Omniscient POV

Why not post the first chapter in Share Your Work forum and see what feedback you get?

Kat M said:

People who have read the whole book don't find the POV jarring. People who've read the first few lines do. Clearly I'm not introducing the POV right—perhaps the whole book is off, too, though the jury's still out on that one. I do know—after attempting to switch to 3rd-limited multi-POV—that omni is what suits the story best.

Therein hangs my question: how do I seamlessly clue the reader in to an omni POV?

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I don't think it needs to be seamless; it just needs to be obvious. The opening sentences should (ideally) establish the omniscient storyteller's voice.

I can hunt down some example and come back later--no time right now--but meanwhile, I second WriteMinded's suggestion about putting a couple pages or so in SYW.

One I can think of that does this pretty well is the Bear and the Nightingale. I honestly don't like Omni POVs. I find them jarring and uncomfortable to read, but she did a good job with this, and I was able to read it the whole way through.

Depending on where you look, it can be listed as YA, but it really doesn't feel at all YA, so I think it's still a good example for you.

Describing a setting without referencing any specific character is an easy way to establish an omniscient narrator right off the bat.

*whispers* You're even allowed to head-hop from time to time, if it works and is needed. /whispers

amergina said:

But sometimes I think we get to wrapped up in the technical details.

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Yeah. Frankly, writers don't always make the best critters (except when we do). We're super-tuned to technical things like POV, as we have to be. But readers just... read. So look at the big picture, and use the technical feedback to help identify the trends you're seeing from readers.

And trust your instincts.

VeryBigBeard said:

*whispers* You're even allowed to head-hop from time to time, if it works and is needed. /whispers

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Though it's not really called head hopping in Omniscient, because it's generally framed in such a way that the narrator is in charge.

Also note that omniscient doesn't require the narrator to share the thoughts of everyone (or anyone) or more than one person in a scene. The difference lies in how the scene is established and in how the information about a characters' thoughts is presented. Omniscient narrators are also free to present information that no character in a scene is privy to or to pull the narrative camera out into a more global "view" or overview of a situation.

Hands shaking with fear, Mary locked her apartment door and drew the curtains. She hid in the hall bathroom for the next two hours, balled up in the darkness, wondering if she was about to die. There was no need for her to worry, though. The vampire she'd spotted had already dematerialized and even now was enjoying a bloody Mary at an underground tavern on the other side of the country. Thanks to the Werewolf Treaty of 1997, Mary was not his rightful victim. A vampire could no more violate this edict than he could materialize at true local noon during the summer solstice.

Omniscient narrators can also spend a lot of time following just one character around, as Rowling did with Harry Potter, but they still retain that external control.

Roxxsmom said:

Though it's not really called head hopping in Omniscient, because it's generally framed in such a way that the narrator is in charge.

Also note that omniscient doesn't require the narrator to share the thoughts of everyone (or anyone) or more than one person in a scene. The difference lies in how the scene is established and in how the information about a characters' thoughts is presented. Omniscient narrators are also free to present information that no character in a scene is privy to or to pull the narrative camera out into a more global "view" or overview of a situation.

Hands shaking with fear, Mary locked her apartment door and drew the curtains. She hid in the hall bathroom for the next two hours, balled up in the darkness, wondering if she was about to die. There was no need for her to worry, though. The vampire she'd spotted had already dematerialized and even now was enjoying a bloody Mary at an underground tavern on the other side of the country. Thanks to the Werewolf Treaty of 1997, Mary was not his rightful victim. A vampire could no more violate this edict than he could materialize at true local noon during the summer solstice.

Omniscient narrators can also spend a lot of time following just one character around, as Rowling did with Harry Potter, but they still retain that external control.

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You should copy this and just paste it into every omni thread. There's a new one every two weeks, it seems.

VeryBigBeard said:

You should copy this and just paste it into every omni thread. There's a new one every two weeks, it seems.

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One good approach is to list different books written in omniscient, to give readers a sense of the different ways an author can handle it.

It's also possible for different scenes or chapters within the same book to be written in different narrative viewpoints.

Roxxsmom said:

One good approach is to list different books written in omniscient, to give readers a sense of the different ways an author can handle it.

It's also possible for different scenes or chapters within the same book to be written in different narrative viewpoints.

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One of my favourite scenes is in The Lions of al-Rassan, a critical (and spoilery, so not saying which) scene told from the POV of an entire crowd of people. In that particular scene, it's bang-on and works wonders.

One very quick way to get across omniscent is to establish the narrator-ly voice and have them talk about your main character.

"In those very ancient days, there was a boy named Nub. He was very dumb, but possessed a kind of dumb luck that sent situations spiraling out of control in such a way that when they stopped spinning, they pointed to him as the cleverest person in the room."

Normally, we're told to Show, Don't Tell. But if you have that kind of wry narratorial voice and it's amusing enough, then you can get away with it.

