Formatting chapters for a multiple viewpoint book

Isingforhim86

Active Member
Joined
Sep 9, 2015
Messages
29
Hey everyone, I'm wondering if any of you can offer some advice or would be able to give me the names of authors/ books who/that may use a writing format that may work for my story. So far, I've come up with about 50-60 scenes for my book and have put them in chronological order to show how the actions of one character in one location will effect those of others in other locations over the course of short amounts of time. I want each of the main characters I describe to go on a mini journey and to weave these together to create one story. My issue is this: I don't know when to end my chapters because I don't know which scenes each chapter should contain. I'll try and summarize my first few scenes below in case you don't understand what I'm hinting at.

1) Day one: We are introduced to a group of social outcasts that are living in an ancient forest. One of them is one of three of the main characters, and we learn a bit about her and her relationship with her brother, whom is the leader of the group. A scout reports that enemy soldiers have entered the area, and the leader of the group says that they will attack the soldiers the next morning...

2) Day two: The social outcasts are seen spying on the soldiers. I focus on one of the young soldiers, who is also one of the three main characters. He and a bully like villain decide to leave for town to collect supplies, prompting the social outcasts to attack. The brother and sister from the previous scene get into a fight because the sister almost gets hurt by the soldiers. The brother questions the whereabouts of the remaining soldiers...

3) We see a young maiden (the main character) whom is the daughter of an apothecary. She is collecting herbs/medicinal plants. When she goes home to bring the items to her father, she finds a pool of blood and learns he was taken by soldiers. The distraught young maiden then runs away, seeking the safety of a hidden encampment in the forest...

4) I want to show the actions of the young soldier in town. He goes to the home/shop of an apothecary in order to seek help for his condition. While at the shop, he learns that the owner was taken by a squad of nearby soldiers because he was accused of witchcraft. The young soldiers finds a baby blanket in the shop covered with blood. The blanket has his name on it. (The house that the young soldier visits is the house where the young maiden lives)...
 
The use of chapters (or the absence of them) is entirely up to the author.

Some do what GRRM does in A Song of Ice and Fire, i.e. have a chapter per scene or more per Point of View character, which can overlap each other and may have events not occurring in strict time order (sometimes by quite a way, to the extent that events in a book may happen later than events described in a later book). Others have chapters containing scenes from different PoV characters, often in time order**. Other schemes are used, in which each (very long) chapter is from a single PoV, and most if not all PoVs only get the one chapter (in which the events described in each may have little direct relevance to the other chapters, because they're mostly what could be seen as flashbacks); Hyperion is, to the best of my recollection, a bit like this. Other writers have completely subverted how the book interacts with time, but I'll omit the names of he books, as getting to grips with this is something best approached, from a reader's perspective, without being forewarned.... Some authors don't use chapters at all!

Basically, there is no one way to organise one's chapters, but you might try organising your novel on the basis that you think it best allows your story to come through to the reader (and then see what your beta-readers make of it).



** - But note that unless the different PoV characters are describing what is actually a single narrative, and they do it in turns (not going over previously covered events), scenes may in any case overlap in time.
 
I haven't read A Song of Ice and Fire, but I think that you are describing my approach so far. I'm going to write down all the suggestions you have and try and think of what works best. Thanks!
 
It sounds to me like a straightforward shifting third point of view story. When I write them (and I mostly do) I try to:

1. Contain whole chapters in one pov, or mimimise swapping and make sure it's shown by a scene break if I do

2. Ensure the pov character is identified at the very beginning. Sadly, it means a lot of chapters starting x did... But when shifting it's important to keep the reader with you in terms of who is doing what when.
 
I also find the one POV per chapter thing easier... Helps focus on one character's head at a time. As an alternative to GRRM, Rick Riordan uses this in his YA series Heroes of Olympus. You can go to a library or bookstore and leaf through one of the Ice and Fire books, or one of Riordan's, to get a feel for how they do it. Just make sure it's the Heroes of Olympus series because the original Percy jackson series is first person. :)
 
I want each of the main characters I describe to go on a mini journey and to weave these together to create one story.

You may benefit from reading more about POV use, so you can get a better idea of the options, and understand the strengths and weaknesses of each choice. Jeff Vandermeer's Wonderbook is a great and comprehensive book about many of the technicalities of writing, and could be well worth a read if you're serious about publication.

You also need to read more widely - your target genre, and other genre fiction. That way you'll see how published writers apply the various technicalities of writing in real life, and you can seriously learn from that. No excuses! :)
 
A few thoughts about what I've been doing/learning so far. Hopefully I will be able to help others in a similar situation by touching on some of what you've posted above.

I started my story in first person with one pov per chapter and got about 10,000 words into it, but I ran into two major issues. 1) I don't have a distinct 'voice' for each character yet, since I'm still developing them and 2)I have about four primary characters (my main character is a Princess and I'm weaving the stories of the other three into hers, since they are her love interest/foil, best friend, and father, and ultimately make her success possible) and then many, many supporting characters (friends, acquaintances, family members, villains. Some of these take up large parts of the story and I deem them as important, while others are known as 'stock' characters. Ie: soldiers, townspeople, etc.) I didn't want to have to switch pov too often for fear of confusing or frustrating my readers with characters that I may or may not develop down the road. (One thing I've done is to try and carry over one person's pov to the next scene/chapter and then to switch it to another main character when it seems to fit Hopefully this creates a smooth transition.) I think I'm going to go back and change things to what I believe is called 'closed third person pov.' I have a bit of experience in it because of the fan fiction one shots I've done in the past. You are able to get inside a characters head while still being able to see what is going on around him or her. Here are a few paragraphs from A Wolf Among Sheep, which I wrote about a year ago to show you what I'm hinting at. I wondered what the Tardis did when the Doctor wasn't around, and came up with this:

"Another dreary day in familiar London. Men, women and children passed by on the walkway to her left. She didn’t have to acknowledge them to know that their eyes were fixated straight ahead as they visualized the steps to be taken. How very dull it must be to continue to travel in one direction. At least the birds can go up and down. The Tardis envied the frequent fliers about her, even though she’d seen Clara and the Doctor disappear only moments earlier.

