I am entering phase two of my literary adaptation of The Knights of the Fish, which involves plotting out the story. That is unusual for me, I being a pantser by nature. I, in fact, did sit down to write—not plot—but nothing happened. The ink did not flow from my pen. I knew I was uneasy about something.

If I wrote in first person, the point of view would shift from the father to one of the twins and then to the other. That seemed a little cumbersome in a short piece. Basically, I’d be “head hopping.” Not a well thought of technique.

Writing in third person would allow me to be the narrator of the story events. That seemed more reasonable. The next question was, do I write in third person omniscient, limited, or objective?

The omniscient allows the most options. I, the narrator, knows all. I can be inside all the characters’ heads, also know things they cannot know, and make comments about it all, even pass judgment.

I never write in the omniscient. It is too hard not to slip into narrator intrusion. The narrator can quickly become a character in the story, upstaging the protagonist, or in this case, the protagonists. The writer can also fall into “telling” when they should be “showing.”

I can’t help but feel there is a trust issue with an omniscient narrator. If there are to be any surprises in the storyline, then the narrator has been holding back on the reader and not telling them certain things.

“What else is the narrator not telling me?”

Another problem is that the writing will sound like 19th-century prose. I asked ChatGPT about this, and it confirmed my impression.

That left me with limited and objective. Limited avoids most of the hazards of the omniscient. The expectation that the narrator knows all is not there. The narrator only knows what the protagonist knows. However, The Knights of the Fish has three protagonists as the storyline shifts from father to son to twin. I was back to the head-hopping of first person.

Therefore, my solution was to write in the objective. I have written in the third person objective. It is difficult, which is why I am comfortable with it. I write to challenge myself. This is what I want.

I still had a problem. Now that my narrator knows no more than the characters, my wish to explore all the notions that the fairy tale suggests becomes problematic, such as why did the fish wish to sacrifice itself? Probing those questions using the objective would lead to thinly disguised as-you-know-Bobs.

What I sensed was that I needed yet another character in the story, who was outside the story, to explore those questions.

(Here I ask you to hear the sound of a conun-DRUM.) NEXT MONTH, I will reveal my exciting conclusion!