[This message has been edited by NoTimeToThink (edited December 30, 2007).]
Writing in cinematic means that you're giving up the greatest advantage that prose fiction has over the movies--a look into a character's head, the ability to live the events rather than merely watch them. If it goes on very long, the reader becomes very disconnected from the whole thing.
Probably what it means is that you knew what you wanted to happen in that scene, and so you made it happen, instead of knowing what your characters wanted, and letting them do what came naturally. Of course, your characters might not have wanted to do what you wanted them to, and that can cause plot problems; but the way to handle it is to know what their motivations and reactions are, and to respond to them so that they have to follow the course you had in mind whether they want to or not (OR to change the plot to fit with what they want to do).
Another thing it might mean is that the motivations are so transparent at this point that you just never bothered to look into anyone's head. If that's the case, it's possible that everything is so transparent to the reader that the scene could be cut entirely. Sometimes a scene is just a matter of information exchange. It's necessary, because the reader is getting the information as well as one of the characters, but there really are no motivational problems involved. In that case, you still need to include one character's reactions to the information. People think more than they say, and often use what they say to disguise their thinking. Let us see those details; we'll be far more involved with your story as a result.
You don't have to "give thoughts" to show PoV though. PoV is more basic than that in my opinion. It is whose eyes you see the events through.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited December 30, 2007).]
The great wealth of written fiction is the ability to see inside the character's heads. Find someone's head to be in and stay there - that's the safest, most secure way to write.
Omni gets a bad wrap lately because it is hard to do well and "fell out of style." I tend to find with complex stories -ie those with more than one MC - a 3rd person limited POV is, well, limited. Some excellent writers get around this by separating the MCs and switching POV every chapter. I tend to think of that as a sneaky way to be omniscient without really being omni.
Just because the scene (or whole thing) is omni doesn't mean you "have problems" or the scene needs work. BUT if something doesn't feel right with the scene, then you need to look at the mechanics: how distant is the Omni POV, could you do better by sinking a bit more into a closer Omni, ccould you do better if you sink into a solo POV? Does the scene need to be there?
I'm a big fan of Omni especially for "epic" fantasy. So, either try to figure out what is bothering you about the scene or give it to someone else to see if they are bothered by the scene.
If one of the characters is an interior decorator and the other a teenager, they are both going to "see" the scene differently. The interior decorator will notice the lighting, type of furniture (Queen Anne period, etc) and such. The teen will see a chair. Those sort of details will signal to the reader whose head we are in.
However, it certainly does require reactions, attitudes, etc. To me, these are all thoughts--i.e., cognitive brain activity. The point is, you have to be in someone's head, seeing events through their eyes (again, as both JT and k_f said). If you don't do this for anyone, you're in cinematic. If you do it for everyone (or at least clearly maintain the option), you're in omniscient.
I would disagree, however, that cinematic is full omniscient with very little penetration. 3rd person limited omniscient is limited because it's only omniscient with regard to one person. The narrator is NOT omniscient with regard to any other character. Cinematic is even more limited--the narrator can't even see into a single person's head. I suppose you could say it's fully-limited omniscient, but if that's not an oxymoron I don't know what is.
Narrator POV is also different from cinematic or omniscient. In most of today's fiction the narrator is as close as possible to invisible. The author can't help but leak attitudes and whatnot into the work, but if you're using a narrator POV, the narrator is an actual person (NOT the author) who's attitudes and opinions are deliberately included, even though he's not a character in the story.
Also, Harry Potter was in 3PLO, not omniscient, and all (except for maybe 4 scenes in the series) from Harry's POV. We never got a scene from Ron or Hermione's POV, or even (that I remember) a stray thought. I won't say that she never made a slip, but this was one thing she was really quite consistent about.
One of the things that makes full omniscient difficult is that people are sufficiently used to 3PLO that they find it jarring when there's a switch from one person's head to another, so the author must keep it clear at all times that he/she is not really in anyone's head, that shifting can and will occur at whim (one way to make this clear is to compare two people's reactions: seeing into two people's heads at the same time can only be omniscient). In the process of making it clear, the reader will lose identification with the POV character (since there isn't only one), and that (aside from the difficulty of doing it well) is the biggest drawback of using omniscient.
I'll also stick with with I said at the start: if you didn't intentionally use cinematic or omniscient (whichever it is), then the scene does need work--even if that work is only examining it closely to decide that you really do want to do it that way. (And I'd say that's highly unlikely.)
quote:
...if you didn't intentionally use cinematic or omniscient (whichever it is)...
It wasn't intentional, so it needs work.