Third person POV is the most common and has many, many, many variations. A lot of the canon of classic literature employs third person omniscient, which is the “god narrator,” a narrator outside of the story that doesn’t necessarily introduce or explain themself, but gets to opine and philosophize. It often feels like they’re a stand-in for the author. You’re generally hovering above the heads of the narrators, watching from a slight remove as they move about the action of the story. You may or may not be told how they feel about things, or be given an idea of their back story or the choices that brought them to the point of the story. The most objective omniscient narrator acts as a camera, presenting the story “neutrally” to the reader.
A more modern style is limited third person perspective, which allows us to “get inside” the character(s) more, understand their thoughts and motivations, but usually restricts us to one or a limited number of characters. Many romance novels might present alternating perspectives for the two love interests, or the hero and villain in a thriller.
Third person limited is what I’m going to demonstrate today, using my most recent publication, “His Neighbor’s Yard,” which was selected by Maurice Carlos Ruffin for a special curated digital issue of West Branch Magazine, along with a stories by Kristina Kay Robinson and Ran Walker.
This story is all about perspective. For years, especially after the recession in 2008, I had mulled over the idea that someone could be living in my parents’ overgrown backyard. I would sometimes have paranoid In Cold Blood terrors about the person who could be living in the backyard wrecking some havoc on my family inside. I always wanted to do something with this idea, but I could never figure out where or how it fit into the work I was doing.
Until the lockdown in 2020. I visited City Park every other day to walk around for an hour to get sunlight and exercise. There is a small lake with an even smaller overgrown island on it and one day, I was sitting on the bank of the lake looking onto this island and I thought, “Someone could be living out there and you’d never know.”
That brought back the nugget of an idea that had been living in my head as a night terror and I suddenly realized that the story was about the person driven to live in someone’s backyard and why that would come about, not the fear of the person inside the house.
I went home and wrote the story in two sessions and did only minimal editing before I showed it to Maurice and he selected it for publication. As I wrote the story, I experienced what I hope the reader experiences - I found out more about this man (yes, it was a man) and why he was there, squatting in someone’s overgrown backyard.
Spoilers follow, so go back up and read the story before continuing.
He still remembered the security code to the Chandlers’ side gate, though it had been almost two years since he’d last helped Joe Chandler manage the backyard. Before all of this stuff with the virus, before Joe’s accident, before the divorce and Angela got the house and sold it. Before everything got so bad for him.
First, the primary character doesn’t stumble upon the backyard accidentally. It’s his former neighbor’s yard (which led to the title later). He knows the backyard well and he’s there for a reason, and it’s not necessarily a good one. There’s a brief reference to “the virus,” which places it a real-world context, but not necessarily the 2020 pandemic. It’s narrated in past tense, but is written from as close to present tense as I could get, as if everything has just recently happened.
Finally, he reached the palapa at the top of the hill. It was too close to the highway, just on the other side of the tall fence and the thick carpet of kudzu that could never quite muffle the sounds of the cars. It was the one downside to their kingdom of a cul-de-sac, that ever-present whooshing noise. But it had made the houses cheaper twenty-five-years ago, when he and Angela had bought in, just a few months after Joe and Rita got their place as newlyweds.
This is the character’s first time returning to the cul-de-sac where he once lived since a cataclysmic event that he doesn’t necessarily want to think about, so every time he starts to think about what’s brought him here, he thinks about the happier past, or speculates about what’s happening inside the Chandlers’ house.
He is not a reliable narrator, though we are following him and we’re privy to his thoughts and no one else’s. I had to figure out ways of revealing that to the reader, though he’s not capable of imagining or understanding anyone else’s perspective on his behavior, either in the current story or in the past.
And so it had gone, for almost a lifetime.
It could’ve lasted a lifetime, if Angela hadn’t thrown it all away.
Hopefully, because there are several names introduced in the first paragraph and because he’s very fixated throughout on The Chandlers, the former neighbors whose yard he’s breaking into, it may take you a while to realize that the main character isn’t named. I had to figure out interesting ways of continually saying “he,” and not making it obvious that I wasn’t revealing the character’s name.
Until I reveal it about 2/3rds of the way into the narrative, when the narrator has a conversation with Joe’s wife Rita and she calls him by name. He doesn’t get named until he’s inside the house, interacting with someone who knows him from the past.
“Hello?” he heard Rita call and her voice was very close.
He rushed over to the back door, but she came into the family room before he could slip outside. The noise she made wasn’t quite a scream, but louder than a gasp. He turned to reassure her before he thought twice.
“Rita, I would never—” he began, then stopped, the hurt you lingering unspoken.
“Dave?” she asked, her fear replaced by confusion. And then the fear returned.
“I’m sorry,” he said and ran.
In part, I had to reveal his name because it wouldn’t be possible that Rita wouldn’t recognize her long-time neighbor when she finds him in her house, but also because there will later be an interaction between two “he” characters and in order to avoid confusion, I had to finally name “him.” But, I was able to reveal his name in a way that became thematically important in the story, when he is once again inside a home, a house he knows as well as his own previous home.
I should stop there because I fear that breaking down any more of the story would reveal the “twist” or “surprise” at the end, the moment when the character changes and grows. I hope you’re interested in reading and discovering that moment for yourself and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I recorded myself reading “His Neighbor’s Yard” last year, if you’re interested in becoming a patron and accessing that, as well as other behind-the-scenes content available on my Patreon.