Do you plan to make a video on second prson narratives?

i thought i could wrap my head around this, but alas, i've only mastered 4th person

I felt that same way. Did you finish you’re novel?

Have you finished your Novel?

@@codelucky I have!!💜💜🔥

@@totallyanonymousbish9599 That's amazing ✌️ A lot of people dream about writing but don't take any action to make it a reality. You're one of the doers among many dreamers. Congratulations! 🎉

@@codelucky thank you so much💜

Hey it’s you!

This video is Closer Look approved. That's an honor.

Really well stated, Wu. I think writing is terrifying, because it's so difficult. Diane, your videos do, indeed, provide a much appreciated guiding hand, but doggone it, telling a story is still horrifying!!!! :-)

Man that analogy! 👏🏾

No monster in the room. Except for the child herself . . .

Stephen King is one author who always seems to try to give advice that is actually useful and clear, rather than trying to make himself appear sage. But yes, this video series is very good, I'm on the 4:th video now. BTW, strictly speaking there are 9 perspectives in GoT, the ones mentioned here and the Night Watchman who is killed off in the prologue. Every book starts with a prologue told from the PoV of someone who is never seen again (at least not as viewpoint character, I'm not sure if any of them appear in passing), contributing to the epic scope feeling.

Same here. As a novice writer, I need to start with something I can handle.

So great, you get to read dystopian fiction in your English class we are still fed the old shit,

why are you guys ending the sentence with a comma,

@@SnoBlobber cuz its a chain dont’t break it,

@@something6513 We had to read and watch The Hunger Games to analyse past and current issues in the US. Was not fun, but at least more interesting than most classics. It was my first time of reading a book in present tense, and I hated it.

@@CameronCCox mhuhmuu

In my opinion, it would have been cool if Harry Potter had been omniscient third person, because then it would have been less focused on just him and we'd have gotten more of the other characters.

Yes, exactly. A lot of people mistake omniscient for head-hopping and automatically label it as "wrong." There can be a fine line between the two. The differentiating feature seems to be that head-hopping describes things through different characters' inner voices, whereas omniscient (like in "Dune") tells different characters' thoughts through the same broader narrative voice. This article explains it well: jamigold.com/2011/02/what-makes-omniscient-pov-different-from-head-hopping/. And this one from Ellen Brock: ellenbrockediting.com/2013/11/26/the-difference-between-omniscient-pov-and-head-hopping/.

@@QuotidianWriter This is nitpicky. What you described as head-hopping is literally omniscient. I can see no reason, other than PERSONAL preference, why that would be confusing or bad.

Excellent reply and link. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Grateful. @@QuotidianWriter

Thank you so much for your kind words! Keep writing! :)

Agreed

Just finished Dune 6 and the headhopping is my absolute favorite part of Frank Herberts original saga

Well all the best... Just to ask isn't just way too tough?

@@adarshachatterjee493 writing this massive event is pretty tricky. like camera work, the more characters that enter the scene, the further back you pan the narration. less dialog, more descriptive. as the crowd gets smaller, i zoom in and describe nuances and small talk dialog.

I disagree. Third person multiple is what I write most often, and most of the books I read are written in it.

That's a cool use of different narrative POVs! In the future, I'm going to make a video about unconventional POVs (second person, collective, and mixed), which will hopefully include books that use a combination of first and third, as in your story. "The Fifth Season" by N.K. Jemisin mixes third person and *second* person, I think, which is extra weird but creates an interesting effect. I'm drawn to books that use mixed perspectives like that. Thank you for watching! :)

@@QuotidianWriter That sounds like my bread and butter! I can't wait to see that video. Well, I mean, clearly I have to, but I'm still really excited for it. The use of second person in a narrative outside of choose your own adventures already intrigues me, but meshing it with third person only makes me more interested. I appreciate your response by the way. Ever since I found your channel I've considered it the penultimate KZfaq channel for writing advice, and have recommended it to my friends. I don't believe this is the first time you've responded to me, (albeit my memory is almost as bad as MC's, so who knows,) but it's still nice to be granted your time, so I thank you. (The compliment felt pretty nice for my ego too. Haha.)

