“This well-written story is incredible knowledgeable, suspenseful, and a truly cool adventure into the world that lies ‘beyond.’”—Suspense Magazine Review of Unraveled Visions by Nina Milton

Under Cover of Midnight: A Midnight Ink Blog: Celebrating Women's History Month #4: Serie-ous Wo...

The Third in the Shaman Mystery Series
in production now

Under Cover of Midnight: A Midnight Ink Blog: Celebrating Women's History Month #4: Serie-ous Wo...: Here at Midnight Ink Headquarters, we find that the best way to celebrate Women's History Month is to talk to our authors whose books f...

Nina Milton, author

Jessie Burton, KTW Quote of the Month

“Every woman is the architect of her own fortune.”http://www.picador.com/authors/jessie-burton

When I read an aphorism  like that, I know I've found a strong heroine who isn't going to disappoint by going all fluffy in the presence of testosterone-ridden muscles and sharp, male jawlines.

The Miniaturist is set in Amsterdam, at the end of the 17th Century. I was rather expecting Girl with a Pearl Earring (Tracey Chevalier, HarperCollins,1999) all over again, which, for me, was a beautifully written romance, but a romance, none the less. The endorsements to this debut novel, which are plastered all over the cover, should have told me otherwise. “Full of surprises” says SJ Watson. “Fabulously gripping” says the Observer. 

I was hoping for exquisite detail…miniaturist detail, in fact, and that I got, but I also found I was reading an absolute page-turner. I  turned the pages of this book all the way from Aberystwyth on the west coast of Wales, to Barnsley, in Yorkshire, on some very slow, long-and-winding, cross-country trains. I hardly noticed the dark, satanic mills, the still snow-capped Pennines or the little towns that moved past my carriage window, because I was in Holland, where silk rustled and sumptuous feasts were consumed as deals were done for the slave sugar of the West Indies…and Nella, eighteen, innocent but savvy, hopes that married life will be the tulip bed she dreamed of as a child. Romance of any kind fails to blossom, and she soon discovers that Jonhannes, the wealthy merchant she’s married, has secrets which will lead them into escalating danger.  In fact, the only the thing that her husband gives her in their marriage is a cabinet house; a doll-house sized, but vastly expensive, replica of their home in Amsterdam. An elusive miniaturist creates tiny items to fill the house, each of which eerily predict the shocks Nella begins to experience.

Despite the fact that The Miniaturist soon became an international best seller, I've taken my time about  reading it because my first encounter was last summer’s Guardian review – http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/29/the-miniaturist-jessie-burton-review

Rachel Cook was not particularly nice to Jessie Burton's first book, and I have to admit, she put me off. But the word-in-the-library was of a wicked page-turner, so in the end I threw reviews to the wind and read it. 

Jessie Burton.
Photograph: Katherine Rose Katherine Rose/Katherine Rose

The Miniaturist has flaws, that's undeniable. I understand exactly why Cooke says, “somehow it fails to convince. Again and again, I found myself thinking: that would not happen. We are expected to take so much on trust…Emotionally, they move from A to Z in the blink of an eye, and nothing in between.”

In writers’ terms, this single problem is the result of a little bundle of plotting issues, which beset us all, and which take time and effort to overcome; implausibility. Like Rachel Cooke, there were times I felt like echoing Victor Meldrew, from One Foot in the Grave, crying; I don’t believe it!

I’m not going to tell you which bits of this book I couldn’t believe. It’s a cracking read, with a vivid period setting, distinctive, even striking characters and a story so seductive and outrageous, it drags you in by the collar of your coat. But, having read the book yourself, you might, as a writer, want to ask yourself what you can learn from its problems. Are there sections of your own stories that are implausible? And if so, what can you do to alter that, so that your eventual readers don’t turn into grouchy Victor Meldrews who long to throw your novel across train carriages?

