Finding the right point of view (POV) for your novel or story can be almost as challenging as figuring out the plot, at times. Should you adopt an intimate POV that keeps the reader close to the character, or allow yourself the wide lens that an omniscient POV allows? Before you decide, let’s demystify a commonly attempted POV, omniscience—the “all-knowing” narrator who can reveal information to the reader without the characters’ knowledge.
What Is Omniscience?
In essence, an omniscient narrator is like an all-knowing storyteller who sees everything in the landscape of your story, one who may not even be an actual person or character in the story—merely a clever device that makes it possible to widen out past the characters’ experiences. The omniscient narrator can reveal information that the main characters might not know—like what the villain is up to; what other characters are doing in another location; information that falls in the past or future, outside of the front-story; details about a place, a plot, even people’s personalities or history. It is also sometimes called the “authorial voice.”
Typically, you can only be in the omniscient POV if you are using third-person pronouns (he/she/they) since it is understood that when we are in the first person (I/we), we are inside/internal to that character’s thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
How Is Omniscient Different From Third-Person POV?
While third person and omniscient both use he, she, and they pronouns, when you are in a limited, or “intimate,” third-person POV, the reader can only learn information that is filtered 100 percent through the character’s minds and perceptions.
In order to really clarify this concept,
