If you have decided to create a story, surely you must be wondering how to write in the third person. Don’t worry, to master this style perfectly, you just need to practice a little.
Believe it or not, writing in the third person will help you provide a unique style to your texts. Therefore, if you already know how to create a story, this type of narration will be the perfect complement to make your stories even more incredible.
Remember that if you want to learn how to narrate in the third person or in any other style, it is not necessary to experience extraordinary events, on the contrary, your job as a writer is to turn the everyday into something spectacular through the correct resources.
As Majo Morón, writer and teacher of the online course The Art of Writing, tells us, “Literature is in the way we see the world, what matters is not the story, but the way of telling it.”
So, to help you realize your potential as a writer, in this article we will give you the best tips to learn how to write in the third person singular or plural. We are sure that by following these key points to write a text in the third person, you will be able to dazzle your potential readers.
1. Apply the best type of third-person narrator
Unlike first-person accounts, writing in the third person is less subjective. In this case, the narrator is not involved in what he writes, therefore he remains completely oblivious to the facts of the story.
In other words, according to About Español, when writing in the third person, the person who verbalizes or writes the action is someone other than the person who performs it. Basically, the narrator becomes an observer throughout the story, which brings impartiality and objectivity to the story.
Likewise, the Escritnow Marketing experts affirm that those who know how to write in the third person are able to give the reader more confidence, since this style of writing allows them to create more professional paragraphs by removing subjectivity from the texts.
Before you start developing your plot, think about which third-person perspective will work best for your story. So that you can have a clearer idea, we will describe the types of narrator in a novel involved in this case: the omniscient narrator and the observant narrator. In this way, you will know how to change a text to third person if you need to.
2. Use third person pronouns
According to the Grammar Manual of the University of Fine Arts, “a story can be narrated in the first person or in the third person; The grammatical person is recognized by the use of pronouns and verbal endings.
So, to learn how to write third person singular and plural, start by leaving out the pronouns you would use when writing in the first person or second person. Always remember that the pronouns to write in the third person are the following:
- Singular: he, her, she, he, it, her
- Plural: they, they
Avoid confusing them with the pronouns that are usually used in the second person: you, you and you. This way, you will be able to connect the words in the third person correctly.
3. Use connectors to keep the thread of the story going.
How to write a coherent third-person story? You must be aware of each event that happens and not get distracted, because by learning how to write in the third person you will go from one event to another repeatedly. Therefore, it is important that you use connectors to avoid sudden changes in transitions.
So, if before starting this note you were wondering how to start a story in the third person without confusing your reader, the key is to pay attention to the transitions, since these are essential pillars to tell a fluid story.
4. Make correct use of the singular and plural
This point is key to writing in the third person, it is a basic rule! Therefore, while you must be very careful with pronouns, the same goes for the use of the singular and plural.
Keep in mind that there may be singular words that you confuse with plurals and vice versa; if you do, your story will lose coherence and the reader will get lost in the story. Watch out for that when internalizing how to write in the third person!
We know it’s easy to confuse yourself with the narrator and occasionally slip into your own perspective. Therefore, stay in the voice of your narrator character. Avoid using first person pronouns: “I”, “my”, “my”, “my”, “we”, “our”, “our”. When you’ve finished writing and are reviewing your first draft, be sure to check for consistency of third person throughout the story.
5. Research the topic to be discussed
What else should you keep in mind when learning how to write in the third person? Basically, you should know that this style requires a research level endorsement. Remember that you will know everything and that requires a previous study on the topics that you will deal with in the story.
In that sense, it is crucial that you find all the information you can about it if you want the reader to be amazed by the third-person text that you will create.
6. Get inspired by examples of third-person texts
So that you can fully understand what third-person writing consists of, we have compiled these examples of third-person narration that will serve as inspiration when you decide to put this literary style into practice.
As you already know, the possibility of writing in the third person is not limited only to examples of short stories, such as novels or short stories. In fact, writing in the third person is widely used to create objective texts, in which the narrator must stay out of the facts.
