If we look back at the origins of storytelling, I posit that there are two natural viewpoints from which stories can be told: the first person past tense, and the third person omniscient.  Other viewpoints, like the third person limited, are later innovations.  Storytelling originated as a way to transmit information, so the first stories must have sounded like “I got sick after eating some berries I found; they looked like orange fingernails and I found them on a bush just past that wrinkle in the ridge,” or “that old one decided to eat some of this blue mushroom she found, and after that the gods gave her visions, and then she died.”  Of these two, possible original modes, it is third person omniscient which I favor.

In fact, it is likely my favorite of all the viewpoints.  When we think of the traditional oral storyteller, though they tell of events in which they did not take part, they are nonetheless part of the story.  The story changes with the teller in a way that it does not for third person limited or the first person.  Third person omniscient allows the storyteller to insert personality into the narrative, to conjure a distinct voice beyond the voices of the characters.  It is telling a story, not showing it, and if it’s implemented well, that will make it stronger, never mind the old bromide about show don’t tell.

To understand why the third person omniscient is my favorite viewpoint, it is easiest to explain with an example, rather than abstractions.  In The Lord of the Rings, there is a scene where Tolkien describes the action taking place, a particular stretch of the journey, from the perspective of a fox that happens to notice the party passing by it.  The fox isn’t a character, it has no unique, individual identity beyond being a fox, and the whole scene lasts only a few paragraphs before Tolkien jumps to a different perspective, yet that to me embodies the versatility, flexibility, and beauty of the third person omniscient viewpoint.

We’ve become so accustomed to third person limited in modern fiction, though (or at least I have), that I sometimes find it difficult to remember that I am writing in the third person omniscient and not the third person limited.  I might begin a story in third person omniscient, but, quite by accident, find myself writing in third person limited after a few chapters.  It can be a subtle difference at times, but an important one.  To do third person omniscient well requires practice and deliberation, it requires the development of a suitable narrative voice, for there is no in-story characterization conceit behind which to hide.  In third person omniscient more than any other viewpoint, the prose matters.

When you write in third person limited or first person, the narrative is meant to display an in-world character, and the prose will reflect that character, whether that’s through a transparent prose approach (third person limited) or a character’s voice (first person).  In third person omniscient, though, it is the author telling the story to the reader, with no character conceits to cloak their own, distinctive voice.  This is why third person omniscient, when it is executed by a master, can be beautiful to read (The Lord of the Rings, Lymond Chronicles, Swordspoint…), but it is also probably part of why the viewpoint has fallen out of favor.

There are technical advantages to the omniscient viewpoint, too.  It enables the narrator to describe things from a variety of perspectives as the story and action demand, without having to wait for a chapter or section break as you would when writing in third person limited or first person.  It can build tension, because the author will often present the viewpoints of protagonists and antagonists, both, and so the tension will derive from the reader knowing things that the characters they care about do not, rather than from the unknown of the merely hinted-at.  That’s a different kind of tension, and it allows you as an author to include intricate plots and twists that might seem insufficiently foreshadowed in a third person limited presentation.

This is the last of my trio of posts on choosing viewpoint.  I hope that this was helpful for you; the exercise was certainly helpful for me.  It forced me to think through, in rigorous terms, how I go about choosing viewpoint, and the unique functionalities of each of them.  Yes, I will probably continue to write many stories in third person limited, but this has also reminded me how much I enjoy third person omniscient, and I intend to try to incorporate that viewpoint more often into my future stories.  Mostly, this should foster an awareness of the decision-making process, so that I do not simply default to a single viewpoint without considering what would be most suitable.  But then, that’s just my perspective.