POV Number Query

[Phyrebrat]

Let me just preface this with the acceptance that I know the answer is 'however many you think - it's your story.' but I would really like some opinions.

The main arc in my story is essentially a supernatural haunted house deal set over a long July weekend where friends have come to spend a lazy, indulgent weekend together. There are also other stories within the narrative revolving around the historic theft of the house, land, or chattels, titles attached to it etc by various agencies.

The cast of characters are:

Willie - MC, POV1, a sculptor, possibly recovering from some mental illness, and best friend to;
Kate - POV2, best friend to Willie, mother of 2 deceased infant twins, adoring wife to;
Neil - Cunning and successful e-businessman (web, ISP and LCR) dedicated to Kate, newish owners of Riffy Grange (the house in question), may have grey moral zones, responsible for the death of the elderly previous owner (also Web supplier to her strange middle aged son)
Craig - close friend of Willie, gets killed in a nightclub (bit of a red shirt)
Jose - Brazilian friend of Craig and Willie, can be volatile, end reveals him to be the latest thief to take the house and his true identity.

With all the historical stories I'm fine, I know who the POV is. But the main arc is set in the present. I am wondering if I could give a deeper character experience by allowing Craig, Jose and/or Neil a POV but the problem is this:

1. Neil has a secret that is so pertinent to the narrative, I don't want the reader in his head. he also has a strange moral compass which will be too exposed if I give him POV
   
2. Craig's death is a bit of a mystery and I don't want to show the evening's events leading up to his death.
3. Jose is essentially the personification of the themes of the story of theft, betrayal and his subtefuge would be obvious if he had POV.

I could use unreliable narrators for them to hide stuff, but really Willie is an unreliable narrator and I think to have that many would be contrived.

Do you think it's okay to have only 2 POVs in such a large story?

pH

 

[Venusian Broon]

I think you should go with what feels right for you.

You will know the ins and outs of your plot and above you've given the reasons for not including the others, so probably they should remain described just as the main two find them!

Really I can't tell you if your story truly is large (is it War and Peace large?) so it would be difficult for me to say if it deserves more PoV characters, or if more different PoV chapters would give a deeper character experience. Personally I think if you can tell the story with just two, then adding more starts to become padding. Occums razor and all that.

And of course adding more characters might make some say 'oh no, too many PoV characters' as some readers hate jumping about every chapter into different heads. Not me, but I know of many that say that.

So I'd write it the way you've outlined it. The one thing I found is that as soon as I let a character get a PoV chapter of his/her/its own they, in some imaginary space outside both this reality and theirs (but tied to my imagination), start to demand more 'head' time and before you know it you're adding more and more scenes for them! So adding more character with their own PoVs will probably add a lot of words to your novel. If it's long already, that might be a consideration.

I suppose the question is how do you know if you have too few, or would adding another PoV would make it even better? It is close to midnight on a Saturday so I am struggling to formulate an answer to that. So I'll have to sleep on it ....

 

[The Judge]

If you can tell the entirety of the modern day plot and all its ramifications with only the two POVs, then I'd certainly do that rather than add more. Not only are the other voices not needed, and could indeed create problems that you've foreseen, as each of the historical passages/scenes/chapters will have its own POV character, you might be in danger of overegging the pudding** if you have more POVs in the 2015 chapters.

Write it as you see it now. If when you get to the end you and your beta-readers think something is missing, you can consider adding more POVs on the edit.



** too many cooks spoiling the custard

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I tend to lean to a minimal number of POVs for the present-day sections also. Alternating between present-day few POVs and past multiple POVs would provide a nice way for the reader to distinguish between the two types of narration, I think.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Thanks both. That's something of a relief. I wanted to keep to Kate and Willie.

ETA: Thank you Victoria, too.

pH

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Do you think it's okay to have only 2 POVs in such a large story?

It might be. I will echo Venusian Broon and say that it is impossible to say for sure. Depending on the progress and complications of the plot it might work very well.

But if you want to bring in more point of views, I'm sure you know that you don't have to give every POV characters anything close to the same number of scenes. Actually, the more POVs you have, and the sooner that you establish that there will be multiple POVs, the less time you have to spend with the ones you don't want readers to know too much about. With five of them in the present day, it is possible that you might be able to limit Neil, Craig, and Jose to a couple of short scenes each.

Would that help with the problems you foresee, or would you still end up giving too much away?

But if I were you, I think I might try writing the whole thing with just the two main characters you mention, and then decide later if the others would add anything to the story.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Actually, the more POVs you have, and the sooner that you establish that there will be multiple POVs, the less time you have to spend with the ones you don't want readers to know too much about. With five of them, it is possible that you might be able to limit Neil, Craig, and Jose to a couple of short scenes each.

