What is an Omniscient Narrator and Should You Use One in Your Story? (Pros, Cons, and Examples)

Last week, we looked at the third person limited point of view.

There’s a different angle you can take with writing in the third person, and that’s to write as an omniscient narrator.

This means writing as if you can see everything in your story, potentially all at once. (Which, as the author, you can!) The narrative can dive into a person’s thoughts or give us a deep panoramic view of what’s happening in a city, country, or even across the world.

Plenty of novels use an omniscient narrator: not necessarily for the whole of the narrative, but at least for parts of it. It’s especially common with older novels—Jane Austen’s novels all use the omniscient perspective, for instance.

Here’s a quick example from Pride and Prejudice:

The evening altogether passed off pleasantly to the whole family. Mrs. Bennett had seen her eldest daughter much admired by the Netherfield party. Mr. Bingley had danced with her twice, and she had been distinguished by his sisters. Jane was as much gratified by this, as her mother could be, though in a quieter way. Elizabeth felt Jane’s pleasure. Mary had heard herself mentioned to Miss Bingley as the most accomplished girl in the neighbourhood; and Catherine and Lydia had been fortunate enough to never be without partners, which was all that they had yet learnt to care for at a ball. 

We can see that this is omniscient, rather than third person limited, because the narrator can tell us about what everyone has seen, heard, and/or felt: Mrs Bennett, Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine (usually called Kitty elsewhere in the narrative), and Lydia.

Pros and Cons of Using an Omniscient Narrator

Should you use an omniscient perspective for your story? Let’s take a look at some pros and cons.

Advantages of the Omniscient Narrator

Using an omniscient narrator has plenty of advantages. It lets you:

1. Give the Reader a “Big Picture” View of Your Story’s World

In movies, we might have an establishing shot where we see a whole town before zooming in on the protagonist’s house or workplace.

The omniscient perspective gives us the same kind of camera angle, letting us show the reader a big picture view of the story world. This can be really useful if you want to quickly get across lots of details.

2. Create Intrigue by Briefly Moving Forward in Time

When you’re writing from the third person limited perspective, you can only show what a character knows in the present moment of the story. An omniscient narrator, however, can jump forward and tell us something that’s going to happen—potentially creating intrigue or suspense.

If you’ve ever read (or written) a line like “She didn’t know it yet, but …” or “In five years time, he’d find himself…” then that’s using the omniscient point of view.

3. Look Inside Multiple Characters’ Heads at Once

With the third person limited perspective, you’re only inside one character’s head at a time. We might guess at what other characters are thinking or feeling—but we don’t know for sure.

The omniscient narrator can remove all doubt here, telling us what several different characters are thinking. This perspective can also create a sort of group thought, where multiple characters are described as feeling the same way or thinking the same thing, like this: “All four of the children were dismayed, but all tried hard to hide it.”

4. Tell Us About a Character’s Feelings or Thoughts That They Don’t Yet Understand Themselves

As well as having direct access to a character’s mind, the omniscient narrator can actually know more than the character about their internal landscape. With this point of view, you can dig even deeper and tell us something the character is feeling or thinking that they’re not yet conscious of.

For instance, you might write, “John always found himself speeding up when he passed the library. He couldn’t yet admit to himself that the awful confrontation with Sarah was the reason he never went inside. Instead, he truly believed that it was just his antipathy to the dull 60s concrete building.”

5. Can Talk Directly to the Reader

The omniscient narrator can address the reader—something that a third-person limited narrator doesn’t ever do.

Sometimes, this shades into a first-person narrator, with the author figure telling the story. This is a popular perspective in children’s literature, though rarer now than it once was. 

But the narrative can remain in the third person while still addressing the reader directly. For instance, Jane Austen’s Persuasion notes that some explanation of Sir Walter’s singleness may be required:

That Lady Russell, of steady age and character, and extremely well provided for, should have no thought of a second marriage, needs no apology to the public, which is rather apt to be unreasonably discontented when a woman does marry again, then when she does not; but Sir Walter’s continuing in singleness requires explanation. Be it known then, that Sir Walter, like a good father, (having met with one or two private disappointments in very unreasonable applications), prided himself on remaining single for his dear daughters’ sake.

Disadvantages of the Omniscient Narrator

While the omniscient narrator gives the author a lot of power and flexibility, there are also some disadvantages of this perspective.

1. The Reader Will Feel at a Distance from the Story and Characters

Third person limited brings us in close to a character, letting us identify with them and see the world as if we’re looking at it over their shoulder. The narrative itself can be filtered through their thoughts.

But the omniscient narrator holds the characters at a distance. We might see their thoughts, but we won’t feel so emotionally engaged with them.

This is why many modern authors use the omniscient perspective in a limited way, perhaps for the prologue or first chapter, but not for the whole of a novel. We can get an overview of the story world without losing the advantage of the closeness to the main character(s) as the story progresses.

2. The Omniscient Perspective May Feel Old-Fashioned

While there are modern novels that use the omniscient narrator, it’s definitely more common in older works. In genre fiction (as opposed to more literary fiction), it’s likely to seem a bit odd and old-fashioned if you use the omniscient perspective.

