Ok, here's another thread on omniscient POV. Sorry if this has all been hashed out over and over, but it seems to be a popular topic - no one agrees on what "omniscient" means.
I'm basing this post on a book from Writer's Digest called "The Power of Point of View" by Alicia Rasley. First off, she says we should think of POV as a tool, not a rule, so she's not saying "you must do it this way."
She divides POV into two types, impersonal and personal. Impersonal, always third person, would be objective and two styles of omniscient. Personal would be first, second or third in all incarnations. She uses multiple examples for each viewpoint. I'm just going to include one for each, here.
Impersonal
1. Objective: Like a video camera. It records movements and audio but provides no commentary or judgement. It just shows the action. Rasley calls this "the most distant form of POV, the one with the least relation to characters ... [doesn't] suggest a human being is attached to the camera." She uses an example from The Maltese Falcon.
2. Classical Omniscient: "... traditionally features a narrator who, very much like the author, knows everything about everything in the book, including what's going to happen in the end." She says these were popular until about 100 yrs ago and they feature "... a true narrative persona--some entity (not a character) who really did have an all-knowing understanding of the entire story." She also says this POV "... works best in "social" stories, which are more about the interactions of members of a group than about the personal journey of one character." She says there's a god-like narrator who knows more than all the characters combined, and that Jane Austen's omniscient narrator is "ironic, detached, and amused by all these mere mortals."
3. Contemporary Omniscient: Common in modern fiction. "... a more flexible version of omniscient that eliminates the narrative persona, although not the narrative control." She says it doesn't have "... that ironic, all-wise, witty voice commenting on events." Instead it has "... the comprehensive knowledge of everything in the story, including perhaps the background of the setting, the characters, and the history of the story. Yet, the whole of the knowledge presented in the narrative is greater than the sum of that possessed by all the characters." Using an example from Atonement she says, "... allows for not only physical observation but also psychoanalysis of a character ..."
Seems to me that many of the disagreements here about omniscient are related to her view of the two different types. Some writers want a more intrusive narrator (classical) while others want a more impersonal but still all-knowing narrator (contemporary).
I know there's been talk here recently about the value of an MFA - I'd like to go to a good MFA program just to discuss stuff like this. That's not going to happen, unless I win the lotto, so AW is my MFA. For now, I've got to get ready for work.
I'm basing this post on a book from Writer's Digest called "The Power of Point of View" by Alicia Rasley. First off, she says we should think of POV as a tool, not a rule, so she's not saying "you must do it this way."
She divides POV into two types, impersonal and personal. Impersonal, always third person, would be objective and two styles of omniscient. Personal would be first, second or third in all incarnations. She uses multiple examples for each viewpoint. I'm just going to include one for each, here.
Impersonal
1. Objective: Like a video camera. It records movements and audio but provides no commentary or judgement. It just shows the action. Rasley calls this "the most distant form of POV, the one with the least relation to characters ... [doesn't] suggest a human being is attached to the camera." She uses an example from The Maltese Falcon.
2. Classical Omniscient: "... traditionally features a narrator who, very much like the author, knows everything about everything in the book, including what's going to happen in the end." She says these were popular until about 100 yrs ago and they feature "... a true narrative persona--some entity (not a character) who really did have an all-knowing understanding of the entire story." She also says this POV "... works best in "social" stories, which are more about the interactions of members of a group than about the personal journey of one character." She says there's a god-like narrator who knows more than all the characters combined, and that Jane Austen's omniscient narrator is "ironic, detached, and amused by all these mere mortals."
3. Contemporary Omniscient: Common in modern fiction. "... a more flexible version of omniscient that eliminates the narrative persona, although not the narrative control." She says it doesn't have "... that ironic, all-wise, witty voice commenting on events." Instead it has "... the comprehensive knowledge of everything in the story, including perhaps the background of the setting, the characters, and the history of the story. Yet, the whole of the knowledge presented in the narrative is greater than the sum of that possessed by all the characters." Using an example from Atonement she says, "... allows for not only physical observation but also psychoanalysis of a character ..."
Seems to me that many of the disagreements here about omniscient are related to her view of the two different types. Some writers want a more intrusive narrator (classical) while others want a more impersonal but still all-knowing narrator (contemporary).
I know there's been talk here recently about the value of an MFA - I'd like to go to a good MFA program just to discuss stuff like this. That's not going to happen, unless I win the lotto, so AW is my MFA. For now, I've got to get ready for work.
