A Pot of Details

As someone who is decidedly not detail-oriented, I sometimes struggle with getting the right kind of detail into the story.  On a first draft, that’s especially a challenge because sometimes putting in a detail in Chapter 2 suddenly unveils itself as being important in Chapter 14 and zooms to major story status where it needs to be developed more.  Others end up being, well, clutter.  The omniscient viewpoint narrator (OPOV) presents even more special needs because that narrator is not limited by what it can see.

To clarify, details mean anything small piece of information.  Sometimes when I say details, everyone automatically thinks of description.  It could also mean world-building/setting, backstory, characters, etc.  Those may not seem like details to everyone, but to someone who isn’t detail-oriented, they present special challenges of what to include and what not to include.

One of the major culprits is description, and not because it’s description, but how we’re taught to do description.    A teacher or website gives us an exercise to describe a forest and make sure we include as many of the senses as possible.    Maybe they provide a picture to get us started.  So it’s easy to focus on getting the picture “right,” mentioning colors and shapes and senses–without ever touching on what actually is imp0rtant to the story in that description.

So some general guidelines for dealing with details:

There has to be a reason it’s in the story. Spending a lot of wordage describing in loving detail a plane taking off when it’s a transition scene are details that can be dropped.  On the other hand, if the plane is going to crash a few scenes later and put your character into jeopardy, then mentioning a shape crawling on the wing is a great foreshadowing (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Use details to emphasis anything you want to draw attention to in a subtle way. In omniscient viewpoint, you might have not yet revealed your main character, but your narrator can take a moment to mention the man in the “striped shirt,” to highlight your main character.

Weigh in on the importance of the detail. If you spend a paragraph paying attention to something, it better be pretty important in the story.  Ask yourself if it’s fulfilling a second function.  This one might take a second review because it can be hard to tell during the first draft what’s important, so check in on it again during the revision.

Watch out for too much detail digging. This is surprisingly easy for people who aren’t good with details, because we can’t always tell when to stop.   Suppose you’re writing along and need to put in a tree.  Now you hop up, hunt through all your reference books searching for a name of a tree in the appropriate location.  Maybe it takes 10 minutes.  A little while later, you have to grab another book to look something else up.  That takes 15 minutes because the fact is hard to find.  Then you stumble over needing a specific jargon term that most people outside of an industry will have never heard and spend 30 minutes searching the internet … Stop.  It’s your first draft.  Just put in RESEARCH.  If the sentence or scene stays in the book, you can research it during the revision.   On the other hand, you may look at the one where you were digging for that obscure detail and wonder why you bothered.

Working with details in a novel can be a special challenge if you’re not detail-oriented.  But it can be done.  It just takes a bit of effor to think differently to work within what your strengths are.

 

OPOV: The Language of Power

In RosemaryKirstein’s The Language of the Power, a steerswoman–a type of scholar–tries to unravel a mystery from the past.  The story is in a fantasy setting, but if you read the Amazon reviews, it also mixes science fiction elements.  It’s the fourth book in the series–somehow I always manage to never grab the first book!

You have to dig into the words a bit to see the omniscent point of view (OPOV).   One of the initial flags of the narrator for me were the numerous references to the main character as “the steerswoman.”  If it was being done in a more traditional third person, the character would hardly refer to herself in such a way.   Here, the one thing that stood out for me with the OPOV narrator was steadiness–the narrator really anchored the entire book.  The narrator made me, the reader, feel like I could settle down and just see what would happen.

 

Omniscient Point of View Book: Inca Gold

The first writer I always think of when anyone talks about Omniscient Point of View (OPOV) is Clive Cussler.  I think until I read his books, I didn’t think much about OPOV.  And that’s because his really looks different.   I never needed to look closely at the narrative to see if it was OPOV.  There were whole scenes where the narrator showed us what the main character was doing from the outside.

Inca Gold is a treasure hunt for a lost Inca gold chain.  One of the most striking thing in the book is the opening chapter (after the prologues), where the narrator focuses on a skeleton in the bottom of a sinkhole.  There aren’t any characters in the hole yet, but the narrator is used very effectively to immediately set up the conflict that searching the sinkhole is going to be dangerous.  This is one of those elements of OPOV that I like–because we can see things the protagonist cannot see or know about, we can get an additional layer of suspense.  It’s one thing to know the girl enters an abandoned house rumored to be haunted, and she thinks the house looks creepy; it’s another thing for the reader to see–out of her view–that a chair moves.  The reader knows something is coming, and the suspense is heightened because the protagonist doesn’t know.

