That’s the advice I’ve heard given to writers (including myself) for most of my writing life. In a way, the arguments against a huge, godlike narrator make sense. In The Art of Perspective, Christopher Castellani argues that the godlike omniscient narrators of nineteenth-century fiction have fallen out of favor with contemporary writers in Western literature because “the omniscient narrator is too old-fashioned for a fractured world that distrusts authority, has abandoned God, and has little faith in any absolute truth put forth by an individual” (68).

Indeed, narrators such as the one from Middlemarch who could interrupt narration to state universal truisms like “We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time” (57) or the one from Howard’s End who state opinions as fact like “It will generally be admitted that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated the ear of man. All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it” (26) or the one from Little Women who metafictionally informs the audience of her narrative choices like “As young readers like to know ‘how people look,’ we will take this moment to give a little sketch of the four sisters” (3) seem to have virtually disappeared in the last several decades in favor of the more immersive first-person, limited third-person, and serial third-person narrators.

Castellani insists that the omniscient narrator is so authoritative, “[the reader] is uncomfortable enough with his authority to slap him with the ‘unreliable’ label [usually reserved for first-person narrators]" (35). He questions: “Who is [the novelist] to speak for anyone or anything other than herself and her own experience” (67)?

Lisa Cron warns that the omniscient narrator who interrupts “completely ruins the illusion that there are no strings attached” (52) and that, if used, the narrative voice must remain “neutral . . . invisible, just reporting the facts” (54). Cron seems to echo Flaubert, the father of the modern-day omniscient narrator who believes “[a]n author of his work must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere” (qtd. in Wood 37-9). In fact, James Wood first declares the omniscient narrator as “unreliable” and “partial” before concluding that “true omniscient narration is almost impossible” (5).

Their arguments, while valid, also raise a number of questions: What’s wrong with a narrator having too much authority as long as that authority doesn’t overtake the story (unless, of course, that’s the whole point, such as the case in N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy)? Why must we rely on the assumption that the third-person omniscient narrator has to be invisible and can’t interrupt (unless, again, that’s the whole point, such as the case in Ana Castillo’s So Far From Home)?

When executed well, an omniscient narrator offers readers entry into works reminiscent of those “Once upon a time” stories that tucked us snugly in our beds at night. Third-person omniscient narration creates intricate relations between voice (ranging from matter-of-fact to voicy), distance (ranging from subtle to intrusive), curation (how much to reveal to the reader), and consistency. Rather than worrying if the omniscient narration is too “godlike” or too “unreliable,” the key is to ensure the omniscient narrator operates as its own entity within a story and that it plays a function to the overarching goals of the story.

In other words, what story do I want to tell and how does the way I tell it impact how the story will be received?

The Subtle Narrator (Peek-a-boo)

Let’s start with a master of the contemporary omniscient narrator, Edward P. Jones. In “A New Man,” a father searches for his daughter who has run away from home. The story starts with the catalytic event of the man finding that daughter with some boys:

One day in late October, Woodrow L. Cunningham came home early with his bad heart and found his daughter with the two boys. He was then fifty-two years old, a conscientious deacon at Rising Star AME Zion, a paid-up lifetime member of the NAACP and the Urban League, a twenty-five year member of the Elks. For ten years he had been the chief engineer at the Sheraton Park Hotel, where practically every employee knew his name. For longer than he could recall, his friends and lodge members had been telling him that he was capable of being more than just the number-one maintenance man. But he always told them he was contented in the job, that it was all he needed, and this was true for the most part. He would be in that same position some thirteen years later, when death happened upon him as he bent over a hotel bathroom sink, about to do a job a younger engineer claimed he could not handle. (203)

This opening reveals more than the catalyst for the story—it establishes the subtle, observant narrator. The reader gets a delightful understanding of this man’s entire life—his health, his age, his affiliations, his death. In fact, Jones masterful introduction of Cunningham’s “bad heart” (which Cunningham might not even know about) connects with the revelation of his death at the end of the paragraph. The narrator even leans into the familiar use of “the” as in “the two boys” (203) to allude to the reader that we should know exactly who those two boys are or, at the very least, an understanding of Cunningham’s familiarity with those two boys. Giving the reader this amount of information quickly establishes the function of the narrator to say here’s all you need to know about this man as he desperately searches the D.C streets for his child.

