Hmm.

[katallison]

OK, I'm still trying to write a Vividcon con report, with marked lack of success, but in the meantime -- I'm very curious about something I've come across a couple of times lately in LJ comments, and that is the issue of the name you use to refer to a character when you're writing a close-3rd-person-POV story about that character.

Ahem. Let me see if I can be clearer. Say I'm writing a story in 3rd person about Fraser, where he's the POV character. I always refer to him as "Fraser" because that's, y'know, what I call the guy. But I've seen a couple of people lately saying that in such situations the name used should be the one that the character himself uses when he thinks about himself, so the question is does he think of himself as Fraser, or Ben, or Benton, or whatever?

See, in my head this is kind of, sort of, related to the issue flambeau was talking about a while ago (here, to be specific), where you can't sneak in descriptive stuff by having the POV character musing about his own tautly muscled abs or emerald eyes or whatever, or on the other hand providing detailed descriptions of scenes he regularly moves through and is familiar with to the point of obliviousness. You have to maintain the authenticity/integrity of the character's own awareness. And one could argue, I guess, that using the name the character would use about himself inwardly is part of that authenticity-maintenance, except -- I dunno, I just have never thought of it that way. It feels strange to me, and I'd love to hear others' views.

Comments

POV

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Although this is a little late in the game, I dug out the textbook I use for juniors and looked up these two.

Omniscient is definitely what it means: "the narrator knows everything that's going on in the story, but is outside the story, a godlike observer who can tell what all the characters are thinking/feeling."

3rd POV Limited makes me think of something: "the narrator is outside the story, like an omniscient one, but tells the story from the vantage point of one character only. The narrator goes where this character goes and reveals this characters' thoughts."

What that SHOULD mean, I guess, is that true 3rd person limited would stick with ONE character throughout the story, like, oh, say, Harry Potter. But when I write, and I've seen others do this to, they switch from one character to another in the story using different scenes to make transitions. That would mean that one is still using the tools of 3rd person limited, but is not sticking to the tenets of it.

I seem to recall that Stephen King does this all the time. I learned it from Mercedes Lackey and never thought to question it. Bizarro.

This book has interesting insights about internal and external characterization that pertain to this thread much better than the above, but I'm tired.