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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/33219
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/33219
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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?**

Original score: 5