Examples of introspection in third-person limited perspective
This post uses excerpts from Ward Arc X (Eclipse) chapter 1, from Game of Thrones chapter 5, "Galveston Bay, 1826" by Eddie Chuculate, "An Envelope" by Hannah Lee Kidder, "Division by Zero" by Ted Chiang, and "State Change" by Ken Liu. Minor spoilers for these stories.
I want to find a bunch of examples of introspection in third-person fiction. I've noted my writing might benefit if I added more introspection, and I'm unclear what that looks like outside direct thoughts. However, I don't have a strong intuition for what it looks like.
Ellen Brock names three things introspection does starting 4:25 here, so I look for those three types. Her video gives great and memorable examples, but doesn't clearly identify what they convey. Also, I find the examples are slightly too intense on average. They're great examples of dramatic introspection, and the drama is what makes them so memorable, but I think there is less intense introspection going on page-to-page. Ellen gives a few examples of those, but I thought it was worth collecting more to get a better sense for low-intensity introspection.
I interpret her three categories as follows:
- Introspection showing the way the character thinks. These are thoughts inspired by the world, but not about it. They are abstract and general.
- Introspection showing the way the character interprets the world. These are thoughts directly about the world in the current moment: Why it is the way it is specifically right now, and the characters around them.
- Introspection showing the way the character interprets their emotions. This includes both (a) explaining their emotions, for example, "I was happy because I'd made Bob angry, that inconsiderate idiot," and (b) reacting to their emotions, for example "I shouldn't have been angry with Jane." Maybe some other types.
These are nebulous and shade into each other at the edges. However, I find this a useful framework for starting to think about what introspection can look like.
I'm going to give examples in the rest of this post and then circle back for some summary and conclusions from this experiment. Some examples will have introspection in bold. The ones without bold are nothing but introspection. I'm going to ignore direct thoughts—thoughts given in italics—because it's impossible to miss what those look like.
Without further ado, the examples.
From Ward, x.1, by Wildbow, in the perspective of Ashley:
| Category | Example |
|---|---|
| the way they think | Years of lessons taught her to be still and not to act on reflex, that it would be futile and make things worse. |
| the way they think | She could kill everyone here if she wanted. Reassuring. She didn’t want to, but it was an option of last resort. |
| how they interpret the world | He was twenty-five or so, He was twenty-five or so, brutish. He was big with a combination of height, fat, and muscle that would have intimidated her if she didn’t already know how little ‘big’ mattered. |
| how they interpret the world | It was enough that she took what scraps she could from it and turned her mind away, her eyes focusing on the little white pill that still circled the drain, defying the plunge. She wanted to see it somehow survive despite odds. She wanted to see it fall at the same time, to see if she could spot what finally doomed it. |
| how they interpret their emotions | From one set of shackles to another, with more waiting to overlap and compound the current set. It was frustrating and frustration was dangerous. The wrong thing threatened to push her over the edge; she could hear a song that she remembered from back in the day, someone could say the wrong thing, or a thought could cross her mind, and her mood would careen away from her. |
From chapter 5 of Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, in the perspective of Jon:
| Category | Example |
|---|---|
| the way they think | There were times— not many, but a few— when Jon Snow was glad he was a bastard. |
| the way they think | A bastard had to learn to notice things, to read the truth that people hid behind their eyes. |
| the way they think | He had thought on it long and hard, lying abed at night while his brothers slept around him. Robb would someday inherit Winterfell, would command great armies as the Warden of the North. Bran and Rickon would be Robb’s bannermen and rule holdfasts in his name. His sisters Arya and Sansa would marry the heirs of other great houses and go south as mistress of castles of their own. But what place could a bastard hope to earn? |
| how they interpret the world | His lord father had come first, escorting the queen. She was as beautiful as men said. |
| how they interpret the world | A jeweled tiara gleamed amidst her long golden hair, its emeralds a perfect match for the green of her eyes. |
| how they interpret the world | Even at fourteen, Jon could see through her smile. |
| how they interpret the world | Sansa, two years older, drew the crown prince, Joffrey Baratheon. He was twelve, younger than Jon or Robb, but taller than either, to Jon’s vast dismay. |
| how they interpret the world | Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like Joffrey’s pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell’s Great Hall. |
| how they interpret their emotions | The sweet, fruity taste of summerwine filled his mouth and brought a smile to his lips. [introspection, in that he credits his cheer to the summerwine] |
| how they interpret their emotions | His brothers and sisters had not been permitted to bring their wolves to the banquet, but there were more curs than Jon could count at this end of the hall, and no one had said a word about his pup. He told himself he was fortunate in that too. His eyes stung. Jon rubbed at them savagely, cursing the smoke. |
The smoke example is an interesting one because Jon is misinterpreting his emotion, probably on purpose on some leve. he misinterprets it as a consequence of the smoke when actually he's sad that nobody cares enough about him to watch and scold him like they do the 'legitimate' children.
