Writing Tips & Guidance

General: Magic of Third Person

The third person is kind of considered to be the cold and detached voice of god (well, the writer). It is thought that the writer shouldn't be heard, should just tell the story as can be observed. However, there are other methods and ways to put a spin on it. The third person is particularly special for the reasoning that it is near limitless.

Overview

The third person uses the pronouns: he, she, it, they. It is most commonly written in the past tense. Though the present tense isn't taboo, be aware that it may feel uncomfortable for readers and may result in clunky writing.

Most people associate sweeping, detailed description to the third person POV. Because of the external nature of the POV, it allows the writer to capture a scene visually without character interaction (as the first person usually requires). Writers who extensively world build are likely to prefer this method, as it allows them to show off their hard, hard work artfully and (hopefully) tastefully. Tastefully done description, instead of simply telling, can allow for a vivid world. However, many writers use the third person as an excuse to 'tell' much of the background and world building information. That is an option, sure, but it doesn't show off style or skill. Consider these things during your writing in the first handful of drafting stages.

The third person is also associated with classic fantasy and complicated character names. Why is that? In the third person, names of characters should generally be of varying length and sound, or at least start with different letters or end with totally different sounds. Why is that? Because character names are constantly in use to keep the use of pronouns from getting confusing. Readers of the quicker caliber (like me) will skim through the names 'Alex' and 'Adam' in a paragraph and not understand who did what, which means they will have to re-read and will likely become annoyed. This is a general rule of thumb in all writing, but it becomes especially important in the third person. As a contrary example, you'll notice that in The Hobbit JRR Tolkien gave some of the dwarves similar sounding names with similar lengths that also rhyme. He's an asshole. A genius and the god of fantasy writers, but an asshole. Choosing to do such a thing will result in those characters to fading into the background as unrecognizable, interchangeable blobs. Which, hey, you might want that for some reason. Tolkien did it and he's a fantasy writing god, that's almost a reason. Try if you will, but be willing to back down if and when your beta readers become lost.

Omniscient

This is the true "god" view, able to dip into the heads of any character in any location at any time (not that you have to). The scene as a whole is available for observation, as well as every scene in the multiverse and those beyond the bounds of time. The trick is not to show your hand. The reader should never realize that they've intruded on the interior of multiple people if you choose to do so and the jumps between time and/or space should feel fluid. There are two methods of omniscience:

The most commonly thought of method of omniscience is termed 'head hopping' by the writing community. You could think of this as using a drone...but with telepathy. This POV allows you to have sweeping descriptions of the countryside or a feast (as the third person does best) and also lets you 'hop' into the heads of multiple characters, letting readers know how characters feel directly. Sure, it sounds easier to 'tell' instead of 'show' but it makes revealing and impactful moments challenging since those are usually based on secrets. In a large-scale world, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, this can work because the characters might never come into contact with the villains until the reveal (or not at all if the ring is destroyed properly). Your choice then would be to only drift around the protagonist characters as a drone (with telepathy) until the situation changed. Of course, in classic fantasy, it was commonplace to have a simply evil character as the antagonist without much development. Now there's a desire for developed, intriguing antagonists in stories which might be more difficult in the third person omniscient. It isn't impossible and is still done, but it has certainly fallen from the favor of the mainstream.