How to bridge characters’ thoughts in an omniscient POV

Perspective is a foundational storytelling building block in novels. Having a consistent perspective in your novel is absolutely crucial, but many beginning writers don’t give sufficient thought to the perspective they choose and its strengths and limitations.

This is particularly important if you’re writing in third person, because omniscient and third person limited are two distinct approaches. Often I see writers who think they’re writing in omniscient, but what they’re actually doing is the dreaded “head hopping,” or “head jumping,” bouncing between third person limited perspectives and creating a disorienting experience for the reader.

At the same time, one of the primary advantages of an omniscient perspective is that it has the ability to dip into multiple characters’ minds via an all-seeing point of view. It just needs to be done in a way that doesn’t jar the reader.*

In this post, I’m going to cover why head hopping should be avoided at all costs, then draw upon two masterful uses of the omniscient perspective, Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko and Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger, to show some techniques for guiding the reader from one character’s mind to another’s.

The problem with head hopping

In order to express what’s bad about head hopping, let’s start with what the perspective in a novel is entirely: It’s the reader’s “view” of a scene.

When we read a novel, we situate ourselves either in a specific character’s mind and imagine the surroundings from that vantage point (third person limited), or from a more god’s-eye perspective where it’s almost like we’re a fly on the wall or looking down from above (omniscient). Everything we read in a novel, from the setting, to who is doing what, to how far away things are from each other, we contextualize with that vantage point in mind. Problems arise when we’re abruptly yanked from one vantage point to another.

Sometimes writers think they’re writing an omniscient POV, but they’re actually filtering the scene through multiple characters’ minds and stringing together a series of perspectives in a confusing way. The reader attaches to a character and imagines the scene from their vantage point. But then the writer will abruptly yank the reader directly into another character’s mind. All of a sudden we have to re-imagine the scene from a new “place.” Then the writer abruptly changes gears to another character. And another. It gets extremely disorienting to imagine where we “are” within a scene and we keep having to reconstruct the scene anew.

A true, consistent omniscient perspective is not a string of third person limited head jumps around a scene. It’s its own voice, almost as if it’s a unique character, even if the omniscient voice is never named. The key is that we consistently imagine the scene from the omniscient narrator’s perspective, even as we dip into individual characters’ minds.

The omniscient narrator–let’s call it Omni–is our guide and we construct our vantage point through Omni’s point of view. Not a string of random head hops. If we’re dipping into individual characters’ minds, it’s because that’s where Omni wants to take us.

Establish an authoritative voice

In order to anchor the reader to Omni’s point of view, it helps to immediately establish our guide’s authoritative voice. Here’s how Min Jin Lee starts off Pachinko:

History has failed us, but no matter.

At the turn of the century, an aging fisherman and his wife decided to take in lodgers for extra money. Both were born and raised in the fishing village of Yeongdo–a five-mile-wide islet beside the port city of Busan. In their long marriage, the wife gave birth to three sons, but only Hoonie, the eldest and the weakest one, survived.

Instead of starting off the novel with Hoonie, or Hoonie’s parents, Pachinko starts with a declarative statement that can only come from Omni. It’s an authorial, sweeping voice. Omni then establishes where we are in time and space, then zeroes in a particular family, then a particular son. We move quickly from expansive to specific, with Omni as our guide.

After a brief prologue, Barry Unsworth starts Chapter 1 of Sacred Hunger slightly differently than Lee, where we’re focused on a specific character. But as in Pachinko, it includes sweeping statements that can only come from Omni (emphasis mine) that subtly helps us grasp who our guide really is:

The ship he meant was the Liverpool Merchant, Captain Saul Thurso, and he had never seen her, though she carried the seeds of all his dreams in her hold.

