Am I writing in 3rd Person Omni??

It's very hard to do convincingly. I think 3rd person omniscient is quite rare. Most people stick to 3rd person limited, but that would limit you to one character's POV all the time. You'd have to solve that by switching POV in scene breaks or chapter breaks.

The novel I'm currently reading, The Hundred-Towered City by Garry Kilworth (lower YA or upper MG) is in 3rd omniscient.

The Gossip Girl books do a lot of 3rd person head-hopping, even within the same scene. I found it confusing. Like, we're at a dinner, and The Blonde Girl (I'm sorry, I don't know all their names) is bored and whiny in her own head, then we're still at dinner but we're reading about how her estranged ex feels uncomfortable and he wants to go get stoned...then we're in The Other Blonde Girl's Mom's head, and she wishes she was hooking up with some dude. Then Chuck Bass muses upon how he is way awesomer than everybody else and he hates the universe and he wants to go buy a new tie.

But apparently it works because the books are way popular (even before the show).

Read Terry Pratchett.

It's not just about being able to jump heads at will (which a good omni author won't actually do; the switches are purposeful, having to do with distance/closeness and pacing, etc.); omniscient is all about establishing an authorial/narrator voice, so the reader bonds with the author/narrator/omniscient-one. There's no hopping about, b/c the reader is always tethered to the omniscient voice, even when that voice is describing what's going on inside the head of a character.

Omniscient is a good choice for authors who have a really strong authorial voice, one that readers will listen to, regardless of what it's talking about. It works well in humor and satire, and perhaps literary works, where ideas, rather than characters/emotions are the focus of the story.

My suspicion is that in your genre, you would do better with third limited. You can have several different points of view in third limited, but keep them in separate scenes, not all jumbled up.

Many authors, especially in the beginning, insist, "but the reader needs to know what secondary characters A, B and C are thinking when my protagonist does/says something." No, they don't. Not usually. Not beyond the external cues that the characters would give. Skipping to that pov is just an easy way out of doing the hard work of SHOWING instead of TELLING what those characters are thinking. If character A is angry, you can either write, "he felt angry" (his POV), or you can show him clenching his fists or yelling or whatever else he would do when he felt angry.

Try third-limited. Stick to one point of view per scene. Figure out how to show what other characters are thinking instead of telling what they're thinking. Let the reader really experience the scene as if he/she were the protagonist (or whoever is the pov character for that scene). The protagonist doesn't KNOW what the others are thinking, but figures it out from external cues (or from the words spoken by the others). The protagonist makes assumptions from those external cues, and so will the reader.

JD

Yes. What Jan Darby said.

Third person omniscient only works when the omniscient narrator actually has a personality of some kind--just portraying the insides of lots of people's heads is dizzying.

Like Jan says, true third omni is really written from the POV of an omniscient narrator who can see and relate everything (including the thoughts of the acting characters) that happens within the story.

Perhaps, AlishaS, you need to strengthen the voice of your narrator (who happens to really be you telling the story).

Or ask yourself: is the information provided by the thoughts of the secondary characters really all that essential to the story? Can i tell this story in third-limited (sticking to one character's POV for at least a whole scene) instead?

--basically i'm just parroting what Jan has already said --

ETA: That being said, there are books that are written in a third head-hopping style with no narrator voice, but they usually either work for someone or they don't (and more often, don't).

You can have multiple POV characters with 3rd limited. You just can't "head-hop" at will.

And what they say about the "POV of an omniscient narrator." I think by far that's the hardest concept for writers to grasp -- they think omniscient is jumping from one POV to another at will -- that's really not true.

JanDarby said:

Read Terry Pratchett.

It's not just about being able to jump heads at will (which a good omni author won't actually do; the switches are purposeful, having to do with distance/closeness and pacing, etc.); omniscient is all about establishing an authorial/narrator voice, so the reader bonds with the author/narrator/omniscient-one. There's no hopping about, b/c the reader is always tethered to the omniscient voice, even when that voice is describing what's going on inside the head of a character.

Click to expand...

Jan puts it beautifully.

However, if you're not sure about the jargon we're using, please don't feel you can't ask more questions.
Also, a very good way of getting feedback is to post some excerpts on the Share Your Work forum.

Good luck wth it

I'm writing my book in omniscient, and it is just one POV--the narrator's. It's more common than many people think because, when it's well done, you can't tell or will think it's third. When it's done not so well, it can be too distant and non-emotional.

