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Omniscient Voice

Well, I've taken the leap into omniscient. I've heard that it's extremely important to know each character's voice and how they talk before even attempting it. Thoughts?
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
I'm confused by the question... do you mean for dialogue? Because it doesn't matter if you are writing in omniscient or first or third, it is always important to know how each character talks when writing dialogue.

Do you mean you are wanting to write multiple POV's? Like, one chapter with Mary as the POV, then the next with David as the POV, then the next with Sam? Because that is not omniscient. That is third person, and yes, you would want to find a way to make them distinct.

When you are writing in omniscient you are writing as "the author" or "the narrator"... use C.S. Lewis, J.R. Tolkien, or Kurt Vonnegut as examples. When you write like this you are not writing from the perspective of a character, you are writing as if you are God... all knowing and all seeing. You can zoom in and out and comment on what everyone is thinking... you need to have your own, totally separate voice if you are going to attempt this. This has nothing to do with character's voice (unless the narrator is an all seeing, all knowing character... like the Princess in Dune, who is retelling the story after the fact, or the ghost in Galapagos, who is also retelling the story many thousands of years later).
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
No problem :) Were you thinking Third Person, where a different character is the POV for each section or chapter?
 
What I actually meant was making the narrator voice distinct from the character dialogue--which probably sounds like a blindingly obvious thing to do now that I think about it...

Making the characters sound different from each other in terms of dialogue has been something I've struggled with for years, which doesn't have much to do with my real topic--perfecting the omniscient narrator voice. There, now that I've written it out, I finally know what I was actually wanting to discuss. It got all confused in my head. Sorry about that. :unsure: It's been a long, hot day and I barely slept last night.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
Ohhhhhh, so you are wondering about tips to make characters sound different when they are speaking to each other? So they don't all sound the same? (Or like the narrator).
 
That and making the narrator voice work well. I know in theory how to make the characters sound different in dialogue, it just doesn't seem to work very well when I try, and it just blends into generic speech patterns for everyone. As for the narrator voice, in the series I'm working on, the narrator is an actual character who is kind of like a god.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
Hmmmmmmm...... okay, so this is what I do:

Character Speech
An exercise I learned a few years back that was really helpful was that in fiction, it is not so much how people say things (though that is important, but I will touch in it in a bit), but what they say.

Get a piece of paper and write down the names of four people you know. Any four people. Now, put those people in an elevator together and make the elevator get stuck. Brainstorm... what would each of those four people do? What would they be saying? You know those people, so it is easy to think, "Oh! My dad would be trying to be the boss and trying to get everyone to go out the hatch at the top like some spy movie. My grandmother would quietly read a book and every now and again ask if anyone wanted a Werthers Original and wouldn't it just better to wait for the fire department? My sister would be complaining about how everyone stinks, especially my dad, and how she is not climbing out of that stupid hatch and he can go right ahead and kill himself, she wouldn't care."

Everyone would be saying something different because their goals, and wants and needs and fears and backgrounds are all different.

If you are finding your characters all sound the same on the page, it may because you are not totally clear on who they are and what their goals are in that scene. Really sit back and brainstorm, who is this person? What would they really be thinking in this situation? What do do they want? What are they afraid of? If you model them off of real people you know it can be very helpful to making them "sound" distinct.

Many new writers think they need to add in a bunch of slang and jargon and fancy dialects... this is okay, but also not okay. It can be VERY challenging to do unless you are very personally familiar with a dialect, and it can be very annoying to read on a page. But, what you CAN do is take your notebook and go to a public place where you can eavesdrop. Maybe a coffee shop or somewhere where you can sit and really study people. Write down what they say and how they say it. You will see patterns emerge. You will see people that rattle on seemingly without taking a breath, people who a very selective in their word choices, people who get words confused, people who speak with large words and people who speak with small words. People who speak softly and people who get excited and have to be told to "shhhhhhh" by their giggling friends.

You can use all stuff to give your characters distinct speech patterns that "feel" real and authentic because there were actually taken from real life.

Narrator Speech
Yeah, you really do have to think about who the narrator is (if you have one) and if you want to draw attention to them, or not. Think about why the narrator is telling the story and who are they telling it to? If they narrator is a god, is it a natural, earthy, sort of god, who speaks in a simple tongue? Or is it an artistic, literary sort of god, who speaks in eloquent poetry? Or is it a calculating and scientific sort of god? All of that stuff matters. The narrator is a character within themselves.
 
Thank you very much for the tips! :D

I've heard of the elevator scenario before, but I have the feeling that it'll be very useful to me, so I'm going to make a little note about it to remind myself.

