Adding POVs

Questioner · Dec 2, 2017

Hello!
In the novel I'm currently working on, I write from different characters' Point of Views for each chapter (Third Person Multiple). What I'm wondering is, is it okay to introduce some new characters mid-way through the story, and a few chapters after getting to know them externally/from another character's POV, add them as yet another POV-character?

The thing is that I have a couple of characters that I need/want as POV-characters, and I've just recently begun introducing them, but I'm not sure if it's the right way to go. I've been thinking that maybe I could add them in the second book (I'm planning a series), because that makes more sense, at least in my opinion.

What would you say? Is it confusing if you add another POV halfway through the story? Would it be "acceptable" to do this?

Harlequin · Dec 2, 2017

I think it is acceptable (anything is, potentially) but I would certainly be cautious about it. I have seen it in published novels, if that helps. If they're introduced as a nonPOV character it's not so jarring.

It all comes down to whether you need or want their perspective. What do they add? A side of the plot we haven't yet seen? Vital information on the world, a character, a culture? Is the book richer with their contribution? If you need them, you will make them work somehow.

How many povs do you have? I found in Sept for mine that I needed to not confine one pov per chapter as it was breaking the pacing and structure of my MS. Mixing things up meant characters who don't get equal screentime still get a bit of input (short scenes within a chapter) and also that everyone got introduced MUCH sooner.

StoryofWoe · Dec 2, 2017

I second Harlequin in saying that the POVs should add a necessary something to the story. If your gut is telling you it'd be better to save them for the next book, then perhaps these perspectives aren't pertinent enough to be included. If this is a first draft, my advice would be to try it and see what happens. It's only a few chapters, right? You can always cut/revise them later. It's not a tactic you see every day, especially in commercial fiction, but some authors do it and many of them do it well. For example, Bryn Greenwood effectively incorporates a lot of tertiary POVs in her novel All the Ugly and Wonderful Things.

indianroads · Dec 2, 2017

I’m one that gets briefly confused when POV changes. My input is to do it as little as possible.

lizmonster · Dec 2, 2017

Questioner said:
What would you say? Is it confusing if you add another POV halfway through the story? Would it be "acceptable" to do this?

It's all in the execution, really. It's perfectly acceptable, but you have to make sure your reader doesn't get confused. (I've done it. I don't think it was confusing, but you'd probably have to ask someone else.

)

blacbird · Dec 2, 2017

Do NOT expand POVs because it "feels convenient". Do it only if it enhances story. Every different narrative POV adds a layer of complication for the reader, and too many just plain tends to get confusing and make too much reader work.

caw

Bufty · Dec 3, 2017

Agree. If - in the middle of the story - an intended scene already contains one or more POV characters, ask yourself why yet another POV is needed. If it doesn't contain any existing POV characters, ask yourself why the scene is needed.

Aggy B. · Dec 3, 2017

I've had single chapters in the middle of a novel from a POV that only appears there. (But usually from characters whom we've already met. Exception to this would be a villain's POV.)

There are plenty of times where it works just fine. POV should always be from the perspective of the character who has the most at stake/most to lose in a chapter. On occasion that's a character we only see a little bit beforehand. That being said, make sure they are distinct, even in third person (unless it's a true omni perspective) or readers will get confused.

Axl Prose · Dec 3, 2017

I just read a book where there's a killer and his victims get their own pov. Some only for a chapter. And this was throughout the book each time we met a new victim. And dude had a lot of victims

It worked ok, didn't bother me.

BethS · Dec 3, 2017

Questioner said:
Is it confusing if you add another POV halfway through the story? Would it be "acceptable" to do this?

There's no right or wrong answer to this, only effective or ineffective approaches to the problem.

Certainly you can add new POVs as you go, and it's less confusing or startling for the reader if they've been introduced to the character earlier.

The problems start when you end up with too many perspectives. The plot can begin to feel splintered, and time spent on minor POVs takes away from time spent on the more important ones. It can be a very hard balancing act and it's easy for it to get out of control.

indianroads · Dec 3, 2017

BethS said:
There's no right or wrong answer to this, only effective or ineffective approaches to the problem.

Certainly you can add new POVs as you go, and it's less confusing or startling for the reader if they've been introduced to the character earlier.

The problems start when you end up with too many perspectives. The plot can begin to feel splintered, and time spent on minor POVs takes away from time spent on the more important ones. It can be a very balancing act and it's easy for it to get out of control.