From "Galveston Bay, 1826" by Eddie Chuculate:
| Category | Example |
|---|---|
| the way they think | This was plain-and-simple joyriding – an adventure – and who wants to be bogged down on an adventure? Privately, Old Bull thought the stories were exaggerated – days and days of water in either direction? The absolute end of the earth? Surely if this was true, this would be the very origin of their existence, he thought. |
| how they interpret the world | Old Bull liked the way the antelope sprang in long graceful arcs, one after the other, like they were playing children’s games. |
| how they interpret the world | While their hosts set about making a fire and gutting the fish, the Cheyennes hacked through some more sugarcane into an open clearing and there spread before them was a startling expanse of blinding blue and white, roar of surf, glimmer of sand. |
| how they interpret their emotions | [skimming and recalling, I couldn't think of an example] |
From "An Envelope" by Hannah Lee Kidder:
| Category | Example |
|---|---|
| the way they think | She rinses her tea mug and stacks it in the top rack, then rolls her eyes. Is that honestly so hard? |
| the way they think | He probably assumes Laini read the letter and then didn't respond to it. He must hate her. |
| how they interpret the world | It's minimalist, just how she's always wanted. Chic, even. |
| how they interpret the world | The apartment is quiet. It's nice. |
| how they interpret their emotions | ? [maybe the above two examples count] |
From "Division By Zero" by Ted Chiang:
| Category | Example |
|---|---|
| the way they think | [Renee] She considered burning the pages, but that would be merely symbolic now. |
| the way they think | [Renee] The doctors would probably describe it as obsessive behavior. |
| the way they think | [Carl] Carl felt that the person he was today was born after his attempt, when he met Laura. |
| how they interpret the world | [Carl] Carl had met Renee at a party given by a colleague of his. He had been taken with her face. Hers was a remarkably plain face, and it appeared quite somber most of the time, but during the party he saw her smile twice and frown once; at those moments, her entire countenance assumed the expression as if it had never known another. |
| how they interpret the world | [Carl] She had a volume opened on her desk; the pages were filled with the usual hieroglyphic equations, interspersed with commentary in Russian. |
| how they interpret the world | [Renee] Renee traced a curly pattern in the dust on the end table. Before, she might have idly parametrized the curve, examined some of its characteristics. Now there seemed no point. All of her visualizations simply collapsed. |
| how they interpret their emotions | [Renee] Renee frowned, reminded of the indignity of being a patient under such fools. |
| how they interpret their emotions | [Renee] As a child of seven, while investigating the house of a relative, Renee had been spellbound at discovering the perfect squares in the smooth marble tiles of the floor. |
| how they interpret their emotions | [Carl] She looked studiedly out the window: her habit when beginning a serious conversation. He suddenly dreaded what she was about to say. |
From "State Change" by Ken Liu:
| Category | Example |
|---|---|
| the way they think | Rina imagined her ice cube in the dark, cold cocoon of the freezer. Stay calm, she thuoght. Block it out. This is your life. This bit of almost-death. |
| how they interpret the world | Rina opened the door of each refrigerator and looked in. Most of the refrigerators were empty most of the time. This didn't bother Rina. She wasn't interested in filling them. The checks were a matter of life and death. It was about the preservation of her soul. |
| how they interpret the world | She stared into the glass dish that held her ice cube. Every time she looked, it seemed to get smaller. |
| how they interpret their emotions | What she was interested in were the freezer compartments. She liked to hold each door open for a few seconds, let the cold mist of condensation dissipate, and feel the chill on her fingers, breasts, face. She closed the door when the motor kicked in. |
Conclusions
Something that surprised me in writing this post is how hard it was to find examples of stories I'd read in third-person limited. I kept coming back to first-person stories and third-person narrated stories and third-person omniscient. I remember hearing in a YouTube video that third limited was the most common style in contemporary fiction and yet of the stories I've read far more are in first person. I was able to think of a few, but it's far from a majority of what I've read.
I was also surprised to find so few examples of characters interpreting their emotions.
This is too many examples. I'm never going to remember all the possibilities of introspection if I have to remember long lists of examples. Can I pick just three memorable-to-me examples? I'm going to try:
- How they think: She could kill everyone here if she wanted. Reassuring. She didn’t want to, but it was an option of last resort. (From Ward, chapter x.1, by Wildbow.)
- How they interpret the world: Most of the refrigerators were empty most of the time. This didn't bother Rina. She wasn't interested in filling them. The checks were a matter of life and death. It was about the preservation of her soul. (From "State Change" by Ken Liu.)
- How they interpret their emotions: As a child of seven, while investigating the house of a relative, Renee had been spellbound at discovering the perfect squares in the smooth marble tiles of the floor. (From "Division By Zero" by Ted Chiang.)
I hope remembering these will help. I guess I'll find out.