How to Write 3rd Person Omniscient Narrative

Writing a 3rd person omniscient narrative story is probably the easiest narrative style to write, and tends to be what more writes gravitate towards. However, in the good sense of a how-to, let’s look at the basic mechanics and steps for writing this style.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer or pen and paper
• imagination
• dedication

1. First, let’s start with the 3rd person part. Writing 3rd person requires that you use words like, “he” “she” “it” “they.” What you will not see, except in character dialogue, is “I” or “we.”

2. The word omniscient means all seeing, and that’s exactly what you will be writing. Your narrator has a bird’s eye view, and can see all. This includes both the interior and exterior and events, situations, places, characters (good, evil, and neutral), and so on.

3. This writing style allows you to see many characters at once. If you want to detach from the main character and show a scene with villains discussing their plan, you can. This allows both the reader to know what is going on, and keeps the main character unaware and guessing.

4. To achieve, simply detach the “camera” or focus of the writing and move it around. Go into another character’s head, or travel far away where something significant is occurring.

5. Explore thoughts of other characters, creating internal tension the reader is intimately aware of, but the characters themselves keep their feeling silent.

6. In epic tales this seems almost necessary to cover all the characters and events, so it has great efficacy in that style.

Tips & Warnings

• This is a very common writing style, and probably the easiest to write. It avoids clunky situations with the main character having to be near villains to hear them, like in limited narrative style. Also it allows you complete writing freedom in terms of where you can go, with the only limit being the third person style.