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Sunday, June 15, 2014

Take One Down, Pass It Around

How many POVs is too many?

I've gotten away with stories (fan fictions) that switch the point of view character every chapter and come back to any of the same ones very rarely. I've also done stories with some twenty-four POVs—hardly equally weighted—and some with about three or four. But what's the farthest you can go, either way? Is the story too one-track-minded if only the main character gets to carry the POV? Is it too incoherent if a long series of characters keeps passing on the baton?

I certainly prefer books with multiple POVs. Not dwelling on certain Hetalia/Hunger Games crossovers, original works like the Unwind dystology do a great job with POV-switching. There are certainly main characters that carry more POVs, but still other characters get their own voices, and even inanimate objects carry the story every once in a while for a change of pace.

Of course, I'm sure there are plenty of ways to go about multiple-POV stories the wrong way. I can't think of any actual examples, though; most books seem to be almost entirely single-POV.

There's nothing really wrong with that, though, right? A novel tends to be the main character's story—that's why the protagonist is the protagonist. Of course, many other characters' stories are entwined with the main character's, but does that mean they have to tell it in their own voices? Dialogue can cover a lot of that, and, of course, the other characters are moving along with their own actions as well.

What do you think? Who should get a POV? How is switching between multiple POVs done right, or wrong?

2 comments:

  1. Frick, I had a long comment typed out and accidentally deleted the whole thing. Today just isn’t my day. Oh well, I’ll try to duplicate it.

    What I was basically saying is that before reading the Brutal Series, I didn’t really like multiple POV stories; I preferred books that stuck to one character’s narrative, or else switched between two or maybe three characters. However, I think the switching POV really worked for Brutal because 1) the Games are the story of 24 tributes, not just 1, and 2) it’s a crossover for a series that doesn’t really have a protagonist, so readers will want to see it from everybody’s POV. However, in general I do prefer books that stick to one POV, and I think that there are some FanFictions, like PWAT and Unstained, that benefit from such. But at the same time, I do like historical fiction books that jump back and forth from the modern day to past eras. Hm. It’s a tough call, it really depends on the story you’re writing.

    Overall, though, I’d say that I prefer original works with one POV, and FanFictions with multiple – unless the FanFiction is focusing on a minor character, like Wiress, Cashmere, D3 boy, who doesn’t get much spotlight in canon. Yeah, that’s it for FanFictions – if it’s an ‘entire cast gets together for an adventure thing, like Brutal or The Rules, I prefer switching POVs; but if it’s something that’s dedicated to telling the story through a minor character’s eyes, I like single POV. For books, I guess that I prefer single POV unless it’s something that goes through multiple time periods/eras, or something where the characters are in very different situations (like, I remember I really liked the switching POV in the Eragon sequel, because one character was going on a mission to the Elven kingdom or something, and the other one was staying at home guarding the village. Both of those were very different but very exciting. But if it was, say, Hunger Games switching back and forth between Katniss and Peeta, it wouldn’t work as well for me because they’re in the same basic scenario, and if it was switching between, say, Katniss and Gale, it wouldn’t work as well because Gale’s POVs would be significantly more boring than Katniss’.)

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    1. Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it, especially your Hunger Games examples.

      Thanks for the input!

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