POV in series

Personally, I'd hate it. Patricia Cromwell did this and it annoyed many of her readers. (She changed from first person to third present)

It might be a bit of a challenge to convert your readers over to first person, though it's hard to say. Think about the 3rd Harry Potter book written in 1st person. It would probably work, but some readers might squawk.

Is it worth asking the publisher/editor for an opinion?

Readers of series will squawk and whine about anything that changes. I don't think I'd mind terribly, as long as it had a point. THe nice thing about it would be seeing a writer stretching his wings.

The bad thing about it would be, if it doesn't go exactly right, it comes off less as wind-stretching and more as jarring.

Thinking back on a few series that I can recall off hand . . . It wouldn't bother me as a reader if the change was done very well. I'd find it fun to get a new perspective, and interesting to delve into a character in a different way rather than a repeat of the previous stories.

The caveat here is: Done Really Well. If you can't pull off First Person with ease and skill, then avoid it. If you can, give it a try and see how it works.

It can be really tricky, too. I mean, for example, Roger Zelazny talks about how he wanted to write each book of his Amber series from a different POV but after the first book, he realized he was stuck writing from Corwin's viewpoint.

To work around this, he had long sections and chapters that were one character retelling events to Corwin that he hadn't been present for. These were written from a different POV. But that was all he managed.

Cool topic, and of interest to me, as well. I have an affinity for writing third person, multi-viewpoint. Most of my novels are written this way.

My current WIP is an urban fantasy told in first person. The universe is somewhat diverse (modern day superheroes), so having a single, distinct narrator helps keep the story focused. It keeps me focused on a single story, rather than all of the cool, supporting characters. It has potential to become a series, but so far, thoughts for a sequel will focus on a different pair of characters. One has been introduced in the WIP, so she won't be coming out of nowhere.

If I stayed with first person narration, but jumped to a new POV character for the second novel (and so on and so forth)......well, what do you think? Anyone else do that? Any published series that anyone can recall?

Rhea L said:

The question is: would that be ...shooting yourself in the foot?

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From the reader’s perspective, they’re buying the next book in a series because they trust you to deliver something familiar. So tread carefully on their expectations.

I'm in sort of the same situation. The novel I'm working on now is first person POV. I intend to write other novels in this fantasy universe using these characters but with different POV characters, but those stories are definitely going to be third person POV.

Part of how I'm planning to reconcile the change of POV is because of the time jump. The other stories are going to be set about twenty years later following one of the MCs from this story and introducing several new characters. Different tone, different type of adventure, same universe. Hopefully it works.