My experience of life is via a single perspective - mine. Therefore in reading I prefer single or very few clearly defined POV changes.

A plethora of POV's can make telling a story easier, and then more difficult when you have a POV character that needs to know something that happened to another POV character. IMO you run the risk of having the book turn into a tangled mess of plot lines.

Harlequin · Dec 3, 2017

Each to their own. I manage 5 in my first ms and that's not unusual for the genre. Character driven, as well. It doesn't make the story telling easier; you need separate plotlines for each one and revising a single POV usually means adjusting all the rest, too.

Fundamentally you have to write what interests you, and as a reader I tend to prefer at least two povs in a story.

Questioner · Dec 3, 2017

BethS said:
There's no right or wrong answer to this, only effective or ineffective approaches to the problem.

Certainly you can add new POVs as you go, and it's less confusing or startling for the reader if they've been introduced to the character earlier.

The problems start when you end up with too many perspectives. The plot can begin to feel splintered, and time spent on minor POVs takes away from time spent on the more important ones. It can be a very balancing act and it's easy for it to get out of control.

Yeah, I guess that's something to keep in mind. However, a couple of these POV-characters will get killed off as the storylines progresses, so I wouldn't it's that big of a problem. Thanks

Aggy B. · Dec 3, 2017

indianroads said:
My experience of life is via a single perspective - mine. Therefore in reading I prefer single or very few clearly defined POV changes.

A plethora of POV's can make telling a story easier, and then more difficult when you have a POV character that needs to know something that happened to another POV character. IMO you run the risk of having the book turn into a tangled mess of plot lines.

My experience of life is, in general, nothing like a book.

I only change POV at chapter breaks. Even in close third the vocabulary and voice is different from character to character (and even more obviously if the story is told in first.) I wrote a novel that has one solitary chapter told from the viewpoint of a gorilla. (They're sentient, and have been introduced prior to the POV chapter.) Because it was the one POV that mattered for that particular section of the book. (I have published work that centers on a character for only a single chapter. Including one who dies. And one who just dies later.)

That being said, not every book benefits from a broader perspective. So, you have to know your story in order to convey it with the most impact. But applying arbitrary (and personal) real life filters to writing in the form of advice is probably not as useful as one might hope.

For me, I tend to have a primary and secondary POV, plus a handful (3-5) supporting PsOV, and another 1-2 that are momentary PsOV. (I.E. The villain or a character that cannot maintain a lot of chapters as narrator, but has the most invested in a particular scene.) It's a tool meant specifically to allow me to step outside certain situations and plots and give the reader a break or make them see the action in a different light. It isn't necessary with every story, but for those that it is, I've found it is vital.

So, as always, one should do what is best for the story rather than what is popular at the moment. (Or recommended at the moment.)

indianroads · Dec 3, 2017

Aggy B. said:
My experience of life is, in general, nothing like a book. [...]

Sounds a bit like an out of body experience to me (just kidding, I get your point).

My perspective as a writer is that I try to limit the number of POV characters as much as possible. I feel the story is more genuine that way. YMMV as they say.

As a reader I prefer clean jumps between POV characters, it bugs me if, as I am reading I don’t know whose head I’m in. POV swaps are best (again in my opinion) if they are done at chapter breaks. In the Expanse series the author(s) labeled the chapter title so I knew who I was with and where I was. Again, just my personal opinion, YMMV.

Harlequin · Dec 4, 2017

Rather than argue the toss over subjective preference... I once encountered a MS that had 45 povs in about 90k words.

Atlantic12 · Dec 4, 2017

I think this might also depend on what kind of weaknesses you might have as a writer. I tend to sprawl my plots, so adding too many POVs makes me and the story a bit scatterbrained. To focus and sharpen the story, I try to limit it to as few POVs as poss. This may mean cutting what I thought was crucial stuff, but I've found that fewer POVs leaves more space to develop the really important stuff. It may take a lot of thinking outside the box to get the story to work with fewer perspectives, and that's usually been good for the story as a whole.

But I agree with others that some stories need more POVs, some fewer. How broad a world do you want to show? That kind of thing.

As a reader, I like books with single or multiple POVs, but both have their issues. Single POVs can feel too constrained, make the story feel smaller. Multiples can start to feel unfocused or sloppy. I don't think I've ever liked a book with more than about 4 or 5 POVs total because I do question why certain POVs just pop up and then go away. I tolerate some things in sagas such as the Song of Ice and Fire, but even there I skipped whole POV sections that didn't interest me. I especially hate the crime novel trope of opening from the POV of the victim, killing him or her off and then starting the book again with the detective. Ugh. That's just way overdone.

