POV: Third Person Limited vs Omniscient

[Brian G Turner]

Something that really surprises me is how many writers on chronicles are using a third-person omniscient POV.

This is specifically because any recent books I've read are written in third person limited - with only "classic" books tending towards omniscient POV's.

Just to kick up a bag of worms, my thinking goes like this on omniscient writers:

1. They think they are writing a film, so focus on writing grand cinematic scenes;

2. They lack confidence with a deep third person limited POV, so current use of omniscient is simply a stage in rewriting to limited;

3. They read classic literature from at least 30 years ago, when omniscient POV's only just started their declining trend.


Obviously I'm not a publishing expert and in the same boat as everyone else. However, I thought it was a given that third person limited is what modern sff markets demanded. That's why I'm consistently surprised when I keep seeing omniscient POV's come up.

Or am I simply being a wannabe publishing nazi, getting lots of silly ideas in my head on what constitutes the needs of modern sff writing?

 

[Aminar]

Omniscient is artsier. It allows for a grander more sweeping style and more narrative voice. I'm sure that appeals to people trying to sound more dignified than what is currently popular. Nothing wrong with expanding on what is there(as long as you stay in past tense)

That said, limited point of view offers more tools for drawing interest. I personally hate omniscient in anything not The Hobbit. I find pretentious sounding.

 

[Venusian Broon]

IB, could it also be that

4) There can be a fine dusty hard-to-see chalk line between limited and omniscient that in the heat of forging prose, wordsmiths all too often blunder across the line and become omniscient.

It maybe also be subconciously compelling if you are writing multiple third person where some of the non-PoV characters are given the spotlight in other sections/chapters.

So the examples you are thinking about - do you think they are deliberately written 3rd ominiscient or does it just slip into it?

I for one try hard for 3rd limited, but wouldn't be surprised if there are moments (what the hell, whole passages most likely ) where I mistakenly allow different persepectives to mingle

 

[AnyaKimlin]

One of my main stories is third omniescent. The story is an urban fantasy (Dresden Files meets Hetty Wainthrop) set in the 1980s, and the main characters are an elderly couple, their daughter, his adopted son, their grandchild and a parrot familiar, so I wanted an older feel to the story and felt it wouldn't work written in a too modern style. Omniescent gives it the feel I want, but allows me to use other modern writing techniques so it isn't archaic either. Also there are five main characters so it feels less confusing than writing it in limited.

My stories are in a variety of narrative styles each one chosen because it is the best for the individual story.

 

[Aminar]

I'm insulted by the eighties being old.(Not really, but I was born then and I'm pretty sure I'm a young guy here.)

I do wonder if it isn't people slipping. I've done it on occasion(typically just as a character is falling unconscious.) But I stand by my original statement, Writer's try very hard to be different. A part of every single one of us is a hipster. Right now different writing is Omniscient, or at least that's an easier way to do it than redefining genres or making vampires and elves your own(Because we've seen every kind of elf ever by now.).

 

[WmPreston]

I think that unless you're an absolute genius, you're probably not doing the authorial omniscient view all that well. (I don't see it as more intrisically more cinematic than other POVs. My recent pieces have been first-person, and I've had people say they seem filmic in some ways.) Tolstoy and Eliot and Toni Morrison can handle it, but limited third-person is much more manageable for most of us, requiring somewhat less effort to narratively focus.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Venusian Broon, that sums up me sometimes. I do go for the limited view but sometimes it can be easy to accidentally veer into the wrong lane.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

But, have we got it all wrong? I write (or try to write, guilty of the same VB) 3rd limited and stay in one pov.

I've just sat and read a chapter of one of my fav. books, which I grant is written in an old fashioned style and isn't SFF, but it had four povs, shifting between sentences, in and out, close but moving. If 3rd omni could be like that all the time, light and fun, it would be fab. this almost seemed like 3rd close omni, which sounds crazy, but it worked.

(It was Corelli's mandolin, btw, which I'm on record for adoring, although I'm skimming for one story arc at the mo, but keep getting distracted by chapters that are so darn good.)

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I'm insulted by the eighties being old.(Not really, but I was born then and I'm pretty sure I'm a young guy here.)

The main couple would have been born in the 1920s and are in their 60s/70s. (Never been that specific). I wanted it to feel like my Great Aunts had written it (although they were born earlier one of the main characters was an old fashioned kind of girl). It is set in Blackpool in about 1986. I wanted it to have an Agatha Christie type feel.

