Third-person narrator restarts their train of thought. Ellipsis?

tharris

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This is kind of an odd one. I’m working on a piece that is third-person limited. I have a paragraph where the description stops because the POV character wants to readjust their mood, then redescribes the same scene. Here, I’ll just show an example:

The valley cradled a mansion, the home of a lonely man—no, Jessica mustn’t let herself get sucked into his void. Today is for celebration…

The valley cradled a mansion, the home of William.

Is that ellipsis being used correctly there? Would an em-dash be better? A simple period doesn’t seem right.

Thanks for any insight!
 

Bufty

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Not sure about the ellipsis's purpose there.

If she's made a decision, a full stop would seem more appropriate.

I know it's a made-up example, but a bigger issue to my eye is the Third Person Limited POV character, Jessica, referring to herself in the third person as if she were the narrator - but she is not the narrator. You are the narrator.

See what others say about the ellipsis.

Good luck.
 
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tharris

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Not sure about the ellipsis's purpose there.

If she's made a decision, a full stop would seem more appropriate.

I know it's a made-up example, but a bigger issue to my eye is the Third Person Limited POV character, Jessica, referring to herself in the third person as if she were the narrator - but she is not the narrator. You are the narrator.

See what others say about the ellipsis.

Good luck.

Thanks for that. Yeah, I'm trying to do something a little unusual with POV but I'm still wrapping my head around it. Since the description is filtered through her, the description shows how she's viewing it. In the above example, she sees the house as the home of a lonely man, then she stops that line of thinking. She doesn't want to think of him that way, so the description is reframed without the judgement. I'm not sure if this type of POV has a term. As you say, its really close to slipping into first person, without actually doing that.
 

Bufty

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I don't see anything unusual in a Third person POV character reconsidering or debating their opinions of someone, weighing up the pros and cons, being non-judgmental or whatever. They can use a monologue or thoughts or talk to themselves.

For clarity and flow, it's execution that needs attention, surely.

How does it create a special type of POV?

I could be misunderstanding you. :snoopy:
 
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tharris

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I don't see anything unusual in a Third person POV character reconsidering or debating their opinions of someone, weighing up the pros and cons, being non-judgmental or whatever. They can use a monologue or thoughts or talk to themselves.

For clarity and flow, it's execution that needs attention, surely.

How does it create a special type of POV?

I could be misunderstanding you. :snoopy:

I don't understand myself, is the issue! ;)

Here is a more standard way (still clunky, but it makes the point) to write that:

The valley cradled a mansion, the home of a lonely man, William. Jessica shook her head. She wasn't going to let his depression bring her down. Not today. Today he was simply William.

Maybe that's the best way to handle that.

But, I was going for something unique, where the narration resets itself and starts the description over based on a change in attitude. Essentially it makes it feel like she is narrating it, despite the fact that its third-person (is there a term for this?). In typing this out, I can hear my creative writing teacher telling me to just write it straight up and stop overthinking things. :tongue
 

Bufty

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It's just one way - whether it's best for your story is your decision.

There could well be a term for what you're thinking of doing. I just don't know what it is.

Good luck whichever course you follow.:)
 

BethS

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This is kind of an odd one. I’m working on a piece that is third-person limited. I have a paragraph where the description stops because the POV character wants to readjust their mood, then redescribes the same scene. Here, I’ll just show an example:
The valley cradled a mansion, the home of a lonely man—no, Jessica mustn’t let herself get sucked into his void. Today is for celebration…

The valley cradled a mansion, the home of William.



Is that ellipsis being used correctly there? Would an em-dash be better? A simple period doesn’t seem right.

Thanks for any insight!

I don't see a purpose for the ellipsis being there, which would indicate a trailing-off. But she's already interrupted herself to change her train of thought, and "Today is for celebration" feels like a complete thought.

And fwiw, unless there's a really good context reason for using her name, "she" would work better. Deeper POV.