I sometimes wonder how the golden age of TV/HBO/Netflix etc series might affect storytelling in other forms. Standard TV series structure is multiple POVs, often too many, so that nobody really gets the character depth they deserve. On the other hand, you sometimes get nice insights into side characters that wouldn't get much page time. All this might be bleeding over into books, or be more tolerated than it used to be. Not sure.

Lakey · Dec 4, 2017

Atlantic12 said:
But I agree with others that some stories need more POVs, some fewer. How broad a world do you want to show? That kind of thing.

As a reader, I like books with single or multiple POVs, but both have their issues. Single POVs can feel too constrained, make the story feel smaller. Multiples can start to feel unfocused or sloppy.

These are the key points to me. What kind of story are you trying to tell? A single close POV can be very intimate, and if that’s the kind of story you want to tell, cluttering it up with other POVs only detracts from the intimacy. An example where this happens is Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love; it has a novel-within-the-novel that wants to be an intimate portrait of Rumi’s relationship with Shams Tabrizi, but is splintered by multiple first-person narrators who come and go chapter by chapter. It’s one of the reasons the book isn’t terribly effective for me.

On the flip side I think of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which is about as close a limited third as I’ve ever seen, and it’s a stunningly intimate look at a man’s perspective on events that are nevertheless somewhat epic in scope. The contrast there is part of what makes the book so effective.

Not all stories are meant to be intimate, close studies. But it’s worth keeping in mind that when you add more POVs, you take time away from being inside the head of one of your main characters, and you whittle away opportunities to help the reader connect that much more closely with that person. None of this is to say it can’t be done, or that it doesn’t add value of its own; it’s just to say, think explicitly about the costs of adding it.

I think this question illustrates one of the reasons people say that reading widely makes you a better writer. You can think over the books you’ve read, think about what are the books I know that have done this, and what’s been the effect on the narrative, to open it up, to expand its scope, to limit its depth? What are the books that have not done it, and what do they have that multiple-POV books don’t have? I’m really coming to appreciate the value of reading with attention to this kind of thing.

Jan74 · Dec 4, 2017

As a reader I prefer multiple pov especially glimpses into the "villain's" head. As long as I know who's head I'm in I'm fine. Some authors are excellant at omni and can bounce around and the story flows perfectly. For myself, I need to stay focused on one pov at a time and each chapter is dedicated to one pov. I have seen novels with too many mc and too many pov and you spend more time flipping back to remember who is who, I don't like that.

BethS · Dec 5, 2017

Harlequin said:
Rather than argue the toss over subjective preference... I once encountered a MS that had 45 povs in about 90k words.

Were they actual third-limited POV characters, or with this written in omniscient with the narrator hopping around from head to head?

Not that it matters, ultimately. Trying to tell the story using too many perspectives is a problem no matter which POV convention is used.

Harlequin · Dec 5, 2017

3rd person limited. Each chapter a separate pov. It was about as problematic as it sounds.

NB, my apologies if that person is on AW. But I don't think they are.

van Adel · Dec 5, 2017

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I'm currently reading The Fell Sword by Miles Cameron. It's book #2 in a series of 5.

I've lost count of how many POV characters there are in this story. There are well over 30 (!) in the first book alone, and the number actually seems to be increasing as the tale unfolds. To be honest, I really don't think it works. Not only does it make for a confusing read (Who is this guy? What was his deal again? Oh yeah, I think I remember him. No. Wait a sec... no, I don't. Or was he from the first book? God, I can't even remember... maybe he's new?), many of them serve little or no purpose that I can fathom.

Adding POVs

Questioner

Harlequin

Eat books, not brains!

StoryofWoe

Sick and pale with grief.

indianroads

Wherever I go, there I am.

lizmonster

Possibly A Mermaid Queen

blacbird

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?

Aggy B.

Not as sweet as you think

Axl Prose

BethS

indianroads

Wherever I go, there I am.

Harlequin

Eat books, not brains!

Questioner

Aggy B.

Not as sweet as you think

indianroads

Wherever I go, there I am.

Harlequin

Eat books, not brains!

Atlantic12

Lakey

professional dilettante

Jan74

BethS

Harlequin

Eat books, not brains!

van Adel