This leads me to several questions while editing:

Can full omni choose not to "peak" inside everyone's head?

Can you "switch" from limited omni to full omni during the course of a novel (NOT short story) assuming the transition is well handled and not confusing for the reader?

What would you think of something that did "switch"?

Would you keep reading or think it was a rookie mistake?

After all, I am fairly sure that I can rewrite the first 3 chapters to be traditional full omni more easily that I can rewrite the next 400 pages limiting the view. But it seems to me I need to address this issue before I consider the WIP "finished."

However, if at the climax (hypothetically) we find that the killer was the butler, and we were in the butler's head before and had no inclination of his motives or if while we were in his head, he was professing innocence and ignorance, then that would be cheating when the reveal comes to pass.

And I hope it goes without saying that you should have a good story reason to use third person omniscient. The rule of thumb is, if you don't need it, don't use it. It puts a lot more distance between the reader and the characters, so it should be avoided if possible.

Edit: Typo.

I revised the original prologue, now Chapter 1, to make it painfully clear that someone's "known" identity is not his real one and that he has a very vested interest in the demands being made by a particular warlord later in the story.

Motivations really matter to the plot. The central theme is the conflict between what the MCs want for themselves and what others demand of them. There is no true "bad guy," although one character is close. The antagonist is more the situation than a particular person.

I couldn't show the readers what they needed to know or truely show both MCs making thier choices in limited. About half way through writing it I realized I need to see inside almost everyone's heads. I switched to full omni and then spent a lot of time in editing making sure that the POV was consistent. Since the first chapter is essentially new (expanding on a scene where the first 13 were subject to feedback here) and on reediting the now second and third chapters, I was having a panic attack. Thank you again

Edit: I really wish I could spell without the spell checker. Sigh!

And actualy, that fact is going to be your biggest hurdle. When I pick up a book (and I think when most people pick up a book) they expect to be inside one character's head at a time. IMHO, if you write omni, you need to make it very clear ASAP and keep that consistency for as long as possible. In fact, if what you had said had been in reverse -- chapter 4 was from one character's POV and chapter 1 was full, traditional omni, then I would say sure. But if you do it the other way around, if you set us up for limited and then switch to omni, I believe I would stop reading.

Once you have established the omni viewpoint, you can choose which character's head to jump into. At that point, you are a narrator telling a story and you can choose to reveal whatever parts of it you like. It will probably FEEL very much like a narrated story, at least if it's done right. What you cannot do is lie. You can choose not to get inside the killer's head or get in his head when he's thinking something inocuous, but I've read murder mysteries in omni where we get inside all the suspects heads and they are all thinking about the murder but conveniently none of them is directly thinking about his or her role in it. I found that terribly annoying.

I hate that and have done my best to avoid the withholding. My Male MC knows he's a mage and an heir in hiding, so do you by the end of the first chapter. My female MC knows she's been stripped of her kingdom by the terms of a regency and created a new identity (including name) to hide who she really is. You know this in the second chapter even though she's not the POV (she's 5 at the time). I don't withhold the tension comes from he choices these two have to make not what they are withholding, to different degrees, from the rest of the world.

Okay, so maybe a bit more head popping is necessary in the first chapter to establish the full omni. Which brings up a follow up question.

In the the first 9 pages (currently, I am still editing the new section) you only meet 2 characters, the male MC and a character that does not reappear after Chapter 1, in the next 6 pages another character enters the text who is important to the story and while the no repeat character is still present, she really takes a back seat in the action.

Based on what I understand, Ellana (the character that fades away) should not be "POV" because that gives the reader the idea that she is more important to the story than she is.

Full omni is not simply POV hopping. You can establish a full omniscient POV with only one character if you do it well.

Good omni is very hard to do.

In LImited omniscient, you are an interpreter riding around in the brain of one of the characters. You know only what they know; see only what they see.

In full omni, you are GOD. You know everything, see everything. You know things that NONE of the characters know and things they they all do. You know what's going to happen and what has happened.

This is omni:

"Jenna didn't know it yet, but her life was about to change forever. The man she knew as Uncle Richie, the man who showered her with presents and smiles, had plans for her and for the throne that should be hers when she came of age. How could she know that he wanted her dead? All she knew, as she laughed and danced with Nanny Marsha, was that her first riding lesson was that afternoon and that the stable master would help her pick out a pony in an hour or so. At least, that was what was supposed to happen."

Clearly, this is also a bit of an info dump, but the point is that your story's god (ie you) knows everything about the situation, people, and setting and is weaving it out for the purposes of a good story. There is clearly some information being held back because the narrator knows if the little girl lives or dies, but we are willing to forgive him that sort because the story wouldn't be very interesting otherwise. :=)

quote:

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Harold March, the rising reviewer and social critic, was walking vigorously across a great tableland of moors and commons, the horizon of which was fringed with the far-off woods of the famous estate of Torwood Park. He was a good-looking young man in tweeds, with very pale curly hair and pale clear eyes. Walking in wind and sun in the very landscape of liberty, he was still young enough to remember his politics and not merely try to forget them. For his errand at Torwood Park was a political one; it was the place of appointment named by no less a person than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Howard Horne, then introducing his so-called Socialist budget, and prepared to expound it in an interview with so promising a penman. Harold March was the sort of man who knows everything about politics,

---

The first words after the MC's name are ones that the MC probably wouldn't use while thinking of himself: "rising reviewer".

He's described briefly even though he has no reason to think of how he looks.

The landscape is described in terms that almost feel like a bird's-eye view, as if it sees slightly farther than one man would normally see. It's also told without any description of Mr. March's reaction to it.

The "he was still young enough..." bit is clearly outside of the way he would speak about himself.

Most of the rest of the story is told from his perspective: although Mr. Horne is also closely followed, it's always in relation to Mr. March. But the perspective remains omniscient, in part because the setup was so clearly omniscient.

This is probably the most modern-sounding of the openings in that book, but he does similar things with his Father Brown mystery series, and, importantly, even though he's omniscient in that series he doesn't give away what Father Brown knows when he knows it. The way he writes makes you feel like you're watching a camera which, though it's outside of any one person's viewpoint, primarily follows one man. "Omniscient limited" sounds like an oxymoron, but Chesterton does it reasonably well.

Regards,
Oliver

Note from Kathleen: Sorry, only 13 lines from someone else's text, too, please.

The potential hazard here is, of course, that the reader thinks of her as a main character or gets close to her and then gets annoyed when she doesn't show up again.

The solution is to keep as distant from her as possible. Make sure to look at her from the outside as much as possible and when you dip into her head, I wouldn't do a direct thought.

In other words, I would do this:

Ethen handed the orders to General Stephen. "These come directly from the king."

They had actually come from the Sheriff or Rottingham, but Ethan had been ordered to lie.

as opposed to this:

Ethen handed the orders to General Stephen. "These come directly from the king."

His heart pounded. Fall for it, he thought. He did not want to have to explain his failure to the Sheriff of Rottingham.

*********************

I'm reading a book on writing called Write Away by Barbara George and she gives some truly excellent examples of objective viewpoint, omniscient, and all the others. In the one for omniscient, she gives an example of two lovers who see the car used by the murderer to leave the scene of the crime. These lovers are only in that scene. Yet the author still goes into their minds briefly, and personally I feel it adds to the texture and depth of the story, to know something about every person in it, no matter how small their role.

My two cents, though I would highly recommend the book.

quote:

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They had actually come from the Sheriff or Rottingham, but Ethan had been ordered to lie.

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