1. Adam Bolander

    Adam Bolander Senior Member

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    Third person omniscient for horror?

    Discussion in 'Horror' started by Adam Bolander, Apr 17, 2021.

    I've always wanted to write horror stories, but none of my attempts ever felt right. I write my fantasy novels either in third person limited or first person, and it just now occurred to me that maybe I need to branch out from that if I ever want to write a scary story. So, what do you guys think about third person omniscient pov?

    Here's what I'm thinking: by making the narration so that it isn't limited to what the main character is seeing/saying/doing/etc, I can add in details that the character isn't aware of. That would allow me to have things happening behind the character's back without the character actually needing to be aware of it.

    For example, let's say the MC goes into a haunted house. They find an old diary sitting on a desk, and sit to read it. While they do that, I describe how the door swings silently open behind them. A figure stands in the doorway, only half there, the only visible features being the two bulbs of white light that were its eyes. As the character continues to read, it glides forward into the room, extends a thin and long fingered hand, and...
    "Well, that was a waste of time," says the character, slamming the diary shut. He spins around in the chair and stands up, pausing to look at the door. Hadn't he closed that on his way in?
     
  2. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    I think it's a good idea. That or just use objective/cinematic, where you don't need to narrate everything from the omniscient God's eye view, but more like just a camera that sees things the character can't see.

    In fact, as Homer has been saying, you can move in close or pull back as much as required when you need to. It's common to start a story or even a scene with an objective view (like describing the weather or the landscape or whatever), then move the 'camera' so you see the character in a 'wide shot', from a distance, then maybe move in to mid-close (metaphorically), saying something about the character but not really inside his head yet. Then in the next paragraph or the next sentence you go inside and from there you're attached to that character in a close POV for the rest of the scene or segment.

    You can do that, pulling away or in closer, whenever it's motivated by the story. Just be careful not to overdo it. Or cut directly to a totally different location where maybe there's nobody who can see what's happening.

    I think to do this well you need to know your stuff. There's a lot of ways to screw it up and only a few ways to do it well. Best to read up on it and find some examples where various POV's are done well. Hell, find some where it's done badly too, that can be more instructive than seeing it done well. When done properly it's seamless, you can't see the trick. But when it's done clumsily you can see everything.

    Read through the sections on POV on Novel Writing Help (scroll down to The Complete Guide to POV). They've got the most thorough advice I've seen on just about any website and a lot of good info on POV.
     
    Last edited: Apr 17, 2021
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  3. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Nothing inherently wrong with using omni in horror, but I can think of a few things that might make it problematic to the genre. Stephen King always said there was nothing scarier than a closed door, meaning that horror derives specifically from the unknown. I suppose a corollary to that could a door that opens for no reason, or a door that's supposed to be closed but isn't for some reason. In your example, we're seeing the exact opposite. There's no unknown left. No mystery, tension, speculation, helplessness, etc. And while you add dramatic irony to the scene (the reader knows things the character doesn't) I'm not sure the character's fear of the unknown will hold water for very long if the reader knows exactly what has happened. That can be an issue with omni in general: the more you expand the available knowledge the less effective tools like suspense or character speculation can become.

    Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it won't work, but with horror, you have to ask yourself how much work the fear of the unknown can be conveyed through the character if you preempt the reader too much information.
     
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  4. Adam Bolander

    Adam Bolander Senior Member

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    I think my problem is that I'm a fantasy author, so I naturally want to give the reader as much detail as I can. I have to come up with a way to us that to my advantage.
     
  5. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Yeah, I hear you. Best bet would be to read some horror novels that use omni effectively. Probably with an emphasis on modern genre novels as opposed to classic gothic horror that might have been written in a time when omni was much more prevalent.

    I'm sure the crew will have plenty of suggestions regarding that.

    I suppose it's possible to write without the whole fear of the unknown thing as a fulcrum, but soooo much horror is derived from characters questioning their own sanity that I can see it being a difficult sell to readers that know exactly what is going on.
     
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  6. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    ^ This is why I recommend objective/cinematic rather than omniscient. With omni you have to spill all the beans, give everything away, but with objective you don't.

    In fact I was running some scenarios through my head last night and had some thoughts—

    In a way they're really the same thing, with minor differences. The differences being that in omni you're in narration mode, sharing interior thoughts with the reader. It's a lot of telling, and you have to give away all relevant information. No mystery.

