Writing popular fiction

looked up the long road toward the mansion that rested at the top of the hill. It would be a long walk in the dark, but he was determined to make it. Foolish man! You suspect nothing, anticipate only joy. But ahead, for you, lies more evil than you ever expect to encounter. Pity him, gentle reader, for the unutterable horrors he must soon face, and pray that his moral fiber and his long-held convictions will see him through these tribulations.
    Ninety-nine percent of the novelists who used the pure omniscient viewpoint have passed into total obscurity: their work is now unreadable. Of the few whose talent was strong enough to permit such indulgences, nearly all have their work edited or abridged in modern editions to eliminate the worst of these stylistic ineptitudes. A modern category fiction writer must never permit himself the pure omniscient viewpoint, must never obstruct the plot with asides to the reader or with small sermons. First of all, such asides often give away events or at least the outline of events to come, thereby destroying the reader's suspension of disbelief. (If he
knows
the story is carefully planned out, he cannot kid himself that all of this is unfolding before his eyes.) Second, such pauses in the narrative flow tend to
tell
the reader what he should be
shown
through dramatic action.
    Many new genre writers use the pure omniscient viewpoint without being aware of it, shaping it a bit to fit modern tastes but making the same basic mistake as all those long-forgotten novelists. They may begin a piece like this:
Leonard turned the car around and drove back toward the house, sorry that he had yelled at Ellen that way. He was going to have to apologize; otherwise, he would be awake all night with the knowledge of what a fool he'd been. As it turned out, he would have been far better off had he gone to a motel as planned and stayed awake until the small hours. He couldn't know that then, however.
    This foreshadowing is less irritating than the long-winded omniscient commentary, but as undesirable. If you want to create a sense of impending doom, you must do it in mood words and suspenseful events, not with coy hints to the reader.
    The modified omniscient viewpoint differs from the pure omniscient because it never stops to sermonize or comment directly to the reader. The author must show, not tell. The only similarity between the two voices is that the author may tell the story from many different character viewpoints, which is advantageous.

THIRD PERSON LIMITED VIEWPOINT
    The third person limited viewpoint differs from the omniscient viewpoints, because the writer stays with the hero, showing the reader only what transpires around the hero, describing other characters mostly through the hero's perceptions of them. The advantages here lie in the ease with which the lead can be made sympathetic. If the author does not have to jump from character to character, he has time to make the hero vivid, and he will more likely snare the reader than if he treats all the characters equally; the reader will know at once where his sympathies should lie and can quickly identify the hero. For example, in the average 60,000-word suspense novel, with a 4,000-word first chapter, it is far easier to develop a likable, single lead than to attempt to sympathetically describe four or five different characters in the same space. And with your attention focused primarily on the one hero, that character can be even more well rounded and strengthened in subsequent chapters.

FIRST PERSON LIMITED VIEWPOINT
    When you employ the first person narrative voice, in which the hero tells his own story, you strengthen further the advantages of concentrating on a single lead character. If your lead is fresh, untyped, and individual, he can best be presented by letting him color the story events with his own judgments. The serious drawback to first person narration is the awkwardness with which the hero must speak of himself. Writing in third person, you can be objective; but if he is telling about himself, he cannot dwell too much on his own appearance or thoughts, lest he appear unsympathetic and egomaniacal.
    The new writer should stick with the third person limited viewpoint until he has sold a number of pieces, if only because three-quarters of all the novels sold and published are told in that voice.
    In conversation, I am an incurable anecdote-teller, no matter what the subject, and I like to think I tell them amusingly.