Naturally you want the reader to feel fully committed to what’s happening on the page. But some confusion arises between being convincing and suspending disbelief, which is what happens when readers are so caught up with the fiction, that they are prepared to go along with what the narrator is telling them, even when it patently could not happen ‘in real life’. New writers mistakenly believe that they can be as implausible as they please, and readers will suspend disbelief when reading their work. Completing a fictional tale isn’t a magic key to the good will of the reader. They will suspend disbelief for you, but you have to work hard to gain their trust beforehand. I recommend five strategies for this problem; 

1. The reader needs to feel grounded within the story. Overload of information, or conversely, lack of relevant information (usually because the writers hasn’t taken into consideration that the reader isn’t familiar with what the writer is telling them), are two major factors. The reader needs time and help to absorb the details of the story. In The Miniaturist, Burton researches her time-period very well, even adding a glossary. But, Nella, as Rachel Cooke points out… “has a sensibility more akin to that of a 21st-century teenager than a 17th-century one: outspoken, determined, reflexively feminist.” This cut me adrift from her as I read – was she really from the 17th Century?
2. Communication with your reader. Stories (or parts of a story) appear implausible because the writer has assumed that the reader ‘will understand’ what they are writing about. Don’t ever assume that; check as you go that your plot is comprehendible and that there are clear links as you move along it, filling in details that will help your reader to keep up with plot developments. It annoyed me, when Nella recalled, towards the novel’s end, all the ‘thrilling conversations’ she and Johannes had, because the reader hadn’t been privy to any of these. We’d barely seen them communicate and when they did, Johannes would peremptorily curtail the dialogue. And yet, Nella seems to gain an affinity with him that I could not credit. 
3. Character development and identification. It’s often the character, especially the narrator, who convinces the reader the story is believable. Your characters should be well-developed on the page, so that the reader can identify, possibly emphasize with them. This links closely with communication above; it will be the narrator who communicates the plot and fills in those all-important linking details. Rachel Cooke writes; “We know their tastes, but little of what lies in their hearts; we know all about their failings, but their motivation remains elusive.” 
4. Cause and effect. When the causes of character action are solidly imbedded in the story, leading directly to the naturally realized effects, the story is likely to feel convincing and believable. There is one plot-line in Jessie Burton’s novel which is never fully explained, and as that concerns the title of the story…the miniaturist who makes strangely predictive furninture for the cabinet house…I felt decidedly let down by this. However, I must commend Burton for the ending to her book. I thought her denouement and final flourishes were cracking – not only plausible, but shocking and perfectly balanced. 

1. Motivation should always be driven by character emotion.  Cook writes, “I had the sense that the novel's characters were simply figures (from a doll's house, perhaps) to be moved around on an Amsterdam-shaped board.” I agreed At times, Burton concentrates too much on her fabulous plot, and forgets the emotional motivation of her characters.  Motivating your characters successfully isn’t easy, but here’s a little template that will help you make that check:
1. The author wants certain things to happen. This creates poor motivation.
2. The actions further a character’s objectives. This creates strong motivation. 

Please don’t let me put you off reading this amazing book. The Miniaturist is a popular choice with bookclubs, and I can see why. It would generate discussion about the era and setting, the story and characters, but especially the themes and events of the book, which are unsettling and powerful. And anyone searching for aphorisms will find an abundance within this story, which is why I’ve chosen Burton as my “Quote of the Month”.

Seven Writing Secrets to Share

Nina Milton is sharing 

Seven Writing Secrets 

with Bea Davenport.

'I thought that would be a great place to bury a body'... 

THE SHAMAN MYSTERY SERIES

by

NINA MILTON

#1 In the Moors

Sabbie Dare is the most compelling protagonist I’ve met this year, and Milton’s tale is riveting: LibraryJournal 

#2 Unraveled Visions

nominated for submission to the  Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award

 in the category of Best Novel: Literary Mystery/Suspense/Thriller 

#3 Beneath the Tor

for release in the US December 2015

Nina Milton is guest blogging for crime novelist and children's writer

 Bea Davenport 

Read author and OCA tutor Nina Milton's great Q and A session here. http://iloapp.beadavenport.com/blog/blog?Home&post=447

Writers Aloud - The Royal Literary Fund

Any desk or table will do -
but is paper and pens really all you need to get started?

