Multiple viewpoint stories, especially the sort that are occasionally termed “bestseller style,” have become increasingly popular over the past couple of decades – popular with would-be writers, at least. Some people hear the saying that “viewpoint solves everything” and assume that it means all they have to do to solve a writing problem is to throw in another viewpoint, from another character. They forget – or never heard – the equally true statement:
“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.” – John Barth
A character’s own life story is about that character, which is a large part of what makes writing multiple viewpoint stories so difficult. The other part is that no two people’s life stories are exactly the same story, not even when they are going through what is ostensibly the same significant event.
This means that in a story that’s told by, say, five different viewpoint characters, the writer has six stories to tell: one story for each of the five heroes-of-their-own-lives characters, plus the main story/plot the writer wants to tell. All of these stories have to be different enough from each other that the reader won’t feel as if they’re reading the same thing over and over, while still fitting together in some way to further the main plot. Each thread needs to balance the others, contribute to the “main” plot, and be interesting and involving for the reader on its own merits (or you get people missing critical information because they are bored with Bob’s story and always skip scenes where he’s the viewpoint).
Furthermore “multiple viewpoint” is not actually a viewpoint; it’s a structure. This means that unless you default to tight-third (which is common), the writer still has to decide whether each scene will be first, close third, camera-eye, etc. In addition, multiple viewpoint means that the overall story structure will have to be balanced against the structure of each viewpoint’s story. The whole thing ends up a lot like herding cats.
Taking on a multiple viewpoint story is therefore not something most writers do casually (unless they are one of the lucky ones who get multiple viewpoint “for free” in their writing toolbox). Still, some stories cry out for it.
Sprawling epics like George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, with a cast of characters that keep changing as some get killed off and others rise to take their place, are obvious candidates for multiple viewpoint. Spreading out a huge number of characters (and the constant turnover as they die) puts the focus more on the events that are taking place than on any one character’s position as “THE Hero.” It also allows the author to cope with a decentralized story and/or large-scale worldbuilding without making their single viewpoint travel everywhere and overhear or participate in every crucial discovery and event. Family sagas that cover the history of one or two families and their descendants over three or four generations or several centuries have a similar need for a constantly changing cast of viewpoint characters and the ability to move through time and location more easily than one single, central viewpoint would allow.
Stories that revolve around an event that affects a large group of people are often well-suited to multiple viewpoint, especially when the author wants to give an in-depth picture of the different ways that individuals react to the destruction caused by the earthquake or wildfire, to first contact with aliens, to sudden revolution or economic collapse, or to whatever apocalyptic scenario the writer has in mind. Multiple viewpoint is especially good for presenting community reactions, whether the community is coming together to survive or falling apart under the stress of unexpected catastrophe.
A central storyline that revolves around the differing ways a theme can play out in different lives may need readers to identify closely with all the characters in a group, so that each death in battle, murder, escape, discovery, success, or failure by each character will have equal or near-equal weight. The writer can use interwoven multiple viewpoints, or treat each character’s story as an anecdote or short story in a chain. Similarly, when the central story revolves around a major discovery that required significant actions by a number of different, possibly unconnected people, whose individual discoveries build up to the realization at the story’s end, multiple viewpoint can give each character’s actions the emphasis and recognition they deserve.
Conversely, using a diverse group of viewpoint characters who have all had some similar-but-not-identical experience (being dumped by their first love interest, diagnosed with cancer, fired, forced to flee their home) can emphasize the commonality of their reactions. Stories like George Turner’s Drowning Towers use multiple types of viewpoint (first-person, various sorts of third-person) as well as multiple viewpoint characters to provide views of different times, as well as different places and different social conditions. And the closeness and involvement of a family or group of friends can show up as rotating viewpoints when they’re all involved in the same adventure.