 

[Aminar]

But, have we got it all wrong? I write (or try to write, guilty of the same VB) 3rd limited and stay in one pov.

I've just sat and read a chapter of one of my fav. books, which I grant is written in an old fashioned style and isn't SFF, but it had four povs, shifting between sentences, in and out, close but moving. If 3rd omni could be like that all the time, light and fun, it would be fab. this almost seemed like 3rd close omni, which sounds crazy, but it worked.

(It was Corelli's mandolin, btw, which I'm on record for adoring, although I'm skimming for one story arc at the mo, but keep getting distracted by chapters that are so darn good.)

No offense intended, but that isn't third limited. That's just bad form. If you shift perspective like that its just confusing and hard to read. I've read one book where that worked and only because James Marsters was narrating the audiobook. I would have put the physical book down in a heartbeat.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

No offense intended, but that isn't third limited. That's just bad form. If you shift perspective like that its just confusing and hard to read. I've read one book where that worked and only because James Marsters was narrating the audiobook. I would have put the physical book down in a heartbeat.

I've sorry, I think you missed my point, which is that it is so well written, it works. It was an odd book because (a bit like one day by David Nicolls, which is another one with an interesting narrative structure) it became a word of mouth hit, as opposed to an instant sensation. When that happens, it's because readers are loving it. It also won the 1995 Commonwealth writer's prize, and came 19th in the big read list of 2004 (which shows the slow build to popularity). To me, describing it as bad form is akin to saying Joyce doesn't quite get his sentence structure spot on.

So, maybe we can be too formulaic, too focused on what's popular, and rule out things that could work, were we but able to make them. (and in this case, de Benerieres is a fabulous writer, who I'll never manage to emulate, and for that reason would never try it.) But, it's definitely not bad form.

 

[chrispenycate]

They seek him here, they seek him there…
No, I am not a dedicated follower of fashion. I happen to be doing most of my writing in first person at present, but that's to force myself into characterisation (I'm a dreadful 'explainer', and find seeing things through a different set of eyes slightly mitigates this). After all, the author/narrator does know everything; if he/she/it can refrain from telling far too much and boring the reader to sleep, the existence of this total knowledge, apparently integrated after the facts described, can give a clearer overall picture. Yes, I did a lot of my formative reading in the sixties when, for SF at least, this attitude was prevalent, or at least widely distributed, so it doesn't shock me when we zoom back for a wide angle shot, just as a few pages settling us into the environment rather than the present strobes and thunderclaps, if you can't hook 'em in the first sentence you've lost 'em (for goodness saké, even TV programs can have a couple of minutes explanation while you're recovering from the commercials; our attention spans can't have diminished that far, can they?) attitude; not that I don't think there's a market for it, but I can't believe that is the only market available.

Obviously, I have the advantage of not expecting to write anything commercially viable, so I can afford to ignore fashion. But how much of that 'the public expect' routine is self-fulfilling prophesy? How many readers choose older books not because you can get them cheap through charity shops but they actually prefer the less frenetic style popular in my youth? And are they all antiques like me for whom reading was the principal escape from reality, or do they include at least a certain percentage of the next generation of bibliophiles? My grand niece has now a complete set of the Lewis 'Narnia' books, and I don't remember those being in the 'throw you in at the deep end, then flashback the missing information when you're confused' style so favoured by fashionable authors.

 

[WmPreston]

No offense intended, but that isn't third limited. That's just bad form. If you shift perspective like that its just confusing and hard to read.

"Third limited" is one way to term these things, but another way (that doesn't stick you with focusing on "person" but on where the narrator is located) is to talk about "anonymous narration." What we often call "limited" (which isn't at all a clear term) can be called "single perspective." In this book

Points of View

which I've used to teach the fiction portion of my creative writing class, the authors separate stories by POV, and the terminology for "omniscient" is "anonymous narration—single character point of view," "anonymous narration—dual character point of view" and so forth. Porter's Ship of Fools maintains, with its anonymous narrator, only a single perspective at any one time, though she shifts perspective in order to move us from place to place by attaching to a new character. While it's certainly true that many nonprofessional writers don't handle POV well, awkwardly shifting about (usually, in my experience, by not having a solid hold on how closely the anonymous voice is attached to the point of view character's perspective), there's nothing that says one can't move about, if there are narrative reasons to do so and if the writer is able to keep from simply confusing the reader.

BTW, in this link to the US Amazon site, you can look at the table of contents for Points of View.