Writers' stories are often a help to other writers. They at least demonstrate that other writers have it hard. 

Writing is often the last thing in a person's priorities, as I can tell from the reasons my writing students give me when they ask for extensions to their assignments. First will come their own health, and after that the raft of other pressures on their time; overload from work, problems with children, caring for relatives, and money worries. 

Writing shouldn't cost you much, you'd think – the price of paper and ink. But writers need time, and space, and the equipment to present their work well.

I have just happened upon the website of The Royal Literary Fund for the first time. This is a UK charity that has been helping authors since the 18th century. It provides grants and pensions to writers in financial difficulty; it also places writers in universities to help students develop their writing.  

I discovered its podcast pages, which are full of interest to writers.

Writers Aloud, http://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase-cat/podcasts/?rlf_front=1 I enjoyed listening to other writers tell their stories; Max Adams’ podcast rang particular bells for me as I’ve always believed walking and writing go hand in hand, and famous writers, from Dickens to Byatt, walked themselves into their stories, which is what I do now.

In Focus http://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase-cat/films/?rlf_front=1

is full of video features in which writers talk about their work.

Vox http://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase-cat/audio/?rlf_front=1 is a series of bite-size audio recordings in which RLF Fellows explore topics such as why they write.

Collected http://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase-cat/articles/?rlf_front=1

is a weekly series of articles where writers write about their craft. 

The RLF came into being in 1790 when the founder, the Rev David Williams, was moved by the death of an elderly writer in a debtors’ prison. Although that plight would not befall most authors today, they can still need some financial support if they are to pursue their writing and eat as well. All of the fund's money has come from donations and legacies, and goes towards helping writers in professional difficulties where setbacks have resulted in loss of income, as well as providing pensions for older writers who have seen their earnings decrease. 

Nina Milton at work in her writing space

The Royal Literary Fund is right to be proud of its heritage, but their website proves they are also well up to date and relevant to writers today.

Bookblog for Bookworms: Nina Milton on crime writing

Bookblog for Bookworms: Nina Milton on crime writing: 'The Shaman Mysteries': a trilogy in the making Crime writing is consistently one of the most popular genres in the best-seller li...

Announcing the Third Novel in the Shaman Mysteries: BENEATH THE TOR

I’m proud to announce that the third of the Shaman Mysteries Series is in production, so now I can reveal not only the title of the book, but the cover picture too! 

As a hard-knock kid, Sabbie Dare knew she was different – she saw through the veil that hides other planes of existence. Now she has a shamanic therapy business, she’s still stepping headlong into trouble – when clients unwittingly bring danger with them. 

BENEATH THE TOR

by Nina Milton

On a Midsummer night on Glastonbury Tor, beautiful Alys Hollingberry dies suddenly after dancingaway the night…  

Beneath the Tor continues the dark, atmospheric edge of the previous two books in the series. Sabbie has a mysterious past herself, which she’s only just beginning to unravel, a theme that links the trilogy.

So here, for the first time, is a rundown of the three books in the series:

In the Moors 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shaman-Mystery-Mysteries-Milton-Paperback/dp/B00JYI43KM/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

A body is found buried in the eerie depths of the Somerset Moors. Detective Sergeant Reynard Buckley is sure that shaman Sabbie Dare’s new client, Cliff Houghton—a wounded, broken man—has something to do with the chilling crime, but Sabbie believes Cliff is being set up. Continuing the therapy she'd begun with Cliff, Sabbie uncovers repressed memories hearkening back to a decades-old string of abductions and murders. But after another little boy is abducted, only Sabbie can prove Cliff's innocence . . . and find the real culprit before any more lives are shattered.

