Asking for help question

I need to write a paragraph about a guitar in "the 3rd person" for a project and I am lost. I know 1st and 2nd person but I have no idea of how to write in the 3rd person. Can anyone help me out here with one or two lines that show how the paragraph must be. Thanks for any help you can provide.

CS

Hello CS,

The first person point of view (POV) would be in the form of: I did this and I did that.

Second person POV: You did this and you did that.

Third person POV: He or she did this and he or she did that. In third person, you can write it as either omniscient, or limited; take your pick.

Best, John

CS,

You've written numerous stories in 3rd person. For example, check out your story Never Mix Wives And Girlfriends. That's all 3rd person. I don't understand how you can say you can't write in 3rd. You do it all the time. Check out those paragraphs and you'll see what I mean.

Remember in 3rd person you can get into other characters heads and know their thoughts, but in 1st you can't do that. That's because the narrator isn't telling the story, the main character is.

It's just that the narrator is out of the scene in the third person. It's all objective. I'm confused though. A 3rd person paragraph about a guitar might say "The Fender Stratocaster is generally regarded as the standard for blues players because of its unique single coil pickup design, however many prefer the fatter sound of the Telecaster." That's third person. But are you implying that the guitar is a character in this exercise?

I was not an English major; would the use of the word "many" in the above example make it third person?

I would think that you could use this exact same sentence in either a first or third person narrative (as there are no included names or personal pronouns to indicate which). If, on the other hand, you had already anthropomorphized guitars, then the guitars would be "they" and I suppose that it might then be considered third person.

Most writing is done in the third person as that's automatically the voice you would use to tell a story about someone else. This gives you the freedom as Bendover says to describe what other people are thinking and to move the action wherever you wish - however if you keep switching the POV between the characters too much it's not considered good style.

If you write in the first person you gain an immediacy at the cost of being unable to describe what other people are thinking however it's quite fun (and challenging) to write in the first person of someone who isn't actually you and to see if their character comes out - you have to "show" not "tell" far more since you have a limited perspective, if that makes sense. If you are writing on behalf of you and another (e.g. "what we did on our holidays" that's also first person but first person plural.

One hardly ever writes in the second person except in instructions, advertising, role-play games, etc. I suppose it could be used in BDSM-type stories where the writer effectively becomes passive and focuses on the other person and what they said and did - "You came through the door, your body encased in black leather. You pointed imperiously to the bed and said ..." etc, etc. I've never seen a whole novel writen this way but I suppose there are some!

Don't fret about it, I'm sure you'll string something together.

You are quite correct, graves94, Rollin's paragreaph could be part of either a 1st person or a 3rd person work.

Some examples:


or


Pure expositional writing, such as en encyclopedia article about guitars, is strictly neither first nor third person, because it has no narration at all. But if any narration does creep in, it will usually be in the third person.


When there is no "I" and no 'You" in the writing, it is generally regarded as third person, even if there really isn't any narration at all.

I have seen short stories and long but not novel length stories (what are sometimes called novelettes, more than say 15,000 words and short of say 30,000) written in the second person. I don't recall a novel so written, but it could be done. Usually, in my opnion, this is merely a gimmick, the story is effectivly a first-person one, simply substituting "you" for "I".

Occasionally second person is used to imply a narrator just off-stage in some special way. Particularly, I have seen it used where the PoV character is in some sort of odd mental state, and the narrative voice is that of the character in a different state, a narrator who does not see the PoV character as "self" in spite of being, in some way, "the same person". For example, in Ted Sturgeon's short story "THe Man Who Lost the Sea" second person is used to obscure the relation between the central character (who is not thinking clearly) and the narrative voice until the climax, where the author makes everything clear.

I've done a couple short - very short! - stories in 2nd person, just to prove I could do it. I can't imagine how a 2nd person narrative of 15K-30K words would get tiresome.