Experimenting

I'm in the process of editing the first draft of my book. I'm doing most of the usual things, fixing grammar, adding scenes, tightening subplots, and etc. Many of the chapters towards the end experiment with nonlinear storytelling, which I am starting to question in this current draft.

One of the biggest changes is dedicating myself to a single viewpoint at a time. The narrative follows the protagonist most of the time, but I've hit a little snag on the way. The second most important character is the one who drives the story. He's the one who forces my protagonist along on their suicidal adventure. At key moments I find myself having to create line breaks so I can have an opportunity to jump into his head. One might say I should switch protagonists, but I'd rather stay focused on the everyman who isn't an *******. I am especially guilty of switching viewpoints towards the end when the protagonist goes insane under extreme circumstances.

Near the end I spend an entire chapter where I focus on the experiences of four minor characters at the time of a major event which had just happened in the previous chapter. I retell the same event from each of the four perspectives and end at a big cliffhanger. To complicate things further I back up to where I left off with the main storyline and explain what happened in that cliffhanger before it happened. I continue to jump forward and jump back until the end. While you can tell the order of the events, I wonder if it is a bit jarring for readers to experience something like this for the first time beyond the halfway mark.

I know this is getting to be a long post, but I have one more example I'm curious about. In several chapters I leave journal entries written by an unknown narrator to describe events completely out of their knowledge. Initially this was to establish a subplot that would become the big twist of the novel so people don't go thinking "where the f*** did that come from?" There are also a few examples of journal entries towards the end that describe a situation centuries ago. I'm not sure if these are a good idea or not.

I'm sure this post is completely incoherent, but if you can get through this. I'd like to know if I should get rid of the experimental nonsense and go with a straight narrative of a single point of view or should I keep them and tighten them up? Would a reader be annoyed or confused by something new?

Most of the time if I switch point of views it goes to the character who drives the story. By around the seventh chapter, I introduce a new character who occasionally gets the spotlight. This character takes over near the final chapter to confront the protagonist after the other character is killed.

The four person chapter happens after an events that changes all of society. They each see it on television and are struggling to survive in the new world. These four characters were introduced earlier as friends and family(exwife, bartender informant, a foreign undergrounder, and priest), each with a different opinion of what the protagonist has done. The only repitition is when they see it happen on television. I'm going to see if I can trim that part.

Journal entries are by the third character I mentioned, but I don't want to make it too clear. They happen before he is introduced and explain why he has come into the protagonist's life. But if someone draws the connection of what he is describing it could make some realize prematurely the secret he is hiding. I made his entries purposely vague to hide the secret and justify it by his lack of understanding, unable to comprehend things like a normal human until later.

At first I added the chapter where I take the four perspectives because I thought the story was going to be too short. The chapter ended up being 40 pages with about ten dedicated to each one. I also did this because they were interesting characters I couldn't explore in the main narrative. The protagonist's exwife was only seen for one chapter and she was depicted as a a total b**** because of the situation. The same happened with the priest who threw the protagonist to the dogs. Both of them were good people that deserved better. In the case of the other two, their storylines relating to the protagonist had not been tied up. Using this chapter I was able to give closure and a different view of the world they lived in. This makes it easier to see why the protagonist laments his decision because of the consequences that the chapter is focused on.

The first example of jumping around happens at the end of this chapter where one sees a giant shadow blocking the sky. I go back to the protagonist's point of view to explain what led to this. This continues until the two main characters split up. The secondary main character's story is told where he betrays the protagonist and come back to see that the protagonist has survived and has challenged him to do battle to decide who is right. In the next chapter I skip ahead to the middle of their battle and there is a shocking twist when one seemingly defeats the other. This is probably the most unnecessary as I thought it would be a cool cliffhanger to leave the reader with before explaining why this is the case. I go back to where they split up to tell what happened to the protagonist that made him change so much. This goes on until their second meeting where I switch back to the other main character's perspective. Once he dies, I start a new chapter with a scene revealing more of his backstory before the third main character takes over. Then the protagonist takes over until the end.

I think some of the shifting is inappropriate with fantasy like you presume, but I don't consider it a fantasy story in the traditional sense. It starts as fantasy with a mystery element until the big event that shifts it into more of the science fiction genre. After this divide is when I start experimenting. I believe that it is considered more suiting to do the jumping around in a science fiction story than a fantasy.