Sabbie Dare is the most compelling protagonist I’ve met this year, and Milton’s tale is riveting. Perhaps readers will figure things out before Sabbie does, but the visceral suspense Milton creates is commendable, not to mention terrifying. I like pairing her work with Elly Griffiths’s atmospheric English mysteries; Library Journal

Unraveled Visions 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unraveled-Visions-Mystery-Nina-Milton/dp/0738740055/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8, 

The day after shamanic therapist Sabbie Dare receives a palm reading at the Bridgwater Carnival, she learns that a police detective has been killed and the gypsy fortuneteller has gone missing. Sabbie’s newest client—a scared woman with an angry husband—has also disappeared. Despite warnings from Detective Inspector Rey Buckley to stay away from the investigations, Sabbie can’t ignore the messages of danger she’s received through her shamanic journeys. But as close as she comes to the answers, Sabbie discovers there are people who want to keep the truth buried forever.

It’s impossible to refrain from rooting for such a plucky protagonist…Nina Milton skillfully integrates the shamanistic elements into her mystery making in this sequel to last year’s In the Moors - an absorbing tale. The return of Sabbie Dare is awaited with interest. – Sheila M. Merritt 

Mystery Scene Magazine http://www.mysteryscenemag.com/ 

Beneath the Tor

In production

On a Midsummer night on the Glastonbury Tor, beautiful Alys Hollingberry dies suddenly after dancing away the night. Sabbie Dare and her friends are in shock and when her shamanic guru, Wolfsbane, confesses that Alys may have unwittingly taken drugs during his ritual, Sabbie’s shock turns to horror.  

After receiving sinister, anonymous emails about Alys, her grieving husband,  Brice, approaches Sabbie for help. She turns to the spirit world for guidance, but receives only enigmatic replies. She tries seeking some practical help from her boyfriend Detective Inspector Rey Buckley, but he is embroiled in problems of his own. Sabbie feels isolated, and as she heads closer to the truth about Alys’ death, a deranged killer is also heading towards a final victim, and both are closer to Sabbie than she knows.

Nina Milton has created a unique fictional world in her Shaman Mystery Series,  featuring Sabbie Dare as a young shaman.  They each have a cracking pace and convey the evocative landscapes of Somerset.  Always, the depictions of shamanic journeying are vivid and authentic. Reading them  kept me up at night much later that I wanted, because I could not bear to miss the next bit.

 Ronald Hutton author of ‘The Triumph of the Moon’, ‘Shamans’ and ‘Pagan Brtain’

*Further news and details about Beneath the Tor will be revealed soon. If you're a Shaman Mystery fan, do subscribe to my blogsite so that you can keep up to date with developments.

Trespass - Rose Tremain – The Kitchen Table Crime Review.

Rose Tremain has won the Orange Prize, the Whitbread Award, the Sunday Express Book of the Year and been short-listed for the Booker Prize. So what is she doing, writing a crime thriller? Because you can hide the fact that Trespass, published in 2010, is a novel about murder. 

Maybe she didn’t realize that’s what she was about. Perhaps she thought this terrifying and bleak story documenting the cultural clash between rich, cultured English people and a provincial French family was the usual contemporary literary fiction that is expected from Tremain’s pen. After, the narrative is beautifully written, the language deeply satisfying.  But I don’t think so. She knew what she was doing. After all Tremain is now in her seventies and so just the right age to take over the Crime Writer’s Crown from P G James. And her take on a crime thriller is edged with noir. Each character is filled with deep psychological pain and the opening is classic crime fiction;  a young schoolgirl sees something in the waters of the river. She runs, screaming. The book then takes us from the beginning of the story that leads up to the event which made her scream.

Don’t suppose she’s going to listen to me – why should she – but I think Tremain should keep going with crime. The late PD James said that “A detective story can give a much truer picture of the society in which it’s written than a more prestigious literature.”http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/27/pd-james-in-quotes-adam-dalgliesh And, interviewed, would you believe it, by Amazon Books, James is quoted as  saying “Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can make no reparation, and has always been greeted with a mixture of repugnance, horror, fear, and fascination. We are particularly intrigued by the motives which cause a man or woman to step across the invisible line which separates a murderer from the rest of humanity. Human beings also love a puzzle and a strong story, and mysteries have both”. http://www.amazon.com/Talking-About-Detective-Fiction-James/dp/0307743136

