Multiple POVs

[gadgetmind]

By the way, this is an example of how Joe Abercrombie does it in his forthcoming book, The Heroes:

Joe Abercrombie | The Heroes Extract
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Hmmm, this bit -

The tree line was some distance away to the north and seemed to Lasmark particularly gloomy and threatening. He did not care to imagine how many men could be concealed in its shadows. But then he thought that whenever he saw woods, and the North was bloody full of them.

Is something I'd have flagged if I'd read it in critique. To my eye, that final one seems like a mild example of a Garden Path Sentence and it took me a couple of goes to parse it correctly.

It's probably just me as it works just fine when I read it now!

Ian

 

[digs]

Ian (and Anne...and The Judge...and everyone who writes), just out of curiosity, to what extent do you plan your stories before writing them? I'm wondering if this would make a difference in the use of POVs (for example, I assume - probably incorrectly - that an organised author would be more likely to limit his POVs and adopt certain POVs with more regularity, whereas a spontaneous author would have a more 'organic' approach, with POVs cropping up here and there whenever the author thinks of something new).

 

[gadgetmind]

I do a whole load of planning. I won't pretend that the entire plot was complete before I started writing, nor that I haven't made changes as I go along, but I've always had a big list of future scenes and I continuously add notes and ideas to these as they occur to me.

However, I don't recall ever making the final decision on POV, nor on the timing of entering and exiting the scene, until pretty late in the day.

Ian

 

[Anne Lyle]

I'm both organised and disorganised - I like to have an outline to give me some idea of where the story's going, but I don't necessarily stick to it! I find that I come up with my best ideas in the act of writing, so I follow them provided they don't lead too far in the wrong direction. That might involve splitting a scene where I hadn't anticipated, or writing it from a different PoV.

I generally know, going in, how many PoV characters I want (I find around 2-4 is a good number), and in the revisions stage I do control them quite strictly, trying to make sure that the main character(s) get a good share of the action with minor PoVs having fewer, shorter scenes. But I try to avoid adding extra PoV characters unless there's a good justification (e.g. an epilogue describing important events that none of the main characters are privy to, in the case of my recently submitted book).

So, yeah - bit of both, really!

 

[The Judge]

No initial planning for me, digs, I just start writing. It's a bit like a journey where I know where I'm starting, where I have to finish, and a few places I have to visit en route, but I've no real idea how to get there and I let the characters do the driving. However, once I've started the journey, I do then start taking stock, and in particular look at the POV characters I have used and whether I need to bring them in again to give balance to the story. So, in WIP1 I was conscious a character whose POV opens the book, but who then didn't appear again in the original draft, needed to resurface, and I altered a new plotline a little in order to bring him back.

 

[gadgetmind]

TJ (and others): When the first draft is done, how often do you find yourself having to add/remove scenes, add explanation, and fill gaps?

I deliberately changed pace for the final 3rd of my book, and have some gaps where I expect the reader to extrapolate based on post-event dialogue. An early reader has found this confusing, so I might need to do some revising and splicing, and write some more scenes rather than having convenient calls!

I have also got some characters who were in earlier scenes a fair bit, but didn't feature much/at-all during the middle section. Their return has been flagged as abrupt.

In other words, my complete lack of writing experience is really starting to show!

I guess I need to plough ahead, see what others think when it's done, and then see if I need to push things around later.

Ian

 

[The Judge]

After I'd finished the second draft of WIP1 I deleted one very short scene which I realised added nothing, but off my own bat, nothing more. I then tried to incorporate a bigger, over-arching plot line which meant a whole swathe of alterations, but actually very few new scenes as such. But when Teresa helped me, she suggested other amendments which added two specific scenes and transferred another one from where it wasn't working to slightly later on where it does -- just about -- work. I had been thinking of bringing in another POV character at a pivotal time, and the earlier changes meant it was then more or less vital, so another two scenes got added there, too.

With WIP2 there's a kind of whodunnit running through it (actually more than one), so I'm having to add lots of scenes as I'm writing it as I realise I have to give the necessary clues as to the killer etc and lay the obligatory red herrings. But that's still only 75% finished, so may well incur deletions and/or more insertions as it progresses.

So yes, for me, lots of changes, possibly caused by the lack of initial planning, possibly by inexperience (don't let my know-it-all attitude fool you, Ian, I'm not so far ahead of you by any means), but it doesn't actually worry me. I enjoy the fiddling with it afterwards, much more so than the route-planning in advance which would probably sap my enthusiasm.

 

[gadgetmind]

Thanks TJ, encouraging words.

For a thick-skinned Yorkshireman, I do let mild criticism deflate me at times. I have a day off work, fully dedicated to writing. I have so far re-balanced my pension, done some email, and am about to change a washer on the bathroom tap.

