: Re: Have a tough time figuring out third-person prose I can write first-person great, but many stories can only be told third-person and i dont have much experience here. It always feels clunky,

@Carla500

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I like @Stephen 's idea, which I think you should adapt into a series of exercises.

Sit in a park or at a café somewhere and people-watch. Try to write down what you see. You can't know what people are thinking; you can only observe. So write that down: She spoke. He laughed. The dog barked. The waiter looked bored/interested/tired. She kissed the first woman on the lips and hugged the second woman. The little boy whined that he wanted more ketchup.

Once you're used to writing what you see, take that home and try to use it as a skeleton for a short piece. What could they be talking about that made him laugh? Why was the waiter tired? and so on. It doesn't have to be a story; just practice figuring out motivations from outside observations.

You can do this with TV too, but I would turn the sound off so you aren't cheating by hearing the dialogue. The advantage is that you can pause and rewind to study faces and gestures.

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