From a Distance, With Intention [Third-Person Omniscient]
I think third-person omniscient is my favourite POV if you can have a favourite or preference, as a story may decide for you what POV it needs to be. I enjoy the distance and often purposefull detachment you can create with it. Honestly though, it might be one of the most intimate POVS, not in the sense of whispering secrets to the reader but in the way it can pull back, pan wide and let you explore the worlds you’ve created.
I find myself gravitating toward it, especially when planning stories. Maybe it’s a sci-fi/speculative writer thing. There’s this urge to show the way a world/magic system/tech works around your characters, not just inside them. How a belief system, a landscape, a myth, or a moment in history shapes a character before they’ve even spoken on the page.
The queen of third-person omniscient Ursula K Le Guin does this epicly and seamlessly, especially with Wizard of Earthsea. She showcases some of the POV benefits in the opening pages as she passes time and lands seamlessly between paragraphs. But my god she uses it to tease us…in the opening of Wizard of Earthsea she gives enough away to reveal where our main character will end up, but not enough to ruin the reveal of how we get there. Le Guin nudges us to make our own connections and assumptions.
We all know authors have their preference and in her craft book ‘Steering the Craft’ she echos this: “It’s not only the oldest and the most widely used storytelling voice, it’s also the most versatile, flexible and complex of the points of view”.
Sources: Here, Here and Here
