Writing novels with multiple perspectives

Well, it's all in the execution. I'm sure it can work.

In women's fic, this seems to be extremely common. I'm not sure exactly why. But I swear more than 1/2 of the women's fiction blurbs I read are for a group of friends or sisters, or something along those lines. Usually 3.

Anyways, I see the problems as:
1) The reader might only like one or two of the storylines, and get frustrated when they come to one of the others.
2) Confusion over the characters, as there are often more secondary characters in such a book.
3) Not enough space to properly develop each plotline, thus making each arc seem relatively simplistic - I think this is the biggest problem.
4) The book takes a long time to "start up" because we need to be introduced to so many characters and problems. (eg. J. Courtney Sullivan's Maine).

I'm thinking you might like Maggie Shipstead's Seating Arrangements. Though there were a few POVs in that one that I could have done without.

So, you have 11 characters, 7 story arcs, 4 narrative arcs, and 3 families.

How many POV characters are there? People we follow?

What I see, is that you have 60K, with that many characters. That's barely 15 pages to focus on a character, let alone characterize while the story and problems mount.


You can do what you wish, LJD listed out some of the problems, and it will be very hard to assess everything.

I've read books with many, many characters and POV changes between each, but in a span of a series, and I really only followed a few character arcs.

My concern is also the word count. I have a rather simple fantasy quest structure manuscript (75K), and it tells the story from alternating point of view of three characters; plus, it has only two clearly outlined subplots. Now that I'm at the finish line, and in the rewrites, edits, and revisions world, I can tell you that I examine each page with a lens: does this part have to be there? Is this character likable enough for us to keep following his/her inner path? Did I give enough for the reader to connect to the plot and each major player in the game? Is there depth?
Dunno. At least I don't see much room to cut out, on the contrary, I feel like I can always tell a little more, dig a little deeper with the story and the characters. Are you sure you are giving it enough attention? If not, you might end up with a longer story that you expect.

On another hand, I believe book Wonder (MG) follows multiple characters and manages to do it in a shorter span with a great skill. So maybe forget about all I've said, and trust your gut.

flowerburgers said:

It's a third person omniscient narrator, so I think everyone is a POV character at some point,

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That's not how omni works.

caw

blacbird said:

That's not how omni works

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blacbird is right...

11 characters and four major story arcs seems out of balance in a 50-60k novel. It seems to me that your story might be too hurried with little depth.

On the other hand, all you can do is write it and see what happens.

blacbird said:

That's not how omni works.

caw

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This is correct. The omniscient story means there's an all seeing, all knowing, narrator. You experience the story through the narrator's eyes.

When I read the title of this post, I immediately thought of GRRM's ASOIAF, which tells the story from multiple POVs but still manages to have great depth in each character. But then each book has over 100K words. I would be concerned that you have too many characters to fit into 60K, so my suggestion would be to keep it to the four major char's POVs or even fewer.

Other than that, multiple POVs are fun to write. I love finding out things about characters from different POVs (I'm thinking of THE HELP and ASOIAF)...and it's a great way to inject humor and suspense (such as in BARTIMAEUS). Just start writing and you'll get a feel for the characters whose voices want to be heard more than others...and don't limit yourself to 60K. Write until the story ends, whenever that is, and then go back and prune the excess.

I second all the above - multiple POV can work, but you seem to have a lot of POVs/plot arcs for 60k. You have to ask yourself whether all this 'texture' is really necessary, or is it just padding/character exploration that detracts from the main story arc.

Interestingly enough (for me at least) I just listed all the POV characters in my novel and then counted up how many scenes they hold POV - turns out it's a pretty even split between my FMC and MMC, with 17 scenes each, then an even three way split between the antag and two secondary characters, with 4 scenes each. That's on the basis of 12 chapters, about halfway through the novel. The antag and protag will probably dominate the next 30,000 words or so... this is in an estimated 120,000 historical novel (target set by my agent - I'll probably go over this in the first draft!)

Maybe you could try a similar exercise to see if there are any 'dominant' POV characters, and any that don't really feature all that much and could possibly be stripped out?

So you have 11 possible POVs or 7? I do think you'll need to have more than 60K, which you said is only a rough idea anyway. My own WIP is similar, not that many POVs necessarily, but more than 3 and I'm aiming for 100K to give me room to breathe. I am also am a fan of ASOIAF and do like the way in which GRRM manages his books, but I'd say another good example is James Ellroy's LA Quartet and Underworld USA if you want an idea in different genres.

That sounds like a lot of characters to cram into a book that short. With that many POV characters, I would expect the book to be more like 100,000 words. But if it works, go for it.

