August 18, 2005
Okay, I lied. After I finished the last entry, I went upstairs, ate my Lucky Charms and took Frodo for a long walk, during which I considered 3rd person pov a bit more. And the more I thought, the more I began to suspect that one of the advantages of a limited third person pov is exactly what I was talking about earlier--the distance you create. And the more I thought about that, the more I began to see the distance between the reader and the narrator (and hence the character) as being oftentimes a function of character. Here's some "for-instances:"

Mary Reed & Eric Mayer write a series of historical mysteries about John "The Eunuch," Grand Chancellor for Emperor Justinian in, oh, off the top of my head, 5th century Constantinople. (Or is it 6th?). Besides being a Eunuch, John is an educated, shrewd, intelligent guy. He's the chief advisor to the emperor, a man who if he gets his toga in a bunch, is more than willing to have you executed without much more than a wave of his hand. In addition, the Empress is a rather fickle, emotional, manipulative shrew who likes to play with people to see if she can get them in trouble, including John. Besides having a pair of bosses as volatile and dangerous as them, there are court politics that make Washington D.C. look like a Cub Scout Pack--everybody manipulating each other, stabbing you in the back (often literally), and everybody from the senators to the Emperor's boy-toys would be willing to bring John down in order to gain more access to the Emperor. In short, John plays his cards close to his cloak, keeping his thoughts and emotions very much under wraps. It's not only part of his personality, but it's a survival strategy. As a result, Mary and Eric seem to have a pretty distant relationship to John. Intentional? Well, only they know, but it makes sense, given the character. Compare John to Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar, and we've got Myron as an outgoing, emotional, sometimes sophomoric, smartass guy--bringing the reader in under those circumstances makes sense and isn't all that hard to do. In fact, I suspect if you kept too much distance from a guy like Myron he'd look a bit like a jerk (sort of like watching an Adam Sandler movie while sober).

I'm currently reading Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston's "Dance of Death," and it's got multiple viewpoints and easily 5 or 6 main characters (some of whom are getting murdered). But essentially there are 2 or 3 main, MAIN characters, Vincent D'Agostino, an Italian-American New York cop; Aloysius Pendergast, FBI agent; etc. Pendergast is a severe... oh, hell, he's a modern day version of John the Eunuch in some ways, the authors' up-to-date of a quirky Sherlock Holmes. And I'll tell you what... we don't get in Pendergast's head much. I'm not sure if we do at all. It seems to me that Pendergast it more likely to be viewed by one of the other characters, or when he is a pov character, it's limited omniscient. We see what Pendergast does, but not why or what's going on in his head. He's a mysterious, complex character, repressed probably, and knowing too much about what's going on in his head would probably just ruin the mystique. Vincent, on the other hand, is cynical, gruff, emotional, insecure, and we're in his head in a big way.

Take away message, if there is one? When using 3rd person limited pov, how close you bring the readers and how often and in what way you get into their heads and emotions (showing or telling) not only depends on the author's intentions, but very much as a function of effective characterization.

Okay. Tomorrow, first person.

Best,
Mark Terry