Point Of View – 3rd Omniscient

Definition

The term omnis is Latin for all while scire meant to know. In third-person omniscient POV, the story is told by an all-knowing narrator who isn’t a character in the story. The narrator can investigate the minds of every character and tell us what they’re thinking and feeling. He can also see into the future and the past and move freely from one location to another. The narrator can even comment on things that none of the characters are aware of, in which case you get sentences such as, “Little did she know that…” or “She didn’t realize that…”

Sometimes, the narrator even addresses the readers directly (“If you were wondering what happened to poor Susan, fear not, dear reader. We will soon catch up with her.”), even though that’s rarely done in contemporary omniscient POV.

Books Written in 3^rd Omniscient POV

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Book Thief by Markus Kuzak (which is narrated by death)
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Example of 3^rd Omniscient POV

#1 Stardust – Neil Gaiman (1997)

Stardust is a fairy tale fantasy story published in 1997 that follows the story of Tristran Thorn on his quest to find and capture a fallen star. Fairy tales are often written in third person omniscient point of view:

There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire.

And while that is, as beginnings go, not entirely novel (for every tale about every young man there ever was or will be could start in a similar manner) there was much about this young man and what happened to him that was unusual, although even he never knew the whole of it.

The tale started, as many tales have started, in Wall.

I feel like this is fairly self-explanatory, as it is clear that the narrator is separate from the story they are telling through their use of ‘there was once a young man’. We’re not getting the story from the mouth of the young man himself but instead from someone watching from above.

#2 Beautiful World, Where Are You? – Sally Rooney (2021)

Released recently, Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney is written in both third-person omniscient and first-person email interaction. It’s an interesting decision for a contemporary novel, but it’s exciting to see authors pushing the boat out again and making bold decisions regarding point of view in newer, more contemporary work.

Here’s an excerpt from the opening chapter to showcase this:

A woman sat in a hotel bar, watching the door. Her appearance was neat and tidy: white blouse, fair hair tucked behind her ears. She glanced at the screen of her phone, on which was displayed a messaging interface, and then looked back at the door again. It was late March, the bar was quiet, and outside the window to her right the sun was beginning to set over the Atlantic. It was four minutes past seven, and then five, six minutes past. Briefly and with no perceptible interest she examined her fingernails. At eight minutes past seven, a man entered through the door. He was slight and dark-haired, with a narrow face. He looked around, scanning the faces of the other patrons, and then took his phone out and checked the screen. The woman at the window noticed him but, beyond watching him, made no additional effort to catch his attention. They appeared to be about the same age, in their late twenties or early thirties. She let him stand there until he saw her and came over.

Rooney adopts a more objective omniscient narrator here, whose sole purpose is to relay the events of the story without adding their own opinions or acting as a character in their own right.

Voice

If you’re writing from an omniscient POV, the story is told in the voice of the narrator, who is neither a character nor the author. That voice should stay the same throughout the entire novel. The vocabulary and syntax should not change, even when you’re describing the thoughts and feelings of different characters.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that the omniscient narrator needs to have his own personality and a strong, distinctive voice, just like first-person narrators. The tone can be graver humorous, sarcastic, or admiring. The narrator judges the characters and comments on everything. Unless stated otherwise, any opinions expressed in the story are those of the narrator, not the characters.

If you are just dipping into the minds of several characters without that strong voice, you aren’t using omniscient POV; you’re head-hopping—writing in a sloppy third-person limited POV with multiple viewpoint characters. We will talk more about what head-hopping is a little later.

Advantages

Unrestricted

You aren’t restricted by a certain character’s perception and access to information. You can relay any information about the past, the present, and maybe even the future without having to make sure that this information would be knowable to a specific character and without having to make sure this information is introduced in a natural way from the character’s perspective.

Develop Own Narrative Voice

You can develop your own narrative voice, which is separate from that of a character or characters. The narrator becomes a sort of extra character in themselves through their voice. They can have their own personality and even be unreliable, or they can be a more objective narrator that tells things completely as they are.

Move Between Characters Smoothly

You can move between characters easily and get a glimpse into different characters’ thoughts in a scene, so the reader is able to see exactly what’s going on all around. An example of this would be two characters meeting for the first time. If we were in third-person limited, the reader would be limited to the thoughts of one character. They would, therefore, only get to see what the POV character thought about the new character. In third person omniscient, the narrator can tell the reader about both characters’ perceptions of the other and convey what both characters think of each other in their first meeting.

Disadvantages

Created Reader-Character Distance

            A main disadvantage to using the omniscient point of view is the distance it creates between the reader and the characters. This might sound counterintuitive since the omniscient narrator knows everything about the characters and the plot, but the result is the reader’s lack of connection to the primary characters.

No Suspense

            There’s not much to leave the reader in suspense from missing details or to question how another character may feel or be doing.

No Bias

            The story may not be told from a biased perspective of the reader, so the story may not be as interesting (no character’s opinion influences the story).

Common Genres

Most of the classics were told from my omniscient POV. In the Victorian era, writers were focused on writing about society rather than individuals, so they wanted to have access to every character’s thoughts. Modern novels, however, are rarely written in an omniscient POV, especially in genre fiction. Readers want to experience the story and bond with the characters, not view everything from a distance.

Omniscient POV is still sometimes used in:

• Epic fantasy, science fiction novels, or historical fiction since these are genres with a broad scope
• Satire and comedy
• Literary fiction

Tips

If you write in omniscient POV, telling the story through a narrator who can dip into the minds of all characters, you have to be careful not to make the transitions between two characters’ thoughts too jarring.

Here are some tips on how to reveal character thoughts and omniscient POV:

• Don’t leap from head-to-head. Instead of taking us from deep inside one character’s mind to another in one big leap, make the shift more gradual and less jarring by narrating characters’ thoughts only from a distance—reporting them instead of showing them.
• Describe an action in between character thoughts. After you reveal one character’s thoughts or feelings, pan out to show us an external action or a line of dialogue. Then show us an action or response of the next character before going inside his head.
• Don’t take us into the head of too many characters. Choose wisely when it comes to whose thoughts and feelings you want to reveal. Also, don’t shift us to a new character too often but stay with them for a while. If you switch back and forth at random, your readers will become dizzy. Every time you switch, make sure you have a very good reason.