The Challenges and Opportunities of an Omniscient POV

The most prevalent point-of-view used by writers today is the third-person limited POV (sometimes spread across multiple characters), as well as the first-person POV.

It’s pretty rare to find a contemporary novel written with an omniscient narrator—which is why Celeste Ng found it a terrifying realization, while writing her first novel, that her story required one. She says:

The idea made me incredibly uncomfortable. To me, omniscient narrator called to mind the Dickens model: a Big Booming Voice who bossed the characters around, a know-it-all who judged everything. Someone very unlike me. As a shy person, I’d always rather listen than talk, and I seldom feel comfortable making definitive pronouncements.

But she found a way of thinking about it that made it work. Click here to read her entire essay on the “quiet” omniscient narrator, which appears in the latest Glimmer Train bulletin.

Other pieces in the bulletin:

• The Place Where Writing Grows by Natasha Tamate Weiss
• On Quelling Writerly Doubts by Molly Antopol
• Some Material May Not Be Suitable for Children by Peter Sipe

Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.