First chapter starts with a minor POV?

It all comes down to execution. There's no rule for such a thing. That you're aware of potential difficulties with it should help you carry it off better. Write it, see what happens.

caw.

Desperation, by Stephen King
Through a Crimson Veil, by Patti O'Shea

Off the top of my head, here are two examples where the opening POV character is killed off rather quickly.

Lots of thrillers start out that way. Victims of serial killers very often have the opening POV until they bite it on page 6, usually the end of the prologue. Like Uncle Jim says, Good writing trumps any technical issues (paraphrased). If you write it well, it'll work. If you write it badly, no amount of rules will save your butt.

If it really worries you, bring back the character's memory in a few places later in the story. Memories of the character can keep him/her in the story for longer than he/she is breathing.

Wurthering Heights

Steve W said:

Hi,

Can it ever work to start a novel with the POV of a character who'll disappear by about page 10?

My novel opens with such a character, then introduces the two central characters (both in their POV), then kills off the minor character and he's never seen or heard of again. Am I asking for trouble, or, if done for the right reasons (to specifically show the world from a particular type of persons view), can it work?

Hope you can help, because I really don't want to start with one of my main characters - they don't see the world in the right way.

Cheers,
Steve

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Doesn't the initial POV character sort of get sidelined in Wurthering Heights? Almost as if the ghost-thing was just too much for him.

Steve W said:

Hi,

Can it ever work to start a novel with the POV of a character who'll disappear by about page 10?

My novel opens with such a character, then introduces the two central characters (both in their POV), then kills off the minor character and he's never seen or heard of again. Am I asking for trouble, or, if done for the right reasons (to specifically show the world from a particular type of persons view), can it work?

Hope you can help, because I really don't want to start with one of my main characters - they don't see the world in the right way.

Cheers,
Steve

Click to expand...

I've seen similar things to this in many novels. No worries.

It depends on the genre and the story. Many mystery starts with a minor character (first victim?) and thrillers usually start with minor characters.

Hi all,
I've tried to do the same thing in my novel, and have gotten repeatedly shot down in my writing group. Starting your novel with a minor character's POV is possible and has been done, but the problem seems to lie in that readers get attached to characters so easily that when your minor character is removed from the story, readers feel betrayed. They wasted their empathy on the wrong character.
I say, no, don't do it unless you've got some really good reason for it.

It's the writer's job to draw that fine line between empathy and letting the reader get too attached to a minor character. Don't blame this on the reader. They're innocent bystanders in your insanity.

Sokal said:

Doesn't the initial POV character sort of get sidelined in Wurthering Heights? Almost as if the ghost-thing was just too much for him.

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Most of the rest of the story is told to him by the Nurse and during her narrative
there is another layer where I-can't-remember-who tells part of the story. It was revolutionary at the time. I need to re-read.

Steve W said:

Hi,

Can it ever work to start a novel with the POV of a character who'll disappear by about page 10?

Cheers,
Steve

Click to expand...

Lord, I hope so. Though in my case the observer was a cat and he's a "minor character" through out the rest of the book (lounging in trees, in chairs and meowing at the door, befriending the MC because she feeds him), we only see inside things from his POV once.

I needed an impartial observer who could not report what he saw, in a book that needed a whiz bang opening in order to work. The cat was the perfect witness. After the first scene, the story is told entirely from the human POV.

Wow, I need a Cat

earthshoes said:

Lord, I hope so. Though in my case the observer was a cat and he's a "minor character" through out the rest of the book (lounging in trees, in chairs and meowing at the door, befriending the MC because she feeds him), we only see inside things from his POV once.

I needed an impartial observer who could not report what he saw, in a book that needed a whiz bang opening in order to work. The cat was the perfect witness. After the first scene, the story is told entirely from the human POV.

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This sounds great. I'm going to try it myself the next time I need a Whizz-bang start. Animal POV. I might even call the book Animal POV.

Wise words

scribbler1382 said:

It's the writer's job to draw that fine line between empathy and letting the reader get too attached to a minor character. Don't blame this on the reader. They're innocent bystanders in your insanity.

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Good points. Must get to work. Must make sig for self.

I can help with that. He felt "thrown" - as in off a horse - because it felt like he was jerked out of one story and tossed into another.

I side with civilian. Don't do it unless it's absolutely necessary, and I can't think of a single situation where it would be. Unless you are an experienced writer with two or three solid books in your pocket, chances are you won't be able to handle it, and I would expect your agent/publisher to demand a rewrite.

It's not only a matter of identification with the character, it has to do with what happens to a reader when s/he starts reading a book. The task of the first paragraph is to grab the reader's attention, set the tone for the book, hint at or introduce some situation that creates tension, and perhaps give some information as to what kind of book it will be. Ian Fleming started one of his books with this line: "The last camel died at noon." There is a wealth of information in that sentence. This is called "grounding the reader," and unless it's done early on, the reader will float around in the air. The danger is that s/he'll get tired of floating and go do something else.

Thanks for plodding through this, if any did.

If you're writing a mystery or thriller, quite often (as has been stated) a minor character is killed off to start the story off, and many times this is done in prologue. Make it one whale of a killing if it is. And read up on these boards regarding the plus and minus of prologues.

If the story is not of the thriller variety, it is very tough to open your story with a minor charcter that will not appear past page 10. I recently tried devising a new opening for my WHIP with a married couple who's sole purpose was to serve the main character's setup. Bad move. Readers identify with that first character, and assume s/he is a focal point in the story. Unless that minor character gets killed off, and by a MAJOR character (ie, the villain), it is very difficult to start off a story with minor characters. At least the villain is a major character and the reader won't feel as cheated, even if the scene is from the soon-to-be-deceased minor character's POV.

Can a throw-away minor character who doesn't die open up a novel? I'm sure almost anything can. But it's that much harder. From my experience, if the minor character is enjoyable enough (and you should make all your characters enjoyable in some way, even if the reader enjoys to hate him), then the reader might assume that character(s) is a major player, and will become entirely dissapointed/frustrated if that same character doesn't pop up again soon.

Once more, anything's possible. But it's real tough.

Katherine Kurtz did this in her first novel, and for a very good reason. The minor character was the king whose murder made it necessary for his 14 year old son to take the throne, and KK said later that she really wanted to give some indication of what a good king, and good father, Brion was - it wasn't enough to have the other major characters grieving for him later in the book.

Evaline, in the case of Kuntz, that's a good reason. But unless you really have a situation like that, use your MC.

Steve, could you start with the MC POV, then react to it with the minor character, maybe with the goal of emphasizing contrast?

In my own case, I discovered that it was because of latent attachment to my beloved minor character that made me want to start the book with him... which isn't a very good reason