In The Known World, a novel about a Black slaveowner in the antebellum south, Jones also utilizes the omniscient narrator to help the reader understand the cast of characters and the reasoning behind their questionable, poor and, sometimes, limited choices. Beyond doing this for his major characters, he also gratuitously offers information about his minor characters. For example, check out the narrator’s description of two child-aged slaves who briefly make an appearance then barely appear elsewhere in the novel:

Also at the head of the crowd were Delores, seven years old, and her brother Patrick, three years younger. Delores would live to be ninety-five years old, but her brother would die when he was forty-seven, shot three times by a man as Patrick came out of the man’s bedroom window after being with the man’s wife. The night Patrick was killed he had had a choice—go down to the bottom and spend the night playing cards or go through that man’s bedroom window where the wife was waiting, all wet and hungry and everything. “I need what you got, P Patrick,” the wife had said to him earlier that day. “I need it bad.” The cards had not been falling right for Patrick that week. He had already lost $53 and owed one evil man $11 more, so he thought he would have better luck with that man’s wife. “Give me what you got, P. Patrick.” (68-9)

The Known World, so much about slavery and also the moral implications of a Black man who owns slaves, answers a question very early in the novel about the fate of some of the enslaved children—while we don’t know where or how Dolores ends up, we know that Patrick will no longer be in bondage because he’s sleeping around and playing cards. The story’s overarching focus is not what becomes of the slaves, which is why the narrator offers this information to its readers. In utilizing the subtle, matter-of-fact, omniscient narrator, the reader has 1) a clear understanding of what will happen to some of the enslaved children and 2) an understanding that the main story is not about the fates of these particular children but, rather, the complicated nuances of slavery and slaveholders.

Let’s Play (Edward P.’s ‘Til Death):

Return to one of your stories and select a minor character (preferably a younger character) and imagine the type of person that character will grow to be decades from now. Based on the life that character has lived, write out that person’s death. Try to be as detailed and as succinct as possible.

Jones roving narrator harkens back to Zora Neale Hurston’s narrator in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Though the novel works as a frame (Janie has returned to town and much of the novel is her recount of the exciting life she has been living for the past few decades), Hurston deftly uses the omniscient narrator to juggle so much (a narrator with access to lush language Janie and her people don’t necessarily have access to, a narrator who leaves Janie’s vantage point to expand the story and its characters, etc.). One of those amazing uses lies in how the narrator roves through crowds and consciousnesses, even consciousnesses of those who aren’t human. After a town has laid its beloved town mule to rest, a reader might expect the narrator to continue narrating human business; however, the narrator lingers and reveals what comes after the mule’s death ceremony:

With that the sisters got mock-happy and shouted and had to be held up by the menfolks. Everybody enjoyed themselves to the highest and then finally the mule was left to the already impatient buzzards. They were holding a great flying-meet way up over the heads of the mourners and some of the nearby trees were already peopled with the stoop-shouldered forms.

As soon as the crowd was out of sight they closed in circles. The near ones got nearer and the far ones got near. A circle, a swoop and hop with spread-out wings. Close in, close in till some of the more hungry or daring perched on the carcass. They wanted to begin, but the Parson wasn’t there, so a messenger was sent to the ruler in a tree where he sat.

The flock had to wait the white-headed leader, but it was hard. They jostled each other and pecked at heads in hungry irritation. Some walked up and down the beast from head to tail, tail to head. The Parson sat motionless in a dead pine tree about two miles off. He had scented the matter as quickly as any of the rest, but decorum demanded that he sit oblivious until he was notified. Then he took off with ponderous flight and circled and lowered, circled and lowered until the others danced in joy and hunger at his approach.