It works really well for stories with large casts of characters or complicated storylines because the narrator can easily control those elements. One of the hardest things I had in a previous work--done in third, but should have been in omni--was a fight scene with four major characters. If I did it from one POV, I ended up missing out on what was happening to the other three, or ended up with a lot of short scenes. It's often used in thriller--Clive Cussler and Vince Flynn both use it. If you read young adult or children's books, you've also probably run into it. Pretty common there because of the audience.

The viewpoint is also known for being distant. Since everything is being observed by an outside narrator and not through a character's eyes, the filtering creates distance. It's a very hard area to control because it's easy to go too distant and not realize it until you read it later. The distance is what makes it work well with humor. I have humor in my book, and in the other two viewpoints, it was annoying, but in omni, the distance gives it a nice balance.

I did a workshop on it, and everyone had trouble with headhopping. Essentially, when they moved from one character to another, they switched to third person and showed the scene through the character's eyes, instead of staying with the omni narrator. It does take a bit of effort to do in the beginning--you have to make a transition before touching another character's thoughts, and then make sure the wording choices are appropriate for an omni narrator. Wording is probably the single biggest component of omni.

Some disadvantages of it:

If you choose to use it, you have to learn how to do the viewpoint entirely by reading. All you'll find is how-to books telling you no one uses it any more--despite the fact there are at least three best-selling authors who do.

You probably won't be able to get much in the way of crits. Unfortunately, I've found this the hard way--people admonishing me for using the viewpoint, telling me I'll never get published, and the worst--"I'm sure you know your story, but here's how you'd do it in third."

It can be a wonderful viewpoint to work with, but it takes a bit more learning than the others.

Awesome answers, as usual

I love omni I don't know that I use omni 'head-hopping' once in my omni work, too. That's the least of its appeal to me with my WIP. A satire I had reasons for wanting a consistent narrative voice that runs through the work with 2 main MCs. I wanted the voice to be somewhat distanced; I want the feel of a lot of observation, if that makes sense. There is politcal critique, etc. You definitely feel that you are watching a strange story unfold. You aren't one of the characters.

Obviously, those same things can be bad things if they don't fit the work. So, it's a mood or flavor, I think, not just the ability to head-hop

PS - The last omni novel I read was Ghosts by Cesar Aira. He covers a ton of people's thoughts, kind of floating around amongst them, so it is the very Omni-Head-Hoppy kind of work.

In earlier drafts I suffered from 'head-hopping', I overcame the problem by using multiple first. BUT I don't change pov in a chapter. A chapter is dedicated to a certain pov and is given such a sub-heading.

Maybe look at the motivation for changing pov. Does it serve the purpose of the story, or for authorial 'vanity'? (I fell into that hole a few times.)

Linda Adams said:

I'm writing my book in omniscient, and it is just one POV--the narrator's. It's more common than many people think because, when it's well done, you can't tell or will think it's third. When it's done not so well, it can be too distant and non-emotional.
(...)
It can be a wonderful viewpoint to work with, but it takes a bit more learning than the others.

Click to expand...

QFT, particularly the bolded part.

edit: great i lost my post due to my cat playing with the mouse (pun intended).

Listen to Jan.

I'm reading The Resurrectionist right now by Jack O'Connell. It's essentially two stories rolled into one. The chapters about the first story are written in 3rd limited. The chapters about the other story are written in omniscient.

It works very well.

Well maybe I'm doing it wrong. I've got most of my current novel in third limited, from the MC point of view but there are very short scenes, that I will probably make separate chapters, without her presence that are distant omniscient. I know I'm breaking the "rule" that if she can't see it, I can't use it, but I know I've read a book recently that did that, can't remember which one off hand without going and digging in my den. Maybe this is one of those things that famous authors can get away with but I'd better not try?

Well I just hit preview and saw Katiemac's post so maybe it can be done.

Telstar said:

edit: great i lost my post due to my cat playing with the mouse (pun intended).

Click to expand...

Awww....

Rushie said:

Awww....

Click to expand...

I was sort of rephrasing Linda with my own words and from my own experience. And I put some emphasis on POV distance.

Browne & King explains very well how to handle POV and POV shifts properly in Self editing for fiction Writers, that i'm re-reading atm.

I also recommend Mary Doria Russell -- The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God. Lots to learn how to handle omni.
Good luck.

Adagio