I have always found the term "omniscient POV" unhelpful. To me, it is a question of who the reader is listening to. Traditionally, the answer was simple: they were listening to the voice of the storyteller. Sometimes the storyteller is also a character and sometimes they are not, but they are always telling a story and the reader understands and accepts that they are hearing a story being told to them. It is only comparatively recently that writers have started to use the artifice of pretending that there is no storytelling voice, that the reader is, instead, directly spying on the thoughts and experiences of the character. The problem is that this has become so common that many readers assume it to be the case absent any direct evidence of the storyteller's voice.

The problem with these two alternatives seems to arise when the writer wants to allow the reader to spy on more than one character at a time. A common approach to this is to alternate chapters in the POV of different characters, but what when you want to spy on more than one character in the same scene. (Two tentative lovers, say, each of whom is attempting to hide what they are feeling from the other, meaning the only way to reveal it to the reader is to get into both heads.)

Switching to the voice of the storyteller is one solution, but this is a bigger change than simply a POV shift. It is an entire change of narrative strategy, and the choice of narrative strategy -- the choice between the reader listening to the storyteller and the reader spying on the character -- has much deeper implications for the novel than merely getting access to the heads of two characters at once. It also implies that the voice of the storyteller needs to be present throughout the book.

What is interesting here is that it seems like there ought to be a way to create the illusion that the reader is spying on the thoughts of more than one character at a time without invoking the voice of the storyteller. After all, there is nothing natural about spying on the thoughts of even one character. We can't do that in real life, much as we might wish to. So if we can create the illusion of spying on one character's thoughts, why not the illusion of spying on two character's thoughts? But this seems to be very difficult to do. The reader seems frequently to find it jarring. (Perhaps it is because the reader imaginatively puts on the persona of the spied-upon character, and while we can imaging being one other person, we can't imagine being too other people at the same time.)

So it is no simple fix. Switching to omniscient will get you access to both heads, but it is more than a POV switch, it is the introduction of a whole new voice into the story, a voice that needs to own the story from beginning to end. And if it is the case that the reader imaginatively puts on the persona of the spied-upon character, then the introduction of the storytellers voice perhaps invites a more detached posture from the reader, which very much changes their experience. If they do decide to put on the persona of a character, they must at least approach it in a different way.

There are literary pleasures to be had both as an imaginary participant and as an observer, and some readers may approach the same work in different ways. (I have never personally felt that my enjoyment of LOTR would be enhanced by dressing up as Frodo or Gandalf) But it probably pays to think about which kind of pleasure you are attempting to provide and how the presence or absence of the voice of the storyteller would affect that pleasure.

Not sure why the term 'omniscient POV' is unhelpful per se..

No matter which POV is chosen, the desired objective presumably is to draw readers in so they experience the unfolding tale as if they were participating as a character, even though they know they are not

However, I agree that being exposed to the internal thoughts of two persons at the same time could be distancing, and perhaps switch the reader experience from one of participating to one of observing from the outside.

I think it all comes down to the individual writer's intention, objective, and choice.

Originally posted by gmbaker I have always found the term "omniscient POV" unhelpful....

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On one of his instructional videos, Brandon Sanderson recommends starting with the scene, with a wide angle like a camera, and then slowly dialing it in. One way to make it obvious that it's omni is to describe something in such a way that there's nobody present who could see all this.

Ex: The sun beat down on the cracked earth as if it were hunting everything that remained alive. Even the lizards and snakes had retreated underground.

Then you dial it in and focus on the character dying of thirst. That sort of thing.

The good news is that you want openers, and these things are free on Amazon. I'd go check out the bestselling lists for your genre/subgenre and see what you like. It won't even cost you anything.

You can always read how I opened Bellerophon there, although it's hardly a bestseller. LoTR starts distant and dials in. So does The Hobbit. A wizard of Earthsea starts by talking about the island where the protag comes from.

I mostly know my genre best, so I can give you a few others in it that are relevant, although I'm sure other genres use this opener. Good Omens by Gaiman/Pratchett. Spindle's End by McKinley. Red Moon and Black Mountain by Chant, and the curiously unsung Gnomewrench in the Dwarfworks by O'Donohue.

Hope that helps. : )

ETA: I read your excerpt, and I think your biggest problem is that you don't start with any kind of hook. Yours reads: Laney wanted to go with Roger to the airport. That doesn't make me ask any questions, although that bit's tricky. Still, here are some examples of opening hooks that I like:

All time favorite: Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but he finished shaving before he did anything about it. (Night Watch, Pratchett)

It can even be a small question: She scowled at her glass of orange juice (McKinley, the Blue Sword). Why would anyone scowl at their glass of OJ? That's enough to get you to the next sentence.

Or a larger question: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. What on earth is a hobbit? Of course we all know now, but nobody did back in the Thirties.

