Point of View - 3rd Person Limited (cont.)

If the story is told in third person but confined to your main character's point of view, that is called third-person limited. The writer is writing in third person but limiting herself to the perspective of one character. That is the way most stories are told.

Third person gives you as a writer a combination of freedom and control. You have the freedom—pretty much (this is a topic I'll come back to another time)—to write in your own voice. That's something you don't have in first person. But your story will be filtered entirely through your main character.

There are great advantages to confining yourself to the perspective of your main character. When we as readers enter a character's thoughts, share his feelings, look out at the world through his eyes, we tend to become that character. And it is that becoming which draws us into the story, makes us care deeply about the problems of the main character, and makes her victory or loss at the end of the story our own. We all read stories in order to feel, and it is that close connection with one character, more than any excitement of plot, that makes your readers feel.

So how do you climb inside your main character in third person? In first person, it's easy. The character just tells us what he is thinking, how he is feeling, what he is experiencing. In third person, it's easy, too. The writing process just takes a bit more practice.