Can a third-person narrator ask questions instead of the characters?
In novels, when the PoV follows a particular character, is pretty common that we get to hear his/her thoughts. Sometimes, those thoughts take the form of questions that the character ask himself:
What does that mean? Jodie pondered.
Of course another way to do this is to cut the internal dialogue entirely and make the narrator report the question:
She wondered what the meaning could be.
But there's another way: making the narrator ask the question directly. This comes pretty naturally when the PoV is a first-person one, e.g., Jodie:
What was the meaning of that? Heck, I didn't know.
But I've seen it done before, and I tend to do it, even with third-person narrators, be they limited or not:
What was the meaning of that? Was it ok to ask? Jodie held those questions in her mind, while her fingers surfed on the keyboard and the white light of Writing SE blazed on the screen.
The question is direct, but it's not a thought; we're not in a stream of consciousness, and the narrator is otherwise impersonal.
What's happening here, to my understanding, is that the third person narrator is borrowing the "voice" of a given character for a little while, making the question in his/her stead.
Can this be done with a third-person narrator?
Maybe it makes no sense. It's pretty natural to do something like that in first person, but it might be a skill that has no right to exist when the narrator changes.
1 answer
Yes, you can use a third person narrator in this way.
In fact, this approach can be used somewhat liberally, to describe a thought process that may be difficult to form into distinct mental sentences, or feels too long when that is done, or feels artificial. An example might be to skip any internal monologue about what somebody said, and instead write: She tried to make sense of this, and failed.
Stating a thought by the narrator can also tone down the impact or intensity of the thought; and can make it seem more realistic. In your example, "questions in the mind" like "is it okay to ask" are not always formulated into crisp grammatical thoughts, they can be on the borderline between a thought and a feeling, or a combination of those, and are better described.
This approach is also useful when the character is having multiple simultaneous thoughts; as we often do IRL when under stress or pressure. Conveying what it is like to wonder about two or three competing ideas or worries, as one might in battle or an emergency, is best done in prose, not serialized individual thoughts. (IRL science shows us that thoughts in words come after processes in non-words; and that non-verbal thinking can occur on several tracks in parallel.)
This 'stated thought' approach is fine, it is a tool like anything else. Notice the difference between making the thought explicit in the character's head, and having the narrator state what is in the character's head. The former feels more intimate and immediate. That isn't always what you want; in fact (IMO) direct mental access is something you want to dole out to the reader, when it is important to maximize the impact of the thought -- And if you maximize everything, you have maximized nothing, it is like writing in all caps. Use whichever approach you think best conveys the scene.
However, I do not think this gives a 3rd person narrator (3PN) license to ask questions on their own behalf; that changes them into a first person narrator, and shifting back and forth between narration styles is confusing.
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