“For freelance clients, in 90% of cases, I encourage the author to firm up into close third. I always used it as my canary in the coal mine-if there were perspective issues early on, I assumed that meant other things were going to be rocky as well. “It’s just the kind of thing that gets ironed out somewhere along the line or becomes a dealbreaker for the book.” “True omniscient is pretty rare, but wobbly perspectives crop up constantly.”Īs an agent, he often saw the problem. Dealbreaker?Įditor William Boggess deems the omniscient POV his number one pet peeve in the fiction he works on. If information is hauled in from any old point of view, there’s no center. This jumping around reflects a lack of clarity about whose story it is and why it’s being told. They usually aren’t intentionally trying to create omniscience.” I call what I see most often scattered rather than omniscient because often they just add whatever perspective they need at the moment, sometimes not even realizing they’ve changed points of view within a paragraph or scene or chapter, certainly not realizing that this shift affects the story beyond that point of convenience.
Omniscient narrator how to#
“Among my students and clients, a scattered POV usually results from writers not knowing what POV is and how to use it (and not knowing they don’t know). Janet Benton is both a brilliant editor and teacher, and she comes across this question of omniscience with regularity. Each writer seeks to tell a unique story in an original, compelling way, but who’s narrating on the page? It’s relatively common for new writers to use an omniscient viewpoint-like God observing from the heavens, hearing thoughts from a variety of characters.Ī recent online discussion among freelance editors discussed the common Point of View conundrum for authors and whether an omniscient approach should be encouraged.Īn omniscient viewpoint isn’t wrong.
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