The Complete Guide to POV

Third person singular past tense

And here we hit our second biggie — our likely main choice Point of View.

In the very first part of the guide we looked at first person singular past tense. And along with the third person singular past tense, this is one of what you could call the spoken POVs.

If we imagine someone unpleasant meeting a friend for dinner this evening, and being asked about his day, he could very likely answer them using only these two POVs.

Well, I was at my brother’s house, mansion actually, for this huge family get together. I didn’t want to go, but I felt I had to. This year, my cousin Billie organised a bouncy castle for the kids. They loved it. Then one of them, Xandra, went on it in her ice-skates. Xandra was in disgrace for the rest of the afternoon. But everyone somehow blamed me.

He’s likely to slip into past perfect or past continuous, when necessary, but his core will be I went I saw I thought and He/she/it went saw thought.

But the two POVs are far from the same, when used fictionally.

Because you are so practiced at using the first person singular past tense POV, you’re very unlikely to go technically wrong with it. Where you’re most likely to err is having your narrator, who is different to you, speak or write in a way that’s too much like you.

This may not be an obvious similarity, such as vocabulary or attitude, it could be more subtle. They could have your speech rhythms, or their punctuation might be yours. Getting away from those habits requires a high degree of self-consciousness, and a firm sense of how other people — very specific other people — express themselves.

Where you’re likely to go wrong with the third person singular past tense is — in my experience — less on a word choice or syntax level (would they say it like this?) and more on the level of transitions, of inclusion or omission, and of overall attitude to the subject (is the story told best like this, or like this?)

In other words, what you’re going to have to spend time figuring out with this POV is on a more abstract, conceptual level.

Sometimes, when writing a novel, this takes a very long time.

That is why I always advise someone who has difficulty with sticking to a consistent POV to pick someone they know really well — a friend or family member — and to narrate as them. The questions immediately cease to be technical and instead become, ‘How would Uncle Sammy say that five years went by in which nothing important really happened, then continue telling the story?’

You don’t need even to think about the fact you’re using first person singular past tense. You’re just being someone else, on the page.

Third person singular past tense is familiar to us from almost our earliest picture and story books.

However, and I think it’s a major however, we are becoming less and less confident in using third person singular past tense.

(By we I mean, very broadly, Western people writing novels in English. I realise this use of we is treacherous, but I can’t think of a way round it. I’m included. I’m guilty.)

Leigh started reading Daniel Deronda the other evening. It’s a third person omniscient novel, mostly in the past tense. A few pages in, Leigh said to me, ‘The voice — George Eliot — we just can’t do that any more.’

She meant a number of things.

One, we don’t write so well. (I was wounded, but said nothing).

Two, we don’t have the confidence to generalise about life as Eliot does. (Fair enough, I thought.)

And three, we don’t feel we have the right to stroll from head to head, speaking for and out of other people. (A major issue, yes.)

Even though we are most of us very at home with reading novels and stories in basically the same narrative form as Daniel Deronda, we are a bit awkward in writing them — unless we’ve done it a lot.

I’ll confess, when I turn from writing a first person narrative to a third person one, it takes me time and effort to adjust.

Third person past tense narrators have a tendency to skew posh, or old-fashioned, or patronising, or know-it-all.

Most people (including me) find Jane Austen charming, if acerbic, but the opening of Emma, updated, would read as starchy (‘mistress of his house from a very early period’) and overwritten (‘an indistinct remembrance of her caresses’).

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father, and had, in consequence of her sister's marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses, and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection.

More crucially, we’d likely feel that too much was being infodumped on us.

Come on, Jane, show, don’t tell.

Third person omniscient narration is all to do with confidence — social confidence. To succeed at it, you really need to feel that you know people, lots of different people, very well. That’s why — even though it’s so familiar from an early age — it’s best done by more experienced writers.

I won’t say older writers, because younger can be very experienced, and older very inexperienced, but if your POV is going to get around, you yourself have to have been around.

In summary:

Third person singular past tense.

Likely upsides:

Flexible, forgiving, familiar, freeing.

Possible downsides

Soggy, old-fashioned, anxious, bland.