Multiple POV

[anthrodisiac]

Wouldn't this be more of an ensemble cast that doesn't have a single main character?

The main character isn't always the one who gets the most POV time. Think of Sherlock, or Great Gatsby. The POV character isn't actually the focal point of the story, but the lens through which the MCs are viewed. It's usually the case that the MC(s) are the ones with the most POV time, but not always.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I've done multiple POV to let the reader hear the story from all the perspectives of all the characters involved in the story.
Each character only tells the part of the story they participate in and how they see it. Since I use first person, the reader gets to see things through their eyes.
Granted it might be an amateur way of telling the story from a POV who doesn't know everything that is happening to keep things from the reader also.

Third-person, even omniscient, can still hide things from the reader. The narrator always gets to choose what to tell the reader and what to keep from them. Granted, an omniscient narrator has to do a big more in-universe logic rather than simply "Nah, not gonna tell you this" or else the reader can feel cheated, but there are plenty of ways around that. Lies of omission, or an unreliable narrator, burying the truth within a bunch of other details, things like that can obfuscate details you, the author, don't want the reader to obviously know. Or you can simply not focus on the scene where the info comes out, that's perfect valid as well, same as you would in 1P.

 

[Duil2]

Third-person, even omniscient, can still hide things from the reader. The narrator always gets to choose what to tell the reader and what to keep from them. Granted, an omniscient narrator has to do a big more in-universe logic rather than simply "Nah, not gonna tell you this" or else the reader can feel cheated, but there are plenty of ways around that. Lies of omission, or an unreliable narrator, burying the truth within a bunch of other details, things like that can obfuscate details you, the author, don't want the reader to obviously know. Or you can simply not focus on the scene where the info comes out, that's perfect valid as well, same as you would in 1P.

Sure I agree.
Personally I don't like omniscient so I'd always opt for either 1st person or close 3rd person but that's a personal choice.
I get better immersed in telling the story.
They're all valid approaches to my mind. Some will be less popular than others for sure though.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Sure I agree.
Personally I don't like omniscient so I'd always opt for either 1st person or close 3rd person but that's a personal choice.
I get better immersed in telling the story.
They're all valid approaches to my mind. Some will be less popular than others for sure though.

Every approach is valid. It's the execution that differentiates them. Some are more difficult than others, but there really any general technique that is invalid for telling a story, simply those that are more likely to work better than others. And even then, it's still "more likely" and not "always better." Someone could do a purely character-driven story from third-person omniscient and do it beautifully, while someone else does it first-person and just blows it. It's where craft comes into play. It's like choosing a difficulty to play a game at. Some modes are harder than others, but none are truly impossible.

 

[TheLobster]

It's like choosing a difficulty to play a game at. Some modes are harder than others, but none are truly impossible.

What’s the equivalent of a no-hit Dark Souls run using only a Broken Sword Hilt? Writing a 2P PoV story that’s actually readable?

 

[Duil2]

Every approach is valid. It's the execution that differentiates them. Some are more difficult than others, but there really any general technique that is invalid for telling a story, simply those that are more likely to work better than others. And even then, it's still "more likely" and not "always better." Someone could do a purely character-driven story from third-person omniscient and do it beautifully, while someone else does it first-person and just blows it. It's where craft comes into play. It's like choosing a difficulty to play a game at. Some modes are harder than others, but none are truly impossible.

And to be honest, at this point in my life I'm much more likely to take the path of least resistance

 

[Kelliezgirl]

What’s the equivalent of a no-hit Dark Souls run using only a Broken Sword Hilt? Writing a 2P PoV story that’s actually readable?

We need a story written from the perspective of 3 primary characters.
One character in 1P, one in 3P, and the last in 2P.

 

[Britva415]

There are plenty of novels where the story follows different characters, but how many aee written in 1P from multiple characters perspective?
That's the real issue to me. There aren't many, and there's a reason for it.

And when they do do it, they do it with a necessary minimum number of the 1p POV characters.

 

[Britva415]

I've done multiple POV to let the reader hear the story from all the perspectives of all the characters involved in the story.
Each character only tells the part of the story they participate in and how they see it. Since I use first person, the reader gets to see things through their eyes.
Granted it might be an amateur way of telling the story from a POV who doesn't know everything that is happening to keep things from the reader also.

