100 Things You Should Know About Writing (Part 2)

30) Writing Multiple Points of View

Sorry for the delay in updating, all! I've been having some trouble with my internet. Today I'm taking a bit of a break from writing craft stuff and doing a bit more of a "how-to". 

Yes, I know this one might not count as a "must know". Many people can go through entire careers without publishing anything written from multiple points of view. That said, I still think writers should at least know how to write from different narrative points of view. (I've already written a section on this in Part 1, Section 15: Points of View and How to Play with Them.) 

However, I got a question from MarissatheMarvelous about writing with multiple point of view characters, and I thought the subject could get some further attention from me. 

I thought it's a good question, because writing from any limited point of view (such as third person limited and first person) means that the amount of information you can naturally reveal to a reader is limited. You can't just tell readers: "Little did he know that on the other side of the country..." Without a narrator, informing them beyond the scope of your point of view characters' knowledge breaks a reader's suspension of disbelief. 

If you've been reading my previous sections, you'll know that this is not acceptable. It will result in your book being put down. 

So what we do to compensate for the lack of scope: We add point of view characters. Point of View characters (henceforth referred to as POV Characters) are characters acting as the reader's conduit into any given scene. In other words and as the term suggest, a POV character is the character through whose eyes the reader experiences a particular scene. 

Therefore, a POV character doesn't have to be a main character. Neither is it necessary that a main character needs to be a POV character. Like in the (published) Twilight Saga. Edward's point of view never gets shown, but he's still a main character because a lot of the story is about his relationship with Bella. Likewise, it can be argued that Jacob is almost always a supporting character, but he gets scenes where he's the POV character.

Now that's sorted, let's get into the technical how-to aspects:

Number of characters

As far as I know, there's not really a hard and fast rule as to the maximum amount of point of view characters. I think the limits tend to be imposed by your own ability, your characters, and the story you're trying to tell. 

One piece of advice, though: If you want to use more than three POV characters, you'll probably want to write the story in Third Person Limited. It's almost as close as first person, but less confusing to the reader to differentiate between the various points of view.  

Differentiate, differentiate, differentiate 

This is the key to your success when using multiple POV characters. You don't, under any circumstances, want your reader to feel as if the various narrative voices are blending together. Remember what I'd said in The Truth About Tension (Section 7) and the subsequent sections about characters and tension? 

Using multiple points of view means that you must make the reader relate to all your POV characters. If that doesn't happen, they're probably going to start skipping chapters and scenes to get back to reading about the character they do relate to. Note, I'm saying relate. Not like. You can write one bastard of a character, and still make the reader want to read more from their point of view, because something about that character compels them to read on. This is done by sucking the reader into the character's world view and almost fooling the reader into thinking the character's opinions make sense. It's tricky, but it can be done. (See Section 13 for more information on this.)

So you need to suck the reader in from the start. But if you have more than one POV character and they all sound the same even when they shouldn't, you've got a problem. It will feel wrong for the reader, and that will keep sucking them out of the story. Voice, therefore, becomes exponentially more important than ever. 

You have to make sure that no two POV characters feel and sound exactly the same. In fact, the aim should be to have them sound so different that you theoretically shouldn't have to provide a clue as to who the POV character is in a given scene or chapter. 

Yes, add the name tag at the top if you want, especially when you're writing first person. But don't ever count on it. 

Again, I've already written a lot about voice, so if you need a recap, it's in Section 16. I'm referring all over the show, I know, but there's simply no point to boring those who remember with information they already have. 

Basically, all I've said about voice there holds true here. You just have to repeat the process for every single POV character you have. 

A Matter of Characterization 

The other thing you need to keep in mind (that will also help you with voice) is the characterization. More so, arguably, than when you're only writing with one POV character. With only one, you still need to think in terms of what motivates everyone, in as much as it affects your plot. 

But even if your POV character isn't a main character, the plot around them is still their main plot. So you need to make doubly sure that you know what's driving their choices, what motivates them, and what's important to them. 

Doing so will not only help you to keep the voice consistent and realistic, but will also mean that scenes from that point of view will keep the reader in the story. 

One more thing... 

Keep Things Consistent

A lot of people new to multi-POV writing make the mistake of head-hopping. This is the changing of perspective between POV characters too fast to allow the reader to get invested in any one of them. This especially happens in dialogue, where the writer wants the reader to know exactly what each character is thinking/feeling every time someone says something. 

It simply doesn't work as well as you'd think. Instead of helping readers understand, it confuses them. As if that's not bad enough, this hopping around means the reader can't find purchase with any one character, because not enough time is being spent with them to relate with the reader.

So do yourself a favor and keep the POV on one character per scene at most. Not per page. Not per paragraph. Per scene. If you have Ben and Sue arguing about which loaf of bread she should buy, stick with either Ben or Sue until that argument is over. 

After that, you can change to the other character so the reader can see the fall-out. Believe it or not, if the reader's been getting to know character's through their points of view, they can infer what's being felt by a given character and why, even if a particular scene isn't in their POV. So it's not even necessary to flit from one character to another. 

And that's pretty much it. Doesn't sound all that difficult, does it? It really isn't, but it takes a bit of practice and editing to get a hang of. So go on and give some multi-POV writing a try.

Thanks so much for reading, all! I hope you find this section helpful. (Don't forget to vote if you do.) As always, you're more than welcome to ask questions about this section or writing in general in the comments. I'll answer you , and if your question inspires me to write a new section, I'll dedicate it to you. 

Coming up in 100 Things: 

How to Keep Dialogue Real (MarissatheMarvelous)

The Difference Between Writer's Block and Burnout

How to Handle Critique