For some stories, you probably don’t want to use multiple viewpoints, or use them very sparingly. Any story that focuses primarily on one character probably needs a single viewpoint, whether the character being focused on is Sherlock Holmes and the viewpoint is Dr. Watson, or Huck Finn giving a first-person account of himself.
Next week, I am going to talk about considerations in choosing the “cast” for a multiple-viewpoint novel.
When using multiple viewpoints, it is essential to immediately identify which viewpoint you are in for each scene change. I’ve encountered too many books where I, as reader, was left in a kind of limbo until the third or fourth paragraph that finally let me know whose eyes I was seeing things through.
One might expect to encounter this in a first draft, but in a published work?…
I’ve often wondered if the “herding cats” aspect of multiple viewpoints may be part of the reason Martin has taken so long to wrap up his Song of Ice and Fire series. I may be mistaken, but I think I recall when the first book came out it was expected to be a trilogy, and it just kept growing and growing. (To be sure, I’ve read every volume avidly.)
Multiple viewpoints need dramatic irony.
After all, why are you showing things from the second point of view except so that the reader knows what the first point of view does not?
Because the first viewpoint isn’t present, is my most common answer.
Suppose we have two characters, Alice and Bob, working together, who split up. Alice, the main viewpoint, goes off and has Adventures, while Bob is also having Adventures elsewhere. Then they get back together and tell each other what happened.
If you want the audience to know what happened on Bob’s adventures, you have two ways to convey the information. Either we have a scene of Alice watching Bob tell her he had adventures, or we have a scene of Bob having adventures. Sometimes the first strategy will be the best, but it’s a lot harder to pull off dramatic suspense if the audience already knows Bob is fine, and Bob may not be very talented at narrating exciting adventures, and so I often find myself wanting to switch viewpoint to Bob for his adventures before returning to Alice for those scenes they share.
But Bob’s adventures are precisely what Alice doesn’t know and now the reader does.
Speaking as an author who usually writes multiple viewpoint, I find your perspective somewhat difficult – which is odd, because Mairelon the Magician is one of my favorite books.
You say that, if the story has five different viewpoints, the author has six stories to tell. But… if the story has five major characters, doesn’t the author have six stories to tell anyway, even if they aren’t viewpoints? If you have one viewpoint and four major characters, surely those four major characters, despite not being viewpoints, all still have lives and perspectives of their own, and the audience cares about them, and wants to see what happens to them. The stories may not be on screen, but the author still needs to find out what they are, so the shadows the main viewpoint sees and the echoes the main viewpoint hears are appropriate to the story happening offscreen.
Or do I misunderstand?
Hmm — actually, I’m going to argue with the multiple story thing. It’s one option. The other is to provide dramatic irony to the central character’s story.
Which one is generally clear by the number of scenes. If one character gets most scenes, and other point of view characters come and go, it’s clear who’s story it is.
Dr. Watson and Archie Goodwin and Spenser (and others) convinced me I want to write novels in first person, for the immediacy and immersion. I just find I’m more into my stories that way.
This post convinces me that if I want to write in multiple viewpoints, I might be best off, given what drives me, to just give each viewpoint character their own novel or shorter work. 🙂
I don’t know from Spenser, but your first two names are examples of the first-person narrator who is not the protagonist, and whose knowledge of what the protagonist knows and does is *deliberately* limited. This is a good strategy if you’re writing mysteries.
And there’s Christie’s _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,_ in which the narrator knows (and doesn’t tell) things the detective doesn’t know–or the narrator thinks he doesn’t, until the surprise ending. Subtlety to the point of deception.
I’ve only written two mystery stories in my life: one was told in tight-third over the shoulder of the protagonist.
The other had two main characters, who told (also in tight-third) their parts of the story when they were separated.
Both stories worked, I guess; they sold.
You’re absolutely right! Even though I write sf/f, the conflict/problem in pretty much all my novels comes down to information. Why am I different? How do I fit in to the world? What’s going on?
So in a sense, they’re mysteries too. Voyages of discovery, anyway.