Every POV character needs to have a "journey"?

No, every character, even a main character, does not have to change. There's nothing at all wrong with writing stories about characters who go through a change, but saying they have to do so is fiction writing 101 BS.

A character should learn something from what he goes through, but even this isn't necessary.

Let me put it this way. You write a novel where the character goes trough an arc and changes. That's fine, and it may be a brilliant story. But, whoops, the publisher asks for a second book featuring that character. It happens all the time. So does he have to change again? To what?

And now the publisher wants a third book, and a fourth book, and a tenth book. Series are not as popular as they are because the character changes in every book, but because he's a great character and readers love him. There's an old saying I've always liked. "You live, and if you aren't totally stupid, you learn." That's fine, but sooner or later anyone who isn't stupid figures it out.

Certain kinds of stories are about change, or coming of age, or redemption, and I like them, but they can also get old very, very fast, and there are other kinds of stories. Many of them. If you're writing a story about change, then the character should change, but real life isn't always about change, and good fiction isn't, either.

In my WIP currently, I started with only 2 POVs because those two were the main journeys I wanted to show. I've got another 2 now because they're also on a journey (I say a journey but I really mean they all have their own individual plots, and they are all interlinked too). I would never have a POV if it wasn't integral to the plot...don't see the point in 'setting the scene' characters and comedy can be done just as well from one of your close POVs using a non-POV character, and often better imo. Besides, if you need outside interpretation of your main characters/what's going on, I think the others POVs can do this fine.

But then I'm not a huge fan of multi-POV anyway so it's broken a lot of my own rules to get this many in the current works

Jamesaritchie said:

A character should learn something from what he goes through, but even this isn't necessary.

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If they don't learn anything, they run the risk of coming across as impossibly dense.

Your character may still be impulsive at the end of the book, say, but teh next book he might think 'Hey, now what happened last time I ran unarmed into a room full of men with guns who want to kill me? Yeah, that was a long six months in hospital....maybe I should go prepared this time?' or 'Note to self; next time do not sniff the white powder to see if it's cocaine...' and then do soemthing else impulsive, or maybe a touch less idiotic.

I think the 'journey' could be as simple as the character learning something, either about themselves, or the world. The don't have to change character or anything - most people's base character stays the same IRL after all, even after they've learnt stuff. I may be a touch more cynical these days, but I'm still stubborn, hot headed and impulsive.

ardenbird said:

But it makes it harder to define a "journey" for already well-developed personalities....

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Oh, ho -- you're missing such a great opportunity here. You think older, experienced people have nothing to learn? Ha.

Give each POV character a conflict: something they want but but can't easily obtain; or maybe something they fear but they have to end up facing it.

Do that, and you will automatically create an arc, a journey, for each POV character. They can still fulfill other functions in the plot as well--dispensing wise advice (which, of course, is seldom followed), being eyes and ears in places your MC can't be, providing a different perspective, and so forth. But it will be so much more interesting if each struggles with his or her own problems as well.

Yeah, this -- I personally like it when I know things the MC doesn't, and can agonise over them heading for unexpected disaster Most of my secondary POVs are in scenes where the MC isn't present.

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And that's fine. But the most deeply layered and engaging novels are those where all the POV characters have something at stake. Your secondary POVs are not robots and drones. They're people, with dreams, problems, and agendas of their own.

I believe that every character needs a flaw in some way that ends up either resolved as a lesson of sorts, or becomes thier undoing in an inspiring/tragic/ 'moral lesson' kind of way. Of course, if the character isn't very developed or is petty, then creating a subplot for them to have some lesson or journey could be redundant or distracting from the main storyline.

Come to think of it, leaving some flaws unresolved can also be useful. So no, I don't think every character needs a journey.

ardenbird said:

Yeah... I guess for one there actually is a journey, which all I'd need to do is flesh out (sees himself as a father figure to the MC, starts out thinking MC needs protection, ends up realising she's grown up and can handle things herself). But the other... I'm not sure. Both these characters are older, more experienced people, to provide perspective not seen by the young hot-heads who make up the rest of the cast But it makes it harder to define a "journey" for already well-developed personalities.

