help with POV

Well, it's your book, so technically you're 'allowed' to do whatever you want, lol. You're not really 'supposed' to do it, but I've never read a bestseller that actually followed the 'rules', so I tend to ignore them. Following all the rules just guarantees you a mediocre book, imo. It won't be terrible, but it won't be great either. To be great you have to learn how to break the 'rules' effectively (and who writes these rules, anyway?). I've seen books that switch from 1st person to 3rd for different parts, and 3rd limited to omniscient would be less jarring than that. I would go for it. You can always change it later if it doesn't work.

There's just been a long discussion of a very similar question: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138143

You're allowed to do anything you can pull off effectively. It's much more useful to ask whether this is the best choice for your story and what some of the pitfalls are.

The way you phrased your question seems to suggest that most of your story is in limited third and you want to use omniscient only briefly. If that's true, my first question would be why do you want to use omniscient at all? In many cases, figuring out how to handle things within the constraints of limited third makes the story stronger.

No. You should not do that. It's too jarring and it will look like you don't understand how POV works. If you set up a very structured pattern, alternating every other chapter--although I don't know why you'd want to do this--you can pull it off. But you shouldn't just fly all willy-nilly and free-spirited, doing whatever you want, changing narrative perspectives randomly, even with scene breaks. This is bad form and will mark you as an amateur.

You have to demonstrate you understand the rules before you can break them.

As Fennel says, you'd have to have a reason - and a good one - for doing it. If it came in the middle of the book, it would seem most odd and make the omniscient narrator very obtrusive. The reader would wonder who this narrator is, which is generally not what is aimed for with omniscient narrators - most of the time their very omniscience becomes a screen behind which they get forgotten.

I supposed you could (technically you can do anything).

BUT you'd have to have a really good reason and it would have to be handled very well. It shouldn't simply be a matter of "the reader needs to know something which my MC does not".

You can do anything you want as long as:

a) you can do it well, seamlessly, without jarring your readers out of the story

b) you understand why you choose the POV to begin with... "I like the intimacy of the character but there are a few scenes he's not in it, and I want to tell..." is not a particularly convincing reason to switch POV for... Choosing the right POV is one of the first things you should do a a novelist -- and it doesn't pay to be wishy-washy midway through the book

c) you're sacrificing your story by trying to tell it from all angles. Sometimes something is better left "untold."

courtneyv said:

No. You should not do that. It's too jarring and it will look like you don't understand how POV works. If you set up a very structured pattern, alternating every other chapter--although I don't know why you'd want to do this--you can pull it off. But you shouldn't just fly all willy-nilly and free-spirited, doing whatever you want, changing narrative perspectives randomly, even with scene breaks. This is bad form and will mark you as an amateur.

You have to demonstrate you understand the rules before you can break them.

Click to expand...

I was going to post something about how it has been done plenty of times successfully, but then I realised you were just saying not to do it randomly without any discernible purpose.