McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

POV Counting

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Gruud:
This a two (or three) parter, and for clarification, I should state this is for a novel (or so), not for a screenplay or some other medium (at least for now  :D)

I’ve been wondering, how many POV characters are just too many?

Consider your typical party of five (or six) adventurers who have set out on the Epic Quest.

They will all most likely make it through the journey alive (or at least the bulk of it) as they will be needed later, when the Party is (inevitably) broken up into pieces.

Now true, some will be there at the very beginning, while others will be added along the way; but, for the sake of this posting, imagine they are all present with “the Hero” prior to the end of the first third of the story.

Can/Should all of them be allowed to take the stage as POV characters?

And if so, how often do they need to be brought to center stage?

In a slightly different vein, but within the same Quest/story, what about characters that join for a brief period but are then left behind along the way? Can they be POV characters too?

Their primary purpose is to provide the Reader with knowledge of current events in various locations, things that the hero and the Party have no way of knowing.

In essence, they will be introduced, and then left behind somewhere in order to keep the Reader up to speed while the Hero is off Questing.

And, for those left behind, how often should they be brought forward, to say their piece then fade back again?

Add these four (or five) “left behinds” together with the members of the Party and the Hero, and you easily have over ten Separate POV characters, not counting any additional ones the narrative may need along the way.

I guess the goal here is to not whipsaw the Reader back and forth from POV to POV, without leaving a Voice silent for too long and have their reemergence break immersion.

“Who the heck is that? *flip flip flip* Oh yeah ... I’ve not seen them since page two …”

Heh, easy stuff, right?  ;D

And as an added bonus, why did omniscience die?

*sigh*

I am very aware, and am prepared to deal with, the fact that it has died, and that using it would be pretty much instant death to a modern work of fiction.

But why did it die?

It was sooo much more useful ...

PS. You have to take a pass at the first questions before tackling that last bit.  :P

Starbeam:
I wouldn't say the omniscient voice died out, just that most authors don't seem to want to write in it much.  For myself, I want to keep the reader a bit more invested in the POV characters, and omniscience generally doesn't do that for me.  In other words, I write what I'd like to read.  A bit part of choosing the style of POV to write in is pretty much up to you and what you're comfortable using for any given story.

As for the question of POV characters, you don't have to have a POV for every character you have, even if it is something of a group to begin with.  You can have the POV as the main character and just have other characters explain what's happened when they were separated--if I'm not mistaken, I believe David Eddings did this in the Belgariad books.  Or you could have one POV with the main character, and then follow the secondary characters when they split off, but still stick with the main POV when they're together--sort of like Robert Jordan did with Wheel of Time.  Although he branched off a lot with POV characters, usually depending on what he wanted the reader to know.

But same as with choosing the POV style, the POV characters, as well as how often to use them, comes down to how you want to do it.  I have one story where I originally started in 1st person, then on a suggestion switched to 3rd limited, and in doing that started out with 2 POV characters, introduced a third, and at some point will use 2 other secondary characters as POV characters, mainly depending on how subplots develop and how the group splits off.

meg_evonne:
Anyone counted POVs in Lord of the Rings?  (within the 3rd that is?)

Starbeam:
I was going to use LotR as an example, but it's been some years since I read it so I couldn't remember if it fell under limited or omniscient.  Or both.  Though from what I recall, I think each section, after Fellowship, follows the smaller groups with one POV in each group.  But not certain on that.

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
LotR is omniscient.

If you are going for tight limited third, well, GRRM gets away with upwards  of a dozen in the first three ice and Fire books, IIRC.  So it;s workable.  (I do not think he does in the fourth.)

But then, he has a huge story. The question I would ask is; what do you gain from any given POV ?  What does it add, and can you get anything it adds in somewhere else.

If you have one party going linearly from A to Z through the book that never splits up, to my mind, uinless you have a pretty solid reason otherwise, the appropriate number of POVs is one.

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