Current mood:

tired

An Omnivorous Point of View.
::grins::

>
Point of view is something a lot of people I admire as writers handle instinctively. And in most cases their instincts are right.

A bunch of other people select POV by other means, and very often find themselves asking questions like 'should I add a POV for this one scene because I want people to understand this character better'.

Much of the time that appears to be because they've divided their characters into two parts. Primary characters, who get a POV, and an insight into their feelings. Secondary characters, who don't, and by these folks own definition these guys are minor and their views seldom expressed outside of direct dialogue.

Right now I'm writing quite a lot of non-POV but not exactly secondary characters, and I hope that many of them are betraying quite a lot about their attitudes and emotions without direct dialogue gimmies. Otherwise I'm blowing some of the complexity of the story.

Which brings me to omni.

The distancing effect of using omni is a reason people tend to consider its characters as having less impact than a nice first person or deep third person POV.

But I'm wondering if maybe it isn't just about not having favourites, but that unless they jump into someone's head many writers draw a character with the broadest of strokes, seeing them from the outside but without real observation. Seen the way I'd describe someone at a glance -- tall, dark, good-looking. Described but not watched. Big emotions sometimes getting painted on, but only when the writer deems it necessary -- the really significant shrugs and scowls.

Maybe too many writers don't observe characters from the outside. Not in first person or third person POVs. Not through other character's eyes. And not through an omni narrator's eyes.

A lot of the time omni seems to be treated as having no major characters, or characterisation. There's just the narrator and varying ranks of secondary characters. And secondary characters which are seen but not explored to any great depth.

I think perhaps because people very often give viewpoints to all the major characters in a novel, the dearth of deeply explored secondary characters, and non-POV-holding primary characters goes unnoticed. In omni it can't because there are no major viewpoint characters, and there have to be non-POV-holding primary characters. The lack of them is much more obvious in omni, and adds to the distancing affect.

Sherlock Holmes never gets a POV, but he's undoubtedly the primary character and he does feel as fully developed a character as many who do get POVs. How much less of a character is he than Watson -- who does have the POV? Not less? More even?

Omni requires Shelock Holmeses. Characters created by using every scrap of observation and possibility.

And that's why I'm thinking omni is not just short for omniscient but that for a writer it has to be short for omnivorous too.

Good omni 'makes use of everything available', most especially of every bit of characterisation. Every glance, every move, every sigh or nervous giggle. What they wear, how they move, whether they get mono-syllabic when angry, or talkative when nervous.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that to write good omni it might be that someone requires even greater characterisation skills than to write the more obvious character-narrated forms.

And maybe omni doesn't just require all the available tricks of characterisation, but of other aspects of writing skill too.



Damn, that turns out to be a rather simple and possibly obvious conclusion. :o)

Ah well.