: Re: Omniscient POV vs deep 3rd person POV After submitting my manuscript the publisher responded with this: "Thank you so much for your interest in publishing with XXXXXXXXXXXX. The publishing industry,

@Debbie451

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Third-person (he/she, rather than first-person, which is I) omniscient (all-knowing) means that the narration has access to everyone's thoughts.

Whatever character is the focus of the scene is the person whose POV is presented to the reader. So if you start your book with Detective O'Malley and then in the next scene focus on Doctor Freeman, we get the thoughts and perspective of both those people.

Deep third-person means that while it's not an I narrative, the reader gets only the thoughts and perspective of one character. The Harry Potter books are examples of deep third-person. Other than maybe two or three scenes in the entire series, everything is from Harry's POV.

To change from omniscient to deep, you'd have to pick your single main character and jettison any scene which doesn't involve him/her in some way. Any information the reader needs must be provided to the main character in some fashion; the reader never gets to see something which the main character doesn't.

(For the record, the Song of Ice and Fire series, aka Game of Thrones, is third-person omniscient, and is selling just damn fine, thanks.)

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