So go for it, Miss Tremain. Your exquisite prose and consistently dark themes are perfect for creating crime noir, and I for one enjoyed Trespass as much as Music and Silence and Restoration. The characters are filled with real existence, despite being to a person damaged by their troubled histories. There is no sympathetic protagonist to latch on to, but even so this is a compelling story. 

jasonbye.photoshelter.com
Novelist, Rose Tremain

The novel centres around Mass Lunel, a crumbling, ancient family farmhouse in the Cevennes in southern France, the home of Aramon Lunel, a man who is so ridden with guilt at the crimes he has committed  in his past and now sickening from a very unhealthy lifestyle. He hits on the idea of selling the house and land, which would net him more money than he has ever imagined. But he needs the help of his half-sister, Audrun, who has suffered a lifetime of abuse at his hands and is now exiled to an ugly modern bungalow on the edge of the land. She is horrified at the idea of selling the family home, especially as her home, and the forest land she inherited with it is threatened by the sale. Alongside this fear, she is already festering with long-term hate and resentment towards Aramon. 

We have already met  Anthony Verey, an elderly antiques dealer with a penchant for young men. When he hits financial trouble in London, he visits his sister, who is living in the Cevennes with Kitty, her lover. Kitty has never been able to stand Anthony and is suspicious of the close bond between the siblings. She know that Anthony would be pleased to break up their French love nest and his horrified when Anthony announces he’s going to buy a property in the area. It’s not long before he claps eyes on Mas Lunel, and he loves it from the start. But he does not love Audrun’s bungalow. He covets her land, too. 

Tremain makes this story a forensic study of the way the shadows from the past always catches up the present until the climax mingles loss of justice with issues of identity and the philosophy of what happiness really is.

This is a troubling book, because it takes crime seriously, examining it for what it really is; messy, dirty. No one comes out of the events within the novel very well. The complexities of all the various relationships and their secret agendas, flare up, as we reach the denouement of the story, and as the book closes, real flames flare, leaving the reader gasping with the strength of the symbolism within it. Tremain wants you to go on thinking about impasse she’s created, long after you close the pages. 

So, even though Tremain writes literary, prize-winning fiction, I recommend that you read this book as if it were a psychological thriller, and then you won’t be disappointed at all.

The Mood Board; a different way of plotting a novel

       There has got to be a thousand different ways

of gaining the inspiration to breathe life into a new writing project.

I'm starting a new novel and I need to stimulate my creativity to bring the infant story to life.

I thought I’d tried  all the different methods of finding ideas and fusing the ideas together to make the story work; wall charts, notebooks, time-lines, character sketches, brainstorming, web-making. But I’ve been motivated by all those interior design programmes on the TV to try a mood board.

Nina's New Novel - the Mood Board

This simply is a cork board onto which I’ve pinned, glued and wedges all the things that are exciting inspiration for the story I’m writing at the moment. 

I’d love to tell you more about this story, but I do believe in the old writers’ maxim; Careless Talk Wrecks Your Plot. So I’ll just say that, yet again, I’m turning to a life of crime. I love examining what happens when people are put in extremis, as both the victims of violent crime and because they are driven to commit atrocities like murder. 

I’ve recently spent time in the East End of London and, in a  lot of ways, I loved it; the vibrancy of the community there feels dynamic and vital. But it is a place where there is a lot of poverty...and a lot of crime. So part of my book will be set there. Another part will be set locally. I’ve been bursting to use the wonderful landscape of west Wales, and I’m heading slightly north to Aberystwyth (the recent home of the TV hit Hinterland) to take advantage of the grey, angry seas, the murmuring starlings over the pier, the infestation of holiday makers, and the rising cliffs with the Victorian Cliff Railway set central. It’s a mixed community, a university town with an Arts Centre and the National Library of Wales, but it also knows poverty. Alongside all this is the long-standing farming community and the bustle of the tourist trade. And, away from the coast, is the windswept raw beauty of the Cambrian mountains and its lakes, which feed the River Teifi.

Trying to gain the right mood for a book is a subtle thing, easily lost as you think up characters and engineer the plot, and I’m really pleased with my mood board. I can easily picture my character's faces; I know about their clothes, their pets, their hobbies and their past stories.