 

Roundup of Omniscient Point of View Links

When I first decided to try omniscient point of view (OPOV), there really wasn’t much information available online.  What was available mainly said it was old-fashioned and not to use it, or used other discouraging wordage.  Since then, OPOV seems to be generating more interest.   Since we have Thanksgiving coming up, I’m going to take the week off and post some OPOV links:

Examining Omniscient POV:  Anna Staniszewski analyzes the use of OPOV in several books.  She mentions one of the reasons I choose it initially: To explore differing opinions of an argument.

Eye for a God’s Eye: Gwenda Bond’s thesis on OPOV.   Quite a bit of reading (55 pages), but a fascinating look at OPOV.  She explains how to tell if a book is in OPOV.

And Even More on POV: From Terry Odell via The Red Room.  This walks us through a passage in one of J.D. Robb’s novels, done in OPOV, to show the difference between OPOV and third.  This is the kind of thing that triggers head hopping accusations from writers.

What No One Ever Tells You About Point of View:  From Elizabeth Stark.  She uses the blind man and the elephant to describe the different POVs.

Ask the Editor: Do Publishers Have Rules About POV:  If you’ve ever had someone tell you publishers don’t accept OPOV, read what this editor says.

 

 

Omniscient Point of View vs. Headhopping

Omniscient Point of View (OPOV) is commonly known as a headhopping viewpoint.  But it actually doesn’t headhop because as Alicia over on Editor To Rent notes:

Omniscient can shift from mind to mind, but with omniscient, there is a controlling “above” narration, a mentality (not necessarily a person or the author) which knows more than the characters individually or collectively know.

There’s only one point of view with OPOV, the overseeing narrator.   The narrator may touch the thoughts of the characters and zoom in on them for closeups, but the narrator is always in control of the perspective we’re given.  One of the things I looked at when I started writing in OPOV was this difference.   I’d critted pieces where the author had clearly headhopped, and then I’d look at an OPOV–it wasn’t the same thing.

So here’s a different way of how to think of OPOV vs. headhopping, using a typical scene from an action movie:

OPOV: A speedboat is charging across the river at high speed, kicking up the waves.  A pilot is at the steering wheel guiding the boat.   He sees another boat up ahead and steers around it.

Headhopping:  The pilot at the steering wheel has been shot.  The boat is still speeding across the river, but it doesn’t have a pilot.  It moves from side to side randomly and nearly runs into another boat, sending the occupant diving into the water.

Headhopping is uncontrolled viewpoint shifts.  Often, the writer is careening from viewpoint to viewpoint without any purpose or reason.  But OPOV gets treated as headhopping because it’s easy to think in black and white terms–i.e., if the thoughts of more than one character are shown in a scene it’s automatically headhopping.   Justine Larbalestier says:

Most of these injunctions, when I press people about them, seem to stem from creative writing classes and workshops and various writers groups. This drives me insane not just because it’s a lazy way to teach but because it’s creating readers who dismiss very fine writing as bad or unreadable because it deploys techniques they’ve been told are wrong.

Too often, writers are simply told “Don’t do it” because it’s easy for beginners to do it badly.  But how do we learn if we don’t try in the first place?

 

Omniscient Point of View–The Golden Compass

Dropping in with a look at another book that’s done in omniscient point of view (OPOV), The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.   This is a story about a destiny for the main character that lies in her ignorance of her role, and is one of a series.   If you search for interviews with the author, he often discusses using OPOV for the story like in this interview from the Guardian.

‘I’d never written in that tone before. It was sombre, it was cold, and there was a sense of spaciousness. I much prefer to be the omniscient narrator, which is part of the old fairytale tradition and the 19th-century novel tradition: the thing Modernism got away from. Suddenly I had enormous freedom. I didn’t expect that. You see, I’m not a fantasy fan. I’m uneasy to think I write fantasy.’

He notes also that he found his voice with OPOV.  In the story with Lyra, the OPOV is wonderful and magical–it brings a comforting sense of the story that could not be done in third point of view.  I particularly like the way the narrator handles the descriptions of the people and places–they’re vivid and distinctive and include details that we probably wouldn’t see if it came from another point of view.  Other points of view are limited to what the viewpoint character knows, but in OPOV, the narrator doesn’t have this limitation (both a plus and a minus).

