Close third person

Close third person is third-person narration that stays tightly inside one character's perception, so the reader sees, knows and judges only what that character does, while the pronouns remain 'he,' 'she' or 'they.'

Also called third-person limited, or simply close third. It is the default mode of most contemporary commercial and literary fiction, sitting between the confinement of first person and the freedom of omniscience.

The constraints are simple to state and easy to break. No fact the viewpoint character does not have. No description of their own face that they could not see. No access to another character's interior — only to the behaviour they could observe and the conclusions they would draw from it.

The corridor smelled wrong is close third: the judgement wrong is hers. The corridor smelled of bleach, though Maya could not have named it steps outside her and becomes an omniscient narrator's line.

Within close third, narrative distance can still slide from a cool overview down to the character's unspoken words, and free indirect discourse is its natural voice at the closest range. Losing the constraint in the middle of a scene is head-hopping.