Third person is the workaday point of view, the one that calls the least attention to itself. This is an advantage: it keeps the reader focused on the story More stories are carried by a third person viewpoint than by any other, and it's usually the best option to look at first, before considering other techniques.
Writing Third Person
Third person can be combined with past tense or present tense. It can be further divided into third person omniscient and third person limited.
Third Person Omniscient
This style is often frowned upon, and comes under fire from many writing style authorities. Nine times out of ten at least, it's a liability to the book. But there are a few stories that must use this style and come out better for it. Since these stories are few and far between, writers are encouraged to use careful judgment, and avoid omniscient viewpoint unless it would add something extraordinary.
First, some definitions: third person omniscient is not to be confused with using multiple viewpoints. A writer can have multiple viewpoints in a piece of fiction and can be writing in third person without using third person omniscient. This is covered later on. Third person omniscient is an older narrative style in which a single viewpoint contains all characters and perspectives. "While Sarah was worrying about the zombie attack, Fred had no idea any of this was happening..."
The key point to remember in using third person omniscient narration is consistency. Narrative shifts shouldn't happen randomly; they should have a sense of order and rhythm that remains consistent throughout the story.
Third Person Limited
Third person limited is a much more familiar point of view to the modern reader. A single character's viewpoint can carry the whole story, or viewpoint can switch carefully from one character to another. In third person limited, the narrative doesn't stray from the details of what the central character knows, feels and experiences. Sarah knows how her ice cream sundae tastes, but not how Fred's tastes (unless he gives her a bite.)
This is the most popular technique currently in use, and there are reasons for that: it's versatile and doesn't distract from the story.
One thing to keep in mind when writing third person limited POV is to keep a separation between characters' narratives. Not "Little did Sarah know that Fred was plotting to steal her ice cream machine..." which is the kind of thing that gives omniscient POV a bad name; rather, show Sarah eating her sundae and how good it tastes, close out Sarah's scene, and then cut to Fred, elsewhere, tapping his foot, contemplating his nefarious plots.
It is usually best, when doing this, not to switch between characters who are both in the same room, and to limit the total number of perspectives in the story.
Disadvantages of Third Person Point of View
Disadvantages to third person writing are few, but they do exist: first and most noticeably, if two characters of the same gender are fighting or romancing each other, every sentence gets crowded fast. "She grabbed her boots" – is our heroine grabbing her own boots, or trying to trip the villain? "He stroked his hair" – is this nice young man putting the moves on his boyfriend, or grooming his own coiffure?
And these confusions lead to the clunky sentence constructions that often get red-lined in a writer's workshop, because the author is tempted to put in an identifier on each sentence, so as not to use the characters' names too often: the raven-haired chef, the bulky brawler. Avoid the temptation, if caught in a similar quandary. There are other less distracting ways to show the difference between two characters: "the other man" (taller man, slimmer man, or, if you're writing SF, go by species) or an elaboration of the action: "She reached out and grabbed at the quickly moving boots."
Another difficulty of third person is that it does poorly at telling the stories of characters who are neither male nor female. There are a few people like that in the real world, and more still on imaginary worlds. If the main character in a story is one of them, consider telling the story from first person.
It always helps, of course, to write three-dimensional characters with unique presence and personality.
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