He finally lit on the ground and walked around the body to see if it were really dead. Peered into its nose and mouth. Examined it well from end to end and leaped upon it and bowed, and the others danced a response. That being over, he balanced and asked:

“What killed this?”

The chorus answered, “Bare, bare fat.”

“What killed this man?”

“Bare, bare fat.”

“What killed this man?”

“Bare, bare fat”

“Who’ll stand his funeral?”

“We!!!!!”

“Well, all right now.”

So he picked out the eyes in the ceremonial way and the feast went on. The yaller mule was gone from the town except for the porch talk, and for the children visiting his bleaching bones now and then in the spirit of adventure. (61-2)

The mention of the buzzards during the narrator’s recount of the humans in the initial paragraph opens a pathway for the buzzards to take center stage in the next paragraph. Continue to think about the function of a narrator that operates like this: In setting up the buzzards and the mules as citizens of this town, Hurston informs the reader the story extends far beyond Janie and her adventures; she’s informing the reader that, at its heart, this novel is about community. Hurston even uses call-and-response to elucidate the communal aspect of the Black church.

Let’s Play (Let Them Say What They Got To Say):

You can either return to an earlier story or start from scratch. Using the third-person omniscient narrator build a scene using an animal (or animals), flowers, bacteria, etc. Give a strong voice to characters whom the reader wouldn’t normally expect to speak. Some questions to think about as you create your scene include: How do they talk? How do they move? What are the rules of their world? What are their goals?

The Intrusive Narrator (We Out Here)

Now my above espousing doesn’t fully address concerns raised about the intrusive, nineteenth-century narrator. For example, George Eliot’s Middlemarch (and, in my opinion, the grandmother of omniscient narration), there are places that do feel, well, too intrusive. For example:

If you think it incredible to imagine Lydgate as a man of family could cause thrills of satisfaction which had anything to do with the sense that she was in love with him I will ask you to use your power of comparison a little more effectively and consider whether red cloth and epaulets have never had an influence of that sort. Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite. (156)

Admittedly, this voicy narrator gives personal opinions about how the reader should feel about Lydgate’s relationship, an intrusion that interrupts the flow of the story. Still, there’s an advantage to voiciness—as long as it’s updated for our current times. For example, consider the opening lines of Celeste Ng’s narrator in Everything I Never Told You: “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast” (3).

Because of the omniscient narrator, the reader is privy to information the family does not know yet. In addition, Ng also establishes the function of the narrator: to redirect the reader’s attention from “what has happened to Lydia” to “how this family will react to finding out she’s missing.” Even with the omniscient narrator, enough information is omitted so that the reader is also curious about how and why Lydia has died. Ng’s narrator has thoughts and opinions, yet the narrator does not tell the reader how to think:

How had it begun? Like everything: with mothers and fathers. Because of Lydia’s mother and father, because of her mother’s and father’s mothers and fathers. Because long ago, her mother had gone missing, and her father had brought her home. Because more than anything, her father had wanted to blend in. Because those things had been impossible. (25)

Still, there are more contemporary, voicy narrators. Take, for example, the gossipy narrator of Ana Castillo’s So Far From God. The juxtaposition of the gossipy narrative voice provides the reader the distance needed from a mother’s traumatic, eventual loss of her four daughters. In order to create a novel filled with death that doesn’t overwhelm the reader, the narrative allows voice to lead the novel. For example, look at how the first death of the novel is conveyed:

La Loca was only three years old when she died. Her mother Sofi woke at twelve midnight to the howling and the neighing of the five dogs, six cats, and four horses, whose custom it was to go freely in and out of the house. Sofi got up and tiptoed out of her room. The animals were kicking and crying and running back and forth with their ears back and fur standing on end, but Sofi couldn’t make out what their agitation was about.

She checked the bedroom with the three older girls: Esperanza, the eldest, had her arms wrapped around the two smaller ones, Fe and Caridad. They were sleeping strangely undisturbed by the excitement of the animals. (19)

The key is in the function, the understanding of how the narrative continues without forcing the reader to drown in the mother’s sorrow.