Or: On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. (Monster Hunter International, Correia)

Personally, I think that's what's holding you up more than POV, so it might be worth considering.

And I hope you don't mind, but I took a stab at yours:

If Roger thought Laney was going to skip going to the airport, he had another thing coming.

That at least introduces conflict and could get the reader wondering if she will be successful. I'm sure there are better possibilities, but that one switches out with your current opening sentence with a minimum of fuss.

Bufty said:

Not sure why the term 'omniscient POV' is unhelpful per se..

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Well, I think I find it unhelpful because it does not address who exactly is omniscient. In other words, whose voice am I listening to? Because whoever may be omniscient, it is not the reader. The reader sees only what they are shown. There is always a storyteller, and the storyteller is always omniscient: they know everything about the story and the choose what to reveal to the reader and when and how to reveal it. They never show the reader everything. They couldn't. There is always more they could say. The whole art of the thing lies in apt suggestion.

The storyteller sometimes elects to speak with their own voice, essentially assuring the reader that they are going to tell them everything they need to know (though this promise may not always be kept). That might mean telling the reader what several people are thinking. Equally, it might mean only telling them what they would see with their own eyes if they were a fly on the wall observing the events.

But, especially today, the storyteller sometimes elects to create the illusion that the reader is spying on the thoughts of one character, or inhabiting the skull of that character, seeing what they see, hearing what they think. (Look hard enough and you will always find that the storyteller is cheating a bit here and there, telling you things that are either not in the character's mind or field of view, but that are necessary to understand what is happening.)

But in none of these scenarios does the reader actually experience omniscience. They know only what they are told when they are told it. What really differs, it seems to me, is whose voice we feel we are listening to, the voice of the storyteller, or the voice of the character echoing in their skull as they experience the events of the story. The dissonance seems to come when the reader who thinks they are listening to the character's voice suddenly finds themself addressed by the storyteller, or suddenly listening to the voice of a different character.

So to me, the real issue is not omniscience, it is not even POV at all, it is voice. That way of looking at it is easier for me, at least. YMMV.

gmbaker said:

So to me, the real issue is not omniscience, it is not even POV at all, it is voice. That way of looking at it is easier for me, at least. YMMV.

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Yep, my mileage varies. It's great you have a way of looking at it that works for you (and may work for others).

All the best,
Riv

gmbaker said:

Well, I think I find it unhelpful because it does not address who exactly is omniscient. In other words, whose voice am I listening to? Because whoever may be omniscient, it is not the reader.​

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It's not meant to be the reader. If the omniscient POV (or style or voice, if you will), is used, it's the narrator who is omniscient. No book or article on storytelling and writing that I've ever encountered teaches anything different.

By contrast, a story written in third-person limited POV does not, by convention, have that outside narrator.

But either way, there's never been any intention (that I know of) for the reader to experience omniscience. The reader is the receiver of the story; the storyteller (omniscient narrator) is the giver.

BethS said:

It's not meant to be the reader. If the omniscient POV (or style or voice, if you will), is used, it's the narrator who is omniscient. ...

By contrast, a story written in third-person limited POV does not, by convention, have that outside narrator.

But either way, there's never been any intention (that I know of) for the reader to experience omniscience. ...

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Agreed. And that is why, to me, the most salient difference for the reader is the voice they are hearing, not the question of omniscience. Either the voice of the storyteller is heard or it is concealed. That is what is crucial to the nature of the reader's experience. That's why I find it more useful to look at it in terms of voice rather than POV.

Though, technically, the storyteller is always omniscient. It is simply that in close 3rd, for instance, they choose not to tell the reader anything that the character in questions cannot see at that time. The narrator's vision is not impaired at all, they are merely constraining the information they choose to give in order, essentially, to disguise their voice. It is not so much a technical limitation as a parlour trick designed to give the reader a different kind of experience of the story. Which is great when you can pull off that parlour trick without anyone noticing. But it seems to me more fruitful to worry about whether the illusion is being successfully maintained rather than to worry if you are commiting a technical violation of close 3rd POV because, as I noted above, there are almost always technical violations of POV in this kind of writing. It is about executing them gracefully enough that the spell is not broken for the reader.

What exactly are you trying to say? That when writing a novel one doesn't need to know anything about POV? That may apply to the gifted few but not to most of us.

And the 'storyteller is always omniscient' may well be true in relation to a narrator sitting in front of you.

Reading the written word is not the same as listening to the spoken word.

There are proven conventions that have evolved to aid the successful communication of the written word to a reader, and writers can either follow these conventions or plough their own furrow.

Unless deliberate or exercised through choice and experience, technical violations usually mean the illusion of which you speak is either not achieved or is broken, regardless of which POV choice one follows.

Bufty said:

What exactly are you trying to say? That when writing a novel one doesn't need to know anything about POV? That may apply to the gifted few but not to most of us.