<Or is it an artistic, literary sort of god, who speaks in eloquent poetry?>

Kind of like that, but also enigmatic and kind of quiet. Though their first words in the series might give you an idea of what kind of person they [ambiguously gendered] are: "I will be the narrator now, if you please."
 

Chessie2

Staff
Article Team
Well, I've taken the leap into omniscient. I've heard that it's extremely important to know each character's voice and how they talk before even attempting it. Thoughts?
No. Study and read about it before you try so you know what it is you'll be doing. Omniscient has many parts to it and is not always straightforward. Very quickly:

-it's written in a NARRATOR voice, meaning that voice has to be strong and its own character. Narrator is different from the rest of the characters, from the rest of the story but it's still part of the story.
-each character has a voice (more on this in a moment) just like in any other pov structure, except for the narrator dominates here.
-omniscient is like a movie camera: the further away from the characters you are, the more the narrator's voice comes to the front. The closer the 'camera' gets to the characters, the less the narrator voice speaks and the more that the characters come to the forefront.

*Far away: more narrator.*
*Closer to the characters: less narrator*

-The narrator is basically in everyone's heads all at once but doesn't narrate in a way that is confusing. You (the author AND narrator, in essence) know everything whereas in third you are limited by each character's perspective. There is a finesse to it that requires some serious practice.

There is WAY more to it but that's just an introductory way of understanding it. However, I highly recommend reading books in omniscient and studying it in craft books before jumping in so you get a feel/sense for what it's like. Below, I'll post a couple of examples from one of my novels so you get a feel for it. I still mega suck at omniscient but am determined to keep writing this particular series in it because I want to eventually write most of my novels in it. Although romance readers prefer third, so there is that. Sigh.

Ex. 1: Video camera moving around.
In the living room, Robert lived an entirely different reality. If he had done something wrong, he didn't yet know it. Searching through the cubby of vinyls for some Lady Day, his back was turned when Frankie returned downstairs alone. Upon choosing a record, he smiled, remembering when he danced to this number with Chloe just days ago. He started the player.

Frankie resumed play with her dolls on the coffee table, completely disregarding her mother's instructions on taking her the brush. She was enthralled in her own little world, playing house as girls like to do, swaddling the toys in kitchen towels and talking for them in various intonations. Saturday mornings were her time, and even though a performance loomed ahead, she cared about none of it, instead taking her pleasure in doing things her way.

Robert turned around at the moment one of the dollies drank from a plastic teacup.

"Hi again, Frankie. Do you like the music?"

She nodded, not looking up from her entertainment.
*Moves into dialogue here*


Now, although Lila liked to think she was a good actress, the reality existed as something else entirely. Phony, just like her heart and her intentions, she had only gotten her minimal string of performances from having connections with a former lover. And although Chloe knew none of this, the act was over with her before it even started.
*
The dress rehearsal for It's Raining Horses, only what the critics were calling a "vibrant form of entertainment for everyone in the family", went unhitched much like Lila's head that night. It wasn't like her to show emotions off stage unless it was strictly to her benefit, and so she ended up crying uncontrollably in a bathroom stall for nearly half an hour. Given her responsibility of heading the costume list, a fellow employee was sent looking for her. But tears and pretty do not mix unless it's in the name of acting, and so she refused to return to her duties.
*

Not that he was different from any other man. Capricious would be the proper term to define a woman such as Lila, who by all means finally had her heart broken in return and didn't know how to handle the onslaught of unsavory memories and pain from the past. But everyone needs to grow up someday and as it turned out, this was her time.

Downstairs, sitting out in the audience waiting for Frankie to finish her practice, Robert experienced the unfortunate inability to get the whole incident out of his head. It was a not-so-comfortable feeling, really, to be in the same tiny building with the woman he loved and the poser he had at one time loved. Like being in an oven, slowly roasting on some unsolicited karma.
*
Now, she couldn't prove it. Sometimes a woman just knew. And that had to be good enough.

Confronting the man she loved with just 'good enough', however, didn't seem fair. There had to be another way to discover if what she thought, what clearly appeared as obvious, was in fact truth instead of fiction.

Chloe, with all her walls and methodically perfect approach to love, had fallen hard and fast. She couldn't escape the inevitable. After the death of her husband, she would find love again, but not in the way she thought. Not in heaven with him. On Earth with someone else. And so, if this was truly the case and Robert was really the one, she needed to get to the bottom of it.

And so she did what any woman would do.
 
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Thank you very much.

As I said, I know most of this in theory, but it's a bit tricky to wrap my mind around it. Being tired certainly doesn't help.

