Guest post written by author Jessica Vitalis
Jessica Vitalis is a Columbia MBA-wielding writer. After leaving home at 16, Vitalis explored several careers before turning her talents to middle grade literature. She brings her experience growing up in a nontraditional childhood to her stories, exploring themes such as death and grief, domestic violence, and socio-economic disparities. With a mission to write thought-provoking and entertaining literature, she often includes magic and fantastical settings. As an active volunteer in the kidlit community, she’s also passionate about using her privilege to lift up other voices. In addition to volunteering with We Need Diverse Books and Pitch Wars, she founded Magic in the Middle, a series of free monthly recorded book talks, to help educators introduce young readers to new stories. An American expat, she now lives in Canada with her husband and two precocious daughters. She loves traveling, sailing and scuba diving, but when she’s at home, she can usually be found reading a book or changing the batteries in her heated socks. Her debut middle-grade novel The Wolf’s Curse releases on September 21st 2021.
As a mentor in the children’s book industry, I’ve noticed a tendency for new writers to lean toward an omniscient voice. And it makes sense!
When you think back to the classics you loved as children, the odds are that many of your favorites were told by omniscient narrators (“Frog and Toad,” “Chronicles of Narnia,” and “The Secret Garden” come to mind). Besides, what could be easier than telling a story from the perspective of a narrator who knows everything that’s happening?
But the truth is that omniscient narrators have largely fallen out of fashion, and perhaps for good reason. While writing from the perspective of an omniscient narrator may at first glance seem simple, the act of deciphering who and what to focus on at any given point in the story can be exceptionally complicated. In addition, readers have high expectations when it comes to omniscient narration.
For one thing, modern readers fall in love with characters; more specifically, they enjoy the emotional satisfaction that comes from watching a specific character grow and change. The distance created by omniscient narrators doesn’t always create the intimacy between the reader and the characters and could leave the reader feeling dissatisfied at the end of the story (if they make it that far).
Inexperienced writers also often lapse into head-hopping when writing with an omniscient narrator; switching from one character’s head to another without the appropriate set-up serves to further disorient and possibly even alienate the reader.
Writing with an omniscient narrator becomes even more complicated if the narrator is a character in the story. Readers need a compelling reason to believe the narrator has some way of knowing what the other characters were thinking at any given moment. This problem is compounded if the story is written in present tense.
In my debut, “The Wolf’s Curse,” for example, the Wolf is both an omniscient narrator and a character in the story, which is written entirely in present tense. I had my work cut out for me to convince the reader that the Wolf knew what was happening in scenes where she wasn’t around.
With all of these potential pitfalls, how does a writer decide when employing an omniscient narrator makes sense? There are four questions I think it pays to ask when making this decision. First, is the author going for a classic feel? If they want their reader to walk away from the story feeling the nostalgia of the types of timeless stories they enjoyed in their youth, then an anonymous omniscient narrator like the one Kate Albus successfully employs in her recent debut, “A Place to Hang the Moon,” might make sense.
Second, does the writer plan to develop the narrator as a character in the story? In this case, the potential dangers of distancing readers from the story may be overcome by the connection they can forge with the narrator. Lemony Snicket and the narrator in “Hook’s Revenge” are both good examples of narrators with personalities that add to the stories.
Third, is the story so complex that telling it from one, or even a few, points of view might be too limiting? If there are multiple characters with perspectives that are all important, or if there is information the author wants to explore that might be outside the scope of any particular character’s point of view, then an omniscient narration might be the best tool with which to tell the story.
Finally, it’s important for the writer to conduct an honest assessment of whether they have the skill to pull off an omniscient narrator. Writers who are struggling with the nuances of various points of view or writers who already feel overwhelmed by the thought of attacking a novel-length story may do better to stick with a single point of view.
The bottom line is that there aren’t any hard and fast rules when it comes to writing omniscient narrators. Sometimes, the best way to figure out when it makes sense to know it all is to give it a try!