While she wasn’t blessed with wings, she’d been born for the same purpose. Why was it that so little of her existence was spent in space? Space. The colorful vortex seemed to contain webs. As she watched time wax and wane, she knew that invisible strands were coming undone, ripping. Unheeded, unstoppable, she. One of the last of her kind who has- Not for the first time, adrenaline was building up within her. She scolded herself for allowing her thoughts to take her elsewhere. Whenever she gave in to temptation, the wait became longer. The wonders that lay beyond the fragile barriers between the worlds made any parking place the Doctor chose seem far too casual for his wife."


Yes, I agree that I need to read different genres. So far I've mostly been in the supernatural thriller and fantasy genres and dabble in murder mystery and the classics. Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on more books in the near future. I'm in college, so its a bit hard to find time.

I know that my four primary characters aren't in every scene, and that this could cause a pov issue. If you have any ideas on how or if I should try and limit how many that I use, feel free. In the meantime, I'm going to start reading A Song of Ice and Fire and see if/how the author handled the situation.

Thanks everyone!
 
I'm going to try and find Wonderbook. So far I have: 1) The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy, Volume One, edited by Darin Park and Tom Dullemond, 2) The Writer's Complete Fantasy Reference, and 3) several of Holly Lisle's books (How to Write Page Turning Scenes, Create A Culture Clinic, etc). They would be good places for others to start.
 
What you describe, about voice, is completely normal in a first draft - I'm 30k words into my new one and am still slipping in and out of the voice, so don't worry about that.

In terms of pov characters - in Abendau's Heir, I have 10 point of view characters, of which two only have short scenes. So far, no one has said pov has been a problem. What I did (don't know how useful this is but anyway:)

Prologue and chapter one in a single pov (main character's parent)
Then a switch to the main character for about six chapters.
After that, and his voice was established, i began to bring in others, two, a brother and sister in quick sucession, taking turn about with the main character. Again, once they were established, the others came in. That 3 of the povs are antgonists, it meant there are two clear story lines going on but each of the 3 main characters, especially in the second and third books, will carry their own storyline. Which means it's really more of a structure/continuity problem, and i find a good gantt chart useful in tracking it.

Your excerpt, btw, seems to be in close third, which is fine for a switching pov. :)
 
When writing the Space Captain Smith books, I generally went with the perspective of whichever character would both move the story forward and enable me to tell it in the funniest way possible. Because comedy sometimes requires a humorous contrast in viewpoints, I was more willing to jump perspective within scenes than I would have been in a non-comedy novel provided that it wasn't too jarring. Often the viewpoints would be "the heroes" and "the villains", and I would just leave a line between the two groups' viewpoints.

The fantasy novel that I am writing at the moment sounds much more like what you're doing. There are four POV characters, and each gets a chapter from his/her viewpoint (and then the cycle begins again). Because of this, sometimes they don't have the full perspective on what's going on, and nor therefore does the reader. Sometimes, they are in the same scene: however, characters D and A never meet B and C.

They differ greatly in skill and outlook, so the reader gets some variety. We have:

A paints a picture in a palace, and gets involved in court intrigue
B flees the city and goes to meet his mentor, C, whilst escaping pursuers
C uncovers a conspiracy, and goes to meet B, where they compare notes
D does some stuff with monsters that seems unconnected.

However, I try to arrange the chapters so that what the reader learns from A is relevant when reading about B, and so on. This enables me (hopefully) to create tension, by giving the reader a bigger picture than the characters have. A learns from her maid that soldiers have left the palace to hunt B, so when we next see B, the question arises in the reader's mind of whether the soldiers will catch him by surprise. The aim is to leave the chapters separate, but to use them to reflect on one another, so as to give the reader more than the sum of the parts.

At least, that's the plan.
 
Creating tension...sounds like I'm doing it. I've heard it said that you should write each chapter from the pov of the person that has the most to lose. I don't always do that, but I usually do. I believe that I have about 8 points of view so far, so I think I'll be okay. Thanks all!
 
Creating tension...sounds like I'm doing it. I've heard it said that you should write each chapter from the pov of the person that has the most to lose. I don't always do that, but I usually do. I believe that I have about 8 points of view so far, so I think I'll be okay. Thanks all!

IMO it's all about the most active character in that scene. Which usually means the one who can show the most conflict. Which may be just another way of what you're saying.

However, it's an ideal. Published authors can get away with producing very passive scenes, but IMO that's bad writing.

If you really want to get into character conflict and emotional development arcs, Save the Cat can be a great book for that. That may actually help you with your decisions on how to set up your own scenes - or, at least, help clarify in your own mind which decisions you are making and why, allowing you to then ramp up specific aspects to help with that.

Just my personal opinion, and it sounds like you're doing a lot of things right - so best of luck with everything. :)
 

Similar threads


Back
Top