.

Introduce things to the scene before they're being used

Picture another scene: A burly man in a black suit drags Sally into a parlor, where a sinister-looking old woman is waiting. Clever and threatening words are exchanged, and then the woman tells her burly henchman in the black suit to take Sally out back and dispose of her. The man reaches for Sally, but she grabs the bowling pin on the table and hits him over the head with it.  And then the reader goes, “wait, what bowling pin? Since when was that there?”

If there is a bowling pin on the table, that is something that Sally would have noticed when she came into the room. If you didn’t mention it when it would have been visible, then you can’t use it later—that’s the rule. If you get to the middle of the scene and realize that you need a bowling pin for Sally to use, then scroll back and put it in at the beginning of the scene. The important thing is that your character becomes aware of things naturally; the scene won’t feel real, otherwise.

Now, if your character suddenly realizes that there’s a bowling pin on the floor by their feet just a moment before they grab it, that’s okay—there are situations where that’s the best way to go. The important thing is that you show your character becoming aware of it, so that your reader can become aware of it, too:

Sally suddenly noticed a bowling pin, of all things, lying on the ground by her feet. Without taking time to think, she snatched it up and swung it at the burly thug’s face.

This is still a little abrupt, but it is acceptably and realistically abrupt.

Using perspective errors to create tension = bad writing

The examples above are simple mistakes; the writer forgot to mention Jacob and the bowling pin when they came into the scene instead of when they became important. There will be times, however, where you are tempted to break perspective in this way deliberately. Why? Almost always, it will be for the purpose of artificially creating tension.

For example: Sally, after hitting the thug over the head with that convenient bowling pin, runs from the room. She gets out of the building and into the spacious yards around it. But as she runs up to the open gate that leads off the grounds, a guard steps in front of her and points a rifle at her head. She stops and raises her hands. He tells her to turn around and go back. She pleads, explains, cajoles, and maybe even threatens him—she talks and talks and talks, stalling. Then Jacob suddenly hits the guard over the head (probably not with a bowling pin), having crept through the gate while Sally was distracting the guard.

The writer didn’t mention Jacob until he hit the guard over the head so that the readers would wonder how Sally was going to get out of this situation. If they’d known that Sally could see Jacob sneaking through the gate (she was looking that direction, after all), then the tension of the scene wouldn’t have been as high.

I’m not going to mince words—this is a cheap trick, and you should not do it. Your readers will feel cheated, and they’ll be right to; you flat-out lied to them in an attempt to keep them from figuring things out sooner than you wanted. Your characters can lie to one another all you want; if your story is narrated by one of the characters, then you have the possibility of having them lie about the events of the story (though it won’t necessarily feel less cheap if you do this, so be careful); but you, as the author, as the person telling this story to your readers, cannot ever lie. If you do so, it will be bad writing, and that’s the end of it.

Find a better solution

So, when you’re tempted to do this, just don’t. Find a way around it. Rearrange the scene so that the guard is standing near a corner that Sally can’t see around, so that Jacob can appear suddenly without a perspective error. Have the guard come up behind Sally, so that she can’t see Jacob sneaking up. Give Jacob the ability to teleport, for all I care—unless you’re writing creative non-fiction, then you can do whatever you want—the possibilities are limitless! Just don’t lie to your reader.

To make things even more difficult, the same thing goes for the information your character knows. If you’re writing from the perspective of a detective investigating a murder, and at the end of the story you suddenly reveal that he knew all along that their primary suspect was innocent and that his boss was the real murderer, then you’ve cheated. If he knew that the whole time, and we were in his head, then we should have known, too.

Picture Ocean’s 11 written through Danny Ocean’s perspective: it wouldn’t have worked, because the movie ends with a big reveal about what the real plan was. In a movie that's okay, because we’re not actually in Danny’s head—there’s not technically a perspective error. No lies. But in a book from Danny’s perspective, it wouldn’t work. If he knew the plan from the beginning, and we were in his head, then we should have known, too.

You can get around it—take us out of the detective’s head and put us in someone else’s head (as Arthur Conan Doyle did in the Sherlock Holmes stories, relating them through Watson) or have the detective suddenly figure it out at the end instead of having known the whole time. For your version of Danny Ocean, have the plan go wrong and he suddenly has to improvise; or put the story from someone else’s perspective, someone who wouldn’t be in on the plan. Again, there’s tons of options. 

Just don’t use the perspective error because it’s easier—you want to be better writers than that.

Overview: Third-Person Omniscient Viewpoints

Third-person omniscient is a viewpoint where the perspective jumps from character to character, showing many points of view over the course of any given scene at once. It generally comes in one of two styles: the omniscient narrator or head-hopping omniscient.

Omniscient Narrator

As the name implies, a story told through an omniscient narrator is given through the perspective of a usually-nameless storyteller, someone who is not a character within the story. This narrator is, so far as the story goes, omniscient, with complete knowledge of what all the characters are thinking or doing at any given time. They will often tell the audience what one character is thinking, and then mention what another character is thinking immediately after, rather than restricting what the audience sees to the perspective of one character at a time. Here is an example from the opening of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis:

ONCE there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs Macready and three servants. (Their names were Ivy, Margaret and Betty, but they do not come into the story much.) He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair which grew over most of his face as well as on his head, and they liked him almost at once; but on the first evening when he came out to meet them at the front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy (who was the youngest) was a little afraid of him, and Edmund (who was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it.

