The Art of Writing: How to Write Bestselling Novels

How to Write Omniscient POV

(NOTE: Don't let the following discourage you from writing omniscient POV stories if that's what you really love to do. Write whatever you love. Just keep in mind that if you want to be successful [i.e. - get a publisher and make a living writing for them], you'll probably have to adjust your strategy in regard to what types of book you use to get to that point.)

Do you want to learn to write omniscient POV? Well, maybe I should ask a more important question: do you want to succeed as a writer? If you answered yes, then the last thing you want to do is start out writing omniscient POV books.

Omniscient is one of those POVs that a lot of people attempt, but almost no one succeeds at, which is why publishers turn them down almost immediately. In fact, they're so rare, it's absurdly difficult to even find one. That, alone, speaks volumes about publishers' choices. And don't think, "Well, I'll just self-publish to get around that problem," because the whole reason publishers don't want those stories is because the readers don't want them either...unless they're written superbly for omniscient style.

Yes, you could self-publish a well-written omniscient POV story and become a marketing master and sell a ton of copies, which would get a publisher interested. But the odds of that are incredibly slim. You're welcome to attempt it, though.

Don't let any of what I'm telling you discourage you from wanting to write omniscient POV. Write whatever you love to write. But understand that if you want to succeed as a writer, 99.999999% of the time, omniscient POV isn't going to get you there. Just put it in your back pocket and bring it out when you're a writing god.

Now, let's say you do write an omniscient POV book. The problem then becomes that most of them fail because most don't have the proper storytelling skills to make omniscient POV work. It's extremely difficult to write omniscient POV in such a way that readers can easily follow and enjoy.

It's so natural to read from a single character's point of view because we can relate to that, and we're already so conditioned in reading those stories anyway. That makes omniscient POV seem very unnatural to us unless it's very well written.

A good strategy that writing teachers recommend is to get really good at writing a more popular POV style first and get one of those books published. That'll show that you know how to create a good story. Once you do that and you're successful, use those skills to write an omniscient POV book and submit that to your publisher. Your publisher will have more trust in your writing and your ability to sell books at that point, which will make them far more likely to consider your omniscient POV story.

Let's look at some reasons omniscient POV fails so you can avoid them (i.e. - so you can perfect some skills that naturally do not include these bad writing habits):

MAIN REASONS IT FAILS

a) The POV jumps around too much so it's hard to follow. Very disengaging.

b) The writer chooses POVs that give away too much information.

c) The writer becomes awful at hiding the right information so the story gives away too much.

d) The writer gives far too much information in POVs that readers don't care about causing them to get bogged down.

HOW TO WRITE IT WELL

First, you'll want to find the very, very few examples of omniscient POV on the market and read them, but only if they're huge bestsellers. The only one that comes to mind off-hand is Lord of the Rings. And there aren't many more--seriously. No joke.

TIME IN POVs

Once find one, pay attention to the time spent in each person's POV in each scene. That's important. How often is the writer skipping around from character to character? Do you find it confusing when it jumps back and forth? That's because it's not a good idea to jump around POVs a lot in a scene. So spend a good amount of time in a character's POV before you go switching out of it in the chapter, unless it fits really well into the scene to do something different than that.