Everyone has been talking about POV, 1stP this and 3rdP-limited that. It's great, and I have picked up new information from each occurance.

But what about OMNI!?
I wrote a flash that was supposed to be in omni, and almost every critique said "You need to settle on one POV", "You need to pick one character for POV", "Don't have your POV jump around", etc etc.
I had one that said toward the end they realized it was OMNI.

This means I failed as a writer to correctly portray my scenes and my intent.

I quickly picked up Character and Viewpoints again. The only thing I got from that (as there doesn't seem to be much info on OMNI at least to me) was that an OMNI narrator can make side comments and address the reader. I tried to make the OMNI narrator invisible.
Is this fundementally impossible?

What makes OMNI work? How can you tell if something is OMNI versus 3rdP-unlimited?
And:
Is OMNI bad? Is it out of fashion? How many OMNI stories can you name from recent years? Is it something readers don't want anymore in their world of "Right here/right now first person" or "This is my story" 3rd-limited?

First off, make sure omni is the right POV for the story you want to tell. If it is, be sure to establish omni POV very early. I have little experience with it, but I would suggest avoiding deep penetration, especially in the opening pages, and be certain you don't remain only in one person's mind for any extended periods of time. Make sure you establish immediatly the narrator's ability to see inside different characters' heads (within the first page or two).

Of all the hobbits in the world, the most contented one was Billy-Bob-Bo. When spring came, he could be seen ...

Yep, it's omni.

The sequal King Of Foxes, starts of OMNI, though the viewpoint character seems to be the Silver Hawk, his godlike totem, who evidently can read his thoughts. Then it zooms in on Talon, and it seems to become 3PL.

The best post-Tolkien OMNI, I can point at is the opening chapter of Runelord: The Sum Of All Men. Again, we zoom in, this time on the city, to a fight in a dark alley. But then we quickly go into strict 3PL from then on.

As others have already said, omni is very dificult to do right. Omni pov works just fine when it is done right primarily because unless someone is paying attention to it, the story flows smoothly and the type of viewpoint isn't relevant.

This means that your reader has to see the story through an omniscient perspective. You must make the reader feel omniscient. You cannot hide information, you cannot say something is unknown, you cannot be fuzzy about important actions.

Tom Clancey wrote many of his books in Full Omniscient, telling everything that was of relevance to the action in the story, even if none of the characters could possibly know about it. Tolkien did not write in omniscient, his narrator character frequently admits ignorance of important matters.

What's the difference between Omni and a story teller? I know it's been mentioned that the Omni is a narrator.
Does all Omni have to have a narrator with a particular personality? Is there a way to have Omni be quiet?

I've done 3rd person and I've been working with 1st person, but I do want this one flash at least to be a good Omni. Omni was my goal when I started writing it, and I want to figure it out. At least this once. :-)

I admit that I do try to follow the POV “rules” with most of my stories. However, this is the one topic I have a lot of issues with. I just hate conforming to other author’s expectations. I can understand having some strict rules with grammar, spelling, and punctuation. For instance, I hate seeing comma splices, but everyone seems to put them in their stories. But I find it difficult to understand why people are so adamant about POV shifts. Why the strict rules? I've thought all along that if it's understandable and helpful to the story, then add the POV shift. I don’t think it should be a frequent deviation, but the occasional deviation is fine with me. I’m sure some people will be ready to vomit after hearing me say this.

I’m sort of a smart guy. I’m smart enough to realize that if Sally is the main POV character, but I read “Johny wanted to....” then Johny is the one “wanting to” do something, not the main POV character. This seems even more acceptable when in the next chapter the main POV character really does switch to Johny. Why not allow the reader to get little snippets from others every once in a while? Of course you don’t want to do this with every story and book, but why not allow those who want to do it, do it? I think normal readers (i.e. non-authors) are much more forgiving when it comes to POV shifts (they haven’t been tainted with all of the “rules”).

Who made up this rule that you can only do this with this type of POV and you can only do that with that type of POV? Sounds kinda funny to me. When I tell my kids a bedtime story, do I have to follow those same rules? Sometimes I like to think of the narrator as God telling the story, and why is it that we have these “rules” that dictate how God tells the story? I’m sure he can keep things from the reader if he wanted to. I’m sure he can stick to one character’s thoughts for a while and then throw in another character’s emotions.