As soon as they had said good night to the Professor and gone upstairs on the first night, the boys came into the girls' room and they all talked it over.

"We've fallen on our feet and no mistake," said Peter. "This is going to be perfectly splendid. That old chap will let us do anything we like."

"I think he's an old dear," said Susan.

"Oh, come off it!" said Edmund, who was tired and pretending not to be tired, which always made him bad-tempered. "Don't go on talking like that."

"Like what?" said Susan; "and anyway, it's time you were in bed."

"Trying to talk like Mother," said Edmund. "And who are you to say when I'm to go to bed? Go to bed yourself."

"Hadn't we all better go to bed?" said Lucy. "There's sure to be a row if we're heard talking here."

"No there won't," said Peter. "I tell you this is the sort of house where no one's going to mind what we do. Anyway, they won't hear us. It's about ten minutes' walk from here down to that dining-room, and any amount of stairs and passages in between."

"What's that noise?" said Lucy suddenly. It was a far larger house than she had ever been in before and the thought of all those long passages and rows of doors leading into empty rooms was beginning to make her feel a little creepy.

"It's only a bird, silly," said Edmund.

Notice how over the course of these few paragraphs the narrator first sets the scene without focusing on any specific character, and then how he describes to us the internal thoughts and emotions of both Edmund and Lucy. These are hallmarks of third-person omniscient.

Head-hopping Omniscient

The “head-hopping” variation of the third-person omniscient viewpoint is similar to the third-person limited viewpoint in that it eschews narrators and instead conveys the story directly through the viewpoint of the characters, as though the reader were riding along in the characters’ heads. However, unlike the limited viewpoint, the omniscient viewpoint jumps from perspective to perspective within any given scene—hence the “head-hopping” description. Here is an example from the beginning of Frank Herbert’s Dune:

Paul felt his left hand aching, uncurled the clenched fingers, looked at four bloody marks where fingernails had bitten his palm. He dropped the hand to his side, looked at the old woman. "You did that to my mother once?"

"Ever sift sand through a screen?" she asked.

The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen. He nodded.

"We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans."

He lifted his right hand, willing the memory of the pain. "And that's all there is to it—pain?"

"I observed you in pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation."

He heard the confirmation in her voice, said: "It's truth!"

She stared at him. He senses truth! Could he be the one? Could he truly be the one? She extinguished the excitement, reminding herself: "Hope clouds observation."

"You know when people believe what they say," she said.

"I know it."

The harmonics of ability confirmed by repeated test were in his voice. She heard them, said: "Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Haderach. Sit down, little brother, here at my feet."

"I prefer to stand."

"Your mother sat at my feet once."

"I'm not my mother."

"You hate us a little, eh?" She looked toward the door, called out: "Jessica!"

The door flew open and Jessica stood there staring hard-eyed into the room. Hardness melted from her as she saw Paul. She managed a faint smile.

"Jessica, have you ever stopped hating me?" the old woman asked.

"I both love and hate you," Jessica said. "The hate—that's from pains I must never forget. The love—that's...."

"Just the basic fact," the old woman said, but her voice was gentle. "You may come in now, but remain silent. Close that door and mind it that no one interrupts us."

Jessica stepped into the room, closed the door and stood with her back to it. My son lives, she thought. My son lives and is ... human. I knew he was ... but ... he lives. Now, I can go on living. The door felt hard and real against her back. Everything in the room was immediate and pressing against her senses.

My son lives.

Paul looked at his mother. She told the truth. He wanted to getaway alone and think this experience through, but knew he could not leave until he was dismissed. The old woman had gained a power over him. They spoke truth. His mother had undergone this test. There must be terrible purpose in it ... the pain and fear had been terrible. He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.

Although there is no narrator directing us through the scene, notice how the reader is shown the thoughts of all three characters at various points—the Reverend Mother, Paul, and Jessica.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Third-Person Omniscient Viewpoint

Advantages of the Omniscient Narrator

Easier to write than head-hopping: Since this perspective is very similar to first-person (a narrator relating the story to the readers), it can be somewhat easier to write than the head-hopping style of omniscient.

Tension: Since the author can share with the reader any character’s thoughts or even information that none of the characters know, it is easy to introduce tension through obstacles that the characters don’t know are coming.

Infodumping: Since the narrator can show thoughts from multiple characters and even pause to explain information, it is possible to get across a lot of information in a very short space of time.

Direct address to the reader: As always, a narrator can address the reader directly if necessary.

Advantages of Head-Hopping Omniscient

More immediate than the narrator: Since there’s no one between the reader and the events of the story, the narrative can feel more immediate and real and less like just a story.

Tension: Just as with the narrator, you can convey information from multiple viewpoints or information that none of the characters know.