I've been 'studying' by reading Discworld books over and over again, along with a Hitchhiker book here and there. I might return to The Lord of the Rings at some point, too.
 

Miles Lacey

Archmage
Well, I've taken the leap into omniscient. I've heard that it's extremely important to know each character's voice and how they talk before even attempting it. Thoughts?

Is Omnipresent - or variations of it - really the best way to tell your story? It's a very challenging perspective to do and one that has not been used much since about the 1930s and with good reason: it's the most difficult perspective to do. It also takes away what I regard as one of the most important things in any story: a sense of mystery.

The example of the elevator scene may be fine for a scene but keeping up that perspective for an entire novel is an entirely different proposition.

I would suggest that you write a chapter of your story in a variety of perspectives so that you can decide which perspective would tell the story best.
 

Hallen

Scribe
Is Omnipresent - or variations of it - really the best way to tell your story? It's a very challenging perspective to do...

I would concur.
It is your book so write it the way you want. At the worst, when you are done, you'll know a heck of a lot more about it than you do now. And that's an important thing for a writer.

I would add that it's the most challenging perspective to do well. I think a lot of people start out writing that way without knowing what the technical term for it because it can feel natural. You are telling the story so you tell it via a narrator.

The difficulty comes because it's really easy to start telling when you should be showing, and it's easy to confuse the reader as to which character is the focus. It's also very easy to just info dump and not allow the reader to experience the story.

When you constrain yourself to a POV character, whether that's first or third, you can only present to the reader that which the character sees or knows. It can be challenging because you have to craft your story so that your character can present to the reader what is necessary. But that can be really good because your reader gets to experience it with the character. It should work about the same with Omni, but Omni does make it really easy to cheat on that part. Sometimes that can work -- there are no absolutes in writing -- but it is more likely to not work.

So, go for it. You will learn from it. But, do beware of the strengths and weakness of your chosen mode.
 
When you constrain yourself to a POV character, whether that's first or third, you can only present to the reader that which the character sees or knows. It can be challenging because you have to craft your story so that your character can present to the reader what is necessary. But that can be really good because your reader gets to experience it with the character. It should work about the same with Omni, but Omni does make it really easy to cheat on that part. Sometimes that can work -- there are no absolutes in writing -- but it is more likely to not work.

Very well written Omni often leads to the feeling that I can "experience it with the character." It is the same with movies and television, which are cinematic POV: I'm certainly not in the heads of the characters, but I can have long stretches while watching these where I'm not even aware of that, heh!

I haven't given this enough thought before, but I think I'd like to hazard a hypothesis: The most important thing is to capture the reader's imagination, make the reader feel something, help the reader to get lost in the story. When I'm in that mode as a reader, the distinctions between third omni, third limited, and first disappear. It's only as a disengaged observer that I might begin to pick at the differences between the approaches; and certainly, as a writer analyzing the writing in an objective manner.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
There’s recent book called Dialogue by Robert McKee of screenwriting fame... I’ve no doubt it would be useful. I haven’t read it, but I read lots of McKee’s stuff when screenwriting back in the day. In general, if you want the best dialogue advice head for screenwriting.
 
In my opinion, the story decides, which style you use. I mean, if your character tells a story per tape – like in Rick Riordan’s The Kane chronicles – it’s the best idea to use the first person with simple past (and simple present for comments,).
 

Malik

Auror
I keep having to remind myself that I have great freedom and that I'm not locked into one character's viewpoint.

You are; you're locked into the narrator's perspective.

My books are in omniscient and I get rave reviews for the way I handled omniscient voice. There are many other omniscient fantasy books out there, as well. I highly recommend you read as many as you can and familiarize yourself with the feel. I say this because my experience has been that writing omniscient is painstaking, smash-your-head-on-your-desk, grind-your-teeth-over-miniscule-details work. I've said this before, but it's the ship in bottle of narrative voices. If it's coming easy, it's very possible that you're not doing it correctly.

If you are writing in omniscient and it's effortless, then for God's sake send me your manuscript, because I have a publishing company and we're about to start looking for gifted writers.
 
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I mentioned that I've been 'studying' by reading Discworld, Hitchhiker's series, and The Lord of The Rings. Any suggestions for others?

It...kind of is coming easily. You're kind of making me doubt myself, and I feel guilty. But even if I'm not doing it right, I can always improve. [Aren't naive little writers like me who've only written seven little insubstantial books so annoying?]*

People keep saying I'm a gifted writer. I keep telling them that I'm my own worst critic, complete with torment.

*I meant that sincerely. They're really just mirages. But, hey, I can use footnotes!
 
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