How to Successfully Write Omniscient POV
By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)
In January, Jami Gold had a great post on whether or not omniscient POV would ever be popular again. I’ve been thinking about that post ever since because some people responded to Jami by saying they liked omniscient POV. I received the same response when I talked about why I think omniscient POV is dying. Some people still enjoy it.
Some of you may even want to write in it.
In case you’re not sure what I’m talking about, omniscient POV is when the story is told by an all-knowing narrator. That all-knowing narrator is the author, and the story is told in his or her voice rather than in any particular character’s voice. (For more on point of view, click here.)
If you’re thinking about writing in omniscient POV, there are three criteria you need to meet to make it work.
(1) A story that can’t be told any other way.
I like to use Rachel Aaron’s Legend of Eli Monpress books as the perfect example of this. Even though I’m not a fan of omniscient POV, I wouldn’t have wanted her to write her books in third person because of what she would have lost.
She created a world where everything—even dead, inanimate items—have a “spirit” in them. In The Legend of Eli Monpress, we’re allowed to peek into the mind of a door, a regular rat, and many other creatures and objects you wouldn’t normally be able to have as point of view characters. These creatures and objects aren’t prominent characters, and so in a third person limited POV, we’d never be able to hear from them, but hearing from them is part of what makes her books so fascinating.
To give us the full experience of her world and stories, she had to write in omniscient POV. Her stories couldn’t have been fully told in any other way.
(2) A unique voice.
Voice is a little hard to define, but basically what we’re talking about when we talk about a writer’s voice is the distinctive way they string words together.
What types of imagery do they gravitate toward?
Is their writing serious? Quirky? Snarky? Funny?
What type of rhythm or cadence do they naturally use?
Every choice we make from the profanity level in our work to the amount and level of description contributes to our voice. If you pull three different authors off your bookshelf and read the first page of their book, you should be able to recognize their individual voices. If I then showed you another passage from one of those writers and made you guess who it was from, if they have a strong voice, you should be able to identify the author.
In other POVs, your readers need to connect with and care about your point of view character(s). The story is told in their voice (or voices). Your voice is there, but it’s less prominent. In omniscient POV, the reader needs to invest in you, the author, and your way of saying things. Your voice is the only voice. They continue reading because they want to hear how you in particular tell the story.
This is one of the main reasons why newer writers shouldn’t usually start out their writing career by attempting omniscient POV. Voice takes time to develop.
And some writers never develop a strong, distinctive voice. That doesn’t mean they can’t write good books. It does mean they shouldn’t write in omniscient POV.
Because this is such an important element of omniscient POV, my next post in this series is going to be on developing your voice.
(3) Know the difference between omniscient POV, head-hopping, and telling.
Stay tuned! I’ll be covering this in detail after we talk about developing your voice. Being able to distinguish between these three is the crux of writing in omniscient POV.
In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about Mastering Showing and Telling in Your Fiction, I’m teaching a 90-minute webinar on October 26th. It’s regularly $45, but if you use the discount code MarcyShowTell, you’ll receive 15% off.
My good friend Lisa Hall-Wilson is teaching a class on how to write in deep POV on the same day, so we’ve also gotten together to offer what we’re calling a 2Fer. If you’d like to take both classes, you can get them in a package deal, saving you 20% off what the classes would cost if you signed up for both separately. Click here for more details.
And remember that you can also pick up my mini-book Strong Female Characters: A Busy Writer’s Guide for only 99 cents!
Have you thought about writing in omniscient POV? What’s your biggest concern that’s holding you back?
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Image Credit: Loredana Bejerita via sxc.hu
Oct 16, 2013 @ 06:59:38
“In omniscient POV, the reader needs to invest in you, the author, and your way of saying things. Your voice is the only voice. They continue reading because they want to hear how you in particular tell the story.
This is one of the main reasons why newer writers shouldn’t usually start out their writing career by attempting omniscient POV. Voice takes time to develop.”
Fantastic explanation of why new writers shouldn’t write in omni! Yes, yes, yes. 🙂
Oct 16, 2013 @ 15:11:42
Thanks, Jami!
Oct 16, 2013 @ 15:08:15
Omniscient POV has gone out of favor in genre for a very good reason. Immediacy.
Readers want to feel what the POV character feels and immerse themselves in what is happening. Omniscient doesn’t provide that.
Oct 16, 2013 @ 15:11:23
That’s what I personally don’t like about omniscient overall. I like to feel like I’m seeing everything from the eyes of a character. I want to experience it along with them, not along with an external narrator.
I wonder if as people become more overloaded with the stimuli around them, we’ll see a shift back toward omniscient, as they try to escape feeling like they’re a part of everyone else’s world.
Oct 16, 2013 @ 19:07:09
“I wonder if as people become more overloaded with the stimuli around them, we’ll see a shift back toward omniscient, as they try to escape feeling like they’re a part of everyone else’s world.”
That’s an interesting observation Marcy. There are times when I am too exhausted to invest my emotions into a deep, intense, fast paced novel. I’m already worn out. Please don’t tell me we are going to be more overloaded than we are now. I can’t hardly keep up as it is. Give me a lite romance, a cozy mystery novel. Ah yes, that’s more like it. 🙂
Again, thanks for this series.
Oct 17, 2013 @ 10:55:01
I’ve written in omniscient viewpoint before, and one of the things I have to dispute is that it’s dying. I can find best selling books pretty easily, and it’s fairly common in YA British fiction. But when it’s well written, it’s often mistaken for third (I think everyone keeps expecting the old fashioned version from the 1800s). Bob Mayer, for example, writes in it, and you can find interviews with Philip Pullman about writing in it. Clive Cussler also writes in it, and, believe it or not, Harry Potter was in it. And that one is a perfect example of everyone thinking the book is in third because it’s so well done.
The problem though is that the some writers decide to use it because they “want to show what everyone is thinking.” They haven’t really settled on who is important in the story, so they jump from head to head, maybe even thinking, “I’m writing in omni. I can break the rules!” and never take the time to understand what the heck it is. It also isn’t helped by all the misinformation out there. I’ve run into a book published by a mainstream publisher that said omni was “multiple viewpoints,” and another one that only defined it as, “No one uses omni any more. Don’t use it.” It mystifies me. Everyone says it’s no longer used, and yet they keep defining it. It’s a very natural storytelling POV.
Oct 17, 2013 @ 14:59:34
Omniscient can be found, but it’s rare in traditionally published popular genres. This is particularly true in romance where the narrative distance is always warm or hot. (For explanation of narrative distance, see this article: http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/2009/08/hot-warm-and-cold-viewpoint-craft.html )
Nora Roberts and a few other writers who emerged at the same time do a weird mix of head hopping and omniscient, but it’s not a smart move for a more modern writer to try this because it is near impossible to do right as well as being a red flag to any romance editor that a writer doesn’t know what she is doing.
As I said earlier, readers in most popular genres want immediacy and intimacy in viewpoint characters, and it’s impossible to do this in true omniscient POV.
Oct 17, 2013 @ 14:40:22
Ladies, I have to say I do hope omniscient POV isn’t dying as all my books are written that way. Omniscient POV is the true art of the storyteller. (IMHO)
Oct 17, 2013 @ 15:03:17
That’s just it. A “story teller” is a filter between the audience and the story. The story is being told, not experienced.
Every writer has the right to choose their form of narrative, but they should be aware of the dangers in each choice.