Third Person Isn’t One Thing: How Narrative Distance Changes Everything

In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, we untangle one of the most confusing pieces of fiction craft: third-person point of view.

Because “write it in third person” sounds simple enough until you realise third person can mean several very different things.

We’ll look at five major forms of third-person narration:

1. Third-person objective, where the reader only sees what can be observed from the outside.
2. Third-person limited, where we stay inside one character’s perspective at a time.
3. Third-person deep or close limited, where the prose moves tightly into a character’s lived experience.
4. Third-person multiple limited, where several characters carry the story in separate scenes or chapters.
5. And third-person omniscient, where a larger narrative intelligence can move beyond any one character’s mind.

Using the same scene, we’ll explore how each form changes the reader’s experience of intimacy, tension, voice, distance, and information.

This is a practical, example-led episode for writers who want to understand not just what point of view is, but how to choose the right kind of third person for the story they’re trying to tell.

And if you enjoy the podcast and would like to support future episodes, you can buy me a virtual coffee over on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/masterfictionwriting

No pressure at all, but it does help keep the podcast going, and lets me pretend I’m a terrifyingly organised media empire rather than one man talking earnestly about point of view into a microphone.