Anna Staniszewski

Last week I looked at how POV affects character, specifically in first person and third person limited narration. Today I wanted to do one last post on point of view, focusing on third person omniscient, specifically involved omniscient POV since detached omniscient is pretty rare these days. (See my post on choosing a POV for an explanation of each.)

One of the advantages of third person omniscient is  that it gives you  freedom to show different aspects of the story. In Neal Shusterman’s Unwind, scenes are labeled with the focal character’s name so we know whose story we’re following. Toward the end of the book, however, there are some scenes told from a mob’s perspective. I thought this was an especially interesting way of using an omniscient narrative to its full advantage; we can pan out and see the whole story when needed, but we can also zoom in and focus on one character at a time. Since Unwind deals with the weighty topic of abortion, it makes sense that the story would use multiple voices (and even several voices at the same time) to tell its story.

In The Lost Conspiracy, Frances Hardinge uses omniscient POV in a slightly different way. For most of the story, we follow Hathin who is our main character. However, the story is also about the world in which Hathin lives and the conflict between its different communities. By going from a third person limited POV to an omniscient one, Hardinge is able to convey this overall world to us while also making us care about Hathin’s story.

In my experience, omniscient POV works exceedingly well in “big” stories, ones that need to be told through more than one person’s POV. The narrator is almost like a film director, showing us what we need to see in order to understand the big picture. It’s not enough to focus on the general, however. As in any story, we need characters we can care about. Even if we don’t get to know them as well as we might in a different POV, we still need to care what happens to them. Shusterman and Hardinge both succeed in this sense; they create larger worlds that make us think, but they also give us characters to root for.

This balance between larger story and individual characters is one of the trickier aspects of omniscient POV. We might love the omniscient narrator’s voice, we might be interested in the world, but if we don’t care what happens to the characters then the story won’t feel complete. This is when high stakes are especially important. In both stories mentioned above, the stakes are exceedingly high for the characters from the very beginning. Even before we know too much about them, we know they’re in danger. We read to find out what’s going to happen next, and in that process we get to know the characters more and more.

Ultimately, omniscient POV isn’t for everyone. It requires keeping track of a lot of different things, and it also means orchestrating a story in such a way that we’re never confused about whose head we’re in, or which character we’re following. It requires precision and clarity and a very wide view of the story. But when done well, omniscient POV can also create a unique and satisfying storytelling experience.

• Categories: A Closer Look, Craft, Writing Rants