Intro: I occasionally teach a writers’ workshop at our local Camosun College on how to write a mystery novel. The students eat it up, telling me that they’re learning lots of practical and usable tips and techniques, so I thought I’d offer bits and pieces of the workshop in my Friday Mystery Writing blog posts.
The information is gleaned from my little non-fiction e-book primer called Youdunit Whodunit! How to Write Mysteries and offers my tips, techniques and information suitable for crafting of all types of genre writing.
So, even if you write romance, sci-fi, fantasy or horror, please keep reading and learn with us crime writers.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT (Part 12)
The last group of posts have concentrated on the story structure of a mystery novel. Been there; done that. Now we’re onto developing characters or as I like to think of it: Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.
In the post on character development, I introduced an essential question: Who’s telling your story? You can have more than one storyteller but for our purposes, we’ll stick to one.
You need a point of view (POV) from which to tell your tale. There are two common POVs in fiction writing: First Person, which we discussed in a previous post, and Third Person.
LEMME TELL IT MY WAY: Today, I’m finishing my discussion on Third Person POV.
In this Point of View, the writer chooses to tell the story from more of a distance by narrating with “He said” or “They said”.
In the last few posts, I offered some reasons to choose Third Person POV; and introduced two of the three main viewpoint types: the Limited Multiple POV and the Limited Detached POV.
Sparrow POV
Today, I’m highlighting the last of the main viewpoint types: the
Know All or Omniscient Point of View.
Know All/Ominscient POV:
This POV offers the action presented by an omniscient or all-seeing POV; one that makes judgments, interprets and explains.
This viewpoint is very challenging to control and to pull off; however, Elizabeth Hyde succeeds nicely early in THE ABORTIONIST’S DAUGHTER:
“And so instead of studying for her biology exam as planned, Megan Thompson, pre-med freshman at the university, found herself giving in to something larger and decidedly more fun that evening. Not only that, but she gave in with no clue as to what transpired earlier that evening two miles west…”
Notice how the Know All narrator tells us something that happened earlier that the character, Megan, doesn’t know about?
Usually, the reader is drawn through the story through the eyes of one or more third-person POVs but in each instance, the reader knows the same information as the viewpoint narrator.
But in the Omniscient POV, the narrator knows everything about the story, from future to past, and may offer tantalizing bits to the reader.
Personally, I find this POV irritating and somewhat of a cheat, especially when used in crime fiction; it does, however, offer the writer many opportunities unavailable in the other Third Person POVs. What do you think?
If you found this of interest, you may wish to see the previous How to Write a Mystery posts.
…Of course, there’ll be MORE how-to write a mystery tips and techniques continued in the next Friday post as we finish exploring character development in Ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille, Part 14.
Find out further information or how to purchase my mystery-writing primer e-book, jam-packed with ways to immediately improve your writing, click Youdunit Whodunit (only $2.99US!).
