Writing multiple tenses

[Mectojic]

I know it feels wrong grammatically to have someone switch between 3rd and 1st person, or any other tense/style.

But in my series, I tell the story from 8 separate point of view characters.
What does anyone think about having different characters tell the story in different ways?

i.e. one character always is first person - "I sprinted after him, sweating to keep up."

Another character is 3rd person - "Lance sat down with his quill, and wondered what to write". In this tense, you do get the character's thoughts sometimes - "Why do I even bother? he wondered"

And even possibly, one character could be told from 3rd person omnisicent. So the focus follows the character, but sometimes the narrator, knowing all, says stuff like, "Little did Tymon know that he was being watched from above."

Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts?

 

[buyjupiter]

The only author I've seen do this well was Charles Stross in Rule 34 (seriously don't read if you're offended by much of anything & yes, it's a reference to *that* rule 34). He bounced in and out of 2nd person--which is hard to pull off to start with. The switches between POV was jarring at first, but then the further I got into it, the more I enjoyed it--even as I realized that he's probably one of maybe 5 authors that could get away with that kind of thing. (Neil Gaiman and Ursula K LeGuin being two that spring to mind rapidly.)

IF you CLEARLY indicated that each section of a POV was a POV character a la GRRM in ASoIaF with his chapter headings being character names, you might be able to get away with it. If you bounce around between POVs in a section/scene? I will find it annoying and put your book down. If I can't tell who is who and who is doing/thinking/saying what? I'm not going to spend fifteen minutes untangling each and every sentence until I figure it out. (That would be my "warning" on how to do it/not do it.)

BUT, I will say this: I'm personally not a big fan of 1st person POV (even though all the cool kids are doing it). I've seen multiple 1st person POVs done well once. It was a bit jarring at first, but once I got used to it, it was fine. I'm not terribly sure how I would view intermixing POVs as you're describing, other than knowing that it would be jarring until it either wasn't, or I put the book down never to return. (This would be my personal reader preference, take it for what you will.)

I like to think of POV as a challenge to tell [whatever] story in a certain way. And finding that balance and knowing the rules for each way of presenting the story (and I've gone and done drastic rewrites when I realize my first person narrator needs to be omniscient 3rd or my close third needs to be a first person) is part of the fun for me. [I may be "weird" in that I can slip in and out of different narrative styles with relative ease? For example, I can write a magical realism story in omniscient 3rd one week and the next I can write a 1st person epic fantasy.]

 

[Feo Takahari]

I don't think omniscient would work, but it could be fun to assign POVs to personalities. For instance, one character might use third person to try to portray everything as objective, but slip up and reveal his personal biases.

 

[BWFoster78]

I've read a couple of books where this kind of thing is done. Personally, I found it distracting and didn't think it added anything.

When making your decision, I understand that Brian's personal preference probably isn't paramount (just for the alliteration ), though.

My main reasons that you might not want to do it are:

1. There is a definite disadvantage (though probably a fairly small one) in that some of your readers will probably find it distracting.
2. Some readers do not like certain POVs/tenses. By including a bunch of different types, you're likely to turn off those readers.
3. You're making things harder for yourself. I get that it's good to challenge what you can do, but, if you're a relatively new writer, it's probably better to make sure you can walk really well before you enter hurdle races.

Hope this helps.

Brian

 

[Penpilot]

I've seen books that mix first and third person limited. They only have one POV character told from first person. I've read books with two POVs both told in first person. IMHO any more than that and the risk of confusion exponentially increases.

I don't see any reason that you can't pull this off as long as each character consistently sticks to their tense and POV type. So if Bob's story is in third limited and in present tense, no switching Bob to past or future tense. And no switching Bob's story to first person.

Why? Because IMHO it just makes things unnecessarily difficult for the reader.

Is there a particular reason you have for wanting to try this?

 

[Caged Maiden]

I would first ask "why". The "whys" of writing are often more profound and deep than people give them credit for. Why does this story have to be told in FPOV? WHy does this story use MPsOV in deep Third? Why does this story work best with omniscient? For what reason should I write this in present tense? Also, I would never advocate mixing tenses.

With those questions out of the way for a moment, I'd like to talk about some of my experiences. I wrote a story with Multiple Points of View, from lets see, one, two three, four, main heads. Not really a small thing. but then there were two instances where I selected other PsOV, once a father of a MC, and once a friend of another MC, for specific scenes the reader ought to know, but the characters didn't get to know about.

I hope that makes sense. My very meager point i'm trying to make is that in tone and consistency, and writing style, I kept all that stuff constant, but still people commented in beta reading that the number of viewpoints were distracting because they were too many. Huh? Just a thing to keep in mind. I didn't have another choice. I needed to have all those characters be PsOV because they were separate for more than half of the story. I couldn't possibly show what one side was doing without going into a certain head. So...

My very most honest advice is to write the story any way you choose, getting all the information in there and finishing out the entire story, and don't worry about that stuff right now. When it's completed, look at how you can simplify. Consider which characters don't really need to be PsOV for the story to work and flow. After all, POV isn't a toy, it's a tool. If it doesn't accomplish a very distinct goal (to introduce a certain bit of information to the reader and not other characters, to show a situation which the other characters can't witness, etc.) THEN decide how best to utilize the tools.

I'd find it very distracting to have certain parts in present deep third and others in past third omniscient and others in present first...it's a recipe for disaster if you ask me. Like, burgers and fries work really well, I love them, but if you try to deep fry the bun and lettuce, chop the patty into mash and mix it with fries, and serve it with proportionally tons of onions and caked in ketchup, I might not like it. All the ingredients are there, but they're prepared in a rather unpalatable way. For me, that's how I would view what you're proposing. It's got all the right things, but not in the right quantities for me to personally think, oh, I'm gonna like this!

I've often started stories I meant as third limited and realized I need to do MPsOV. That's a hard thing to switch halfway through a novel. But for reasons that meant a lot to me (secrets I don't want the reader to know until the time is right), I had to do it. I'm not saying it was the best way, and I'm certainly open to any beta comments to change it, but sometimes it's impossible to fight.

I think the best method would be to write it, see what you think, make some big decisions once you have a whole manuscript, and then get creative with tense or POV if it's warranted. Only if it serves a purpose.