Would that help with the problems you foresee, or would you still endup giving too much away?

That's an interesting point, Teresa. I was going to give Jose one POV scene right at the very end as he surveys his ill-gotten gains. As VB says, I think giving Craig a POV would be padding things, and I can't see how I can give Neil a POV that comes across as relevant without throwing in countless red herrings and so on, to such an extent that the reader would feel mislead.

But I hadn't taken into account what Victoria had said about the historic side stories where there are POVs from;

• 1178 - First use of site
• 1215 - Magna Carta
• 1400s - Creation of Farmer's Guild
• C1400-1620 - Restoration, Priest Holes, Owned by Shielde Family
• Early 1700s - Land redeveloped as Bossthorpe Manor. Owned by Lord Selwyn, inherited by Jenner
• Mid to end 1760s - owned by the 1st & 2nd Earl Grevilles, property half dismantled by criminal steward to 2nd Earl Greville
• 1800s - Lazaro Rocha flees America following atrocities at his slave auctions, missing Quakers and the underground railroad. House taken by the Rochas,
  
• 1850s - this part is regarding engineer Bertram Wott and the Eastern Star (based on IK Brunel and the Great Eastern).
• Present

I think the side stories (which occur chronologically within the timeline as opposed to all at the same time) will be enough in terms of overall story POVs. I'll keep flexible and if there is a need to introduce another POV as I go, I will as VB has mentioned.

pH

 

[hopewrites]

I've read stories that have only 1 or 2 POV characters, and they've been fine for me.
Honestly in mystery pieces I prefer to stick with fewer POV's otherwise I figure it out way before the characters do and end up yelling at the book.

I've also seen it done where second tier POV characters get brief snippets, just enough to deepen the mystery of what is going on.

 

[Brian G Turner]

The more you write your story, the more you'll see where the gaps potentially are that you need to fill. Only when you've finished the first draft will you be able to get a proper idea of where these might be.

If you write in extra POVs that you don't need, you can also take what you need from them before removal. IMO it's harder to add to an existing story, than take away, because once the story settles it develops its own rhythm which can be knocked out of kilter when trying to add more to content and structure.

 

[Ursa major]

• Neil has a secret that is so pertinent to the narrative, I don't want the reader in his head. he also has a strange moral compass which will be too exposed if I give him POV

• Craig's death is a bit of a mystery and I don't want to show the evening's events leading up to his death.

Regarding Neil, do what GRRM does: do not have PoV's who (allegedly) know what is really going on as PoV characters.

Regarding Craig: is an author obliged to record everything that a PoV character knows and experiences? It depends, really. If something non-fatal had happened to Craig, and Craig was a PoV character, not mentioning what happened would be a problem (unless Craig had a rather convenient case of amnesia). Stopping Craig's role as a PoV character before his death is, I would argue, different. I expect most readers would accept it if they knew that, say, all the suspense would be drained from your other characters' attempts to discover what had happened (and who done it). (To return to GRRM: something happens to a PoV character, something a lot of fans really wanted to know about, but when we next meet them, it's in the narration of a different PoV character and we're still left in the dark.)

 

[AnyaKimlin]

As a writer I find it far easier to tell a long, complicated plot with one or two characters because it makes it less confusing. A more simple plot can take a few more POV characters.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I have re-written to only introduce other POVs in sections were I need to have story without MC, and yet couldn't be pure omniscient Narrator.
I found even switching POV in a different chapter to non-MC somehow spoiled it.

I did one story single POV and found this really difficult. Treasure Island I think has only one chapter with a different POV (Doctor instead of Jim). Single POV seems to work best for first person, and single POV seems to have to be written/plotted that way from the start. I tried to re-write a story to first person and it seemed impossible.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Regarding Neil, do what GRRM does: do not have PoV's who (allegedly) know what is really going on as PoV characters.

Regarding Craig: is an author obliged to record everything that a PoV character knows and experiences? It depends, really. If something non-fatal had happened to Craig, and Craig was a PoV character, not mentioning what happened would be a problem (unless Craig had a rather convenient case of amnesia). Stopping Craig's role as a PoV character before his death is, I would argue, different. I expect most readers would accept it if they knew that, say, all the suspense would be drained from your other characters' attempts to discover what had happened (and who done it). (To return to GRRM: something happens to a PoV character, something a lot of fans really wanted to know about, but when we next meet them, it's in the narration of a different PoV character and we're still left in the dark.)

