Severe Viewpoint Issues

[Amanita]

Hello everyone,

once again a question by me. How many view-points can you accept within a single story? In my current story (where I've been searching an element for the villain) there are five view-point characters. I tried to reduce the number to as few as possible but five is the number where I'm getting stuck. Would this number of narrators put you off? (They're all third-person limited.)

Personally, I tend to have trouble with many viewpoints, that's why I'm worried about this. I failed to keep track of all the character in the "A Game of Thrones" even though this might have been because I didn't really get involved into the plot either, no matter how good the book may be, by objective judgement.
In "Codex Alera" I managed with five but there and in other books I've read I've realised that I really hate situations where character A faces a possibly life-threatening situation and the story switches to character C whom I neither know nor care about at this point. (I can't really concentrate on them than because I want to know what's going to happen to character A. That's something I'm definitly trying to avoid.

Besides the sheer number I also fear that potential readers will have the same problem with this story that I have with A Song of Fire and Ice. They might not know why the hell they should want these people to win, at least in the case of some of them.
One of the main characters is seen as a villain by three of the four others and only his own sections show that he really isn't. The character who seems the most likeable to me is actually supposed to be fighting for the "evil" side for quite a while. (And she doesn't join the others after that either.) I used to have another character whose story mainly served to prove how evil this side acutally was but I'm not really happy to keep this because "good guys become good when the bad guys are just evil enough" doesn't really work for me.
The way it is now, I'd probably sympathize with Madam A and might even support her side if I'd read the story. As the author I know that victory of the other side would actually be better for the world and other people in it, though.

Of course I know that to many of you it doesn't matter if there's no real division in good and evil but I'd like to know if such a setup of viewpoints can work. Or would you cut out or change either the "evil side"-woman's part or allow the readers to actually see the other character as a villain and without getting his own view on things?

 

[sashamerideth]

I think three is the most I can keep up with, eventually the viewpoints came together. Maybe changing your viewpoint to third person omniscient instead?

 

[BeigePalladin]

hmmmm, I'd say it depends, are we getting the same event from each view point, but at different chronological times, if so, then 3

otherwise, if we see the characters without all the others there, then I'd say the same number as characters

 

[Derin]

As a rule, I'd say that's too many, because large numbers of viewpoint characters can get confusing. But any rule in fiction can be broken if you write well enough. If you can keep such a number clear by giving them distinct voices, making the change clear (between chapters or something), and not switching between them too often, I see no problem.

I'm not a fan of absolute-good-and-evil stories, so I don't see confusion over who the audience should sympathise with being a problem. And as you said, a bad cut can just about ruin a story. (Don't cut in the middle of a dangerous situation to somebody outside the situation! What is this, a commercial break?!)

 

[Robdemanc]

Hi. I am new here. I wrote a first draft recently and I told it in multi viewpoint characters. After finishing it I decided to write the whole thing again with just one viewpoint character. I think it has turned out ok. The problem with multi viewpoint is that each character must have some significant input to the story, so the fewer the better I think.

 

[CicadaGrrl]

Biggest set of views I have--basically four with one character in one of the books doing a cameo and taking it to five. For me the question is, do each of these characters have their own legitimate arc within your book that needs to be told and can only be told using their voice? Do they intertwine? Then go for it. If you can handle it handle it. But do have them in some way, even not physically, interconnect since you need a unified sense of an overall arc, which is what people sometimes lose in having multi stories.

Even in third limited you can get a lot done cutting viewpoints by simply having your narrators be slightly unreliable. For instance, three of your characters bitch about one being evil, but write in actions on his point, even just expressions or dialogue that make it clear to the READER that he isn't evil, but your narrator is too dense or too blind to get that point.

 

[Ravana]

I've read many SF novels the number of viewpoint was more than I'd care to go back and attempt to count–in some of those cases, I've read the book over a dozen times, and I still couldn't tell you how many points of view there were without going through it yet again. (And I would inevitably get caught up in the flow of the story yet again and forget to keep track. ) It's not a question of how many, it's whether or not you can make them all sufficiently distinct–and their input sufficiently important–that the reader feels justified in having the PoV shift from one place to another. If you can manage that, I don't think the actual number matters in the slightest.

 

[Chinaren]

I rather like a lot of viewpoints, as long as it's well done of course. But then I also like complex twisty plots too. It kind of depends on what you like I guess.

I've written stories with quite a lot of different viewpoints that worked well (at least I thought so), but some people don't like this style. Harry Turtledove does this a lot for example, if you've read any of his, but it works for him IMHO.

 

[cobrarosa]

I had no problem with multiple viewpoints, but more than three, if they constantly switch from one to the other throughout an arc in the story, is a difficult balancing act. Although I love Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time", the myriad of viewpoint-switches had my brain singed more than once. I was always pulled back though, but it could just as easily have lost me. As someone/many said, if you write well enough, you can pull it off.

Peace
/Tomas