She carried death for the cotton broker who owned her, or so at least his son believed. For Erasmus Kemp it was always to seem that the ship had killed his father, and the thought poisoned his memories. Grief works its own perversions and betrayals: the shape of what we have lost is as subject to corruption as the mortal body, and Erasmus could never afterwards escape the idea that his father had been scenting his own death that drab afternoon in the timber yard…

From start to finish, it’s always clear who’s narrating Sacred Hunger and Pachinko, and everything is filtered through Omni’s voice.

Minimize shifts within a scene

Sometimes writers feel it’s necessary to “check in” with everyone within a scene in order to show what all the various characters are thinking. This can quickly feel to a reader like we’re riding a very dizzying merry-go-round.

We don’t “need” to check in with a character. There’s no obligation to tick everyone’s thoughts off on a list. And Lee and Unsworth are judicious with how often we dip into characters’ minds within a scene. The only reason we shift is because it builds to our overall understanding of what’s happening. We’re not ping-ponging between characters’ heads, we’re gently and sparingly guided.

One challenge with an omniscient perspective is that there’s a risk of having too many different shallow perspectives without forging a deep attachment to the core characters. Every time you shift us over to see what a minor character is thinking, it dilutes our connection to the most important protagonists, and it may obscure why they’re doing what they’re doing.

For Lee, it was important to her to show a broader cross-section of society in Pachinko, but in an interview she acknowledges it risks a reader’s intimacy with particular characters compared to other points of view:

I write social novels—novels about society and the problems I see about society. I didn’t want to write from one character’s point of view. Of course, you could have alternating chapters with third-person or first-person limited, which I find a bit tricky because unless the voice is profoundly distinct, the reader doesn’t always identify the character properly. Also, I have so many characters that I wouldn’t want to limit the shifting perspective to let’s say, three or four characters. I prefer omniscient for my purposes, but I do admire first and third limited point of view a great deal for their intimacy.

Consider carefully every time Omni chooses to dip into another character’s head, limit the disruptions, and gut check whether you’re sticking with your core characters enough to connect with their motivations and hopes and dreams.

Gently shift the reader to another character’s thoughts

Once we dip into a particular character’s head within a scene, it can be jarring to then suddenly shift straight to another character’s thoughts. Even if we trust that we’re in Omni’s sure hands, it can feel disorienting if it’s too abrupt.

One technique that Lee and Unsworth employ is to utilize a bit of physical description to “reset” the scene before we dip into a different character’s thoughts.

In this scene in Pachinko, Lee gently shifts us between brothers Yoseb and Isak, and Isak’s wife Sunja by interspersing the individual characters’ thoughts with a bit of physical description to guide us to the next character (emphasizing the “resets”):

Yoseb wrapped his arms around his brother and pulled him close. Here, the only other person Yoseb ever touched was his wife, and it was gratifying to have his kin so near–to be able to feel the stubble of his brother’s face brush against his own ears. His little brother had facial hair, Yoseb marveled.

“You grew a lot!”

They both laughed because it was true and because it had been far too long since they had last seen each other.

“Brother,” Isak said. “My brother.”

“Isak, you’re here. I’m so glad.”

Isak beamed, his eyes fixed to his elder brother’s face.

“But you’ve grown much bigger than me. That’s disrespectful!”

Isak bowed waist-deep in mock apology.

Sunja stood there holding her bundles. She was comforted by the brothers’ ease and warmth…

In Sacred Hunger, Chapter 16 is a long string of jumps from character to character aboard the Liverpool Merchant slave ship, from Paris to Morgan to Thurso to Billy Blair back to Paris to Wilson to Deakin back to Paris and so on. And yet with as many different characters’ thoughts we see, each transition is smooth and the disruptions are minimized. We don’t bounce back and forth at random, and only tend to return to the major characters’ points of view.

Here’s how Unsworth handles the first transition from Paris (the ship’s doctor) to Morgan (the cook) to Thurso (the captain). I’m skipping some of the dialogue and emphasizing the “resets” for clarity:

‘What is lobscouse?’

‘That is according to what goes in it.’