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No. I'm saying that the same way of dissecting the craft does not work for everyone. One of the besetting sins of most crafts is that what start out as analytical categories often harden into ironclad rules, and then people struggle because they feel they have to obey those rules and yet they don't understand them. But writing, like all the arts, is a form of alchemy, and no ironclad rule captures that alchemy in all its subtlety. So for some us it becomes useful to look at the craft through a different lense. I'm not trying to tell anyone for whom the POV lens is working that they shouldn't use it. I'm just saying that for people who are struggling with it, looking at the problem through a different lens might help.

Bufty said:

And the 'storyteller is always omniscient' may well be true in relation to a narrator sitting in front of you.

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I mean that the writer is ultimately the storyteller and they know everything there is to know about the story and the characters because they created them. But they never tell all they know. Sometimes they tell whatever seems to them pertinent to the reader, freely using the narrative voice to do so. Sometimes they create the illusion that no one is narrating the story, but that the reader is eavesdropping on the experience of a particular character. But it an illusion, and, if you break it down, and artful one. There is a reason this stuff is hard.

Bufty said:

Reading the written word is not the same as listening to the spoken word.

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Interesting thought. I suppose you are right. The spoken word storyteller is always the storyteller. They can't create the illusion of eavesdropping the way the written word can. Which is interesting because it raises issues about whether you can really read as close third novel aloud successfully. Certainly there seem to be issue around clarifying which passages are in quotes or in italic when reading aloud. Does the problem run deeper than that?

Bufty said:

There are proven conventions that have evolved to aid the successful communication of the written word to a reader, and writers can either follow these conventions or plough their own furrow.

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Not sure I would express it that way. I would say that there are conventions that have developed for describing the writer's art, but that, while useful, those conventions are not always clear or useful to every writer. Writing is alchemy and alchemy sometimes defies logical analysis. Again, I think there are traps for the unwary when analytical categories are turned into rules for synthesis. Writers may certainly find the analysis of literary technique useful, but the alchemy defies precise analysis, and different writers may find different modes of analysis useful to them, while others may get no benefit at all from the analysis.

Bufty said:

Unless deliberate or exercised through choice and experience, technical violations usually mean the illusion of which you speak is either not achieved or is broken, regardless of which POV choice one follows.

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Here I am inclined to disagree. I find technical violations of the ostensible POV everywhere in published work. I don't regard this as a bad thing. It is part of the alchemy. I simply regard it as evidence that there is a limit to the perceptiveness and usefulness of the commonly used analytical categories.

But again, if they work for you, use them. If they don't work for you, don't take them for ironclad rules. Maybe another form of analysis will prove more fruitful for you.

gmbaker said:

A

Though, technically, the storyteller is always omniscient. It is simply that in close 3rd, for instance, they choose not to tell the reader anything that the character in questions cannot see at that time. The narrator's vision is not impaired at all, they are merely constraining the information they choose to give in order, essentially, to disguise their voice.

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This is true. Clearly the author--the person creating the narrative--knows everything that is important about the story and characters, including any backstory, world building, etc. The author chooses how much, when, which, and how to dole information out to the reader. The hardest part in any narrative viewpoint, imo, is deciding which information doesn't need to be shared at all.

The traditional definitions of narrative viewpoints are simply descriptions of ways a writer can go about doing this. Each approach creates a feel and experiences the way the reader manipulates the way the character experiences the story and connects to different characters. Each has strengths and weaknesses and can work better for some stories than others.

The reason it's a good idea to study and understand the different approaches is to avoid a type of narrative unevenness or inconsistency that can result in readers feeling confused, jerked around, thrown out of a story, or failing to connect to a character.

gmbaker said:

. There is a reason this stuff is hard.....

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Yes- writing is a craft and like any other craft it has to be learned. The final paragraph of Roxxsmom's post#24 says it all, and I suspect you agree with both of us despite the 'analysis of analytical categories' approach, which may be a job-related tendency. ..

gmbaker said:

Here I am inclined to disagree. I find technical violations of the ostensible POV everywhere in published work. I don't regard this as a bad thing. It is part of the alchemy. I simply regard it as evidence that there is a limit to the perceptiveness and usefulness of the commonly used analytical categories.

But again, if they work for you, use them. If they don't work for you, don't take them for ironclad rules. Maybe another form of analysis will prove more fruitful for you.

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Again, I think we basically agree despite the wording of your reply, and nobody but you has mentioned ironclad rules. They are proven techniques that can be used or ignored as the writer chooses.

To me, deliberate[sic] technical violations simply mean the writer has chosen for whatever reason to convey the information in a different manner and I agree there's nothing wrong with that. But that doesn't negate the advisability/wisdom of writers learning or at least understanding proven techniques for the reasons outlined in Roxxsmom's post.