I’m gaining a real sense of my central characters; their lives, their feelings, decisions, flaws; their hopes and fears. In fact; the mood board is helping life inside their worlds. 

Kitchen Table Writers: THE SHAMAN MYSTERIES – British Shamanism, Living t...

Kitchen Table Writers: THE SHAMAN MYSTERIES – British Shamanism, Living t...: Sabbie Dare, Shaman British Shamanism,  Living the Pagan Life, Solving Mysteries and Falling in Love – Sabbie's life revealed. Go to...http://kitchentablewriters.blogspot.co.uk/p/in-moors-first-shaman-mystery.html for all the goss...

THE HOLLOW PLACES; Kitchen Table Writers and the Open College of the Arts

Kitchen Table Writers: Open College of the Arts Creative Writing; The Hollow Places by Nina Milton

Austerlizt by S. G. Sebald; Stellar Authors

Fifteen years ago, WG Sebald suffered a heart attack while driving and was killed instantly in a head-on collision with a truck. He was fifty-seven years old. He was a writer and lecturer, born in Germany but living in England. He has been describes as ‘one of contemporary literature’s most transformative figures’ – he might have won a Nobel if not for his early death.  I have only read one of his four novels, “Austerlitz”, which is a simple enough story, and one told many times before; a Jewish child, sent to England through the Kindertransporte, begins to retrace his roots.

I found it difficult to read; the structure is unsettling, making you feel disorientated, but the narrative voice is richly rewarding. Sebald has a ground-breaking take on structure and storytelling, which felt utterly unique in its breadth. In Austerlitz (and all his novels, I believe), he combines fiction with memoir, essay, psychogeography, biography and history. This is a strange fusion, and it took me a while to get my head around the figurative and literal ramblings of the novel, but in the end, after thinking the oddness through alongside the atmospheric mood of the book, I had to agree with Susan Sontag, who, in the Times Literary Supplement in 2000, was asked if literary greatness was still possible. Her reply; “one of the few answers available to English-language readers is the work of W. G. Sebald.” And in the New Yorker, his work was described as moving the boundaries of narrative fiction as radically as anyone since Borges. 

Reading him is a disorienting experience, partly because of this fusion of forms; I kept wanting this to ‘just be a novel’, but Sebald was not going to let me off the hook that easily. Quite a lot of the narrative is taken up with Austerlitz,  who, having been brought up in Wales as Dafyyd Elias  during and after the war, discovers his real identity and tries to piece together his first, lost four years. As he moves across the continent, he is constantly encountered by the author and at each, apparently random, meeting,  talks deeply of what is in his mind at that given time; long, winding stories, opinions and discussions on philosophical dilemmas, which slowly move things towards the heart of the matter; that his parents put him on a train before being taken to a concentration camp.. 

One of the most disconcerting areas of the book are the photos. These grimy, black and white images are dotted throughout the book and relate directly to Austrelizt's life, as if the real man had handed them to Sebald for publication. I poured over them, and their reality haunted me because, although thewriter makes it clear that he met Austrelitz and is recording their (extremely one-sidedº conversations, it is generally accepted that Austerlitz is a work of fiction. 

As Vertigo, a Sebald-themed blog, points out; The mysterious cover photograph has almost taken on a life of its own. The photograph of a young fair-haired Aryan boy in an all-white costume and holding a white tri-cornered hat…It’s an image that seems to me less connected to the character Austerlitz himself and more to Germany’s pre-World War II nostalgia for a glorious past.(Could that actually be the young Sebald or is it just one of his flea market photograph finds?)

https://sebald.wordpress.com/category/young-austerlitz/

If you want an experience beyond the norm in your reading; if you want to see where novels can go when writers are this brave, read Sebald. 

The Omnisicient Point of View; Can You Be Omnipotent?

out from Midnight Ink Books
available on Amazon and Waterstones

They say, and in my opinion they’re right, that the

 omniscient Point of View (POV) is the hardest

perspective to take as a writer.