Good points, thank you. I am wary of misleading the reader. My gut says no POV for Craig or Neil, and I wanted to check in with Chrons about this as I have only written 5-20k stories which are always in 1 person's POV which I find far easier (especially for horror which is pretty much a supernatural youdunnit). I'm enjoying the 2 POVs of Willie and Kate as he is somewhat cynical to her naïvete.

As a writer I find it far easier to tell a long, complicated plot with one or two characters because it makes it less confusing. A more simple plot can take a few more POV characters.

This is me, too.

I have re-written to only introduce other POVs in sections were I need to have story without MC, and yet couldn't be pure omniscient Narrator.
I found even switching POV in a different chapter to non-MC somehow spoiled it.

I did one story single POV and found this really difficult. Treasure Island I think has only one chapter with a different POV (Doctor instead of Jim). Single POV seems to work best for first person, and single POV seems to have to be written/plotted that way from the start. I tried to re-write a story to first person and it seemed impossible.

Yes, I have been cursed with the rewrite. This is my second re-write - so, my third attempt. I have binned 120k of the first draft which was about half-written and in first person, and then attempted in third person but gave up after about 4 months.

Now having found the missing ingredient I am fired up, but I really don't want to get 120k in again only to bin it.

Again, thanks all

pH

 

[tinkerdan]

One thought::
The POV character doesn't have to spill his guts the minute that we see them and hear them. They do have to give information that is pertinent to the scene and would be deemed unreliable in that scene if they did withhold something that was critical to the scene and their role in the scene.

With that said if you craft the knowledgeable character into scenes that limit the amount of information that they need to give in that scene you can have a totally reliable character who hasn't had a chance to reveal anything and get away with it.

The caveat being that there will always be someone who will not recognize that there was no demand for that information and they will think that either it was deceitfully withheld or it came out of nowhere and they should have been given a warning. So even if you craft it carefully and correctly you take a risk.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

The POV character doesn't have to spill his guts the minute that we see them and hear them

Villette is quite sneaky, we realise later the 1st Person POV woman has been keeping stuff secret from us. It works too.

 

[Ursa major]

Isn't there a difference, though, between random items that would rarely cross a PoV character's mind unless something in the scene prompted it, and not bothering to mention that, say, the PoV character has carefully plotted what is happening to people they're meeting on an everyday basis?

Wouldn't thoughts even as non-specific as 'Character A wouldn't look half as cheerful if he knew what I'd planned for him' or 'If she only knew....' cross the PoV character's mind? And if not, why not?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

and not bothering to mention that

Yes, which why my initial reaction in Villette was surprise and feeling cheated. But then I felt it did work. (The 1st person POV MC KNEW quite definitely who someone important from the past was and DIDN'T tell us in the narration). Interesting comparing it with "The Professor".

 

[The Judge]

As an aside, I'd guessed who the person in question was in Villette and I was still annoyed at Bronte's hiding it as she did -- I know it's seen as an example of unreliable narrator, but frankly it read more to me as Bronte wanting to have her cake and eat it with the whole what-an-incredible-surprise thing ages after the issue could have been revealed. So for me, no, it didn't work.

It is possible for a POV character to keep secret even major plot-points if they don't impinge on a scene -- eg if there is a sudden fire, and he's desperately trying to escape the flames, he's going to be too preoccupied with thinking of survival to consider his imminent betrayal of all his friends. But those are exceptions, I'd have thought, and the more scenes the POV character has, the longer the scenes are (in time, not necessarily word count) and the more other people are present, the less likely keeping such secrets becomes, as Ursa indicates, and therefore the greater the risk is of readers feeling cheated.

 

[ratsy]

Hey Phyre, my book started with only two POVs but I felt there was a chunk of the story I was missing out by only having two so I added a third. I think it was the right move for me. Of course I have Rose as my main POV, with an important petty criminal who carries his buddy around in his trunk so his 'spirit' which is tethered to the body, can travel with him. I then have the detective and Rose's beau, Roger as a POV.

Other than that, I did use a separate POV from a spirit who was killed by the mysterious killer to give the reader a hint at what is going on behind the scenes without giving too much away.

So at this point, I have 3 consistent POVs and have one small scene with a 4th

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Bronte wanting to have her cake and eat it

I agree. It did become very artificial. I didn't guess straight away (coffee / chocolate shortage?) but before the Narrator revealed it. I sort of thought I must be wrong because she didn't reveal it. I don't think you'd get away with such a slow start to the story either (for ages till later in the book, I thought, "what was the point of all that?").
It's an example of stuff that an unpublished writer today would best avoid!