Is 3rd person limited for the author, or the audience? It sounds like it'd be harder to write.

Is 3rd person limited for the author, or the audience?

I don't understand the question. Can you rephrase?

(Usual caveat of Y writing experience MV:)

I find third-limited and first really easy to write; all you need to do is get in the character's head and write what they see. I know that many people have a hard time conveying the unreliability of a third-person narrator, or the things they wouldn't see that the reader needs to, but I've never had difficulty with this, beyond the occasional logistical one.

I tend to treat second-person as a kind of alienated first-person.

First-person in fanfic is harder because the voice needs to be even closer to canon, and I'm bad at mimicking. Distant-third is hard because I don't have the gift of creating emotional involvement by action alone, and I have a really hard time learning it. Ditto experiments in figuring out what to leave in and what to leave out in omniscient.

Can you rephrase?

The prevalence of limited third in fanfic -- is it for the audience's pleasure, or the author's pleasure/convenience?

I've got nothing against reliable narrators, in fact, I love them, and that's mostly what I've written in my short portfolio. Also limited third, with switching POVs.

I guess the question is basically about distant third -- it would seem that one could get away with less of an intimate grasp on character voice -- sure, all the dialogue needs to be true, but you don't have to keep up the internals for such a long time.

From where I'm standing it sounds sufficiently harder that I'm surprised that so much of fanfic is in it.

I'm a decent mimic...I should try that sometime. But I'm a baby ficcer...I didn't want to be a *complete* freak.

The prevalence of limited third in fanfic -- is it for the audience's pleasure, or the author's pleasure/convenience?

I think that, as someone said earlier, it's about feeling close to the characters; a story, any story (and it's my feeling-- mine only-- that this is also true in regular fiction) told in omniscient third is much more likely to seem an epic tale, about life and death and herring, with the author using characters to illustrate a point, while something in first or limited third brings one closer to the characters, more 'inside their heads'. And because in fanfic, both author and audience often want to be close to the characters (not every time, but mostly), because that's what gives them pleasure, it's for pleasure-- writer's and reader's. There's an overlap, of course.

Many fanfic authors will use limited third and switch characters-- using limited third and *not* switching is tough if it involves more than two, maybe three characters.

Do you think of it as an instinctive impulse? I'm trying to work out where my non-trained writing self would start, and I don't think it would be there.

I think it started for me as shameless copying. My first impulse generally is first, I think.

What Micole and Nutty said, basically. And Dana too. The fannish audience is so closely wedded to the characters that both writers and readers tend to stick to limited third most of the time, although it's acceptable for the pov to rotate amongst two or three characters.

Limited third from an original character's pov is done, but not often (KodiakkeMax's In the Company of Ghosts comes to mind). Omniscient is difficult to pull off, and often just looks like head-jumping unless it's set up very carefully. People tend to shy away from it for that, I think.

First person requires a very good handle on the pov character's voice to work properly, and not every writer can do that. When it's done well, though, the reader response can be quite gratifying. Voice is one of the issues that comes up over and over in fanfic -- the imperative to sound as close as possible to the characters on the show, either through dialogue or through the narrator's internal monologue.

I prefer 3rd limited in my regular reading, as well as in fanfic, so it was sort of a natural POV for me to choose. I write 1st person from time to time, and find that Fred, for example, is much easier for me to write 1st person than she is 3rd, for whatever that's worth. I wouldn't write 1st person Wes ever, because 1: I dislike most 1st person Wes stuff, and 2: it feels off for me to do so, even though I have a fairly decent grasp on the voice.

3rd Omni usually fails to draw me into a story. As a reader, I'm all about pathetic navel gazing and the human condition.

(Also, Latitude has been updated, as happens once a month or so.)

A writing teacher once told me that people, as they learn to write, usually go through phases. They often start with 1st person because it's easier to write. While in that phase, often every story's protagonist sounds like every other, because they're all the writer's voice. Then they learn to make them sound different from one another, and then they start writing in 3rd person, either omniscient or limited, and play with those two for awhile. After they've mastered each of those styles, they'll often write in whichever voice serves the story best, though less skilled writers, or writers who are less interested in form, will settle into whichever one is most comfortable for them, though some writers will choose the point of view first and then write something in it, in order to stretch their abilities as a writer, or as an interesting exercise in working with the limitations of a particular POV.

I believe limited 3rd is most popular because it's a way to distance the narrator from the protagonist, a little, but not so much that the reader feels he or she should know everything that's going on, and yet be able to reveal things that the protagonist can't know. I recall studying Moby Dick in college, and having pointed out to me (I didn't notice it) that the first person narrator tells the reader what happens in the captain's cabin when the captain is alone, something he couldn't have known.