What I feel is amateur about it is the plausibility. What is it that's getting these various people to tell their various parts, and how do they know what parts to tell and not tell? How do they know how to make their part fit in the overall story? How are all the different characters aware that there is an overall story being told, and how it's composed? What motivates people with utterly conflicting motives to go ahead and cooperate in this cooperative storytelling?

People will tell me (and have) that I'm wrong for regarding the 1p voice/PoV as an in-universe act of storytelling. I can swallow that up to a point. It's easier when there really is only one narrator. But the more of them that get spammed into the manuscript, the harder it is for me to interpret it as a stream-of-consciousness the author magically has access to, because the things in their consciousness have been contrived to fit the things we're supposed to believe are in other people's consciousness for narrative purposes.

I don't necessarily object to the author having the omniscience to do this, but when the things being narrated are just too convenient to believe the characters are really experiencing them, it's... neon glowstick colored play strings.

 

[Britva415]

Third-person, even omniscient, can still hide things from the reader. The narrator always gets to choose what to tell the reader and what to keep from them. Granted, an omniscient narrator has to do a big more in-universe logic rather than simply "Nah, not gonna tell you this" or else the reader can feel cheated, but there are plenty of ways around that. Lies of omission, or an unreliable narrator, burying the truth within a bunch of other details, things like that can obfuscate details you, the author, don't want the reader to obviously know. Or you can simply not focus on the scene where the info comes out, that's perfect valid as well, same as you would in 1P.

My feeling is, if the author wants the reader to know some shit happened, why is the person who doesn't know that shit the one telling the story?

There can be good reasons, and, if there are, then maybe not revealing it to the reader at all is a good option. Maybe not having the unknowing character narrate the story is a good option. Pasting in a separate narrator just to work around the MC's lack of omniscience doesn't generally strike me as one.

 

[Katiel3036]

I am currently working on a story that needs multiple POV, at least 3 and could be up to 6. At the moment, it is written in first person, but that could be changed.

My concern is balance. Some characters are getting more page time than others. Does that matter?

No, if you are writing first person then that character should have the most. Put your self in their shoes. How dose he or she feel, or see. I love first person stories because it really allows you to bond emotionally with the character.
Hope that help.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

Thought about this some more. @Writer61 you could mix & match. Have one primary MC and keep it 1P, and do 3P close for the rest of the characters. Depends on how balanced the focus is, I think that would only work if it's heavily skewed towards the MC.

Robert B. Parker did that for some of his novels.

 

[Britva415]

Thought about this some more. @Writer61 you could mix & match. Have one primary MC and keep it 1P, and do 3P close for the rest of the characters. Depends on how balanced the focus is, I think that would only work if it's heavily skewed towards the MC.

Robert B. Parker did that for some of his novels.

Yeah.

A RBP novel is a story about basically one thing. Sometimes it's necessary to provide some info which is "off screen" as far as the narrating character's POV goes, but those side bits are necessary to tell that story.

There can be stories which are "about more than one thing," and which really are just intertwined stories, and sometimes a really good plotter can make the intertwined stories tell a story that adds up to something bigger than the sum of the sub stories, but (A) it's hard and (B) it's STILL a story about one thing. ALL the sub stories are subordinate to it.

So to OP the real question I think they'd do well to know the answer to is, what is the ONE thing they want this story to be about? Knowing that, making parts of it fit is a problem that solves itself.

 

[liliput1]

I just finished reading Memory, Sorrow and Thorn earlier this year. It's very noticable how his attitude to PoV shifts after the first two-thirds of the first book which is definitely one main PoV with wandering switches into secondary characters and then on becomes a more rounded cast of equally important characters. Definitely an improvement as a little of his main character goes a long way. It's also very noticable how, once he's properly underway, his MC no longer has to accidentally overhear important political and plot developments multiple times in successive chapters. Great books nevertheless.

It's also worth studying G.R.R. Martin for an example of PoV creep going completely off the rails. The first Game of Thrones book (i.e. A Game of Thrones) is fairly tight in the number of characters - four or five members of the same family, an inside view of the enemy family and someone a thousand miles away whose import can clearly been seen but has (almost) no direct connection to anyone else yet. That grows over the next few books but is mostly still managable - mostly getting PoVs to characters we know who are becoming more important (and fan favourite) Then by books four and five (which are really part of the same mega-book) he's handing out PoV's like candy to multiple new people we've never heard of in regions we've never been to before and then not giving reasonable development space to the new characters he's introducing (how could he with so many?)

