As I said last week, multiple viewpoint is most commonly used these days for writing ensemble cast or braided plot novels, and for these, one usually ends up with a more-or-less balanced word count for each POV character. The most obvious case of this is the alternating-viewpoint novel, where there are two viewpoint characters who alternate scenes or chapters. If the chapters are roughly the same length, the viewpoints will obviously be balanced in terms of word count.
Chronology is the biggest peril of the alternating-viewpoint or balanced-braid story. It is extremely easy to find oneself in a situation where one of the viewpoints has more important stuff happening today than will fit into their allotted chapter, while the other viewpoint character is supposed to spend a week traveling to somewhere else with not much happening. The author is then faced with the choice of either figuring out something interesting to happen to Character B (which frequently comes across feeling like unnecessary padding), or else dropping the alternating-viewpoint structure and letting Character A have two or three chapters (which nearly always ends up making the book into Character A’s story, rather than the dual-plotline the author started off envisioning).
The second biggest peril of alternating-viewpoints is that it isn’t enough to balance the word-count or scene count; the plot interest and contribution of each character has to be equally interesting to the reader. Too often, a writer starts with two interesting characters, but one of them develops more and/or in a more interesting direction than the other. Or one ends up with a lot more invested in the outcome than the other. By mid-book, the reader is skimming A’s chapters and devouring B’s, which usually does not end well for the author.
Fortunately, the multiple-viewpoint technique does not actually require that the word-count be balanced among POV characters. Not all stories are true ensemble cast stories, or balanced braided storylines.
Strongly plot-centered stories can use viewpoint changes to keep events driving forward regardless of who is present. The narrative starts with the mad scientist dropping the beaker of zombie virus, cuts to the cheerleader who’s the first victim, then to her waiting father, then the beat cop who finds the body. Eventually we get to the medical researcher who’s the main character hunting for a cure, and the viewpoint will keep coming back to her, but it’ll still cut away to the truck driver who’s trying to get through to her with the crucial supplies, the panicked general who wants to call in a nuclear strike, or anybody else who will keep events moving and tension escalating. Many of the “viewpoint characters” have only one or two scenes; the crucial factor in deciding who has the next viewpoint is “What is the next dramatic thing that happens, anywhere, that moves the plot forward?”
On the other hand, additional viewpoints can be added as embellishments to a story that is strongly centered on one character and/or limited to one place. Most of the scenes are from the main character’s viewpoint, but much shorter secondary viewpoint scenes are used from time to time to provide an outside or alternative view of the main character, to move the plot forward when the main character is mentally or emotionally stuck, or to expand the scope of the story by letting the reader glimpse how events are affecting people/places that are far away from and/or unconnected to the central story.
Multi-century or multiple-generation sagas pretty much require the viewpoint to change as the original characters die off, and the word count for these new characters often increases as the story builds to its eventual climax. These stories sometimes divide the main story into sections, with the first section from one viewpoint, the second from the viewpoint of that character’s children or grandchildren, the third section from the viewpoint(s) of great-grandchildren, and so on. Or, one can tell the first part from the POV of Character A, the second from the POV of the child of Character A’s arch-enemy/rival, etc.
All of the above methods allow the author to sidestep the problem of keeping the time line in step. If the main character has a lot going on Tuesday, the author can spend most of a chapter on those scenes, nip off for a one-page summary of the one important thing that’s happened to Character B, and then go back to finish up A’s day. If C is traveling for a week, the rest of the POV characters get scenes but C doesn’t…or if the writer needs a little break, C gets a two-paragraph scene describing how he/she is sitting in the dining car of the train enjoying a prime rib and a fine Merlot while wondering what everyone else is up to.
Another possibility is a “chunk” structure, in which the story is divided into several multi-chapter sections, each from a different viewpoint. This, too, avoids the problem of keeping the viewpoints’ chronologically synchronized, but it requires a storyline that’s strong enough to carry the reader through the change in viewpoint. The problem is that if the reader gets deeply invested in POV character A, and then the story switches to POV B without resolving A’s part of the story, it can throw the reader out of the book…but if character A’s story is resolved too completely before switching to B’s viewpoint, the “novel” quickly starts feeling like a fix-up composed of related short stories or novellas.
And, of course, there are stories that assign each subplot to a different viewpoint character, allowing readers and writers to keep track of Subplot Y by reading all of Character E’s viewpoint scenes. In fact, there are whole writing systems based on variations of this idea. Most usually, they start by allocating the majority of the word count and scene count to the main POV and central plot, then they assign a lesser percentage to minor viewpoint characters, depending on the intended length of the book and the role of the minor POV (romantic interest, sidekick, minor opposition, main villain, etc.). Alternatively, some systems assign wordcount/number of scenes to each subplot and only then assign POV characters to each of the differing plotlines. I don’t have a lot of use for these systems as a way of constructing and planning a novel, but occasionally this kind of formula can help when one has gotten totally tangled up in possible viewpoints and potential subplots.
Because “multiple viewpoint” can be used in so many different ways, it is usually a good idea to do some up-front thinking about why one is using it, which way one intends to use it, and how one expects it to contribute to the excellence of the story. Sometimes “I want to see if I can write an alternating-viewpoint story” is a good enough reason, but if that’s the goal, then one has to be willing to shuffle story elements and events around until both viewpoints are balanced (otherwise, readers are likely to get more interested in one character than the other, and start skipping every other chapter). “I love both these characters and want to write both of them” may mean that you need two different books, not two viewpoints in this book – or that it’ll work better if A is your main, central viewpoint and B is a secondary/subplot viewpoint, instead of trying to keep them equally balanced. It’s a lot harder to change this kind of thing when you have 20,000 words of strict (and unnecessary) alteration under your belt.
