Omniscient POV; the Pratchett way.

I'm writing my current WIP in third-person omniscient POV, and it's supposed to be a comedy. So I figure, who else to study but Terry Pratchett? All the Discworld novels are humorous and in Omni POV, and I have a few of them on my bookshelf already.

In studying them, I discovered a pattern to how Sir Pterry uses perspective. Of course he shifts from character to character after a scene break; that's not exclusive to omni POV, multiple tight third does that also. But when he shifts POV during a scene, it seems to be for three specific reasons.

1) Establishing shots. In new settings -- and almost always at the beginning of a story -- we get an omniscient look at the landscape in no fixed POV at all. It may then zoom in on a character, or it may carry through to a scene break. These 'establishing shots' are often packed with wry humor and are dripping with the author's voice. A lot of exposition is delivered this way, also.

I can see how easy it would be to overuse these establishing shots, and in fact I think Sir Pterry sometimes does, but his charming voice makes it palatable. The voice is the entire key to this trick; the author has to be entertaining, but has to do that while actually saying something. It would be easy, and bad, to lapse into rambling authorial digressions that do nothing to serve the story.

2) Quick Jokes. I found many instances where Sir Pterry carried one character's POV through an entire scene, *except* for a one-sentence excursion from their perspective for the sake of a quick joke.

Vimes decides to go to bed. We get one funny sentence that mentions him snoring, then he's woken up and we're back in his POV again.

Gaspode is talking to a werewolf. We get one sentence revealing what the werewolf thinks of Gaspode (it's not flattering), then we're back to Gaspode's POV.

So apparently, in writing humor in omni POV, it's permissible to make very short POV breaks if and only if they are funny.

In fact, it would be difficult to make these kind of jokes in tight third. The shift of POV appears to be what makes this kind of humor possible. They say that omni POV is the natural perspective for humor writing; I wonder if this is the reason.

3) Subtle shifts. This is the one that puzzles me. In many scenes, Sir Pterry will begin with one character's POV, but end the scene in another character's POV. The transition is subtle, and I can feel the master's pen at work even if I don't understand why he's doing it. My best guess is that it's for expediency -- often the characters go separate ways, and the narrative wants to follow the second character, and rather than put a scene break in the middle of a continuous period of time he just smoothly works us out of one POV and into another.

I think, but am not sure, that he uses cinematic POV as the transition between characters. He steps out of character #1 and into a POV where we only see what can be seen, no internal monologues. Then he slides us into character #2.

The subtle POV shift is not done for humor value. I think it's just a tool in the Omni POV toolbox, and Sir Pterry decided to use it since he was in Omni POV anyway.

It worries me that for a lesser author -- namely me -- someone might label this POV shifting as head-hopping. Perhaps the fact that the transition is subtle, and that he never shifts more than once per scene, is the key to keep it from being confusing to the reader.

Well, that's what I'm discovering about omniscient POV. Thought I'd share it...and invite you all to poke holes in my research and explain to me where I might have it wrong. I'm still trying to figure this out, and research is better when it's peer reviewed.

Bufty said:

What do you mean by 'get an omniscient look at the landscape with no fixed POV at all? It's omniscient - it's the omniscient narrator's view.

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I meant with no character's POV. Omniscient POV -- at least how Sir Pterry usually uses it -- is tight third person POV with occasional excursions outside. But you're right, those outside excursions are the narrator's perspective.

Douglas Adams is another author I've thought about, although I haven't dug up his books from the back of my shelf yet.

Adams, going just by my memory, did somewhat longer POV breaks for a quick joke. The classic whale and bowl of petunias bit was several paragraphs long, as I recall.

I also don't recall Adams ever performing that subtle shift in POV from one character to another through a scene...but then, that technique is *supposed* to be invisible if you're not looking for it, so I may have just missed him using it.

blacbird said:

In general, I think comedic work gets a little more leeway with POV than do non-comedic works, simply because you can play with POV for humorous effect.

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I think you've got it the wrong way around, actually. Writing comedy does not permit you to play around with POV. Playing with POV allows you to do comedy. Omniscient POV allows for comedic effects that are nearly impossible in other perspectives.

This is even pointed to by the definition of the Shakespearean 'comedy': A light story in which characters misrepresent themselves to each other. That kind of mistaken identity plot is much more difficult if done in tight third. Other comedic techniques, like the nonsequitur joke we've mentioned above, also require omniscient perspective.

I'm not saying that you can't do comedy in tight third, nor does every omniscient story have to be funny. But omni lends itself to comedy, it fits.