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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33323
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33323
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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.

Original score: 1