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You don't need to develop every single thing about your character to show a change (however small). The narrator for The Great Gatsby changes, but, the other main characters not so much. Even a peripheral character can experience something here. Why not Gatsby? Why didn't he change? Well, he's not the narrator. He has no POV.

I think if you figure out why you need these characters' POVs (it has to be more than just reporting or it feels contrived) you'll be set. If you can switch them out with anyone else, then that might be a problem. Why them? What is their occasion for narrating?

Maybe you can already answer that and maybe it's already there.

I think about prologues for epic fantasy. In one book, it was a scribe detailing past events from long ago. It was this character's only POV section, and yet, we saw how the story he recounted HAD changed him. We didn't necessarily see that change on the page, but we knew he'd been forever altered by past events.

Mr Flibble said:

If they don't learn anything, they run the risk of coming across as impossibly dense.

Your character may still be impulsive at the end of the book, say, but teh next book he might think 'Hey, now what happened last time I ran unarmed into a room full of men with guns who want to kill me? Yeah, that was a long six months in hospital....maybe I should go prepared this time?' or 'Note to self; next time do not sniff the white powder to see if it's cocaine...' and then do soemthing else impulsive, or maybe a touch less idiotic.

I think the 'journey' could be as simple as the character learning something, either about themselves, or the world. The don't have to change character or anything - most people's base character stays the same IRL after all, even after they've learnt stuff. I may be a touch more cynical these days, but I'm still stubborn, hot headed and impulsive.

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In the Nero Wolfe mysteries, neither Wolfe nor Archie change in any way over the entire series. For that matter, none of the stock characters do. Neither does the setting. The entire series can be read in any order precisely because none of the characters change.

Roger J Carlson said:

In the Nero Wolfe mysteries, neither Wolfe nor Archie change in any way over the entire series. For that matter, none of the stock characters do. Neither does the setting. The entire series can be read in any order precisely because none of the characters change.

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All of this is true (and I've read them all), and what JAR said above is also true. A POV character doesn't have to "change" in the course of the narrative. That character just has to have a solid reason for being a POV vehicle. The more POV characters you use, the greater is the difficulty in having such solid reasons. That's not saying you can't do it. It's just a caution. I've seen many a manuscript with multitudes of unnecessary "POV" characters, and the more of those you have, the weaker your narrative becomes. Most readers enjoy identifying with POV characters. That identification gets hard to maintain if there are a bunch of them.

The worst reason for switching from one POV character to another is perceived "convenience" for the narrative. That, I believe, is what BethS was getting at with her astute comment about "walk-on" POV characters.

caw

Roger J Carlson said:

In the Nero Wolfe mysteries, neither Wolfe nor Archie change in any way over the entire series. For that matter, none of the stock characters do. Neither does the setting. The entire series can be read in any order precisely because none of the characters change.

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Exactly - Hercule Poirot learns things(or more properly, Captain Hastings as he narrates) about people and the world, but it doesn't change his essential character.

I think it works better in crime/thriller series, I think, but I dare say you could extend it to other kinds of books.

Perhaps the thing is 'what is the main focus of the book'. If the plot is the central focus (as in a whodunnit, where finding out is the point of the book), then you can have your character not changing at all. As the characters become more of the central focus, then change becomes a better thing to have. In epic fantasy (which the OP is writing iirc) there tend to be changes in the characters because of what they go through, and because the characters are more of a focus in most stories of that type (Even Harry Dresden changes very subtly over time...). It's more of a convention there than in the aforementioned crime series. In which case, I think while yes, ofc you can do it, it would be as well to make sure you are doing it for the right reasons.

No!

For the excellent reasons already given.

BethS said:

But do they need to have a POV? You can have walk-ons without going into their heads.

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I concur...

If I write from a POV at all, it's usually with very light 'penetration' and otherwise I do omni...

Then again, I'm not a fan of jumping right inside people's heads and bodies anyway. I can see wanting to do it for the main character or even a couple of other really important characters but definitely not for 'walk-ons' who are just in a couple of scenes.