thomas harris and POV

BellaSignora said:

This month I'm re-reading Red Dragon and The silence of the lambs.
A quick question: are they in 3rd person omniscient or in 3rd limited? A sort of camera eye? I'm really confused!

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Silence seems to be in a 3rd limited, with much POV changing, as opposed to an all-seeing POV character.

What some people call a 3rd rotating.

maestrowork said:

What some people call a 3rd rotating.

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Or third person limited, multiple viewpoint. Several terms for it.

So how do you differentiate 3rd person omniscient from 3rd limited rotating or multiple viewpoint. Does'nt 3rd Pmniscient cover those.

Omniscient means, literally, knowing everything.

In terms of writing, it's the difference between a narrator who knows all and tells what he wants, and a narrator who only knows what the characters experience and think.

In Omnisicent, you could have (for example) a camera-like spiraling-in of viewpoint, starting with a bird in the sky and swooping across a plain, only to end up in a bedroom window, all the while sharing information about the storyworld. See King/Straub's Black House for an intro that does this.

In 3p limited, unless the character was doing the swooping and spying, that tool is out of the box.

In practical terms, since no one says "You must write this piece in 3pL" or "You must write this piece in Omni" (outside of markets or contests that require it, of course), it doesn't matter. If it suits your needs to step outside the heads of the characters, then do so--just be consistent about it, and be artful.

And don't bore the reader.

What JAR said. Omniscient literally means the narrator knows everything -- he's God like. He knows things that the POV character doesn't know. If the character is standing there and someone is lurking in a corner to scare her, the narrator can say that.

3rd limited rotating is exactly like 3rd limited (single view point) except that the narrator gets to switch view points. But once in a particular view point, the narrator can only report what that view point can see, smell, hear, feel, and taste. If something is lurking in a corner, the pov character doesn't know that and thus, the narrator can't report that...

That is, until he switches to the view point of the person lurking in a corner. Then the story can be told from that person's pov.