Third Person Limited: critique some sentences.

[shamguy4]

I usually feel I am a good writer and never question my ability to write from third person limited, but lately I am wondering if I have been pushing it.

Here are two examples and I want to know if you feel they are ok to use. Shamguy4 is suppose to be the point of view.

It was obvious the date was going horribly, and it only seemed to get worse. Shamguy4 searched for words as Jane pushed her vanilla ice cream away and stared everywhere but in his direction.
"So you don't lik ice cream?" he asked.
"Oh I do!" Jane answered, in what she clearly thought was a winning voice. Shamguy4 just smiled back weakly.

Here we can see what she thought clearly. I think it's still in Shamguy4's head but what do you think?

Now we can try to push it further:

"So… you don't like vanilla then?" Shamguy4 nodded toward the vanilla ice cream at her side which was pretty full and uneaten.
"Well…" Jane thought hard, "I guess I am a chocolate person."
"So why did you get vanilla?" The words fell out of his mouth before he could stop himself. At this point the only thing he would be taking home tonight was the extra vanilla ice cream, which shamguy4, and his taste buds, felt was perfectly fine.

Here Jane thinks hard. Now Jane is obviously a moron! (Who doesn't like vanilla ice cream?!!!?)
But does this go against the third person limited. Here I let Jane think hard. However I have her speak. We never go into her mind.

So what do you think?

 

[Vaz]

Hm. This is a tricky one.

I'd say (no expert) that writing "Jane thought," it puts the reader in her head and would make the viewpoint seem more distant. If you were to write something like "Jane paused, frowning." 'I guess... I am a chocolate person.' (Really rough example, sorry.) But I would imagine in close third the viewpoint character would note another persons physical reactions and behaviour rather than mention they are thinking.

Still its a slim line.

Hey @Jo Zebedee. You're a Jedi at close third, what d'ya think?

v

 

[tinkerdan]

If you are in Shamguy4's POV then you might think about what he sees.
Although he could easily see that she appears to think hard you might consider describing how that really looks.

For instance.
"Well...."She glanced upward and after the pause her hard gaze came down to scorch him. "I'm a chocolate person."
I removed 'I guess' because chocolate people don't guess.

Also you might try in the first one.

"Oh I do!" Said she in a disturbingly winning voice.
(That would sound more like his take on her tone of voice.)

 

[TheDustyZebra]

"What she clearly thought" is pushing a bit, but it's... well... clear that she's thinking it, evidently.

"Jane thought hard" is really stretching beyond his POV. You might get away with it, because he can see that she's obviously (clearly?) thinking, but you'd be better off with one of the above suggestions or something like it, describing what he sees that makes it obvious that she's thinking.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

@Vaz - hee, you managed to put the darn Yoda Seagull Song in my head. Once there, it stays...

Anyhow, I'm pretty much with everyone else. I was actually chatting about this with my 12 year old today who asked how to do just this. If you want to keep something like the other person thought hard in the pov you're writing in (and I found it a pov hop for sure) I think it's about the old showing not telling. What does she do that shows her thinking? It can be anything - staring into space, fiddling with her straw, rubbing her forehead.

 

[HareBrain]

"Jane thought hard" is fine as long as the reader is firmly ensconced in Shamguy4's POV. They'll read it as his interpretation of her facial expression etc. (After all, you could get exactly the same line in a first-person POV, and it would be obvious it was the narrator's interpretation.) Where it gets tricky is if the reader isn't yet settled, if they're still trying to work out how deep the POV is. Then it can feel like it's broken out.

Having said that, showing is better. But you can have too many frownings (I'm guilty of that).

 

[Ursa major]

I think my view is somewhere between HareBrain's and the others'...


...by which I mean that if you have already established that Shamguy4 can tell** when Jane is thinking about something specific AND when she is thinking hard (these are, really, two different things, as is her apparent (to him) deployment of her "winning voice"), what you have written is fine. As HB states, we (well, I) really don't want to read the list of signs that tell Shamguy4 how he knows she's thinking/thinking hard/whatever, every single time.


** - I suppose you could get away with not describing Jane's tells for every one of her "thought processes". For instance, you might tell the reader early on that Shamguy4 believes*** he's so familiar with Jane that he can almost read her mind, perhaps giving a couple of examples where this is shown

...she was think hard right at this moment: the scrunched up face, the insistent waggling of the index finger on her right hand....

*** - He may, of course, not always be correct.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

But you can have too many frownings (I'm guilty of that).

Stop frowning.

 

[crystal haven]

It reads like a pov shift to me. I would go for actions which, as mentioned already, probably would bring it across better.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I think the other thing for me is this is the place for emotional hits. Part of what makes close POV work is that emotion. So I'm less interested in whether she paused as to how he feels about it. If you can start to filter that in you both embed point of view and make the scene stronger

 

[shamguy4]

Alright thanks for the input.
I guess I can work on making it stronger.

I have come across these examples in real books so I know that it has been done before, but maybe it's not the strongest way to do it. It's hard when another character is thinking or when they are not using words.

 

[tinkerdan]

Omniscient limited POV can look like this; however it's still something you need to rein in.
Plus it is quite different from limited third and you don't want to confuse the two.