What is the difference between limited third-person narrative and free indirect discourse?
Free indirect discourse is a writing technique that makes the writing display the character's thoughts whilst still remaining in third-person narrative, with 'he' or 'she' as pronouns. As an example, Jane Austen used it in Northanger Abbey:
The manuscript so wonderfully found, so wonderfully accomplishing the morning's prediction, how was it to be accounted for?--What could it contain? . . . and how singularly strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it! Till she had made herself mistress of its contents, however, she could have neither repose nor comfort; and with the sun’s first rays she was determined to peruse it.
Limited third-person narrative describes the viewpoint of usually exclusively one character in a narrative as oppose to omniscient third-person, which has access to all the characters' viewpoints. An example of this would be from Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World:
As Rand watched his side of the road, the feeling grew in him that he was being watched. For a while he tried to shrug it off. Nothing moved or made a sound among the trees, except the wind. But the feeling not only persisted, it grew stronger.
Both keep the 'he' and 'she' pronouns characteristic of third-person narrative, but act like first-person by displaying the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist, so is there any difference between how free indirect discourse and third-person limited narrative appear on the page?
2 answers
Limited third-person narrative and free indirect discourse are analytical categories invented by academics to classify the techniques of writers because classification is what academics do (regardless of whether such classification produces anything useful).
Academics are often bitter rivals so it is not a good idea to assume that any two analytical categories you find lying around are part of the same analytical system. They may well be rival ways of classifying the world, in which case the question of how they are different has to be answered very differently.They are different because the belong to two different analytical systems.
Classification systems for complex things like prose are often incomplete and inconsistent within themselves. Don't ever suppose that just because one academic proposes an analytical system that every artefact in the real world will fit neatly, obviously, and unambiguously into one category. Categorization schemes, like battle plans, seldom survive first contact with reality.
Contrary to superstition, writers don't always stay in the same narrative mode (by any definition of narrative mode you come up with). Like composers changing key, writers may change their narrative technique, sometimes for large sections, and sometimes only for a sentence or a phrase. Trying to put a whole work into one category, even accepting that the definition of the category is sound, is a category mistake.
Teaching writing is hard, so writing teachers often turn to the works of academics for some (supposedly) hard knowledge to impart to their students so that the students feel like they have got their money's worth. In the process they often misunderstand or corrupt the work the academics did, or use it for purposes for which it was not intended. It is teachers of this ilk that turn uncertain analytical categories into hard rules for fiction writing, regardless of the fact that anyone who has done any actual reading can demonstrate the falsity of these rules with countless examples from literature ancient and modern.
Yes, this is one of those annoying challenge-the-premise-of-the-question answers. But if the question is founded on a false premise, that is the only answer you can give.
If you are a student of literature, recognize that assigning analytical categories to literature is an uncertain business and that there are rival systems of categorization. You would be better served by first identifying the school to which the categories you are interested in belong and then asking in a forum dedicated to that school.
If you are an aspiring writer, however, you should recognize that these analytic categories will do absolutely nothing to help you become a better writer. In fact, they will almost certainly make you a worse and more stilted writer. Write naturally from the narrative viewpoint that makes sense for your story and for the particular moment of your story. If the choices you make present a categorization problem for later scholars, that is their problem, not yours.
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EDIT: I redid the whole answer, because I misunderstood the question.
After some research, I can report that the short answer is that free indirect discourse is a subset of third-person limited.
In direct discourse, traditional third-person limited, thoughts from character are more obviously thoughts from the character. Example:
Tim ran into the woods as the wolf chased him. Will I survive?, he thought.
In free indirect discourse, thoughts are intermingled with narrative. Example:
Tim ran into the woods as the wolf chased him. He feared for his life as the wolf came in closer.
While those two examples aren't literary masterpieces, I hope they make the point. For a more thorough explanation check out this article.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33305. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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