It’s oh, so much easier to get inside a head, as I do with my protagonist Sabbie Dare (In the Moors and Unraveled Visions) and write in the first person, or to keep close to that character’s psyche by writing in the ‘limited third person’. But the omniscient has always been there, from the very beginning. It may even be the first real fictional perspective, used by ancient story tellers and used today by writers who want to retell folk stories. Early novels, when they weren’t in diary form, were mostly in the omniscient POV, informing the reader of everything that happens in a god-like manner. Victorian authors, such as Wilkie Collins and Trollop, revelled in it. Children’s authors sometimes return to it – Lemony Snicket’s marvellous 'Series of Unfortunate Events’ being such a recent success. Literary novelists love to have a go, notably Fay Weldon (The Wife’s Revenge) and The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson.  John Fowles used an active, present, author-voice in The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Italo Calvino  And in The Book Thief,  Markus Zusac chose a clever version of the omniscient; the narrator is death itself; I could introduce myself properly, but it’s not really necessary.  You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables.  It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible…You will be lying there (I rarely find people standing up).  You will be caked in your own body…a scream will dribble down the air. 

Are you reading this because you’re  thinking of using this Point of View? Worse; are you struggling with it in the story you’re writing at the moment? Have you turned to writing advice on the internet because you’re wondering if you’ve made a mistake, choosing the omniscient, when there are so many other ways – easier ways – of narrating a story?

POV answers the question: whose voice tells the story – gives us the information we need – tells us what is happening? Does one character control our understanding of events, or do we have an omniscient narrator who gives us facts and insights that the characters themselves do not have? How does the voice or consciousness that acts as the point of view shape our interpretations? What might happen if another point of view took charge?    POV is the hidden camera though which the reader perceives the scene...in fact all the story… and I think at this point it would be good to refresh ourselves on the subject of POV generally.