 

[allmywires]

Springs, I second your Captain Corelli love. (Really want to read it again but I leant it to my friend last year and have heard neither hide nor hear of it since... )

Brian, I think your original question sounded a little too condescending (at least to me) to people who choose to write omniscient, but it's a fair point. To me, it's a choice just like picking 1st person over close 3rd. I think it's true that new writers (or new, young writers used to watching things in film and on TV) approach their early writings as omniscient because they are describing what they're seeing in their head, rather than putting themselves in their characters' shoes. I've done this and it's a really hard habit to break.

However, I also think there is value in not being so close to your characters in narration. I'm probably a lone voice in the crowd, but for me it's better sometimes to be neutral - sure, in close POV of a character you love, it's great, but I'm far more likely to put down a book in close POV because I dislike the character and can't get away from their bloody annoying thoughts. I love description, and that works better in neutral narration. I want to be firmly placed in a scene.

(It's also another reason why I'm not hugely keen on 1st person narrative).

Anyway, just my two pennyworth.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Brian, I think your original question sounded a little too condescending (at least to me) to people who choose to write omniscient, but it's a fair point.

It's okay, I knew I was pushing boundaries a bit with my original post.

But my key concern remains the same: third person limited appears to be the preferred publishing norm in the 21st century - over third person omniscient.

In which case, if anyone is looking for commercial publishing, why are they trying to write omniscient instead of limited?

It doesn't make sense to me, unless there's a clear trend that omiscient is alive and well and firmly established in sff novels published over the past few years. I haven't seen that trend, which I'm prepared to put down as ignorance.

If not, I'm concerned that some writers may be shooting themselves in the foot by aiming for a POV use that is, for all intents and purposes, out of fashion and favour. Anyone arguing it's useful as a writer's tool is all well and good, but when it's so hard to get published in the first place, and publishers want their third limited, why go against the grain?

Again, I'm going on presumptions of the current market, but am happy to be corrected.

(I've left out first person as that seems accepted - it's the use of third I want to focus on).

 

[Abernovo]

3rd Person omniscience is good for grand scope, not necessarily just cinematic apirations. Not fiction, but I've had to use a related version of it for examining visitor trends and values for nature conservation zones - i.e. extrapolating from the figures. I see no reason that it couldn't be useful in the same way to relate social reactions to big events in a story. So long as it doesn't become a pompous monologue, similar to some trashy but profitable Hollywood blockbusters, it might work. I have to admit that I do like many old books and who knows, if clothing can come back into fashion (repeatedly in some cases)...

That said, most of my writing is generally in 3rd relatively close. I don't go overboard on trying to define its position, though. I'm more interested in how the language - and form - works for the story in question.

I'll also add my status as a fan of Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

 

[Mouse]

I'm only just understanding what all the terms mean! But I've written in '3rd limited' since I was 17 so I don't think I could do omniscient at all now. That doesn't mean I'm bothered reading it.

(I've not read Captain Corelli's Mandolin, but I have been to Kefalonia where it's set. )

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I shall start a new thread for mandolin lovers everywhere.

Seriously, though, I'm not sure writing to the market is what we should be doing. I like 3rd close, but I'm obsessed with characters and motivations. If I was a bit more distant, 3rd omni might give me more room to play. And who knows what the next big thing will be and if it's omni all us close will go, doh!

Write the best book you can, and hope it finds the market. Let's face it, the odds are stacked against us anyway, so why write something in a style that your heart doesn't want? Think of the revisions... you have to love it to endure them.

 

[allmywires]

Write the best book you can, and hope it finds the market. Let's face it, the odds are stacked against us anyway, so why write something in a style that your heart doesn't want? Think of the revisions... you have to love it to endure them.

Completely agree! The way I see it, I write what I want to, and publishing would be the icing on the cake. I don't pay too much attention to what's 'in' at the moment. I just enjoy myself!

 

[Abernovo]

Write the best book you can, and hope it finds the market. Let's face it, the odds are stacked against us anyway, so why write something in a style that your heart doesn't want? Think of the revisions... you have to love it to endure them.

Completely agree! The way I see it, I write what I want to, and publishing would be the icing on the cake. I don't pay too much attention to what's 'in' at the moment. I just enjoy myself!

Absolutely. Getting too interested in the market isn't going to help anyone, I suspect. In fact, it could make your work unoriginal if you end up moulding the writing to a formula. Write for yourself, then you can change things to get published, if it gets to that point. After all, if you're not enjoying what you're writing, why should anyone else?