Fiction writers everywhere, let's think about point of view. :)

Sometimes I wish that third person omniscient hadn't gone out of style as a legitimate storytelling voice, since it's often the most cinematic and can really capture a visual setting like no other POV. Third person limited is what I usually strive for in any given scene for the majority of my books, but to me, there is nothing more tiresome than forcing yourself to be stuck inside a character's head when the story longs to breathe, expand a bit and show the reader an insight they won't otherwise see, at least for a paragraph or two.

Vintage fantasy and SF often walks a balanced line between omniscient and limited POV with great effect. I find this lends the story a mythic weight that is missing from modern fantasy--at least where young adult literature is concerned.

I'm having issues with this right now. I was trying to rewrite a chapter from a work-in-progress, and I'm longing to write in omniscient for a bit, just to panoramically scan the camera across the scene before seeping into my character's head. If I were writing fantasy in the 70's, I wouldn't question this choice.

Here for example is the current opening line of Daughter of the Skies:

"Two suitors came to Alhimins Hall, to the mountain stronghold of the Jötnar, to woo the Skylord’s daughter."

Even for the genre I'm writing in, this is decidedly old-fashioned. The newly published stuff in Barnes & Noble reads more like this:

"Ellisif's life changed forever the day Wotan rode into her father's hall."

Or, the recently popular first person present tense, of which I am not a big fan:

"From the tower window, I can see the crow-man in the garden. He is waiting to talk to me. Or rather, to my twin sister. I still haven't corrected him. Ellisif frowns at me from across the room. I know she disapproves, but..." etc. etc.

Yeah, this is obviously a caricature and not the best example I could come up with, but that's more or less an approach I see a lot in YA, especially those paranormal romances and dystopias. There's nothing wrong with these books. They get the plot started faster than I do. But they're so...modern. Colloquial, even.

My sentence is quaint, but without it, I lose something vital that I want in that story. I lose the resonance of the diction, the feel of an old legend unfurling. Most importantly, if I begin in limited third with my heroine, I lose the word "two."

The last words of the book, completely out of context, are as follows: "...learning once again to be whole." My choice is not merely an effort to sound archaic. I begin the novel with the word "two": duality, schism, a choice of options. I end on "whole": oneness, unity, selfhood.

I can't do this if I begin the story inside my heroine's head, in limited third. Most of the book is indeed in limited third, alternating between the two sisters' POV's, for immediacy and relatability. I reserve at least a paragraph or two at the beginning to set a mood, an atmosphere, but maybe literary agents won't agree with me when I start submitting this manuscript. We'll see.