"It's also possible to have two third person singular points of view, as represented by two characters through whose eyes the story is told in alternating chapters, say"
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Craft talk rarely sounds this casual while sneaking in a fairly radical permission slip. Herzog’s line is basically a novelist leaning over the workshop table and saying: the rules are tools, not handcuffs. “It’s also possible” is doing quiet rhetorical work; it frames technique as option, not dogma, nudging the reader away from the absolutist advice that point of view must be singular, consistent, and policed like continuity in a TV writer’s room.
The specificity matters. “Two third person singular points of view” isn’t the omniscient god’s-eye many readers associate with third person; it’s intimate, character-bound third, doubled. By invoking “two characters through whose eyes the story is told,” Herzog foregrounds perception as the real engine. The subtext: narrative authority isn’t neutral. Splitting third person into alternating focalizers turns the novel into a controlled argument between realities. You get the psychological closeness of third-person limited without the claustrophobia of one mind, and you also get built-in friction: what one character notices, the other misses; what one interprets as cruelty, the other calls necessity.
“Alternating chapters, say” adds a shrug that’s deceptively instructive. Herzog isn’t prescribing a rigid braid; he’s pointing to pacing as ethics. Chapter alternation is a fairness device, a way to promise the reader balanced access, while still letting the novelist curate suspense and irony by choosing when to switch lenses. Contextually, it’s an answer to a recurring anxiety in modern fiction: how to keep narrative momentum while honoring complexity. Herzog’s solution is structural and humane: multiply viewpoints, but keep them disciplined.
The specificity matters. “Two third person singular points of view” isn’t the omniscient god’s-eye many readers associate with third person; it’s intimate, character-bound third, doubled. By invoking “two characters through whose eyes the story is told,” Herzog foregrounds perception as the real engine. The subtext: narrative authority isn’t neutral. Splitting third person into alternating focalizers turns the novel into a controlled argument between realities. You get the psychological closeness of third-person limited without the claustrophobia of one mind, and you also get built-in friction: what one character notices, the other misses; what one interprets as cruelty, the other calls necessity.
“Alternating chapters, say” adds a shrug that’s deceptively instructive. Herzog isn’t prescribing a rigid braid; he’s pointing to pacing as ethics. Chapter alternation is a fairness device, a way to promise the reader balanced access, while still letting the novelist curate suspense and irony by choosing when to switch lenses. Contextually, it’s an answer to a recurring anxiety in modern fiction: how to keep narrative momentum while honoring complexity. Herzog’s solution is structural and humane: multiply viewpoints, but keep them disciplined.
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| Topic | Writing |
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