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omniscient point of view

POV is one of those things that beginning students of creative writing find hard to understand. The simplest way to determine POV (the one that I use when I'm confused in my own writing) is this: who's got the camera? We're seeing and experiencing this scene through somebody's eyes -- who is it?

For a long time it's been fashionable to write in limited third person POV, which means simply that only one character at a time is holding the camera. You're inside Joe's head, watching a car accelerate toward a brick wall; then you're in Jane's. The contrast between how two characters experience the same event is one of the ways to use contrast to build tension. Mostly my work is in limited third person POV. Here's Albany in 1794 seen through Elizabeth's eyes:

The roads were crowded with housemaids swinging baskets on red-chapped arms; peddlers hawking sticky peaches, sugar-sweet melons, wilted kale; young women in watered silks with feathered parasols tilted against the sun; River Indians dressed in fringed buckskin and top hats; slaves hauling bales of rags and herding goats. It was not so dirty and crowded as New York had been, that was true. There was a pleasing tidiness to the brick houses with their steeply tiled roofs and bright curtains, but still the humid air reeked of sewage, burning refuse, pig slurry and horse dung. Elizabeth swallowed hard and put her handkerchief to her nose and mouth, wondering to herself that she had forgotten what cities were like in such a short time. Three months in the wilderness had changed her, stolen her patience for the realities of a crowded life.

And now from Nathaniel's POV

Because they did not have any other molds, Run-from-Bears had melted down about twenty pounds of the Tory gold in a makeshift forge and cast a fortune in bullets. These Nathaniel had been carrying in double-sewn leather pouches next to his skin since they left Paradise, ten pounds on each side. In Johnstown this unusual currency would have caused a stir, but Albany was a town built on some two hundred years of high intrigue and trading shenanigans. Comfortable Dutch and British merchants had made large fortunes running illegal furs from Canada, reselling silver spoons stolen in Indian raids on New England families much like their own, and bartering second grade wampum and watered rum for all the ginseng root the native women could dig up, which they then traded to the Orient at an outrageous profit. A sack of golden bullets would raise nothing more in an Albany merchant than his blood pressure.

It used to be that authors wrote almost exclusively in first person POV (David Copperfield, for example) or in omniscient third. Jane Austen is a good example of the latter case: the author sees all, knows all, and tells all. She sees simultaneously into the heart and mind of of Jane, Darcy, and Miss Bingley and understands each of them perfectly. She is, in other words, their god. Along with what they are thinking and doing, Austen gives us a running editorial (and a sharp-edged one) on the greater society in which this is all happening.

I have wondered if I'm even capable of writing a whole story or book in omniscient POV, and I think the answer is that it would be a great deal of hard work. Like learning to write with my left hand, almost. There are a few writers now who are moving back toward omniscient POV; take a look at Ann Patchett's most recent novel, Bel Canto (which won the Orange Prize and a lot of other critical awards last year), or the novels of Patrick O'Brien or Gabriel García Márquez.

And to state it clearly: I have over-simplified here. For a more detailed look at POV and the way it can be carved up, have a look here.

February 19, 2004 10:24 AM

Comments

Posted by: Rachel at February 19, 2004 10:30 AM