I’ve also run across comments from other writers stating that Pullman does a lot of telling.  This particular comment turns up a lot for OPOV writers because the narrator is telling us the story.  Despite the “show vs. tell” guideline, there isn’t anything wrong with this–it’s a merely a different techique and approach in writing a story.

 

Omniscient POV–Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

The best way to learn about omniscient POV (OPOV) is to read the many different books that use the viewpoint and observe how authors use it.   One of the things OPOV can do is use distance to keep from overwhelming the reader.  In Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, by Patrick Suskind,  a man is born with an exceptional sense of smell.  In his quest to create the perfect perfume, he turns into a serial killer, thinking of people as objects.

Frankly, the book is not for the faint-hearted.  To me, it was like witnessing a car accident–you want to look away, but you can’t do it.  The main character doesn’t relate to the rest of the world in the way we all do, and he doesn’t have any boundaries.  This would be an impossible read in third person–getting inside the head of a person like this would be too intimate, too disturbing.  This is where OPOV shines.  The OPOV narrator follows the murderer for most of the story and keeps its distance, barely.  It makes the book horrifying, shocking, and readable.

 

The Scariest Story

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is one of the scariest stories I’ve read.  It sets up from the start that something is not right in this place and then hits with a shocking punchline.  It was originally published in the New Yorker in 1948–there’s  a very interesting discussion via Podcast on the magazine site.   It was very controversial at the time of its publication, with complaints and subscription cancellations.

Looking back at it now, I also noticed that it’s told in omniscient point of view.  It would not have had nearly the impact if it had been told in one of the other points of view.

 

Viewpoint and Number of the Characters

An urban fantasy I read recently got me to thinking about how much viewpoint might influence the number of people in a novel, as well as the management of the cast.  The UF was, as most are, in first person, but it had a thriller storyline.  Most UFs are done as private detective novels–an individual with magic investigates crimes.  Sometimes they work for agencies that protect society, but the number of characters that the main character interacts with is often pretty limited.

With this story, it involved a secret government agency and a huge cast to accommodate the story’s events.  Probably about fifteen actively participating characters, many at the same time.  More than 2/3s through the book, and I still had trouble remembering who was who.  I don’t have that problem with thrillers that have casts of fifty.  Why this one?

I think the viewpoint contributed to the problem.  First person tends to be up close and personal.  But that becomes tricky when the cast is large, because everything is through that narrator’s eyes.  My last story was in omniscient, and five was my stopping point.  I put a sixth in, and I tended to have trouble getting the character to interact.  With first person, the same number of characters seemed more like visual clutter, all vying for a place in the story.  It could be that the writer had trouble managing the characters, too.

What do you think?  How many characters can you manage at one time in first person?

 

Omniscient Viewpoint–A Point Against You?

When I first thought about switching my book over to omniscient viewpoint, the first thing I thought was what I heard from other writers:  If you use it, it’ll be a point against you with the agent.  I thought about that for a while and reasoned out that if I was going to use it, it needed to be the best I could do.  I also reasoned out that the viewpoint might not matter if it was done well AND the story was something an agent or editor could sell.

But the only side I’ve ever heard is from other writers.  Then I found this blog from an editor who’s been in the business for nearly five decades:

My only rule: Does the manuscript work?
As an acquiring developmental editor with more than 40 years in commercial publishing, including Simon and Schuster, Bantam, and John Wiley & Sons, I don’t subscribe to any rules or generalities about the right or wrong point of view to tell a story.

My approach is strictly empirical. I need to produce books that make a profit. So when I work with a writer, I ask myself: “Is this manuscript working? Will the reader engage and keep turning those pages?”

As the editor, my job is to help the writer develop the book with the POV that works best. Each story requires a custom point of view. When working with a writer I encourage an open-minded approach.

I especially like the part of about “Each story requires a custom point of view”–because it’s true.  When Laurell K. Hamilton came out with her Merry Gentry series (done in first person), the first thing I thought was “Anita Blake with faeries.”  The first person voice was the same as her Anita Blake series, and the book itself was a little too similar.   I thought it would have been a little different and fresher by being in third.  She says in her interviews she only writes in first, and I was disappointed that she wasn’t willing to go outside of her comfort zone.  Lee Child’s done both first and third for Reicher series–though I think I prefer the slightly more distancing third for the books.  Just suits the stories better.

It’s always about what’s best for the story.  Have you tried other viewpoints outside of your comfort zone?  What did you think of the results?