The third person limited POV tells a story using the pronouns ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘they’. Some third person limited narratives only have one viewpoint character, but others have multiple viewpoint characters (you can see my blog on third person multiple POV by following this link).
What Is the Third Person Limited POV?
In the third person limited POV, you can only mention what your POV character knows, sees, hears, feels or thinks. With the limited POV, you can choose how close your narrator is to your character. In more distant limited POVs, your narrator should have a neutral voice. In closer limited POVs, your character becomes your narrator (like in the first person POV), so it will have a unique identifiable voice.
Advantages
In many of the other POVs, we often have to make the choice between closeness to the character and knowledge about what else is going on in your novel’s universe. But the third person limited POV strikes a good balance between the two. You can have greater intimacy with the characters than in the omniscient POV and a broader knowledge of what else is going on than in the first person or third person deep.
Similarly, you can have more flexibility than the first person POV because, like a camera, you can zoom in and out. You can zoom in and provide information about how the character is feeling in the moment, or you can zoom out and offer context or fill in the background.
You can use this ‘zoom out’ technique to create suspense by controlling what your viewpoint characters (and, therefore, your readers) know. Because you’re in one person’s head for at least a scene, you can’t know what the other characters are thinking or feeling.
You can have multiple viewpoint characters within the same book, meaning you can tell your story from multiple points of view.
You are not bound by the character’s voice, which is helpful if you are writing from the perspective of a child or non-native speaker.
Disadvantages
You can only show what that viewpoint character notices. If this character isn’t aware of something, you can’t mention it. You can’t reveal what non-viewpoint characters are thinking or feeling. You can have the viewpoint character speculate about what others are thinking, but you can’t state it as a fact.
Likewise, you might struggle to describe your viewpoint character without them sounding incredibly vain. There are ways around this, such as having another character describe them or showing how your character looks (e.g. if they’re short, you can have them struggling to reach something).
Because of the reasons I’ve outlined above, it can be really easy to head hop. Even experienced writers struggle to maintain a consistent limited POV.
Conclusion
The third person limited POV is often seen as a middle ground between the more distant but knowledgeable omniscient narrator and the more intimate but less knowledgeable deep third and first person POVs. You can zoom in and out of characters’ minds, so you can tell the story from multiple perspectives. But it can be easy to slip into head hopping. If you stick to one viewpoint character per scene, you’ll be grand.
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