Preferred POV for Multi-POV Novel?

Omni's great when done well, but done badly it's horrible to read. I can only think of one YA book I've read that was written in omni - and it wasn't omni so much as head-hopping.

If it's not omni, I don't mind if it's first or third. I've read and enjoyed both. The voices of your characters have to be sufficiently different if you write in first, though, since there are no names to identify who's head we're in. If I have to check the chapter title to see who I'm reading about, that's a problem.

How many different perspectives do you have or want to have? Would it make sense for each of them to be first-person? Then close third would probably work just fine, too.

I stay away from omniscient, but it makes most sense when you have a big gallery of characters and want to reserve the possibility of dipping briefly into a POV we never see again after that. (I don't know Harry Potter that well. But once I read a book that ended with a single chapter from the POV of a crow. And not a magic talking crow, either. The author just dipped into that POV so he could show the crow finding something the human characters had lost, and it felt pretty silly IIRC. )

A good example of close third with multiple POVs is We All Looked Up (I just started reading it). The characters get alternating chapters, and each chapter is firmly in the character's voice, but it's still third person. It never feels like there's some overarching narrator, which is what you get with omni. It can be hard to write voicey third, but it's a great skill to develop, and I admire writers who can do it well.

That book is in past tense. Present tense seems less common in close third books, though I've seen it (Pure by Julianna Baggott comes to mind).

Me, I've been writing first person, present tense with multiple POVs (usually just two), and I really enjoy it. It's almost like a dramatic monologue; it's a great way to channel a character's voice.

Of course I worry about whether the POVs sound too alike; that's always a concern. I think the method works best when the POV characters have radically different voices and perspectives on the world, and are often in conflict within the story. Gone Girl is a good example: it would be hard to mix up Nick and Amy. It's a really fun way to deal with antagonistic characters who both think they're the hero of the story.

Omniscient is tricky, very tricky. I've seen it done well but it's not for the faint hearted! Present tense multi POV's in either 1st or 3rd person can work equally well. If you are writing 1st person multi do make sure it is clear at all times which character is 'speaking'.

The only example of omniscient POV in present tense I can think of is THE NIGHT CIRCUS. It gave me the feeling that the narrator was not just relating the story, but was almost a presence manipulating the action as it happened -- a sort of puppet master. I think it worked brilliantly there, but it really depends on the story you're telling.

For past omni in YA, the examples I can think of stick close to one POV at a time -- the Raven Cycle does this, but has a pretty consistent narrative voice that tends (maybe a little too much at times) toward the self-consciously clever. THE DIVINERS used (as I recall -- been a while since I read it) a closer POV in general, but in some sections zooms out over the rooftops and peeks in the windows of a bunch of different characters at one moment in time, which I found a nice reflection of the Jazz Age sensibility.

In general, though, I think multi-POV close 3rd works best unless you have a strong narrative voice outside any of your characters, and the story wouldn't work as well without it.

For preference, in a multiple viewpoint novel, I'd take close third-person limited, past tense.

Jtrylch, have you read any of Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass books? She does third person past with a LOT of characters and I think she does a great job. In fact, most of the fantasy I have been reading right now does third person past with multiple characters, but the Throne of Glass books definitely have the most. I'm reading Heir of Fire right now, and there are at least six that I can think of.

Might be worth the research to see how she does it because I think you get in the heads of the characters enough and it's easy to follow the different characters.

I prefer multiple POV characters in third-person limited. In first person, you have to make an even greater effort to differentiate character voices. I've read very few authors who manage to do this effectively.

jtrylch13 said:

So I've written the rough draft of my current WIP in 1st Person Present. I like writing in that, and I hate past tense. But I am considering changing to an omniscient 3rd POV. My question is, of all the multi-POVS you have read, were they in 3rd or 1st, past or present, and which did you like best? I feel like maybe 3rd omni (not sure I have the right term) would allow me to still be in the characters head to some extent, but switch from different perspectives while allowing for easier identification of whose POV I was in. Example being, Harry Potter was mostly in Harry's head, but there were chapters here and there that were from Snape, Muggle Minister, Vernon Dursley, etc. Any thoughts? I'm going to dig through my books and see which ones I've read.

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I'd read any POV if it's done well.

I'm currently reading one in 3rd past omni (Frances Hardinge's Cuckoo Song) though so far it does stick to one character's viewpoint though is still omni. The same author's Gullstruck Island (retitled The Lost Conspiracy in the USA) is also third past omni, though that has more than one POV character. Both novels are upper MG rather than YA, though Hardinge certainly has an adult readership.

One multi-POV I read recently which was in dual first present was Tabitha Suzuma's Forbidden, though it was a flaw of that novel that I didn't think the two voices were as distinguishable from each other as they should be - there were points when I found myself checking the chapter headings to see which POV we were in at given points.