N.K. Jemisin evolves the third-person omniscient narrator even further to create a juicy, voicy, omniscient voice, which is later revealed to be an actual character in the novel. The novel starts off with that BIG voice:

Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things. First, a personal ending. There is a thing she will think over and over in the days to come, as she imagines how her son died and tries to make sense of something so innately senseless... But you need context. Let’s try the ending again, writ continentally. Here is land. (1)

As the reader continues, the seemingly disparate narrations of the trilogy (second-person, limited serial third-person, etc.) records how the world falls apart, yet, what holds these different tales together is the omniscient narrator. At the end of the first chapter, the omniscient narrator reminds the reader of their role for the trilogy: to recount this story and to ensure the reader understands the trilogy will be about how the world ends, and not if the world ends.

But this is the way the world ends.

This is the way the world ends.

This is the way the world ends.

For the last time. (14)

Let’s Play (Go Hard or Go Home)

Create a big, voicy omniscient narrator with thoughts, opinions, ideas. Make sure the voice is distinct from the voices of all other characters in your story. As you’re creating your story, continue to think about the function the voicy, intrusive narrator serves. What are they adding to the story? How are they facilitating the telling of your story?

The Meta-Intrusion (But-I-No-You)

One additional take on the narrator that boldly incorporates criticism of the omniscient narrator and elevates the function of an omniscient narrator to a meta level is the tit-for-tat between the protagonist, Frank, and the omniscient narrator in Toni Morrison’s novel Home. In this journey story, Morrison allows Frank to have the first and last words.

At the start of the novel, Morrison immerses the reader into Frank’s consciousness, in his first-person narration, “They rose up like men. We saw them. Like men they stood” (3). For the next few pages, Frank describes a memory of seeing horses brutally fight one another and also the burial of a body. In the last paragraph of that chapter, Frank chides the omniscient narrator (or perhaps the author) of the novel, “Since you’re so set on telling my story, whatever you think and whatever you write down, know this: I really forgot about the burial. I only remembered the horses. They were so beautiful. So brutal. And they stood like me” (5). As the novel continues, the omniscient narrator commandeers the story but Frank interjects to inform the reader that the narrator is omitting details from Frank’s stories. After the omniscient narrator alludes to Frank having nefarious intentions, Frank takes his narrative back:

You are dead wrong if you think I was just scouting for a home with a bowl of sex in it. I wasn’t. Something about her floored me, made me want to be good enough for her. Is that too hard for you to understand? Earlier you wrote about how sure I was that the beat-up man on the train to Chicago would turn around when they got home and whip the wife who tried to help him. Not true. I didn’t think any such thing. What I thought was that he was proud of her but didn’t want to show how proud he was to the other men on the train. I don’t think you know much about love.

Or me. (69)

The key with these options is to continue to think about the purpose they can serve a story and how they can facilitate the telling of your story. What role do you want the narrator to play? What purpose can the narrator serve?

Works Cited

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. 1868. Barnes and Noble, 2018.
Castellani, Christopher. The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story. Graywolf, 2016.

Castillo, Ana. So Far From God. Norton, 1993.

Cohn, Dorrit. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction.

Princeton University Press, 1978.

Cron, Lisa. Wired for Story. Random House, 2012.

Eliot, George. Middlemarch. 1871. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Forster, E.M. Howard’s End. 1910. Penguin, 2000.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937. HarperCollins, 1998.

Jemisin, N.K. The Fifth Season. Hatchette Book Group, 2015.

Jones, Edward P. The Known World. HarperCollins, 2003.

---Lost in the City: Stories. 1992. HarperCollins, 2012.

Morrison, Toni. Home. Vintage, 2012.

Ng, Celeste. Everything I Never Told You. Penguin, 2014.

Prose, Francine. Reading Like A Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them. Harper Perennial, 2007.

Wood, James. How Fiction Works. 2008. Picador, 2009.