Thank you for watching and for your kind words! Third-person POV is a bit difficult to capture because there's not always a defining line between omniscient and limited. Plus, even stories that fit into the same category can be completely different in narrative execution. There's just so much variety. I've also read books that mix first and third, with the protagonist narrating in first and then other chapters being in third-person limited for one-off characters (I'm thinking of "Tell No One" by Harlan Coben in particular). "The Northern Lights" is a fantastic example of third person, and I love how you convey the effectiveness of the perspective! Keep writing. :)

Thank you, Joel! I always appreciate your kind comments. I hope you've been writing more!

Yes, that's an excellent analysis! You expressed it wonderfully. The objectivity of third person definitely lets the narrator add layers of characterization, world-building, and atmosphere. The stream-of-consciousness examples are very illustrative. Thank you for watching and for your thoughtful comment! :)

I'm so glad to hear that my videos have been helpful! That's a great analogy, too, haha. Keep writing. :)

completely agree, just finished the final dune and the way perspective hops is the most fun and fascinating part. the series would genuinely not work at all without it

I'm so glad to hear it was helpful! Thank you for watching. Keep writing! :)

Lady Macbeth It's a good read for lent and Easter, if you are Catholic. There are many parallels to Christ's passion and resurrection. There is also a bit of a Shakespearean allusion a Lady Macbeth might enjoy. The villain compares the star-crossed lovers to Romeo and Juliet, and says what he likes about that story is that everybody dies at the end, his kind of ending...

Hello, may please ask if you vacillate between 3rd person limited and omniscient within the same story? I'm asking for a few reasons, I didn't know you could do that I would like to write a story that has one main character who I follow closely like in third person limited, but want the freedom to describe things such as weather, appearances, landscapes, etc, that the main character might not be present for, such as them being asleep, or, I would just like the reader to know about them. I would like to sometimes have the narrator chime in with his own commentary and occasionally speak directly to the reader In this video, it's said that while Harry Potter is written mostly in third person limited, there are occasional scenes, descriptions and during some of the narration that breaks from limited or sounds broader than just from Harry's view, for instance, there is narration that describes the seasonal weather outside of the castle, but harry may or may not be present for this bit of narration, he may not be the one experiencing it directly, and the description isn't really in his voice. The video goes to describe that kids in school were getting colds and the nurse Pomfry was administering medicine, and described the appearance of the students who were affected by the magical medicine, but it never said Harry was observing these events. Yet the narrator still described them. I am curious if a third person limited narrator is allowed to describe such things such as other students, the appearance of the castle, the cold weather, etc, if the main character isn't the one experiencing them? Isn't' that just narration in general - describing such things in order to set the scene and mood and help with the passage of time? Or by describing such things, does that make the narration omniscient? Pleases help and let me know what you think. I have been researching this for a long time now, it's hard to find a good answer. I'd love to write story and am trying to figure out if I should use third person limited or omniscient and not sure where the line is. Thanks!

​@@quillink3817hey, just read your comment and wanted to reply as I am in the same situation. I am writing in 3rd person limited but wish to give broader descriptions also. I was wondering if you had discovered any more information? Or if you are still even on here, as I see the comment is from a while ago. I am going to actually go into Harry Potter 1 and see how Rowling does it, that should give me my answers. Also, I read a comment saying that the more characters that are in a scene, the further the camera pans out. So it goes from limited to panning out to include more characters, like a camera in a movie. Perhaps then it can begin broad, describing the setting or time of year and current events as 'omniscient' and then focus in on the MC and become limited, following only what they see. Maybe broadening back out at the end to become omniscient, or wherever necessary. It's difficult to know how much swapping is 'allowed' or 'good' before it damages the flow/rhythm/ spell of the narrative though, and I'd like to find answers regarding this.