The big exception to this is children’s literature. Plenty of children’s novels use an omniscient perspective: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is a good example, and all of the Harry Potter books open with an omniscient narrator—sometimes for as long as a full chapter before the narrative becomes Harry’s third-person limited perspective.

3. It’s Easy to Tell, Not Show, With Omniscience

While there’s no reason you can’t show things as an omniscient narrator—like settings, conversations, and action—it’s very easy to slip into “telling” mode. 

That’s not necessarily a bad thing: “show, don’t tell” doesn’t always apply. But readers aren’t likely to want to be told things at length, and so it can help to move quickly out of the omniscient perspective and into a closer, more limited third person point of view to show us what’s happening in one character’s bit of the story.

Four Examples of Omniscient Narrators

Let’s dig into some specific examples of omniscient narrators and see how they work.

Example #1: The Ship Who Sang, Anne McCaffrey

So, for happy years, Helva scooted around in her shell with her classmates, playing such games as Stall, Power-Seek, studying her lessons in trajectory, propulsion techniques, computation, logistics, mental hygiene, basic alien psychology, philology, space history, law, traffic, codes: all the et ceteras that eventually became compounded into a reasoning, logical, informed citizen. Not so obvious to her, but of more importance to her teachers, Helva ingested the precepts of her conditioning as easily as she absorbed her nutrient fluid. She would one day be grateful to the patient drone of the subconscious-level instruction.

Helva’s civilization was not without busy, do-good associations, exploring possible inhumanities to terrestrial as well as extraterrestrial citizens. One such group – Society for the Preservation of the Rights of Intelligence Minorities – got all incensed over shelled ‘children’ when Helva was just turning 14. When they were forced to, Central Worlds shrugged its shoulders, arranged a tour of the Laboratory Schools and set the tour off to a big start by showing the members case histories, complete with photographs. Very few committees even looked past the first few photos Most of their original objections about ‘shells’ were overridden by the relief that these hideous (to them) bodies were mercifully concealed.

In this opening chapter of The Ship Who Sang, we can see the omniscient narrator at work. While the narrative follows Helva closely, this isn’t her limited third-person perspective. The narrator has more insight into Helva than she does herself (“not so obvious to her…”) and can look forward into the future (“she would one day be grateful…”) There’s also a bigger-picture perspective of “committees” and “Central Worlds” in the second paragraph, beyond what Helva herself would know.

Example #2: A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning, Lemony Snicket

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klause, and Sunny Bauderlaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I’m sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.

This is the very beginning of A Series of Unfortunate Events, narrated by “Lemony Snicket”. As an omniscient narrator, Lemony Snicket can look tell us about things that haven’t yet occurred, and give us an external perspective on the children (it seems unlikely they’d describe themselves, or one another, as “charming” or with “pleasant facial features”).

We’ve also got a great example in this passage of a narrator who addresses the reader (“if you are interested…” and “I’m sorry to tell you this”) as well as a narrator who’s aware they’re telling a story (“that is how the story goes”).

Example #3: The Rotters’ Club

On a clear, blueblack, starry night, in the city of Berlin, in the year 2003, two young people sat down to dinner. Their names were Sophie and Patrick. 

These two people had never met, before today. Sophie was visiting Berlin with her mother, and Patrick was visiting with his father. Sophie’s mother and Patrick’s father had once known each other, very slightly, a long time ago. For a short while, Patrick’s father had even been infatuated with Sophie’s mother, when they were still at school. But it was twenty-nine years since they had last exchanged any words.

The opening of The Rotters’ Club uses an omniscient narrator who succinctly fills us in on who Sophie and Patrick are and (importantly) how their parents are related. These characters go on to form a framing narrative, with Sophie telling Patrick a story about their parents that begins 30 years previously.

Example #4: Emma, Jane Austen

The real evils, indeed, of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.

Here, in this passage from the first couple of pages from Emma, we again see the omniscient narrator’s unrivalled ability to look far more deeply within a character than they can look within themselves. There’s also a suggestion of future change – “at present so unperceived.”

Should You Use the Omniscient Perspective?

The omniscient point of view is certainly worth experimenting with. It has some unique advantages as a perspective, compared with first-person or third-person limited … but it also has some drawbacks.

Many authors compromise by only using the omniscient perspective for small sections of their novel (perhaps the prologue, opening chapter, or the beginning of different parts). 

If you’re writing for children, it’s a perspective well worth considering—especially if you want to address your reader directly.

For more help on choosing perspectives and viewpoints, take a look at:

Choosing the Right Viewpoint and Tense for Your Fiction [With Examples] – This post runs through first person, third person, and second person perspectives, giving examples of each. It also tackles the question of past vs present tense.

Choosing Viewpoint Characters: What’s Right for Your Story? – Who are the POV characters for your story? It’s not necessarily a straightforward decision, so this post goes through some key considerations (and covers what to do if the viewpoint isn’t quite working).