For myself, I'm more structure-focused than most, so I like it when these things nicely balance out (at least roughly) in terms of word count and, sometimes, in the order we visit and revisit characters. Spitballing here, but I imagine that there are some rules you can ask yourself when deciding to introduce a new character or not:

1) Can I achieve the same narrative goals without introducing this character?
2) What am I going to do with this character once this critical plot point is done?
3) Does this character have a defined arc which the reader is going to be interested in following? Do they need one?
4) Am I willing to put in the ground work and extra words needed to make this a proper character with their own unique voice, motivations and backstory, or are they just going to be an extra 'camera' focused on the actually important people in the story.
5) Could this character end up being more popular with readers than the 'real' MC of the story? Is that a problem if it happens?

More to the point, a good question is:

6) What is the absolute minimum number of PoV's I need to tell this story? Is there any good reason not to use that minimum?

I'm sure there are more, but that's a start at least.

Williams brings back a lot of different PoVs in the Osten Ard books. Also it's worth noting that Martin lists Memory Sorrow and Thorn as an influence for ASOIAF, so that compromises it as a distinct example since it's partially derivative.

Broken Earth by Jemisin is telling parallel stories and not so parallel stories. It becomes obvious early on that one of the stories is not in the same timeline as the others, since a very obvious cataclysm hasn't happened in that story. Children of Time and The Expanse also run different stories in parallel. But you sort of have to with system politics like that.

 

[liliput1]

The main character isn't always the one who gets the most POV time. Think of Sherlock, or Great Gatsby. The POV character isn't actually the focal point of the story, but the lens through which the MCs are viewed. It's usually the case that the MC(s) are the ones with the most POV time, but not always.

I think if you're planning to break perspective, making the narrator not be the MC is probably better. Watson gets to show Holmes as both less and more than he appears at the same time. Because he is very much a man, but also he understates his own best attributes. They are simply facts rather than something to be remarked upon. Listening to Holmes all fucking day would be horrific.

 

[liliput1]

I will once again offer up The Afterparty as counterpoint that satirizing the rules here to make something fun can work, occasionally.

We get the same exact story from 8 perspectives, and we see these people in all their narcissism, neuroses, and secret hurts. Every single one of them is an unreliable narrator, one of them is a killer, and a slightly unhinged detective has to figure it out, with the help of a neurotic suspect. They stretched the premise to 2 seasons and then bowed out.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

Williams brings back a lot of different PoVs in the Osten Ard books. Also it's worth noting that Martin lists Memory Sorrow and Thorn as an influence for ASOIAF, so that compromises it as a distinct example since it's partially derivative.

Broken Earth by Jemisin is telling parallel stories and not so parallel stories. It becomes obvious early on that one of the stories is not in the same timeline as the others, since a very obvious cataclysm hasn't happened in that story. Children of Time and The Expanse also run different stories in parallel. But you sort of have to with system politics like that.

I would add that with Broken Earth, the 'realization' of what's happening isn't immediate (at least it wasn't for me, and given the names, I'll maintain that it wasn't meant to be). It's really well crafted, especially the reveal in book 3.

I'm assuming that took some serious plotting, I'm not sure how you could ever pants something like that. (I know that's getting off the POV topic, but believe it's quite related )

 

[liliput1]

I would add that with Broken Earth, the 'realization' of what's happening isn't immediate (at least it wasn't for me, and given the names, I'll maintain that it wasn't meant to be). It's really well crafted, especially the reveal in book 3.

I'm assuming that took some serious plotting, I'm not sure how you could ever pants something like that. (I know that's getting off the POV topic, but believe it's quite related )

It's a difficult series to discuss around people who have not read it. I feel like she said something about how she handled that but I'll be fucked if I can find it now. The 2P aspect is quite something, but it works because it's written like a love or a fan letter. You did these things and this is how I feel about them.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

It's a difficult series to discuss around people who have not read it. I feel like she said something about how she handled that but I'll be fucked if I can find it now. The 2P aspect is quite something, but it works because it's written like a love or a fan letter. You did these things and this is how I feel about them.

Agreed. If you ever find it, please send me the link, I'd be interested

She did a lot of things that I don't think would work for most people.