Every POV you employ in a story multiplies the difficulty of making the story work for a reader, by a factor of two. Two POVs make things four times as difficult as a single one. Three POVs make things eight times as difficult, four POV, sixteen times, etc. etc. etc.

Given the great number of great novels available that work with straightforward omni, or single limited third, or first-person POV, why are soooooooooooo many people who post here sooooooooooooooo entranced with proliferating narrative POVs ad infinitum?

caw

blacbird said:

Every POV you employ in a story multiplies the difficulty of making the story work for a reader, by a factor of two. Two POVs make things four times as difficult as a single one. Three POVs make things eight times as difficult, four POV, sixteen times, etc. etc. etc.

Given the great number of great novels available that work with straightforward omni, or single limited third, or first-person POV, why are soooooooooooo many people who post here sooooooooooooooo entranced with proliferating narrative POVs ad infinitum?

caw

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I like reading books with multiple POV, wouldn't it be natural if I enjoyed writing in a similar manner? heh
I find you get closer to each of the characters represented, and as a reader, we always want to be pulled just a little bit more into the story. Now, I don't disagree that it's difficult to pull off. I pray I'm on the right track, but who knows?

blacbird said:

Every POV you employ in a story multiplies the difficulty of making the story work for a reader, by a factor of two. Two POVs make things four times as difficult as a single one. Three POVs make things eight times as difficult, four POV, sixteen times, etc. etc. etc.

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I just love this kind of blind adherence to made up mathematical formulae. It's like someone trying to calculate weight loss over a year based on one week of living on lettuce and water. Those people must be humoured, and pitied, and then laughed at when you see them in KFC scoffing a family bucket to themselves the following week.

blacbird said:

Given the great number of great novels available that work with straightforward omni, or single limited third, or first-person POV, why are soooooooooooo many people who post here sooooooooooooooo entranced with proliferating narrative POVs ad infinitum?

caw

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I like multiple POV stories, because I like seeing the same events from different perspectives, and getting to explore different aspects of a character from someone else's viewpoint. I also want to be able to show events happening in the MC's absence. It helps to create dramatic irony. I don't see how writing multiple POV is any harder than single POV - enough people manage to bollocks that up as well, so I'd say neither is easy. Someone who can write can handle both narrative styles. Someone who can't probably shouldn't attempt either.

I've read single POV authors and multiple and do enjoy getting a look inside multiple characters heads and seeing how they look at their surroundings and others as well.

flowerburgers said:

but I also think they're pretty funny and don't want to lose them. Do you think this can still work -- having characters without fully realized narrative arcs, but who are given attention to add more "depth" to the image of this community as a whole?

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you can write as many people as you like, but you have to ask yourself, in cold, hard terms, if these extras are moving the story forward in any meaningful way, or a self-indulgent excuse to soapbox and/or grandstand......and if ANY of them are in the latter camp, either make them matter or cut them loose.

I was being a mite satirical, and came out harsher perhaps than I meant to be. But we could easily start a whole new forum here for POV issues, and that might not be a bad idea. We've sure had a lot of threads about them over the past two or three years.

I'm admittedly a skeptic of proliferating POVs, at least in manuscripts I've critiqued, for several reasons:

1. Often they are little more than an excuse for sloppy head-hopping, lack of POV focus when it is most desirable.

2. Even when multiple POVs (more than two or three) are applied in narrative, the POV characters have little to differentiate them, other than geography.

3. A nagging sense I have that the story would be more focused, more disciplined, more vivid, more engaging, if the POV choices were more limited. It seems, at times, that some writers consider every new idea that comes into their heads requires narrating that new idea from a new character's head.

4. Too much reliance on "being in the head" of characters in general.

5. A pure lack of understanding of POV and its importance in narrative.

I've written two novels using dual limited third-person POV characters. But I really wouldn't want to do more than two narrative characters. I've written stories in objective omni, and another novel and several stories in 1st-person POV. I pay attention as a reader to POV, can't help it, and sloppy use of POV narration drives me wild.

So I be a bit of a curmudgeon on this issue.

caw

blacbird said:

Every POV you employ in a story multiplies the difficulty of making the story work for a reader, by a factor of two. Two POVs make things four times as difficult as a single one. Three POVs make things eight times as difficult, four POV, sixteen times, etc. etc. etc.

