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Day 199 - a little POV diversion
Jul. 17th, 2012 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
faradWonderful Dail is off today, leaving me to share with you yet another of the writing essays that my writing friends send to me. This is from IO9, one of my favorite sites (it's mostly sci-fi fantasty stuff, but it covers all aspects, media, books, science, everything). It's on one of those POV issues that we all seem to have pretty strong feelings about: the omniscient third person. Charlie Jane Anders makes some very interesting points about the power of the omniscient narrator, and he also makes a really good point about why many of us don't like that POV:
"Most of the problems that people have with the omniscient narrator come down to a lack of clarity. Which, really, is the main problem with bad narration in general. Good narration sets the scene, puts you in the moment, and allows you to identify with characters — or at least understand what feelings they're projecting. Bad narration leaves you lost, confused, or just disgusted.
Omniscient narration presents a special challenge to clarity, because you're not following one character's perceptions with a laser focus throughout the story. But it can also present a unique opportunity, if you choose to have a narrator with a strong voice. (Fairy tale narration is one example of this: "And so it was that the young maiden, who knew nothing of gamification, found herself surrounded by LARPing consultants, who are a most insidious breed.") Or you can do what I often do with third-person narration, which is to stick to tight third but occasionally — in a way that is clearly sign-posted and clearly not just a lapse in judgment — go omniscient.
But also, clarity requires discipline. Readers will be able to follow your narration more easily if any shifts are signaled by a break. The more clearly broken things up are, the more the reader will accept them. Even in a "tight third person" novel, the author will switch POVs between chapters. So you can experiment with going more granular than that — instead of having a chapter break between POVs, have a section break. And then you may be ready to try a paragraph break — with a clear transition."
The whole essay is an interesting argument for the omniscient POV and while I"m not sure that I buy it, it does have me thinking a lot more about it.
"Most of the problems that people have with the omniscient narrator come down to a lack of clarity. Which, really, is the main problem with bad narration in general. Good narration sets the scene, puts you in the moment, and allows you to identify with characters — or at least understand what feelings they're projecting. Bad narration leaves you lost, confused, or just disgusted.
Omniscient narration presents a special challenge to clarity, because you're not following one character's perceptions with a laser focus throughout the story. But it can also present a unique opportunity, if you choose to have a narrator with a strong voice. (Fairy tale narration is one example of this: "And so it was that the young maiden, who knew nothing of gamification, found herself surrounded by LARPing consultants, who are a most insidious breed.") Or you can do what I often do with third-person narration, which is to stick to tight third but occasionally — in a way that is clearly sign-posted and clearly not just a lapse in judgment — go omniscient.
But also, clarity requires discipline. Readers will be able to follow your narration more easily if any shifts are signaled by a break. The more clearly broken things up are, the more the reader will accept them. Even in a "tight third person" novel, the author will switch POVs between chapters. So you can experiment with going more granular than that — instead of having a chapter break between POVs, have a section break. And then you may be ready to try a paragraph break — with a clear transition."
The whole essay is an interesting argument for the omniscient POV and while I"m not sure that I buy it, it does have me thinking a lot more about it.