There was something sullen in this and Paris realized after a moment that the man distrusted him and perhaps thought his question some kind of a trick…

‘Very good, sir. I will get the boy to bring it below.’

‘No,’ Paris said. ‘I am unwilling to wait so long. I will have it here and now.’

‘Here, sir?’ Scandalized into directness at last, Morgan permitted himself a stare. ‘In the galley?’ He saw a smile come slowly to transform the surgeon’s white face.

‘Yes,’ Paris said. ‘And as soon as may be.’

From his place by the helm Thurso had watched the emergence of his surgeon with an ill-will tempered only by his weariness.

The entire chapter is almost constructed like there’s a camera moving smoothly through the scene, picking different characters to focus on. That’s Omni guiding us, thanks to Unsworth’s skillful craft.

Err on the side of omniscient physical description

Typically with an omniscient perspective, Omni is the one who sets the scene. The overall scene is described from a god’s-eye point of view, rather than filtered through a particular character’s senses. We start with an overall view before we zero in on the particular character that will be the focus of the scene.

For instance, this is how Unsworth starts the aforementioned Chapter 16 in Sacred Hunger, which is a classic way of utilizing an omniscient voice to set the scene (I’m emphasizing the shift to a particular character):

When the Liverpool Merchant was three days out and rounding to clear the island of Anglesey, the weather thickened and squalls began to build up from the south-east. Through the night they grew in strength and by mid-morning of the next day it was blowing so hard that the trysail and topsails and later the foresail had to be handled and the boats lashed to the scuppers. The ship plunged under mainsail alone in a high, irregular sea.

These were dark hours for Paris. Feeling the disquiet approaching seasickness, he took some powdered ginger-root as a preventive and afterwards went up for air.

That said, even in an omniscient point of view, sometimes it’s helpful to show how a particular character is observing something or someone within the scene. Not every single bit of physical description must be filtered through an omniscient lens.

For instance, when Sunja meets Kyunghee, her sister-in-law, we pause in the middle of the scene to show Kyunghee’s first impression of Sunja:

Kyunghee stood close by Sunja and stroked her hair.

The girl had an ordinary, flat face and thin eyes. Her features were small. Sunja was not ugly, but not attractive in any obvious way. Her face and neck were puffy and her ankles heavily swollen. Sunja looked nervous, and Kyunghee felt sorry for her and wanted her to know that she needn’t be anxious. Two long braids hanging down Sunja’s back were bound with thin strips of ordinary hemp. Her stomach was high; and Kyunghee guessed that the child might be a boy.

In this scene, Kyunghee’s first impression of Sunja is important to the scene and the broader narrative, so it makes sense for Lee to “break” the “rule” that the physical description should always be from Omni’s POV. It’s important that we see how Kyunghee views Sunja.

Just do so judiciously, and remember that we’re seeing the physical description this way because Omni thinks it’s important.

Let Omni be your reader’s guide

The most important overall writing principle around omniscient narration is that it is ultimately Omni who is guiding the reader through the narrative. Whether you simply think of your omniscient voice as Omni, name the omniscient narrator yourself, or craft an unnamed character who’s narrating, there’s a unified voice that serves as an overarching point of view.

It’s cohesive. It’s authoritative. It is not a scattered string of third person limited thoughts.

So as you revise, put yourself in the shoes of someone unfamiliar with the world of the novel, and get in tune with Omni as your reader’s guide. Ask yourself whether Omni is helping the reader imagine the scene and smoothly leading the reader between the different characters.

And if you need to see how it’s done, dip back into Sacred Hunger and Pachinko for craft lessons from two masters.

*I want to caveat that avoiding head jumping is the current storytelling vogue in the western traditional publishing world. In the past, such as 1970s/1980s fantasy and science fiction, writers head jumped with abandon in some much-beloved novels. You ultimately have to write the novel you want to write in the style you want to write it, but if your goal is traditional publication, it’s important to keep the current market in mind.

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Art: Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise by Pierre-Auguste Renoir