alixtii: Player from <i>Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?</i> playing the game. (Default)
alixtii ([personal profile] alixtii) wrote2006-07-09 12:59 pm
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POV issues

Okay, I'm not sure if the fic I'm writing right now is in omniscient POV or just from River's POV, but I suppose there isn't all that much difference, is there?

[identity profile] alixtii.livejournal.com 2006-07-10 09:13 am (UTC)(link)
But how often do omniscient narrators demonstrate precognition either? I mean every once and a while one comes across a "But little did she know...." but in general it destroys tension just as much.

[identity profile] executrix.livejournal.com 2006-07-10 02:07 pm (UTC)(link)
If the omniscient narrator is writing in the past tense, then naturally the narrator knows everything that happened. Many Victorian novels ended with a wrap-up of the future lives of the characters and their children, because the narrator "knows" that Roger is going to lose his life bravely fighting for the Empire, or that Georgetta will have three children.

[identity profile] alixtii.livejournal.com 2006-07-11 01:45 am (UTC)(link)
Well, the narrator doesn't really "know" anything--it's an author's construct, nyet? If we envision the narrator as a character--and I'm not sure we inevitably do that with omniscient--then we'd probably envision her as existing after the events of the novel, like we do with a first-person narrator, so there'd be no precognition necessary.

After all, even if it is from River's point of view, there's still a narrator in some sense, as its told in third person, and the narrator "knows" what River is thinking, but it'd be odd to say the narrator is psychic.