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.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but most films of necessity use head-hopping, expressed both through speech and actors’ facial expression and body language. Frodo’s voice is his own; Sam’s is distinctly Sam.
One notable exception seems to be Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant (yes, that’s the title, chosen to distinguish it from an earlier film called The Covenant).
You never really get inside the heads of either main character, John Kinley or Ahmed. Neither ever has a cathartic on-screen moment in which one can see what formed them, and brought them to where their lives so deeply converged.
Instead, small clues are given out, through actions or brief comments from other players.
Is it effective? For me, yes, but I lived in a similar milieu with similarly uncommunicative men, so that may to some degree invalidate any universitality of my opinion.
However, most critics seem to have agreed with me. Audiences, alas, did not, and the moviegoing public stayed away. Perhaps it’s that eight-second attention span.
A pity, that, because it’s one of the finest and most meaningful films I’ve ever seen.
Ah, the sonnet…
#
Each sonnet’s told in my own voice,
the POV is strictly mine.
That fact, it hardly is a choice,
and usually I’m fine
with this stringent limitation
(all I have are fourteen lines!)
but for readers’ information
I must say that there are times
when I would set up dueling
quatrains in my poem;
an intro, and then two brains,
and final couplet takes us home,
but that is far beyond my skill,
as it was for Bard-y Bill.
#
I don’t believe Shakespeare (shameless comparison, eh) wrote either sonnets or plays outside of an omniscient POV, but I might be quite wrong, and would love (well, not LOVE, exactly…) to be corrected.
Movies are a whole other animal. What works on the page doesn’t usually work on the moving screen. So, we get head hopping. But there’s something about that, when done well, that adds to the movie. Ups the tension at times.
Of course, people like what they like, no matter how it’s done, right?
When a new writer headhops, the reader is often wrenched out of one POV and dropped into another one. There can be amoment of profound disorientation before the reader can go on.
The Christian authors I know that use OPOV in genres such as Regency Romance or Cozy Mystery do not find it hard at all. It allows for a voice that knows all aspects of the story, characters and backstory to provide more insight that just looking through a character’s eyes. It allows suspense and humor and greater insights. as well as dramatic irony. There are actually two types of omniscient points of view. One, is an involved narrator and the other is invisible. The known narrator speaks directly to the reader and becomes part of the story. The invisible tells the story separate from a character but does not speak to the reader. Head hopping only occurs when the author switches too often to different character’s thoughts in a scene and it becomes confusing. Tolkien is a poor example because he is often criticized for excessive detail or history lessons. A better example is Agatha Christie and a modern secular example of an involved narrator is “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak. Limiting readers to a single deep point of view loses for them all the insights and knowledge that character doesn’t know. It would be nice to see someone experienced in the OPOV to teach it at Christian writers’ conferences and its advantages. It’s becoming a good tool for modern secular writers.
The Book Thief is a big idea story. The omnicient voice is Death if I remember correctly. Imo that’s why it works. Omniscient pov in a romance feels manipulative.
One of my favorite authors, Denis Lehane, sprinkles just a bit of omniscience into his multiple pov novels. I think it works in literary novels and big world speculative, but not so much in other genre fiction. The story has to be expansive for it to work.
It would be great to have some story example that shows it written in both ways
I would love a few examples as well. It would be great to see the same scene written differently to show the different POVs. I’ve been reading so many authors that I could grasp this if examples were given. If there was an online class, I’d take it.
Ah, this is such a helpful post! I got the chance to meet Kathy at a conference last year and she was such a delight to talk to.
Thank you so much, Kathy, for this incredibly insightful post!
I love the explanation of omniscient voice and head hopping. And I agree, to effectively pull off omniscient voice requires a master.
But here’s the thing; my generation grew up reading books that head hopped like crazy. It never bothered me until I starting going to conferences and learned about it. haha! Now, I see it in so many books and wonder why an editor let it through. But I also noticed those books were pretty much all general market books. It seems to be Christian publishing that is firm on the writing rules.
And some genres lend themselves to omniscient voice, don’t they? I feel like speculative fiction (especially fantasy) can work well with a narrator’s voice. But again, it really does depend on the author’s voice. And that’s for any genre.
I agree. Certain genres do. Others do not. Omniscience adds a layer of meaning.