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How many POVs is too many?

OGone

Troubadour
I'm writing in third person.

I've outlined my plot, most of it is set in stone. However there are some parts which I haven't decided on a POV for yet.

There's about 15 chapters, I'm estimating 10-12k words each. Each chapter is told in one POV.

I have a choice between 3-5 POVs. I'm just not sure whether to go for more. Is only having a couple chapters with one character as the narrator a good idea?
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Wow, that's a lot of worms for a six-word question to open.

There are a lot of considerations for who your POV character should be. One of the best I've heard is from this forum (T.Allen I think?) said that you should choose whoever experiences the most emotion in the scene.

Other considerations are:

1. Which character knows everything that you need to convey to the reader?
2. Which character can be excluded for knowing something you don't want the reader to know?
3. Your story is typically about A protagonist. His viewpoint should dominate the book.
4. Changing POVs too often CAN break the flow of a story.

I know I'm leaving a lot out. This is just not a simple answer.
 

johnsonjoshuak

Troubadour
I think 3-5 POVs over the course of a 150K word novel isn't too many. In The Cerberus Rebellion I have 4 POV for most of the book and then add a 5th late. And TRC is only 100K.
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
My basic answer may not help you much.

The number of POVs should be the minimal number that is necessary to tell the story in the best way it can be told. What constitutes the "best" way is what you need to figure out.

Let me illustrate. My current WIP originally had 4 POVs. As the story progressed, it became clear that I needed another to show a set of scenes that happened away (distance) from the other characters. The events in these scenes are important so they rated another POV. That POV currently has 4 chapters.

As the story progressed further, I realized that one of the originally planned POVs might not be necessary. I haven't made a final decision yet but...if I conclude that the events surrounding that POV aren't integral to the story, that character will get the axe...dropping me back down to four. Whatever my final choice is, the decision will be based solely on minimal necessity. Any characters that get cut may rise again in this story, or another, within the same world.

For some readers, a story with a lot of POVs may have a jarring effect. While I accept this as a matter of taste and style preference, I don't necessarily agree. I believe the problem in multi-POV stories rests with character inequalities. What I mean by this is that readers find some POVs more interesting or emotionally evocative than others. The more POVs you have, the greater the risk for that comparative reader response. They wish to rush through one POV to reach a character they care about more. If however, you were able to fashion 10 amazing, distinct, & immersive POVs, I don't think you'd suffer that problem. The difficulties of succeeding in that effort, combined with an idea of only writing what is important to the story, lead to my practice of limiting the number of POVs to those that are absolutely necessary.

Brian is right that, when i select a POV, I try to identify the character that will have the greatest emotional reaction (sometimes the most interesting reaction) to the events.
 
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BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
I believe the problem in multi-POV stories rests with character inequalities.

I get what you're saying here and agree that it can be a contributing factor. However, I've experienced this phenomena separately from the issue with mulitple POVs impacting flow.

As I've stated before, an author who jumps to a different character POV and jumps in space/time too often disrupts the flow of a story for me. If an author shifts POV but stays in the same space and time, it doesn't seem to bother me at all.
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
I get what you're saying here and agree that it can be a contributing factor. However, I've experienced this phenomena separately from the issue with mulitple POVs impacting flow.

As I've stated before, an author who jumps to a different character POV and jumps in space/time too often disrupts the flow of a story for me. If an author shifts POV but stays in the same space and time, it doesn't seem to bother me at all.

This is where I feel it comes down to style preference. The shifts you describe above wouldn't bother me a bit as long as I found each POV interesting. In fact, I almost prefer that structure precisely because it gives a break in flow...showing me things that are happening concurrently and all building up to a climax that draws everything & everyone together.
 

TheokinsJ

Troubadour
I believe that the number of POVs doesn't matter, as long as it is told well and that the number of POVs don't retract from the story. A great example of this would be George R.R martin's series called 'A song of Ice and Fire', where there are almost twenty or so POV characters, and yet the story is so engaging and each character is developed throughout the chapters. My advice- start big and work down. Start with as many as you want, perhaps five or six, however many you feel that you would like. Write a few chapters from each of your POV characters and you'll quickly realise if it's too many or not, from there you can subtract POV characters and work until you find the right number. Hope this helps and good luck!
 
As long as you can make them distinct and interesting, the number doesn't matter; but creating one good character is hard, and creating two is twice as hard. Creating five is five times as hard. There's also the fact that for some readers, switching between too many POVs means you never get a lot of time with any one character, and that can be troublesome. I've heard that exact criticism of A Game of Thrones, although it never bothered me.

In general, I'd recommend against newer writers writing multiple POVs. Start simple, master the basics, and then move to harder stuff. :)
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Just doing the simple metrics here if it's only 15 chapters with 3-5 characters, with one POV per chapter, then that means each character only gets between 3-5 chapters of stage time if you distribute them evenly. Without knowing your story, my gut tells me you could be underestimating the size of it.

From my thinking, not only does each chapter have to move the plot, it has move character and world in regards to that character, and five chapters of face time seems too little in terms of a novel. I'm guessing, but things could feel rushed in terms of character depth and development.

Also, I've said this before, the more POVs you have, the more complex the web of relationships can get. With 5 POV characters that interact with each other, the math says you have to define ten different relationships in a meaningful way. This is above defining the relationships with the minor characters.

Of course some characters may not interact so the complexity may go down, and this isn't me trying poo-poo anything. I'm just trying to point out why using the least amount of POVs will be make things much easier on yourself. My first novel I had three major POVs and it ballooned up to 270k and was a complete mess that I didn't know how to untangle. My second novel, I used one major POV and I had my hands full even with that, but I found it let me focus more on the writing and developing my craft instead of having to deal with the tangle of logistics when working with so many POVs.

To me, working with one POV is like learning to walk before you run.
 

OGone

Troubadour
Thanks for all the help guys.

Funny, I asked the same title question back in 2011:

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/1623-how-many-povs-too-many.html

Hope this helps!

Haha you even worded it exactly the same. Yeah I went through some of the previous answers, thanks.

Just doing the simple metrics here if it's only 15 chapters with 3-5 characters, with one POV per chapter, then that means each character only gets between 3-5 chapters of stage time if you distribute them evenly. Without knowing your story, my gut tells me you could be underestimating the size of it.

From my thinking, not only does each chapter have to move the plot, it has move character and world in regards to that character, and five chapters of face time seems too little in terms of a novel. I'm guessing, but things could feel rushed in terms of character depth and development.

Also, I've said this before, the more POVs you have, the more complex the web of relationships can get. With 5 POV characters that interact with each other, the math says you have to define ten different relationships in a meaningful way. This is above defining the relationships with the minor characters.

Of course some characters may not interact so the complexity may go down, and this isn't me trying poo-poo anything. I'm just trying to point out why using the least amount of POVs will be make things much easier on yourself. My first novel I had three major POVs and it ballooned up to 270k and was a complete mess that I didn't know how to untangle. My second novel, I used one major POV and I had my hands full even with that, but I found it let me focus more on the writing and developing my craft instead of having to deal with the tangle of logistics when working with so many POVs.

To me, working with one POV is like learning to walk before you run.

Hmm maybe I'll try to use the lowest number then. I need a minimum of three to tell the story though - although I only need one of them for one chapter. Midway through the story all of my MCs are together (bar one) so the choice to use more wouldn't have an impact on the length of the story though, I just wanted to add a bit of diversity and build more sympathy for the other chars.
 
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