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Third-person (he/she, rather than first-person, which is I) omniscient (all-knowing) means that the narration has access to everyone's thoughts. Whatever character is the focus of the scene is th...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-13T12:00:26Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/14576 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T03:54:23Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/14576 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
_Third-person_ (_he/she_, rather than _first-person,_ which is _I_) _omniscient_ (all-knowing) means that the narration has access to everyone's thoughts. Whatever character is the focus of the scene is the person whose POV is presented to the reader. So if you start your book with Detective O'Malley and then in the next scene focus on Doctor Freeman, we get the thoughts and perspective of both those people. _Deep third-person_ means that while it's not an _I_ narrative, the reader gets only the thoughts and perspective of one character. The Harry Potter books are examples of deep third-person. Other than maybe two or three scenes in the entire series, everything is from Harry's POV. To change from omniscient to deep, you'd have to pick your single main character and jettison any scene which doesn't involve him/her in some way. Any information the reader needs must be provided to the main character in some fashion; the reader never gets to see something which the main character doesn't. (For the record, the Song of Ice and Fire series, aka _Game of Thrones_, is third-person omniscient, and is selling just damn fine, thanks.)
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2014-12-05T23:29:43Z (almost 10 years ago)
Original score: 2