Limited Third Person POV suggests that we are inside our character’s head. It is a direct POV, much as our First Person direct, where events unfold in front of us. In this case, our character isn’t talking into a tape recorder. She is simply reacting to events and we, from our perch behind her eyes, are seeing and hearing what she sees and hears. By using your character’s diction and vocabulary as you describe the scene, you will give us much the same sense of overhearing the character talking or thinking to herself, just as we have in the Direct First Person.

So how do you choose? Why use First Person? Why pick Third? Personal preference plays a role here. As I said, we come to prefer one voice to the other. However, the First Person POV does present more challenges than Third Person, especially to a new writer. For one thing, your character may know too much to make the plot work. If you’re trying to write a mystery, and your POV character knows who the killer is, or is the killer, it is very difficult to keep that knowledge from the reader. It is difficult to create a successful ‘unreliable narrator’, a character who can lie to us, but leave us feeling satisfied with the story. There are a few devices you can use – amnesia or mental illness for example. Or you can successfully create a character who is a liar, whose withheld information is believable at the end. (Ha, ha, I fooled you. I’m the killer, and now…I’m coming for you!) But this is not easy to do, and requires excellent characterization.

Less important drawbacks concern details such as gender and ‘as we all know’ speeches. Your character is not going to mention details that do not matter to him or her. If you want to show your reader the types of flowers in the garden and your character is a tough biker who could care less about flowers, he is not going to ‘notice’ the asters, daisies, cannas, and other species, especially not by name! I looked around the garden. Not here. Where did she get to? Third Person would work better here. Yes, your character may not care about the daisies, but if you’re using that characters voice, you can sneak a little exposition in and we won’t feel that you’ve violated the limited POV. Curt glanced around, his eye sliding past dasies, asters, and cannas. Not here. He clenched a fist. Where did she get to? Now our POV character here wouldn’t know the names of the flowers -- we’re sneaking in a bit of author here -- but it’s less noticeable than it would be in the first person. We are also able to see Curt’s body language. That clenched fist tells us that he’s tense, angry, aggravated…it tells us something about his mood. In First Person, our speaker is going to have to tell us how he feels, and if our tough guy biker, Curt, isn’t in to baring his feelings to others, he’s not going to tell us a thing. Which means you many have to work harder in order to let us discover his feelings about someone!

There is a harsh reality in the world of first person fiction. Your readers will always assume that the First Person narrator is the same gender as the author until proven otherwise. This can lead to some startling moments, as your character (whom we all assumed was a woman) strolls into the men’s room and unzips his fly. Remember…your character must have a reason to think or talk about something in First Person. When was the last time you thought to yourself…I’m a woman, about 5’ 11’, and kind of lanky…? Now you can give your narrator reason to think about her gender and appearance, but sometimes, especially if you open with a dramatic scene, it can be difficult to get that information to the reader before that reader has visualized your character incorrectly! Those details of appearance and gender can be quite a challenge.

The most compelling reason to choose one POV over the other is voice. Does this character speak in a unique voice? If the reader picks up another story you’ve written, will he or she realize that a different character is telling the story? The default voice of a First Person narrator is your voice – you, the author. Which may work if your character has the same educational and social background as you do. But what if they don’t? If your street kid talks like a graduate of MIT with a middle class upbringing, there is a problem here, and it’s a big one. It is critical, in writing a First Person story, where you are not the character, to make the character sound like a real individual, with his or her own voice and world view.

So next time you begin a story, ask yourself: Which should I use? First or Third Person? If your character has a unique voice, if he or she is as much in the dark about plot events as we are, if he or she is strong enough to carry the story, then by all means go ahead and let that character tell the story.

If you need to conceal information from the reader, if you really don’t do that well with unique voices, or if you want to show the reader a lot of rich and interesting scenery, then stick with Third Person. Choosing a voice should be a matter of ‘what works for this story’ rather than habit.

Go to it!