    But in objective/cinematic there's little to no narration, meaning you're in show mode. There's mainly just description and action. Example, showing a landscape or the weather conditions to set the mood, showing what someone is doing etc. In a way it's like omniscient, because the narrator knows exactly what the reader needs to be shown in order to advance the story properly, and shows him exactly that. But objective isn't a blabbermouth the way omniscient is, he doesn't tell all, he leaves some mystery.

    Having had this thought, I feel like objective isn't really a separate POV but just a specialized form of omniscient that allows for some mystery and is done through showing (description and action) rather than telling (giving any and all relevant information through narration, which dissipates any chance at mystery).
     
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  7. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Sure, but you've opened another can of worms. There is no interior monologue in objective, so you can't get into their head and see what they're feeling directly. You can't "feel the fear" because the character doesn't feel anything. I mean, they do, but the narrator doesn't talk about it or use it as a story engine. So if you want to have a character question their sanity you can't do it through traditional interior monologue (more on that later). And I'd imagine it would difficult for a reader to experience horrific things through the character if the character's thoughts are inaccessible.


    Which is great in theory, but very difficult to do. Especially in writing. Words are not cameras. You can certainly "point" them at a landscape all day long, but are you going to engage a reader's mood more effective through a written description of scenery or by entering their heads and feeling what they're feeling?

    Flip it the other way: what's more effective in setting mood in film? Emotional music and cinematic landscapes, or the inner thoughts and struggles of the character?

    I'm just talking about mood here. Nothing about plot or character. Great writers make it look easy but I find it hard as hell to take the long way around.

    You're thinking about the camera again. Yes, the visual part of omni and objective are similar in that the camera can go anywhere, but there is no interior monologue in objective POV. Omniscient is loaded with interior monologue, so much that you want to choke, but you can't access any of that in objective. You're talking 25-33% of your traditional word count out the window. And most of your simple tools for setting mood, developing character, advancing plot through agency, etc. In that, objective and omni are the antithesis of each other.

    Best to keep in mind that there is no camera. The two POVs might share the same visual/experiential freedoms, but their similarities crumble the moment you need words to describe something and don't have access to you character's thoughts.
     
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  8. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Right, but you don't need it all the time. You get plenty of that when the POV moves to a character rather than the objective mode.

    I'm not talking about staying in objective/cinematic all the time, just switching to it for certain scenes where you need to show something no character sees, or for 'zooming in' from a vast wide shot of a landscape to a tighter shot where the characters are seen talking, then in tighter and now you attach to a character and begin the scene proper.

    You can also have a cutaway (without the 'zooming in and out' effect) to a fully objective 'camera' just to show important events that the characters wouldn't be able to witness but that the reader needs to know about.
    That's exactly its strength in this kind of situation. It's why I said objective is showing rather than telling, and it allows mystery.

    But I think you're imagining the entire story being done in objective, like Hemingway. That's not what I'm talking about. I just envision cutting away (or pulling out or easing in) only when necessary for a particular shot or scene. Then you go into close 3rd or whatever your chosen POV is for the non-objective parts. That's where you get all the interiority and the feeling.
     
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  9. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    Implicit in the statement “I need to branch out if I ever want to write a scary story” is the notion that third person limited or first person won’t work for horror. That’s certainly not the case. Most horror I’ve read has, I think, been in third person limited. I’ve read some in first person as well as more omniscient POVs.

    There’s no reason not to give a third person omniscient POV a go and see what is produced with it, however third person limited and first person are perfectly viable POVs for horror stories.
     
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  10. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    Yup. Lovecraft wrote most (all?) of his stuff in first person so it clearly works.
     
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  11. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Man I wish I could find some info on 3rd objective/cinematic. There's only like 2 sentences about it on the internet that I've been able to find. Most sites that discuss the other forms don't even mention it.

    But I'm starting to think you can't shift from it to other POVs like I suggested above. The best resource I've found so far about it is this graphic drawn by Wreybies some time ago:

    [​IMG]

    The red one-way arrow suggests once you've chosen Objective you're stuck there and it has no connection to other POVs. I need to see if I can find the thread where he originally posted this, there might be some better info there.
     
  12. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Meh, you can do anything you want. Hard to unring the bell once you establish a POV drift, though.

    Honestly, I shy away from all that master-level shit. Just doing regular POVs and traditional stories is hard enough for me.
     
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  13. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    I think the main reason I like Objective so much is because of the Doc Savage stories I used to read as a kid. They always started with a gruesome murder that usually happened way out in the boonies somewhere, deep in the North woods or something, and done from an objective pov. But now that I think about it, the books were written in objective all the way through. Basically like detective novels. Really they ARE detective stories, with a lot of action thrown in.
     