I will gird my loins, or whatever it is I use to write with, and get stuck in. Right away. Once that pesky washer is done.

Ian

 

[The Judge]

... I do let mild criticism deflate me at times.

You're not alone in this.

I have a day off work, fully dedicated to writing. I have so far re-balanced my pension, done some email, and am about to change a washer on the bathroom tap.

Nor in this... though I leave the tap-washer fixing for the other half!

As for criticism, the short answer is, you have to get over it. If you are going to pull the covers over your head and weep every time someone says something potentially adverse (as I have been known to do) then you're in the wrong profession, alas. Even if you wrote the most sublime book in the history of the universe, with exciting scenes, exquisite prose and snappy dialogue, some berk would come along and say it was boring, or too long, or used words he didn't understand.

It seems to me one has to pay sufficient attention to criticism to recognise and accept good advice and then benefit from it, but one must never, ever take it to heart, and it should roll off one's back like water off a duck. And when you've worked out how to do that, let the rest of us in on the secret.

 

[Anne Lyle]

TJ (and others): When the first draft is done, how often do you find yourself having to add/remove scenes, add explanation, and fill gaps?

Well, my recently finished and submitted work was the first proper, saleable novel manuscript I've produced (as opposed to rough drafts and shorter work), so writing and revising that has been a major learning curve. I threw out most of the first draft after I decided to switch it from an invented world to the real Elizabethan London, then it took several more attempts at rewrites to pin down the story. I think I must have written at least two novels' worth of material in the process!

Also I write very lean on the first draft, and then build the story up around that framework. The penultimate draft was only 105k, but feedback from beta-readers (as well as advice from John Jarrold on here) suggested it was too short - in particular, the ending was rushed (it's always tempting to pelt for the finish line!). The current version is 128k, adding a bunch of new scenes that expand on some conflicts and characters arcs and of course beef up the climax and denouement.

 

[Dozmonic]

The stuff you're writing is sci-fi and I don't read that as much as I do other genres. I can suggest looking up stuff by other writers who use multiple POVs well. Conn Iggulden will use a lot of POVs, some only lasting for one scene in a book, just to give a different perspective on the happenings. He'll use *** to separate scenes within the chapter. Grab Wolf Of The Plains from the library or a shop and see how you feel that works. Another author is David Gemmell who, in his Troy series, separates things even more. Each scene with have multiple "parts", part i, part ii etc and within each part can be more than one pov, separated by blank lines.

Ultimately, if someone reading it for the first time is not confused, it works. Choose how you wish to set the book out and stick with it. You can change this around while editing. For example, I've got a book with two parallel story paths and I can have 2-4 POVs telling each story path even though they follow only 1-2 characters along each path. Sometimes I'll change the chapters so 1-3 tell one path, and 4-6 tell another. Other times I'll alternate them and find that works better

 

[HareBrain]

There's a balance to be struck. The downside of lots of POVs, even if you don't confuse the reader, is that you don't get such reader identification with any of the characters -- in my experience, at least. Also, if you give yourself free rein to stick in extra POVs to provide other perspectives, you can end up losing some of the mystery that comes with restricted knowledge.

 

[Anne Lyle]

There's a balance to be struck. The downside of lots of POVs, even if you don't confuse the reader, is that you don't get such reader identification with any of the characters -- in my experience, at least. Also, if you give yourself free rein to stick in extra POVs to provide other perspectives, you can end up losing some of the mystery that comes with restricted knowledge.

Very true - having lots of PoVs works fine for GRRM telling an epic, quasi-historical tale where there is no real protagonist, but mostly readers want to identify with one or two characters they can root for.

Then there's the mystery vs suspense argument, as discussed on another forum I belong to (not public access, I'm afraid). In mysteries, the PoV is limited so that the reader is one step behind the protagonist (usually a detective), whereas in suspense the bad guys' viewpoint allows the reader to stay one step ahead and worry how the hero will avoid disaster. Both techniques have their place, as long as you know which you are aiming for.

 

[gadgetmind]

Interesting what you say regards mystery versus suspense - I'll have to do more thinking about that.

One early reader of my incomplete book (brother in law!) has commented that I've jumped too far ahead a couple of times, and it feels like something is missing. I consciously decided to do this, and let the reader work out what had happened based on subsequent events and dialogue. If others also find it too "gappy", I'll have to drop in some additional scenes, and one of these might involve a head I've been trying to keep out of.

Let's add this to the list of things I struggle with. At the head of the list, we have justifying certain actions of characters, flashbacks, and multi-way dialogue, but it's a big old list.

Ian