McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
POV Advice
Aminar:
Personally, use small characters rarely but with reason. Some times you need to show something happening half a continent from the main characters. Sometimes you need to show how dangerous something is without killing off somebody important. Just don't abuse it. 3 or 4 per book at max, likely less if you change Point of view frequently.
Starbeam:
--- Quote from: belial.1980 on August 07, 2012, 04:09:59 AM ---I do it because it seems to be more interesting to tell that bit of the story from an otherwise unexplored angle. In the case of the protag's mother, it felt more visceral to see her son in pain through her eyes than to stick with the protag's POV. She doesn't have a major subplot dedicated to her POV, but I just thought the particular scene worked better when seen through her eyes.
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Going by this, sounds like it's possibly the right choice for the scene. Yeah, it's not done often, but in part that's because most people haven't seen it done often. I can't say off the top of my head where I've seen it done, if I've even read any books like that, but in one episode of Writing Excuses, Brandon Sanderson talks about this sort of thing. In one of the Mistborn books, he switched from main character POV into a minor one-off POV. The episode is hazy, so I don't remember exactly why he did it, but in part it was to give a different perspective on something happening, and to also heighten the tension a bit, I believe.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Quantus on August 07, 2012, 08:10:44 PM ---I think it depends on where and how you do it. To give an example: In the Codex Alera books the main plot POV's are Tavi, Amara, Fidelius, and Isana. But in several of the books there were brief parts that were told from other POV's, often as one-shots. These included Erron, Varg, and a 'redshirt' soldier getting eaten by giant bugs.
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To each their own; that is, I think, a large part of why those books never quite gelled for me.
belial.1980:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on August 07, 2012, 05:46:22 PM ---As a writer, I think they can be an unduly easy out - where it might make for a better story to figure out how to get the relevant information in, or imply it, within an existing POV.
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Thank you! This really got me thinking. It reminded me that sometimes imposing limitations can cause you to be more creative. IE it forces you to do more with less. I've actually reworked a couple of POV shifts in my head and plan to take some of these one off's and rewrite them from one the major view points I've already established. I think it should work out better overall.
--- Quote from: Aminar on August 08, 2012, 12:18:41 AM ---Personally, use small characters rarely but with reason. Some times you need to show something happening half a continent from the main characters. Sometimes you need to show how dangerous something is without killing off somebody important. Just don't abuse it. 3 or 4 per book at max, likely less if you change Point of view frequently.
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Yeah, I actually finished reading a book that had a lot of POV shifts to minor characters. Basically, a whole town was getting turned into vampires and we saw the victims' POV. It was kind of cool but a little annoying at the same time since it's hard to really care about nameless victims #1-17. If I end up using some one off viewpoints, it will definitely be in a limited capacity. I'm going to try and stick with 4 major POVs for this draft: 2 protagonists, 1 antagonist, and 1 that's both and neither at the same time. :)
They all have a large part to play in the story and we should get pretty good development of plot and other minor characters through them.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on August 08, 2012, 02:43:55 AM ---To each their own; that is, I think, a large part of why those books never quite gelled for me.
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Fair enough. Ive never really minded it, and there are some authors that I respect for their ability to use one-off POV characters well. Ive seen authors that can establish a character with full characterization, motivations, unique voice, etc with less than a page, which always impressed me. Guy Gavriel Kay is a good example of this, but to be fair Ive always had an irrational love of the Fionavar Tapestry, so Im probably biased. :)
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