Using the Third Person in Writing: Omniscient Point of View
In literature, point of view refers to the position from which where a writer tells a story. POV determines how much information the writer gives to the readers. Someone as to tell the story, and that person is known as the narrator.
Writing in the third person involves doing so as if you are narrating a story. Which is why it’s referred to as the narrative form. Characters in your story (or article) are referred as he or she or by their actual names.
The beauty of third person’s view is that you are a narrator and not a character in the story. As a narrator, you’re able to give the events of a narrative any slant you want, you set the tone and the mood too. You can talk about a person’s ideas which are totally unknown to the individual next to your character. These ideas can be light-hearted or menacing, it is up to the narrator.
Here’s a couple of tips to think about to help you stay on the third person path:
- Omniscient or Limited POV
Decide whether you will tell the story from a single character’s point of view (Limited) or all of characters points of view (Omniscient).
- Goal
Next you have to decide whether you wish to narrate just the actions of your character or all of your character’s actions and thoughts. The third person objective doesn’t narrate any character’s feelings or ideas, it only accounts for the characters actions in an objective way.
- The voice of your character
At this point, you get to choose your character’s voice. You determine if your character will be a mild-mannered introvert or perhaps a lunatic.
How to utilize omniscient points of view.
You can lay out the story with the writer speaker reporting in the omniscient point of view. This is probably the most popular view. This gives a panoramic view of the scenes and characters throughout the narrative.
Third person omniscient gives the narrator access to the thoughts, words, actions as well as the feelings of the characters in the writing. The narrator sees all, hears all, and knows all. The writer knows all about all characters such as all emotions, feelings and thoughts. The author can then choose to share this information with the reader or withhold it. Employing third person omniscient, the writer is in full control to steer the reader leave no space for interpretation.
The writer can use the omniscient point of view, to dive into the minds of the characters in the story. It also facilitates more expansive treatment of all the events and players, but it could lead to a muddled story line, with misplaced ideas and concepts. You have to be keen on this common mistake, because even the best writing software isn’t programmed to detect wrong flow of thoughts. Usually, they are best employed for third-person tales, although some use them with other point of views.