1. First Person…A character tells their own story – they are the narrator. It is distinguished at all times by the use of the pronoun ‘I’ and the narrator must be in every scene. 
2. Second Person…the writer addresses a third person at all times, using the pronoun ‘you’. Not a popular choice, but works well in short stories, as in the anthology You, Me and a Bit of We (in which on of my own stories appears)
3. 3rd person Limited…sometimes called the 3^rd person subjective, we only see inside one character’s head. The narrator seems to sit on his shoulder, but it’s fairly clear that the character and the narrator are not absolutely the same. It’s a straightforward POV, but because we are only inside on character’s head at a time we are definitely not allowed to wander into others, or view scenes the narrator is not in.
4. 3rd person Deep While using the 3rd Person Limited, above, the writers dips deeply into a single person’s head, until we read what David Lodge describes as  Free Indirect Discourse, which is a bit of a mouthful, so I usually refer to this as filterless monologue The convention that the reader is witnessing the narrator’s thoughts gives the narrative a rich, inner feeling of attachment to the narrator. There are no secrets, everything is exposed. In extreme cases, this might be said to be stream of consciousness, 
    a literary POV best served in fairly small doses.
    Filterless monologue is hard to maintain, but that’s less of a worry because you don’t have to maintain it – you can move in and out of this deeper perspective, because the two 3rd Person POV’s are so close in construction that it is possible to allow a single piece of work to move between them at will, without having technically gone outside  the 3rd Person POV…i.e. use of the pronoun ‘he/she’.  
5. Omniscient….At one end of the range is the god-like perspective, where almost no character is examined closely and there is no ‘dropping down’ into anyone’s consciousness. This is also known as  ‘legitimate authorial standpoint’ and probably the most tricky POV for the 21stC writer. The ‘hovering above the characters’ aspect can feel cold and unaffecting, but allows an ironic overview which achieves a detached, humorous tone.                                                                                                                                 At the other end of the omniscient range is the constant fluctuation between intimate viewpoints, even within the same sentence. Navokovich called this latter approach propelling the reader into a new angle. E.M. Foster called it ‘bouncing’. Excellent for stories in which a richer effect would be created by knowing what several characters think, this gives a ‘lifted’ tone to work.                                                         Because the Omniscient offers a complete range of vision over the narration, the narrator must know everything. You have all the power; you can shift in time and space at whim from character to character, inside thoughts, feelings and motives. It’s your choice as writer what glimpses the the reader will have into any character’s head.                                                                                                                        All this is devilishly difficult to achieve well – most of the examples of omniscient I see as a tutor are errors of judgement on the writer’s part; they’ve moved outside their chosen POV without realizing it. Julia Bell warns that you should avoid ‘headhopping’…An uncontrolled third-person point of view is something I encounter all the time in creative writing workshops, sometimes accompanied by a grumpy writer…every character in the room gets a POV – even the dog. This is just bad writing…
6. 3rd Person Wide-ranging. One way of achieving the effect of an omniscient viewpoint is to approach it casually. By taking a step away from the intimacy of the limited and deep 3rd Person, described above but staying mostly with one character, you’ll gain a more flexible canvas to work on. In this format, a single character is often still the central point of the narration, but the author can tell us what goes on outside their range of vision, even moving into scenes they don’t inhabit. This is used a lot in books where a narrator tells almost all the story themselves, except for some limited scenes – J K Rowling uses it all the time in the Harry Potter books; few readers notice there are scenes that are not in Harry’s 3rd Person POV.               This ‘take’ on the Omniscient allows you to further experiment with style and can be a lot of fun as you move back from being right inside a single head, but it needs professional handling or it can lose its ‘thread’ and become muddled – the writer must be absolutely sure they understand, and are in control, of their perspectives, especially knowing how to tackle ‘chill’ of the Omniscient, because once you move away from that central narrator, you’re not offering the reader the one thing they’re craving; that deep intimacy with a single character they identify with.                                                                                              
7. Plural Viewpoints…the ‘we’ form (2nd person plural) and the ‘they’ form (3rd person plural) are not often used in fiction. For a start they are fiendishly difficult to maintain successfully. But Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides is written from the perspective of a group of boys who grow up fascinated by the Lisbon family and their five daughters, we do not get the sense of one person narrating on behalf of a group.  Instead, a strong collective voice comes through; it could be any one of the boys, or they could even be taking it in turns to narrate…We climbed up to the tree house the way we always had, stepping in the knothole, then on the nailed board, then on two bent nails, before grasping the frayed rope and pulling ourselves through the trapdoor…The oblong window we’d cut with a handsaw years ago still looked onto the front of the Lisbon house.  Next to it were five spotted photographs of the Lisbon girls, pinned with rusty tacks…
8. Multi-viewpoint…This is a popular format, where all the changes of viewpoint are at specific moments in the text; usually the changeover of scene, chapter, etc. Perspectives can also be alternated with other points of view.This is not an Omniscient POV; most multi-viewpoint books don’t touch the Omniscient, they simply move through different viewpoints.  Margaret Atwood uses this technique in The Edible Woman.  To reflect her protagonist’s growing sense of detachment, Atwood starts the novel in first person, switches to third part way through, and changes back to first for the last section of the book. ; i.e. write your chosen piece mostly in a wide-ranging 3rd person, becoming authorial on necessary occasions.

So, how do you choose the right POV? Luckily there is no reason (other than it is somewhat time consuming) why you cannot change POV at the end of a first draft.Almost by definition the reader will perceive the POV character as the most important in a scene and will remain sympathetic to that character. This is a crucial point when deciding which POV to use, especially if you’ve chosen multi-viewpoint. 

You might like to ask some of the following questions about the project you are undertaking at the moment:

• What do you want the reader to know, and therefore, who is the best character to reveal these things…or not?
• Whose voice would tell the story in the most gripping manner?
• Which voice gives us the crucial information we need to understand what is happening? 
• Do you want only one character to control our understanding of events, or would it be preferable to have an omniscient narrator furnishing facts and insights that the characters themselves do not have? 
• Do you need a second perspective to allow the reader to see things a single POV will not cover?

I’d be interested in any of your ideas, experiences or comments on this post, and the struggle writers have with POV. Do let me know through the comment box, please!