Saturday, December 19, 2009

Going Omniscient



(Deep breath.)  I have decided to take the plunge and re-write my first few chapters from a third-person omniscient point of view.  Fantasy is just too darn hard to write in third-person limited, because you can't describe anything that the point-of-view character wouldn't consider out of the ordinary.  I have some wonderful things in my world that I can't describe, and I feel that a lot of the magic is being lost for the reader.

I know, I know - third person limited is the darling of popular fiction.  (Thank you, J.K. Rowling.)  But The Lord of the Rings was written in third omniscient and is my absolute favorite work of fantasy ever.  Jane Austen also wrote in third omniscient.  I love those narrator-ly voices, the voice of God that tells us things the characters don't know yet and then shows us how they react to them.  You can compare and contrast characters in interesting ways that third limited doesn't easily allow.

I may change my mind later, but right now I feel as I'm stuffing my story into a girdle that is too small for it. I've decided to let myself breathe a bit and see what happens.

3 comments:

Michelle Gregory said...

when i think of 3rd person omniscient, i think of "Stranger than Fiction" and Harold Crick hearing "little did he know."

Nighfala said...

(shudder) I never use "Little did he know!"

I just want to be able to describe the houses, people, and creatures in a little more detail. My characters wouldn't pay much attention to those details because they see them every day.

Nighfala said...

My goodness! I just discovered that I have people stopping by from Germany, Ireland, the UK, Canada, Egypt, and all over the U.S.

Thanks for stopping by! Please feel free to comment and add your thoughts. I love interactive blogging.