“So-called omniscience is almost impossible. As soon as someone tells a story about a character, narrative seems to want to bend itself around that character, wants to merge with that character, to take on his or her way of thinking and speaking.” (James Wood, How Fiction Works)
Writing Exercise: “Gravity Toward the Center”
Techniques to Develop:
Close Third-Person Perspective: Letting the narrator’s voice bend toward the character’s consciousness—absorbing their worldview, preoccupations, and linguistic habits while remaining in third person. Psychological Diction and Syntax: Infusing narrative sentence structure and word choice with the rhythm and logic of the character’s inner life—staccato for anxiety, meandering for nostalgia, etc. Narrative Filtering Through Interior Lens: Allowing mood, perception, and memory to shape how setting and action are rendered, transforming objective elements into subjective experience.
500-Word Writing Prompt:
Write a 500-word scene in close third person in which a character returns to a place that holds complicated emotional weight—an attic, a church basement, a hospital corridor, a shuttered corner store. The character must be alone and silent throughout, but the narration should immerse fully in their psyche. Write the scene twice, using the exact same setting, objects, and timeline. In one version, the character is deeply nostalgic but optimistic. In the second, the same character is resentful and emotionally shut down. Avoid direct exposition of mood—let word choice, rhythm, and perceptual focus do the emotional work.
Evaluation Criteria:
Voice Integration: The narration must organically reflect the character’s thought patterns, emotional state, and perspective without slipping into generic description. Emotional Precision: The internal shift between the two versions must be clear and meaningful, driven by tone and perception, not plot. Language as Character Filter: Diction, imagery, and sentence structure should change based on the character’s mindset, not just on surface emotion words.
Examples:
Weak: “He looked at the cracked mirror and felt bitter.”
Strong (resentful): “The mirror was still cracked in the corner, warped just enough to split his face in half. Good. It didn’t deserve to reflect him whole.”
Strong (nostalgic): “The crack in the mirror had grown a little, like a child’s scrawl stretching across the glass. He remembered tracing it once, pretending it was a river.”
Weak (between versions): Same sentence with only a word swap—e.g., “The room felt cold” becomes “The room felt warm.”
Strong: In one, the dust becomes a “coating of silence.” In the other, “a fine ash no one cared to clean.”
Follow-Up Questions for Workshop/Revision:
What kinds of details does each version of the character notice or ignore? Are those choices intentional? Do the sentence structures mirror the character’s emotional pulse? Where could rhythm be used more effectively? Are there moments where the narrator’s voice strays too far from the character’s consciousness? Is the transformation between the two versions revealing something essential about the character’s unresolved conflict?
Recommended Reading:
The Coast of Chicago by Stuart Dybek (specifically the story “Chopin in Winter”). Dybek’s third-person narration consistently fuses with the characters’ emotional realities—particularly through tone, musical rhythm, and sensory filtering—while maintaining grammatical distance. The story demonstrates how close third person can inhabit characters so fully that the narration becomes an extension of their private music.
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