Keeping track of POVs

[Dragonie]

If you're writing a book with more than one POV, how do you keep track of what's going on in each POV? Especially if one POV is off doing something related to, but not directly involved with, another POV's plot? I'm trying to figure out how to keep all my threads in some sort of order, but it gets a bit confusing.

 

[JCFarnham]

Extensive outlining ^_^

 

[mythique890]

I have about 3 plot threads at a given time in my story. I don't find them too hard to keep track of because such different things are happening in each one, and there's one big one and two smaller ones.

Constantly updated notes are probably your best bet along with outlining.

 

[Lord Darkstorm]

Remove some pov characters. Each pov character should have a purpose to them being one. Having a half dozen pov characters to show the story from every possible angle is usually overkill, or worse, boring. Figure out which character is the most important, or drives the plot the most, then go from there and order them. See which ones you are adding only because you wanted to show something because you find it important, but not needed for the plot.

If you can't keep up with them all, you have to many. Try writing the story with one character. Just one. They will be very easy to keep up with, and you wont have to worry about keeping the one thread in order.

I've read a few 'cast of dozens' type story with so many pov characters that by the time they get back around to one I've forgotten who they are. Half of them could have been nixed and made a better story.

 

[Shadoe]

I use link charts, and now I've started using Excel. I write some fiction that involves some crime investigation, and I used to do that for a living, so I use some of the charting (link charts) to show who's related to what and how they come together.

For my last story, I used Excel. I wrote a short synopsis of each scene then put them into the spreadsheet, using one column for each character (or, rather, couple of characters), and each line represented a scene. In this way, I could see who was doing what and when, and I could reorder the scenes (or even reassign them to different characters). It worked pretty well, since the plot was one that had different characters' plot lines intersect at various points.

But yes, it can be difficult to keep the various pov plot lines organized.