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Point Of View – 3rd Objective

Posted on by dominiquelambright
14
Jun

Definition

In objective POV—also known as cinematic, impersonal, or camera-eye POV—the narrator stays outside the characters’ minds and reveals only what a camera could record. Readers might feel like a fly on the wall: they see the action and hear the dialogue, but they never get to look inside any character.

The narrator cannot access thoughts, opinions, or internal debates. As a result, the character’s feelings and thoughts remain hidden unless their body language, actions, or dialogue make them obvious.

Books Written in 3rd Objective POV

  • The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
  • The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris uses objective POV for some of the scenes
  • The Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell uses objective POV for some of the autopsy scenes
  • Little Things by Raymond Carver (short story)
  • Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway (short story)

Example of 3rd Objective POV

He climbed the fence and crept closer to the house. The trees and bushes concealed his approach. Pressed against an oak, he waited, one hand wrapped around the hilt of his knife.

A dog started barking somewhere in the house, but he didn’t move.

After a few seconds, the door opened. Light fell onto the back deck. “Tom?” A woman’s voice drifted through the dark. “Is that you?”

He didn’t answer. With a smile, he crept back toward the fence, his hand still around the knife.

As you can see, we don’t get the narrator’s interpretations nor dip into the characters’ minds. Emotions are indicated only by actions (“with a smile”). In this example, it might work to create suspense by hiding the man’s identity and his plans, but if you write the entire novel in objective point of view, readers might feel distanced from the characters and not care much if the woman is killed.

Voice

The voice is that of a narrator, not a character. The narrator’s voice is neutral and doesn’t offer any interpretations or opinions. That means you’ll have to cut out any subjective words and offer a judgment, for example, adjectives such as “beautiful” or “depressing.”

Advantages

Forces Revealing Emotions Via Dialogue & Actions

Even if you might not want to use it for an entire novel, try writing a short story in objective point of view. It’s great practice! So you learn to show instead of tell.

Creating Tension & Suspense By Concealing Information

For example, if you are writing a thriller or a mystery, you could write a scene in the antagonist’s POV without revealing his identity. You could write the first chapter or the prologue showing how a crime is committed, describing just the actions without dipping into the head of the antagonist, never revealing his or her thoughts, feelings, or identity.

Dashiell Hammett used objective POV in The Glass Key. He opened a scene with the protagonist standing beside a dead body. Because of the objective POV, readers can’t be sure whether he killed the man or just found him—and they’ll have to read on to find out.

Allows Readers To Make Up Their Own Minds

Objective point of view allows readers to make up their own minds without any interpretations from the author or the characters. Readers get to determine how they feel about the characters and the issues presented in the story.

Disadvantages

Distanced & Impersonal

Objective POV is distanced and impersonal because it doesn’t allow readers glimpses of the characters’ inner lives. It doesn’t allow readers to feel close to or identify with any of the characters.

Readers Want Emotion Not Information

Readers are reading for the emotions, not the information. Most readers read books because they want to share the characters’ feelings, thoughts, and motivations instead of just observing them from the outside, as they would in movies, so a strictly objective POV won’t satisfy them over the course of a whole novel.

Common Genres

Objective POV is rarely used for an entire novel, especially not in genres such as romance, where emotions are essential, but it could be used for individual scenes in suspense novels, where the focus is on the plot, not the characters.

It’s sometimes used in hard-boiled fiction, which is a subgenre of crime fiction that usually features a tough detective as a protagonist.

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