Infodumping: Again, it is possible to convey information from multiple perspectives very quickly, rather than having to give a separate scene to each perspective.

Most reliable narrator: With its absence of a biased, actual narrator and ability to show the thoughts of many characters in quick succession, this is the single most reliable narration that a writer can provide to a reader.

Disadvantages of Both Types of Third-Person Omniscient

Difficult to write correctly: Third-person omniscient is the most difficult to write without creating viewpoint errors or getting confusing—when you move from head to head, the reader can get lost very quickly and become unsure who is thinking what.

Unfamiliar to many readers: To make matters worse, very few books are written in third-person omniscient these days, so readers are unused to reading it. This means that even if you get it right, readers may still end up confused. This is particularly true with the “head-hopping” variation of omniscient, because to the reader it will often seem like third-person limited until the first time the narrative jumps to another character’s thoughts. This can be very jarring to readers, even if they’ve read omniscient before.

Lack of tension: It can be difficult to keep secrets and tension going if the readers are getting too much information about what is going on.

Infodumping: While it is an advantage that omniscient allows you to convey lots of information more quickly, this is a very difficult thing to do well. Often, this can turn into a firehose-esque flood of information that the reader will be unable to follow.

Overview: Third-Person Limited Perspective

Today we'll continue our series of discussions on common perspectives. We've already discussed what perspective and tense are and first-person perspective; today we'll delve into third-person limited perspective.

Third-person stories are told from the perspective of someone who is not part of the story; hence, all of the characters are referred to as "he," "she," or "it," rather than "I" or "we." In third-person limited perspective, your goal should generally be to not draw attention to the narrator—in a way, you're pretending that there isn't a narrator, that the audience is simply riding in a character's head and seeing what the character sees and thinks. Take a look at these examples from the first and second chapters of Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin:

     It was not until they were mounted and on their way that Bran allowed himself to taste the sweet air of victory. By then, his pup was snuggled inside his leathers, warm against him, safe for the long ride home. Bran was wondering what to name him.
     Halfway across the bridge, Jon pulled up suddenly.
     "What is it, Jon?" their lord father asked.
     "Can't you hear it?"
     Bran could hear the wind in the trees, the clatter of their hooves on the ironwood planks, the whimpering of his hungry pup, but Jon was listening to something else.
     "There," Jon said. He swung his horse around and galloped back across the bridge. They watched him dismount where the direwolf lay dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A moment later he was riding back to them, smiling.
     "He must have crawled away from the others," Jon said.
     "Or been driven away," their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone would have opened his eyes while the others were still blind.
     "An albino," Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement. "This one will die even faster than the others."
     Jon Snow gave his father's ward a long, chilling look. "I think not, Greyjoy," he said. "This one belongs to me."

     [Chapter Two]
     Catelyn

     Catelyn had never liked this godswood.
     She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers.

In this example, there is no narrator to speak of—we don't know who is telling the story, because the narrator isn't a character. Instead, the narrator follows the thoughts and experiences of some perspective characters: Bran Stark in the first chapter and Catelyn Stark in the second. Even though Bran and Catelyn aren't personally telling the story, as they would be in a first-person narrative, we still see the world through their eyes. This is what limited perspective means—our view as an audience is limited to that of one character at a time. When the author wants to switch perspective characters, he begins a new section or chapter.

Advantages of Third-Person Limited Perspective

Reliable narrator: Because the narrative is not relayed by one of the characters, third-person stories tend to seem more trustworthy and objective. The audience feels like they're inside a character's head without a narrator, so what they are shown is probably true.

Character sympathy: While not usually quite as intimate as a first-person narrative, third-person limited stories can still feel very close to the characters—the story takes place in their heads, after all.

Multiple perspectives: As demonstrated by the example passage, third-person limited narrative makes it very easy to switch from one perspective character to another. Some books have two or three perspective characters, while others—like Game of Thrones—have dozens and dozens.

Eloquence: Not all characters are as intelligent or well-spoken as others. If you wanted to write a first-person story from the perspective of a thick-headed thug, it would be difficult to describe the action as well as you would like with the thug's limited vocabulary. In third person, however, you can write a scene from the thug's perspective without sacrificing eloquence or creativity.

Disadvantages of Third-Person Limited

Easy to over-do: Just because you can write from multiple perspectives does not mean that you can do so well. Many new authors attempt to branch their story out among too many perspective characters, resulting in a slow and confusing story that loses track of its own plot. Yes, George R.R. Martin did it—but you're not George R.R. Martin. (Unless you are, of course. Hi George! Thanks for stopping by.) Try to keep your novel to two or three perspectives until you've really got the hang of juggling all those characters.

Difficult to withhold information from the reader: Since the narrator is so reliable in third-person limited, and since the audience is inside the heads of various characters, the audience will often feel cheated if you don't tell them information that the main character should have known.

Perspective errors: It is very easy to make perspective errors when writing a third-person limited story; in fact, this perspective probably sees more mistakes than any other perspective. We'll cover the many errors that writers make in third-person limited in future updates.