Overloading Third-Person Non-Omniscient Perspective

Novels written from a third-person perspective these days are written in a different style from novels written 2-3 generations back. The difference is in the amount of information the narrator has about the events of the story and the story world. In the fairly distant past, the third-person narrator was omniscient, meaning the narrator knew everything and could tell the reader about events known to none of the characters. In most modern novels written in third-person, the narrator is non-omniscient, which means that at any given time, one of the characters in the story is really the narrator. Or that the narration is taking place based on the information that character knows.

The value of third-person non-omniscient (a.k.a. third-person limited, or 3PNO, or 3PL) perspective is that it enables the writer to tell a broader story involving multiple perspectives and even multiple groups of characters acting out separate subplots, while still retaining some of the personal feel of a first-person narrative. Of course, some novels are written in multiple first-person perspective, where different parts of the book, e.g., different chapters or groups of chapters, are narrated by different characters, with each of the characters speaking in first person. This approach attempts to preserve the benefits of both first-person (instant, easy sympathy) and third-person (multiple perspectives). I personally don’t usually care for this mixed style, but I’ve seen it done fairly often and it’s not always bad (see example below, toward the bottom of this entry).

Without going into detail on how third-person non-omniscient perspective narration is achieved in the writing, which is yet another topic, I’d like to bring up an issue I’ve seen in some novels. Specifically, I’d like to talk about overloading a story with too many viewpoints.

Like the idea of the unreliable narrator, the point of a non-omniscient narrator is to impose a perspective on the writing. This gives it flavor and limits the reader’s access to information. When a story is told from a handful of perspectives, these limits really add something, which I suppose is ironic. By contrast, a third-person omniscient perspective gives the reader so much more information than the characters have that it really limits the kinds of suspense and personality that can be employed.

When a story features too many perspectives, though, like eight or ten or a dozen, it makes me wonder why. Granted, each chapter or scene remains limited, in terms of what information it can give the reader, by the viewpoint from which it’s told.

But overall, when so many viewpoints are used, the amount of information (and opinion) available in total begins to approach what an omniscient narrator would have. In my opinion, this defeats the purpose of non-omniscient narration and costs the story most of its benefits…and begs the question of why the author doesn’t just go ahead and use an omniscient narrator. That’s still allowed, so to speak, and you see it occasionally, though no examples spring to mind.

It’s true that the reader should still get the feeling of being in the heads of the various narrators (viewpoint characters). So there’s a benefit that remains. And yet, how close can you feel to any of these characters if you’ve been inside a whole pack of them? Like polygamy. Exactly like polygamy. Yeah, I just said that. Bam! That just happened.

Moving on…

As a result of this realization—or belief, if you prefer, or philosophy—I’ve tried to limit the number of viewpoints in my own project to two main ones, one secondary, and one and a half very occasional ones. (The one-half is a non-human narrator, and I’ve used it only three times in interstices.)

I could be totally missing the point here, and I can’t say this issue has ruined my enjoyment of any particular book, but I just don’t like the idea of trying to tell a story from too many viewpoints unless there’s a specific reason to do so. An example of an exception would be one book I read recently called The Atopia Chronicles, by Matthew Mather.

That book—which I found thought-provoking, and quite liked, and even reviewed on Amazon—was written as a series of shorts from a whole slew of different first-person perspectives. As I mentioned above, this is not exactly the same as 3rd-person non-omniscient, but it serves the same purpose of providing a number of different perspectives that the reader can pull together into a big picture. (Frankly, I don’t really see why he didn’t just use 3PNO, but that’s a question of style and not really my business.) Anyway, my point is that in this case, there was a good reason for covering an intersecting set of events from many different perspectives, and I won’t reveal that reason to avoid spoilers. But, I do think this is the exception that evades the rule.

I’d be interested to hear conflicting/supporting opinions regarding this blog entry.