One of our regular readers asked, “What about the Omniscient Point of View? It exists, and some of us use it, but today’s writers aren’t taught the difference between OPOV and head hopping in a limited POV. ”
I thought I’d ask an expert! I’ve had the honor of working with Kathy Tyers for over 25 years. She is the author of Writing Deep Viewpoint: Invite Your Readers into the Story and is known for her award-winning Firebird series and two licensed Star Wars Legends novels, including New York Times bestseller The Truce at Bakura. Her messiah-in-space novel, Daystar, which concluded the original Firebird series, won a 2013 Carol award. In 2019, Shivering World received the Christy Award in the visionary category. At home in southwest Montana with her husband, William T. Gillin, Kathy focuses on writing, music, and short-season vegetable gardening. Kathy is active on Facebook, and her website is www.kathytyers.com.
Back in the 1800s, Charles Dickens used the omniscient point of view. So did J.R.R. Tolkien, my all-time favorite, in the mid-20th century. What is wrong with people today? Why has contemporary taste shifted away from the omniscient point of view?
Full disclosure: I write in deep, limited third-person point of view. I give my readers full access to the thoughts and senses of one character at a time. Several members of my first writers group were multipublished by traditional major houses. (Was I lucky or what?) In the reader’s mind, they explained, he or she becomes the viewpoint character.
Cool!
Learning to write limited third-person shipwrecked my love of Tolkien for awhile. Then, I discovered that there was such a viewpoint as omniscient, and Tolkien was a master. “Yes,” my writing friends said, “but you aren’t Tolkien. Poorly done, it’s just head-hopping.” Afraid that I might be tossed out of the group if I committed such sins, I stuck with deep third-person.
All these years later, though, the questions remain: What is omniscient POV? Does that just depend on who you ask? Can it be done well?
Classically defined (as I understand it), an omniscient POV story is told from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator. That narrator has his or her own voice, which should not be confused with any of the characters’ voices. That “voice” is super important. Establish it early in the story, so the reader knows what to expect.
But what’s “voice”?
It’s your way of expressing how you see the world. It includes your vocabulary and how you use it, influenced by your locale, your profession, your age and habits, etc. It’s how your friends would know it was not really you on the phone begging for gift cards, but some scammer trying to impersonate you.
Omniscient POV means that the author can reveal any character’s thoughts or senses at any point in the story. However, those thoughts or sensations must be revealed using the narrator’s voice. Not the character’s voice. That narrator’s voice should be consistent throughout the story.
Here’s an example. If, in a supposedly omniscient-POV novel, I was writing along in Jonah’s point of view, using Jonah’s voice to describe a scene, but I wanted to reveal Mackenzie’s thoughts—and if I used Mackenzie’s voice to do it, not the narrator’s voice—that would be head-hopping. I would have used two on-stage characters’ voices, instead of the narrator’s voice.
In true omniscient, I would need to keep a certain distance from Jonah’s heart and soul, using a narrator to “tell” the readers about him, rather than “showing” how it felt to be Jonah. Then, after I moved my omniscient self across the room to focus on Mackenzie’s thoughts, I would be omnisciently “telling” my readers how it felt to be Mackenzie.
For me, that would ruin the fun. I would rather use Jonah’s senses and thoughts, watching Mackenzie’s face and body language. I could show Jonah guessing what she was thinking. He might be right. He might not. I could reveal Mackenzie’s actual thoughts in the next scene, as she recalls the conversation.
When both characters’ thoughts were absolutely required in a crucial scene (e.g., the space duel in my first Firebird book), I switched viewpoints a few times during that scene; but I separated those viewpoints with a strong visual cue, such as a centered hashtag. My publisher replaced that # with a blank line or an attractive symbol when the book went to print.
With ten-plus books traditionally published, I still don’t consider myself skilled enough to carry off an omniscient narrator. I share the contemporary preference for deep third-person limited POV. We live in the era of the eight-second attention span. We all understand how it feels to be a limited human being; very few of us know how it feels to be omniscient. Your mileage may vary, especially if you have mastered the craft. Many contemporary authors head-hop, and their plots and characters are apparently so compelling that their fans don’t care. Still, some of us wonder, Where were their editors?
To write omniscient viewpoint well, you must establish and maintain your omniscient narrator’s voice, whether or not you reveal his or her identity to your readers. Apparently, it’s that simple.
Sometimes, though, “simple” isn’t “easy.”
It requires a master, and I am still not J.R.R. Tolkien.