  14. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    I did a quick count of the stories I posted in the horror section. 4 of the 7 are in first-person (well, 3 are in first-person, the other is first-dog), and 3 are close third.
     
  15. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    I wouldn't be surprised to learned that horror is inordinately skewed toward 1st person. More so than the other genres. It's just got that "I" vibe going on. Probably because it taps into the psychological and lends itself to declarative, emotional statement.
     
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  16. Rosacrvx

    Rosacrvx Contributor Contributor

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    With horror, contrary to drama, for instance, and in books (let me stress this: in books), I prefer to experience the fear from a character's point of view. I think that horror Genre is a Genre apart, with rules of its own. With rules for movies (where the camera can show you what's happening behind the character to give you goosebumps) and for books (where you have to experience the goosebumps from the perspective of a character). This doesn't mean that you can't say: "as Joe left, a strange grey mist rose behind him". But you'll only give me the goosebumps when Joe sees it, maybe next chapter, and I can feel his terror.
    My two cents.
     
  17. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    I'm remembering the conversation better now, though I wasn't able to find the thread. He was talking about starting from Traditional Omniscient and then being able to transition smoothly out into the other POV's. You can slide into all the ones where the circle overlaps, and even from close 3rd into 1st, and then back into omni. But apparently you can't transition back again once you're in objective.

    I suppose that means you need to cut back at a chapter break or a page break.
     
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  18. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    It just occurred to me to search my Evernote account—this is exactly the kind of thing I would put in there. So I searched it with the name of the image file, and sure enough, here's the accompanying text, written by Wreybies:

    5/25/20
    Remember that, whenever possible, I eschew the idea of "rules" in favor of "tools" when it comes to how I engage.

    I created this image rather quickly and I am 100% sure it is not remotely all-encompassing and that there is something much better out there, but it serves to show my sentiment. There are borders and abutments with respect to narrative mode that allow one to stray into foreign territory to a certain extent. My original sentiment of sticking to your narrative mode at all costs is, as I mentioned prior, because the narrative mode seems to always be the first part of the foundation that we sledgehammer when the going gets complicated, and I think it's a mistake to immediately go that route when things get a little sticky.

    In this image, think of the overlap areas as zones of permission rather than obligatory land that is equally occupied by both concepts.

    From traditional 3rd omniscient, you can slide into limited and even authorial to a certain degree within the same chapter, without any kind of formal break. If you're going to include some genuine 1st person content, you're going to need a hard break because 1st and trad 3rd omni do not share a border. But 3rd close limited and 1st person do share a border and one of the things that typifies 3rd close limited is the delivery of internal thought, written in 1st person, delivered without thought tags, just like in 1st. We can do this because 3rd limited already possesses the solid constraint that sentiments expressed through the narrative will necessarily belong to the POV character - not anyone else - so there's no confusion in writing them as if they were 1st person.

    Omniscient certainly can dip into Objective, but a story intended to be Objective that dips in the other direction has abandoned its defining characteristc and is no longer Objective, hence the one-way only.
    Man, I miss that guy!! Wish he'd pop in every now and then.

    Edit—with what he wrote in mind and studying the graphic for a while, here's my summary of what he was saying. If you start from 3rd omni, you can slide into any of the other 3rd person pov's, and then back, without hard breaks. Transitioning as I called it above. This includes 3rd person objective/cinematic. You cannot slide into 1st (geeze, what, am I talking about baseball now?), except insofar as when you're in 3rd Close the interior monologue can be done in 1st person present, without italics or quotation marks. If you start in 3rd Close, apparently you can transition into 1st person? Not sure, need to think about that. He might have meant strictly for the thoughts.

    However, if you start in objective, you're stuck there for the duration. Makes sense.
     
    Last edited: Apr 20, 2021
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  19. Adam Bolander

    Adam Bolander Senior Member

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    I wrote and posted the first chapter for critique, if anyone is interested. It's mostly third person limited, but becomes omniscient for one paragraph when it says his clock strikes eight even though he's not looking at it. I'd love to hear what you think! Did I do good for my first attempt?
    https://www.writingforums.org/threads/mr-jitters-my-first-attempt-at-horror.169557/
     
  20. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Awesome... I'll take a look.

    Sorry to keep chipping away at this, I got kinda obsessive about it (it's the way my mind works once I latch onto something I want to learn). But I dug up the thread that graphic came from, and it's a university course in POV: Sticking to one POV per scene
     
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