Pacing novels with multiple narrators

Hi,

Personally I don't think the pacing with multiple POVs is any different than single POV narration.

Not sure which stage you are with your novel but if you are still on the first draft I wouldn't worry right now about pacing and just get the whole story down on paper. Once you have a first draft one thing that can help is making a spreadsheet listing your chapters, who's POV, scenes for each chapter and then put in one colour moments of tension and in another colour breathers. You can also add a column for chapter ending to keep track as well.

The thing with pacing is that it cannot all be tension, tension, tension, you need breathers to create a rhythm to your story. By using different colours you can see you can see if you have an imbalance between tension and breather and you can then work on that during draft 2.

Of course that one way of doing it, there are many more out there so you might need to experiment a bit to find which one works for you.

My advice re pacing multipov novels: Be flexible on your POV rotation. In my personal experience, sticking to ABC ABC ABC for the sake of it tends to bugger up the pacing.

MS1 has 5 POVs, and not all of them are equally important. My rules, as such, are that every character must appear every couple of chapters, but not necessarily in their own pov (as in, they feature in someone else's chapter as a non POV character). The other thing I do is make sure that there is always one mini-arc rising and falling. Don't interrupt arcs just to shove a perspective in

The great advantage of multi pov is you actually have way more freedom to manipulate pacing by staggering perspectives and switching as needed. Having an even rotation of perspectives *can* work too, but it's usually better for your story if you take advantage of the flexibility.

One thing that I like to do when switching POVs is have the previous POV in some way relate to the next. Whether having the events of each chapter parallel one another in some major or minor way, or having the current POV wonder how things are progressing for the next POV, with irony bonus points for things going the exact opposite of what they suspect. I find this can help smooth the transition and maintain the sense of continuity between chapters.

Harlequin said:

My advice re pacing multipov novels: Be flexible on your POV rotation. In my personal experience, sticking to ABC ABC ABC for the sake of it tends to bugger up the pacing.

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This. My first MS had a much-needed POV that I couldn't make work until I gave up the pattern.

balletomane said:

I'm working on a novel that has three protagonists, who narrate each chapter in turn. Their stories unfold in parallel and then become intertwined. I'm finding it quite challenging to pace. My opening chapter feels very effective - a sharp hook, just the right level of suspense, relevant background detail that harmonises with the story and doesn't feel forced - but when I switch to the second protagonist I'm unsure how to maintain the momentum. The first chapter ends on a tense note, and moving from that into a more pedestrian scene and narrative style seems to disrupt the flow of the story. However, if I inject more tension into the second chapter, the effect of the two together is quite strained, and as though I need to take it down a notch. Does this make sense? I'd be grateful for any hints and suggestions from writers who regularly work with multiple narrators. It's a new thing for me.

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Is it truly necessary to alternate your POVs in that pattern? 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3... It's like a waltz.

I've read books that do this. The pattern, in its predictability, becomes monotonous. Each POV gets only one chapter at a time, and if each chapter is fairly short (as was the case of the most recent book I read that used this technique), the story can feel as if it's progressing in a series of small, deliberate steps, each the same as the last, despite what was happening in the chapter itself. It was rather excruciating to read.

I have several POV characters in my WIP, but I interleave chunks from each character. Some chunks may be longer than other chunks. I can't really explain how I know when to leave off with one character and pick up with another, except that I know when it's their moment to walk on stage. The story dictates that, not the chapter order.

It may just be your phraseology, but to me, if each of the three protagonists narrate their respective chapters, they are all written in First Person POV. And I agree with Beth, when you change from the perspective of one character to another it should be because the telling of the story requires - and benefits from - the change.

I presume they are not each covering the same ground every time.

lizmonster said:

This. My first MS had a much-needed POV that I couldn't make work until I gave up the pattern.

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I did the same thing. BethS taught me different in one of her helpful posts.