My preference is 3rd person close, past tense. I enjoy the complexity of multiple POVs.

Least favorite: 1st person present tense.

jtrylch13 said:

So I've written the rough draft of my current WIP in 1st Person Present. I like writing in that, and I hate past tense. But I am considering changing to an omniscient 3rd POV. My question is, of all the multi-POVS you have read, were they in 3rd or 1st, past or present, and which did you like best? I feel like maybe 3rd omni (not sure I have the right term) would allow me to still be in the characters head to some extent, but switch from different perspectives while allowing for easier identification of whose POV I was in. Example being, Harry Potter was mostly in Harry's head, but there were chapters here and there that were from Snape, Muggle Minister, Vernon Dursley, etc. Any thoughts? I'm going to dig through my books and see which ones I've read.

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Omni is a very big leap from First, in that you'd have to strip out a lot of that voice you've already established for your character and make it overall more neutral, seeing everyone in the same light. It is also a more distant narrative that is tricky to make engaging and rich.

My preference is also close third limited, past tense when there are multiple viewpoints. I've done two first person perspectives in a book.

You can have a lot of fun with close third, because you can still pick up the vocabulary, voice, tone and feelings of each POV character, so it almost feels like First, but it gives you more flexibility to change perspective at either scene or chapter breaks.

For multi-POV I definitely prefer 3rd. Single POV, I prefer 1st. I think for dual POV 1st person to work well, the author has to be very very good at developing distinct voices for each character. A lot of times, it's just not done well enough to work. I read a YA book recently that I really wanted to like because it had such a cool premise, but it was dual 1st POV, and both characters sounded too much alike.

Totally agree oceansoul. Dual 1st is really tricky to pull off. Personally I wouldn't attempt it unless I was feeling super confident in my characters.

Partings and Greetings Version 1.0 was in triple first present. I went with a beta comment on that version and rewrote it and it's now in just one first-person viewpoint, still in present tense.

One thing that I've seen with multiple first-person points of view is that the author writes each in a different font (obviously, this is up to the publisher). It worked well in Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy, though I also found the character voices were distinct enough that I could have seen the difference.

SoCalWriter said:

Jtrylch, have you read any of Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass books? She does third person past with a LOT of characters and I think she does a great job. In fact, most of the fantasy I have been reading right now does third person past with multiple characters, but the Throne of Glass books definitely have the most. I'm reading Heir of Fire right now, and there are at least six that I can think of.

Might be worth the research to see how she does it because I think you get in the heads of the characters enough and it's easy to follow the different characters.

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I'm reading Crown of Midnight right now and agree. I think it flows well from character to character.

I would have to say that I definitely don't like first person that jumps from character to character. I find it really easy to forget who the current narrator is.

jtrylch13 said:

So I've written the rough draft of my current WIP in 1st Person Present. I like writing in that, and I hate past tense. But I am considering changing to an omniscient 3rd POV. My question is, of all the multi-POVS you have read, were they in 3rd or 1st, past or present, and which did you like best? I feel like maybe 3rd omni (not sure I have the right term) would allow me to still be in the characters head to some extent, but switch from different perspectives while allowing for easier identification of whose POV I was in. Example being, Harry Potter was mostly in Harry's head, but there were chapters here and there that were from Snape, Muggle Minister, Vernon Dursley, etc. Any thoughts? I'm going to dig through my books and see which ones I've read.

Click to expand...

I'm going to be the odd person out and say Past tense, Third Omni. Im reading Nigh Circus right now, and I'm finding that I love it. Omni allows you to give the narator their own voice and personality, while still being able to delve into the lives and heads of any character you think best tells that part of the story. But then, I'm biased. I wrote a Horror short in Omni, and while not perfect, I still love it.

A nit pick, but a novel written in omniscient third would have only one pov, that of the narrator. Unless you've got more than one of those.

For me, it really depends on the story and on the author's skill with the pov in question. I tend to have a bit of a bias against omniscient, simply because I enjoy bonding/connecting directly with characters and seeing things through their eyes. But a skillful omniscient narrator with a good voice and way of describing the characters that makes me feel close to them can work for me. It's preferable to a first or limited third narrative with bland character voices.

I'm finding that more and more of the fantasy I've enjoyed in recent years is written in first, though limited third would be a close second. In general, I'd say that more than 3-4 pov characters might bother me more for first person than for limited third, but it depends. It goes without saying that you especially need good, clear character voices in first person, though I prefer to see that in limited third too. Additionally, many authors writing in multiple first person put the name of the pov character at the beginning of the scene or chapter. Jones and Bennett did this in their Dragon Corps books, and if I remember correctly, so did Barbara Kingsolver in her Poisonwood Bible.