How to Write a Story in Third Person

Writing a story in the third person is a way of telling a story without telling it from the narrator’s point of view. There still may be a narrator, but the story will not be told from the “I” point of view of a first person story. It will also not include the “you” point of view as in a second person story.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Decide how the narrator will tell the story. This will mean choosing from among the different types of third person narrators. There are narrators who see the story happening but don’t know what the characters are thinking, narrators who know what all the characters are thinking and narrators who have only a limited view of the story.

2. Choose third person subjective narrator if you want your story told without the narrator being able to see outside the characters’ points of view. That means that the story will be told as if the narrator was seeing the action from inside each of the characters.

3. Limit the number of points of view if you are using third person subjective. You might choose three or four main characters and tell everything from their points of view, switching from one to another during different parts of the story. If you have more points of view, the story can lose cohesion and become too confusing.

4. Pick the third person omniscient if you want your readers to know everything that’s going on, even when the characters don’t. With this type of third person narration, anything can be included in the story even if the characters aren’t aware of it. This narrator knows everything and can relate what the characters are thinking, what’s going on outside their view and even what happens in the future.

5. Use third person to tell just one character’s story if you want the story told from only his or her point of view.