I think the biggest problem you can run into doing that is to backtrack and retell the story. It's fine to switch narrators, but I've found it better that the story keeps going -- you don't tell POV 1, and then go back and tell POV 2 and so on. It works best for me when the story stays linear as the narrators/POV change.

It's fine to let one character dominate a few chapters before switching to the next. I usually leave something unresolved in one POV when switching to another. With my two-POV novel, State of Love & Trust, I created a spreadsheet with a scene-by-scene breakdown for each chapter, colored-coded by POV. This really helped me achieve a POV balance that felt organic rather than forced or repetitive. One character had the main plot, the other, a subplot. They were intertwined, but the POV character for the main plot got a larger share of page time.

And I'm going to second the advice to avoid repeating a scene in a different POV. A given scene should be awarded to the POV with the most at stake (unless there is some really compelling reason not to). If you're unsure who gets the scene, it's well worth the effort to write a scene from each POV and select the one that is best.

I'll be the rebel. I've never worried about balance for POVs. I just write the scene from whichever characters' POV it needs to be written from. Major characters get a lot more attention than minor characters, but I don't keep track of who has more scenes or chapters from their POV.

When reading, I hardly ever notice if there's an imbalance in "time" given to a character, either, unless you're George RR Martin and leave a string of characters out of an entire book.

The one time I experimented with this I found it really, really helpful to make a huge plan beforehand, but also as I went along.

That way you can plot out, on an actual physical piece of paper (or papers) what each narrator will be doing at what point, and how this overlaps and corresponds to the others.

But yeah, it is easy to get overwhelmed by it. But that's what editing is for!

Most of my novels have had a single POV character, just because that's the way the stories played out in my mind. In the only novel where I switched the POV character (1st, and second to last chapters only) I was careful to change to mood / tone of the writing. My thinking behind this choice was that I was within someone else's mind, so their opinions (internal dialogue) would differ from the novel's MC, and they would see and react to events differently.

I'm a discovery writer (pantser), but I also somewhat plan ahead. The current WIP alternates between three POV's, the protagonist, the antagonist (a vampire), and the protagonist's BFF who ends up being the lover of the antagonist. The story alternates between the three character's every chapter, starting with the protagonist, the BFF, and the antagonist. I see some here hate that. But I think it works in my case, because the story propels forward with each chapter, and for each chapter the POV character is the one who has the most at stake, or at least I tried to make it that way. It's not been easy. That's why it's been taking me, oh, a long time to finish. I must plan the chapters somewhat ahead of time, but there's been times I was stuck, and the work sat untouched for a while. So planning seems the best bet for writing a story with alternating POV's if they must stick to the 123, 123 formula, like I did with mine. It also helps to know where you want to go with it. I had a vague idea, but like I said at the start, I'm a discovery writer, and I like to find out how the story unfolds as I write it. The sequel to this book, if I should write one, will be told through one POV.

Tension doesn't always come from action and big things—it doesn't even necessarily come from what's on the page, especially in multi-POV stories. Think of the information the reader gets from each POV; the things that relate to the individual POVCs, but also the bigger picture. How do the POVCs' goals, motivations, and methods conflict/interact? How does not having access to the same info affect them?

In mPOV stories, you can build and maintain tension by making the best of a simple fact: at any given point, the reader knows more than any of the individual POVCs. Weave the choices and consequences of the various POVs in such a way that the reader can anticipate and connect things even when the POVCs themselves aren't aware of them.

In my current series I have two primary POV characters as well as third minor POV character, all written in third person limited past.

When all characters are in a scene I tend to write from the perspective of whoever has the most to lose; advice I first heard from CJ Cherryh at a con 20-some years ago. While I normally alternate POV scenes between the two major characters, and occasionally throw in the third, I don't limit myself to a strict rotation.

One thing that I find helpful is color coding. I write in Scrivener and use a different color icon for each POV character. This lets me see at a glance if I've gone too long with a single POV so I can see about adding or moving scenes so that the pacing makes more sense.

What it all boils down to is that you can do anything you want when it comes to POV rotation so long as you can do it well enough that it works.