Given the great number of great novels available that work with straightforward omni, or single limited third, or first-person POV, why are soooooooooooo many people who post here sooooooooooooooo entranced with proliferating narrative POVs ad infinitum?

caw

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I agree.
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(Note: The meat of this post is discussing a "limited narrator 3rd person POV" type of story POV that has multiple viewpoint characters, which uses the restriction of one viewpoint character per scene. That is, it isn't discussing "omniscient narrator 3rd person POV".)

It's so hard for a relatively new writer to create one interesting pov character that can hold a reader's interest and be a convincing character for a whole novel. And it's hard to create major supporting characters, characters that are not pov-characters where those characters have their own dialogue voices and their own subplots with their own objectives and problems. It's so hard that most writers fail for most of their novels, imo.

For a novel with two pov characters, well, some markets require two pov characters (e.g. some romance subgenres); and so, in that case, a writer has to be able to accomplish this.

But in subgenres or markets where this isn't a requirement, then I'd figure a writer might want to attempt, at first, to do the story with only one pov character. An aspiring writer has enough on his plate in creating what is needed for one pov character: a unique voice, the character's situation, a full plot, his cast of major characters with all their unique dialogue voices and subplots and etc. For each additional pov character, the writer has to basically duplicate that work. (Of course, some of the major characters are usually shared by more than one viewpoint character.)

And besides all that, the writer has to be aware of the little, wee-little, weakening effect that can, or might, sometimes occur with each transfer from one pov character to the next. If that transfer isn't done carefully and cleanly, then eventually, the accumulation of that effect might become noticeable, where the reader ends up not feeling close to any pov character.

Also, a writer has to figure out which pov character to start the novel off with: the first pov character has to grab your typical targeted reader, as the reader will probably assume that's the character that the reader is expected to bond to.

Each viewpoint character will need to have his/her own unique narrative voice. That's tough enough to do for a single pov character. Three or more pov characters in a novel is probably going to require quite a bit more technique and stuff. Yes, there are probably novels that could handle having many pov characters--but not as many as the number of threads I've been seeing on writer forums where aspiring writers want numerous pov characters because they think that in that way they can show more of the story to the reader. Those aspiring writers think that their story will be limited due to having only one pov character (or only a few pov characters).

And yes, there have been quite a few threads on this subject. Perhaps they could be linked to.
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In the OP's first post:

flowerburgers said:

So, my current WIP is a satire called "The Suburbs" about a suburban community responding to the death of their local postman, who is eaten by a jaguar. It follows three families, each of whom embody a different aspect of the community, and there are approximately seven intertwining story arcs... Which seems like kind of a lot! I read somewhere that in multiple-perspective novels it's better to limit the bulk of the action to five or six characters, so I'm wondering if this is going to be a problem. But at the same time, I've definitely read multiple-perspective novels that use more characters and pull it off (off the top of my head, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and a book I read in middle school called Seed Folks).

There are eleven characters in my story, and four narrative arcs that I would consider significant. The others serve more as texture, but still get their share of the spotlight. It's probably going to be a pretty short novel, no more than 50-60k, and I don't want their chapters to detract from the central story -- but I also think they're pretty funny and don't want to lose them. Do you think this can still work -- having characters without fully realized narrative arcs, but who are given attention to add more "depth" to the image of this community as a whole? Right now, I've got some chapters devoted to a teenage girl who is obsessed with identifying as an oppressed minority on the internet (she is "transable", "transethnic", and "otherkin"), and an ordinary businessman who steals a pack of gum and becomes paranoid and fixated with his transgression. They don't do much, and I don't think they need any obvious closure at the end, but I like having them in the background, utterly preoccupied with their ridiculous problems while a postman-eating jaguar is on the loose.

So whaddaya think? More generally, what do you find to be effective in multiple-perspective novels? If you've written one, how did you approach it?

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Since it's satire, perhaps try omniscient narrator 3rd person POV. Since the novel is so short and it has so many perspectives (sorta like viewpoint characters), again perhaps try omniscient as that narrator can be the glue to help shift the focus from one perspective character to another. Omniscient also allows the writer to show off the writer's word skilz.

Good luck!

I like stories with multiple POVs, but usually 2-4 is enough. I do like having both POVs in a romance.

I've read a few books in which POVs seem to multiply unnecessarily, including:
Homecoming (Cathy Kelly)
Garden Spells (Sarah Addison Allen)
Seating Arrangements, as mentioned above.

The last has something like 10 POVs. I think only 3 were necessary. Many showed up only once or twice, and I found them completely pointless. They didn't add anything, IMO.

I think the first two have a similar number of POVs, but I read them a while ago (and honestly, have done my best to purge Homecoming from my memory) so I can't remember how many, just that I really didn't see the purpose, and thought the story would have been better if limited to fewer POVs.

