Would this Work?

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Scoody

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I am kicking around idea for a story in which the character POV is never shown. Kind of like the Sherlock Holmes done from Watson's point of view. Here the POV would be from whoever was was interacting with the MC in the scene. When he is home he is viewed through the eyes of his wife. When he interrogates someone, he is portrayed through the eyes of who he is talking to. If he is thrown in jail the POV is through some random inmate. Would this work? Be interesting?
 

shaldna

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It could work.

It could also be as annoying as hell for the reader, and come across as quite jarring.

Try a few sample scenes and see how it's going to work out firsr.
 

TheIT

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Sounds like you're talking about third person limited where each scene has a different POV character. The difficulties would be establishing who the POV character is in each scene especially if you're jumping around between random characters, and also distancing the reader. The reader won't have time to gain much sympathy for any POV character before getting yanked into another one.

Could work. Depends on the type of story you're trying to tell. Try writing it and see.

Good luck!
 

backslashbaby

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That could be very interesting. But would it seem gimmicky compared to the best way to tell the story? I can't tell. It's certainly worth a shot, I think.

A lot of the reason I love omni is because often I want to know the story from a different place than the MC's brain. It is fascinating to see the interrelationships between other people, the environment, etc. and that MC. It is less intimate to the MC, though. And most people enjoy intimacy better, probably, I think. A whole lot of people, anyway :)
 

JayG

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The POV character should be the one with the most emotional investment in the scene. Told as you postulate, who would the reader identify with and shout advice to?

Something like what you suggest was done in Poul Anderson's, The High Crusade.

The story is seen through the eyes of a priest, as I remember it, but the protagonist, and most interesting character is the master of the castle.

I enjoyed the story, but throughout it felt like I was reading a history lesson, and the story was missing the passion it would have had had the reader been in the protagonist's POV.

That said, if you can pull it off, it's a gimmick that's not been over used, and gimmicks sell.
 

Lydia Sharp

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I am kicking around idea for a story in which the character POV is never shown. Kind of like the Sherlock Holmes done from Watson's point of view. Here the POV would be from whoever was was interacting with the MC in the scene. When he is home he is viewed through the eyes of his wife. When he interrogates someone, he is portrayed through the eyes of who he is talking to. If he is thrown in jail the POV is through some random inmate. Would this work? Be interesting?

I think what you meant in your first sentence was that the MAIN character PoV is never shown. If that's the case, yes, I think you could pull that off, and with less difficulty than you might think. If you already know how to write third person limited (how to write it well, that is), this is basically the same thing. And you can make it clear that said character is the MC by the events of the story, even though the reader never reads through his/her eyes. Good luck with it!
 

Libbie

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Yeah, if you mean the MAIN character's POV is never used, that can definitely be accomplished.
 

knight_tour

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You certainly need to be careful with POV. I just tried a book by Elizabeth Bear called Worldwired where she used 3rd person most of the time but switched to 1st person for her main character. I couldn't get past thirty pages before giving up. Part of it was the annoying POV change, but part of it was the writing, which just didn't thrill me.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Pretty much anything will work, if it's done well enough. Pretty much anything will fail, if it isn't done well enough.
 
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