I have a terrible time keeping POV straight simply because the bulk of the writing I had done prior to joining Hatrack was in "game format" where our POV usage jumped around like a frog on steroids. I have thus ingrained a bad habit and am struggling to bring it into control.

Bottom line with ALL writing is this: You can do whatever you like. But if you WANT to be published, you have to keep in mind 1) what Editors like, and more importantly, 2) what READERS like.

There's a quotation I read the other day, but I can't remember who said it.

You can write anything you can get away with, but they won't let you get away with much.

Yeah, any time there's a "rule" there will be dozens of exceptions and places where people have made breaking the rule work. But there will be hundreds of thousands of times when people tried to break the rule and just looked like amateurs.

The danger of shifting POV is that it can jar the reader; they have to refocus their brains when you shift POV. A POV shift may well be just what your story needs, and you may be able to handle it brilliantly - go for it. Just understand the risks you're taking.

I always try to stress that point, because the freedom to just let the reader know what a character is thinking/feeling/etc. without having to convince the reader that the character is really thinking/feeling/whatever that is so often taken for granted.

Writers used to have to go to some really elaborate lengths to convince readers that the internal action attributed to the characters was "genuine". Accepting the conventions of modern POV character usage liberates us from all that ****ing nonsense.

If we choose to use it.

But hey, nobody's forcing anyone to use modern POV. It used to be far more against the "rules" of writing than all the other stuff we hammer. Eventually literature might evolve way past it. POV usage has noticibly evolved in just the last couple of decades, after all.

I happen to really like well written omni, it's just that well written omni is very rare. Multiple POV character fiction that accomplishes most of the features of omni is fine with me too. But it has to be done well. Just because we tend to concentrate on learning one thing doesn't mean that nothing else can be good.

If you are writing for yourself and have no intention of letting anyone else read it, it doesn;t matter what you do. Write in pig-latin if you want. If you want to be published, and like many of us, want to make a living at this, you need to follow the POV rules, and only break them when you know exactly what you are doing and why. And even then, there will be a price to pay. Harlan Ellison could get away with writing a circular story with no timeline in 1969 because he had a proven track record and a Nebula award to prove it. That also gave him a loyal fan base that will give him the benefit of the doubt.

Had I turned in that story, it would almost certainly be rejected. I haven't won a nebula award and my loyal fan base can be counted on one hand. I can get away with anything for those few readers, but not for the world at large.

So, if you want to shatter the world and bring omniscient POV back into vogue, you'll either have to be so good that the world MUST stand up and notice, or else you need to prove yourself with more conventional stories first.

For instance, we have three characters in a room having an important discussion. The POV is the MC. The MC leaves the room.

# to indicate a scene break

The two characters (including a secondary MC) who still remain in the room continue their conversation, and discuss the MC and the issues that were being discussed prior to the change of scene, and the POV.

I am trying to limit the POV to one character per chapter as much as possible, but sometimes I feel it enhances the scene to have a short snippet, separated by a scene break, with the viewpoint of another character.

I belong to a critique group and no one has cited the chapter POV changes as being an issue for them. I am assuming it is reading smoothly. But I am uncertain as to whether an editor would find this style unprofessional?

This is what Doyle did with Watson and Holmes, and what Tolkien did with the hobbits.

Anyway, the issue with dead characters' upraising themselves somehow, at least long enough for the story's purposes, is one some writers will argue. There are exceptions; right now I'm having no luck thinking of a good one, though--unless we open up the romance genre, maybe some thrillers. In literary fiction, there's J. D. Salinger's story, "A Perfect Day for a Bananafish"... but I think the point of view there is objective, not sure.

It's a good rule of thumb, I think, anyway. Dead men don't talk, as the mobsters say. It's a strange feeling to realize you just read a story about a character who's dead, but whose innermost thoughts and feelings, dreams, etc., you just witnessed, supposedly. So, I'm not saying writers don't sometimes kill off their point of view characters--they do. Personally, though...it usually doesn't work. Flaubert made it work. A few others.

Any thoughts?

Just a thought.