Ah but the thing is psychic distance within a novel fluctuates. Zooming in and out as the scene necessitates. However is you start with a super close third person then jump out do something really far it’s quite jarring (and vice versa). POV is like a camera angle, it’s versatile, and not a check box. So you can definitely do an omniscient POV that is intimate. However the distance you establish at the start details the furthest you can zoom out, so in limited third you can never do a lot of the dramatic irony that omniscient narratives allow. An omniscient narrator doesn’t mean you have to tell everything and show. I wrote an example in which the psychic distance zooms in and out: Mages like Ember were rare creatures. Ember had never met another one till now. She ought to have been happy upon this fateful encounter. Instead she froze, and the world froze with her. The surrounding raindrops stopping their eager descent and becoming complacent in their air bound position. Likewise the nearby squirrels who were working hard became idle as if winter no longer was approaching. Ember meant to run, she meant to use this spell to give time for her flight. Why was it that magic always seemed to fail when it mattered most? She thought fear was the reason as she was dreadfully terrified at the moment. Yet, while fear often causes spells to miscast, in this scenario it can’t really be considered Embers fault. “That was a nice spell girly,” the old wild mage said. “I hadn’t expected to be blasted with magic before we could even exchange greetings. It usually takes a couple of weeks of interaction before a person decides to kill me, and mages rarely ever try to at all!” It truly was a surprise to the archmage, the young mage had an aspect of fire. Such individuals rarely knew how to do things besides frontal attack thus a temporal prepared and casted in a single moment was quite out of left field. The archmage correctly identified talent in the girl that she herself hadn’t noticed. However, the old man didn’t want another violent archmage in this world as two he knew of were far to many. The old man’s caution was well deserved, however it was also greatly misplaced. In this example the omniscient narrator is quite voicey and you can almost feel the presence of a third character, however they can be subtle too. And the omniscient narrator can always choose which information it wants to reveal, how and when so you don’t have to give up suspense in the story just because your narrator knows everything. If you frequently change POV within a scene I’d suggest you seriously try out omniscient narrators as the shifts are much more fluid. 3rd person limited can brew creativity through it’s restriction, however jumping from one POV to the next within one scene can be jarring in 3rd limited. 3rd limited is like if someone hands you a puzzle piece and tells you to start with that piece and finish the puzzle without a picture. So you do that for a while and are able to get a small section together but then you can’t find any more matching pieces and you don’t know what they should look like. So you change perspective and start working on another section. Eventually you have several smaller pictures that when come together complete the story puzzle. However omniscient POV you’re given the big picture from the start so you can pick and choose which portions of the puzzle would be easiest to start with. And you can look at a lone piece and know where it might go without any adjacent pieces. It makes the puzzle building process much easier. . . I’m not sure if that analogy made any sense but I tried lol. Anyway, I really like POV because telling a story from different angles/perspectives truly creates two different stories. Omniscient narrators, some defined character, some unreliable, some barely visible, they come in all different styles so you could totally write a story that 3P omniscient that places heavy importance on intimate feelings and thoughts of your characters. Also any body language descriptions is objective and your all knowing narrator can relate that information just as third limited would.

@@ruriva4931 Thanks for that. With 3P limited, I find it fun to write in the "voice" of the POV characters and convey things about them that are not explicitly said by selecting the vocabulary - consider a person who looks forward to an evening of scintillating conversation vs a person who enjoys the witty conversation... both describing the same evening, but you pick up a distinct difference in the terms they use and build an image of the sort of person they are. I can also play with misapprehension by limiting myself to a person's head and conveying their flawed perspective on the situation. I'm not saying these things can't be conveyed using 3P omniscient, but you get the information in a different way and also, since it's coming from the narrator, it's "reported" rather than direct from the character. Personal preference thing, but I like to be in the heads of the characters - I'd rather hear someone - "Bill" - tell me what they did last night than hear someone else tell me what Bill did - even if they do know exactly why Bill did it and what Bill was thinking at the time (so Bill probably told *them* the story from his perspective and now they're telling me instead of leaving it to Bill to tell me...) Also, 3P omniscient means coming up with another character with a distinct voice. A non-participatory character whose sole function is to narrate.

Not switching between the two is the conventional advice when it comes to third person, and modern readers seem allergic to omniscient POV, to be honest. However, I'm reading "The Beautiful Ones" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (published in 2017), and the shifts between third-person limited and omniscient POV surprised me! I enjoyed the style, and I figure the author "gets away with it" because it was her third novel as opposed to a debut.