Blacbird, I think you're mixing up multiple 3rd POV and omni, at least you're attributing that mix up to people who use multiple 3rd POV. I'm pretty sure I know the difference because I hate omni like the gates of Hades.

blacbird said:

I'm admittedly a skeptic of proliferating POVs, at least in manuscripts I've critiqued, for several reasons:

1. Often they are little more than an excuse for sloppy head-hopping, lack of POV focus when it is most desirable.

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When done wrong, yes. But just because some POV switches are handled badly that doesn't mean you should tar them all with the same brush. Multiple 3rd limited POV should not have head hopping within scene, so POV switch should be done by chapter break or at the very least a scene break. I never show multiple POV within scene.

blacbird said:

2. Even when multiple POVs (more than two or three) are applied in narrative, the POV characters have little to differentiate them, other than geography.

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Are you talking about your experience of published or unpublished fiction? I think you're generalising too much in either case.

I take great care to ensure that all my POV characters have distinct personalities, and I use different style and diction for their narratives. One is very blunt, direct and focuses on action in response to a problem. Another is a bit more introspective and over analyses every situation, so the narrative has more inner monologue. I'm pretty sure that you can identify each individual character by their narrative voice, even down to their general mood and disposition.

blacbird said:

3. A nagging sense I have that the story would be more focused, more disciplined, more vivid, more engaging, if the POV choices were more limited. It seems, at times, that some writers consider every new idea that comes into their heads requires narrating that new idea from a new character's head.

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I don't understand what you mean by 'every new idea' - does this only apply to people writing off the cuff then? My scenes are all mapped out and I know who needs to be the POV character for all of them. I would not be able to tell the story I have planned any other way.

Single POV stories work for some genres, like a whodunnit where you follow the detective, but my novel is HF and those often have multiple POV. I have numerous subplots, and in order to explore these subplots I need to assume the POV of the characters in them. It would make no sense to try and tell them all from the MC's POV, particularly if he isn't present or supposed to know whats going on! For instance, how could I write the scene that shows the MC's cold bitch of a wife is actually desperate to reconcile with her husband but is hurt and afraid of failing again from the MC's POV?

blacbird said:

4. Too much reliance on "being in the head" of characters in general.

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Again, I don't really understand this. The alternative to being in a character's head is being the omni narrator, and this is going out of fashion more rapidly than Ugg boots.

blacbird said:

5. A pure lack of understanding of POV and its importance in narrative.

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I think I got it, but thanks.

blacbird said:

I've written two novels using dual limited third-person POV characters. But I really wouldn't want to do more than two narrative characters. I've written stories in objective omni, and another novel and several stories in 1st-person POV. I pay attention as a reader to POV, can't help it, and sloppy use of POV narration drives me wild.

So I be a bit of a curmudgeon on this issue.

caw

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I think this pretty much sums it up - you're not commenting objectively, but as someone with a bee in their bonnet about multiple POV. I happen to have a bee in mine about omni. So we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one

Another clarification: When I referred to "being in the head of" a character, it was in the sense of relating thoughts, as opposed to observations. I've seen a lot of manuscripts (and some published work as well) that wallow in thought-relating, to the detriment of having stuff actually happen. And that problem really gets brought to the forefront when it's done with numerous POV characters. As a reader I much prefer for characters thought-processes to emerge in the form of activity or dialogue, through interaction with other characters.

I'm not generally a big fan of omni, either, unless it is highly objective, for much the same reason.

caw

blacbird said:

Another clarification: When I referred to "being in the head of" a character, it was in the sense of relating thoughts, as opposed to observations. I've seen a lot of manuscripts (and some published work as well) that wallow in thought-relating, to the detriment of having stuff actually happen. And that problem really gets brought to the forefront when it's done with numerous POV characters. As a reader I much prefer for characters thought-processes to emerge in the form of activity or dialogue, through interaction with other characters.

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Ok, on this you and I agree. I don't like a lot of inner monologue and navel gazing in narrative either. If I ever catch myself doing it, I get very ruthless with the delete button. I might have a paragraph of it between lines of dialogue to show a progression of thought between question and response, but I can't be doing with whole pages of a character just sitting there and thinking. If my MC is standing on his balcony contemplating how nuts he is about the girl he's just finally got to first base with, it's because five seconds later he spots a fire in the city and has to rush off into harm's way.

But now I think I see what you're saying. You're not against multiple POV narrative per se, just multiple POV done badly.

I could say the same about almost any stylistic device. I am against writing in general when done badly.