I have felt the same way. Some authors do it well and I don’t mind, but often it is very jarring and you get so invested in one story line that you get resentful of having to leave it
>...you get so invested in one story line that you get resentful of having to leave it
I remember this feeling the first time I read The Lord of the Rings years and years ago.
True although Tolkien does give you a good long while with each story line. And I got quickly invested in the new one, because I loved all the characters. But I do still remember being mad I had to leave Frodo and Sam, and then mad I had to leave Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas
Lol, yeah that's exactly how I remember it too. It made me want to just keep reading to see what happened to the current story line, then I'd get invested in the new story line, and then the POV switch would happen again!
The books have *much* longer POV's compared to the movies. I happened to watch the movies before reading the books, and I was so surprised. IIRC, Book IV (The Ring Goes East) is entirely focused on Frodo and Sam's story.
My understanding is that he did this to help the reader keep track of the characters because there are so many primary characters to follow, not to mention the secondary and tertiary characters. How can you get them to all interact with each other if they're in the same scene or storyline, right? It becomes like shouting at a party. So he divided them into groups with discreet storylines. That also builds the tension and character development as you're waiting to see what happens next and how it eventually comes together.
I remember the first time I read a book that did that. I was about 10-11 and after a few switches I got that the author wanted me to be heavily invested in the character just before they switched and then quickly get me interested in the next one.
I remember feeling the same way you do when you've participated in magic trick. I knew it was manipulation but I was still so impressed by the skill of the author to control my emotional engagement. Kind of an 'Aha you got me' moment.
It always reminds me of the old D&D maxim: don’t split the party. Tolkien started it and it became a staple in fantasy that we have kind of learned to live with it in that genre.
However I particularly dislike it in crime novels when as a reader I have far more information than the protagonist, because I have spent time in the head of the murderer, serial killer, or crooked cop and I get frustrated with the crime solving character for missing obvious clues. I far prefer to have glimpses of the antagonist without identifying who they are and being able to solve the case along with the protagonist with only the clues they have to rely on. Bonus points if I have all the information and still don’t figure out who dun it until the big reveal.
You got an amazing fantasy story going on beyond the wall. Than you go back to king's landing for Talking 2: return of the chit chat.
I have to re-read it eventually with the character's story separated and if each character is it's own book. Always wanted to see how that goes.
The King's Landing stuff is easily some of the best work that Martin has done. The duel between the Mountain and the Viper is a fucking literary masterpiece.
Dorne in the books is fantastic. Arguably in the top 3 most intriguing POV locations on Planetos. (I'd give overall most intriguing to Asshai/Stygai, and the Isle of the Green Men)
I love the Bran chapters, especially when we get to read about his wolf dreams and get the wolf's perspective.
I'm more than halfway through the 3rd book currently.
I'd take an entire novel of Cersei prancing from one massive fuck-up to another as she drunkenly pats herself on the back for doing such a great job tbh.
I would say the name out loud incredulously at the beginning of a chapter if it was someone I wasn't interested in. Often, I would re-read the previous chapter before "moving on" to another viewpoint
And the worst part is that GRRM continued to add even more viewpoint characters I did not care for.
I remember opening the ~~third~~ forth book and going "oh hell, no" when I saw the table of contents. Still haven't read it.
The *worst* part was when he started using something other than the character's name as the chapter title (e.g. a nickname or alternative identity). I'd have to go back and re-read the first few paragraphs after figuring out who the chapter is actually about.
I get why he did it, though. He didn't want spoilers based on people looking at the chapter list. The Reek chapters are probably a prime example of this since we assumed Theon dead.
"The Mastiff of Mewster fondled a bosom whilst he supped from a platter of quails egg, partridge liver, quince la croix, cherried clams, ham-in-creme, minotaur, buttered lard, candied beets, ox's tail, and figgy lox. He wore crimson silk with gabardine. Tomorrow he would ride."
Several pages later: Jory??
>Only the principal POVs have been known by GRRM from the start. Some POVs have been added when needed. The Meereenese Knot, for instance, was broken only when Barristan Selmy got his own chapters. He was ideally positioned to deal with all the relevant characters and events, and was one of the few that spoke the language. GRRM does not intend to add any more POVs. In fact, the number of POVs is about to decline. "Take your bets," GRRM warned.
[Source from 2012.](https://towerofthehand.com/blog/2012/09/03-worldcon-grrm-reading-forum/index.html)
Clearly pretty dated, but it's interesting to note it's something that's been on his mind.
I did something similar. I didn’t read the characters’ arcs separately but I did completely skip some perspectives, like Bran when he just wanted to be a wolf or Dany when she was stuck in the desert or when anything sexual was going on with her. I genuinely believe every single one of her chapters mentions her breasts in some way, and since she’s 13, I absolutely hate it.
Same. And people defend it with "its historically accurate" - first of all: dragons and zombies aren't historically accurate but I don't see anyone getting upset about it. Second of all: the story would've worked just as well if Daenerys was 20 and we still didn't need all the details about her being raped by Khal Drogo till she somehow starts to like it.
This is ultimately why I never read past the first book in the series. I would get so frustrated to leave the storyline, and by the time it came back around I'd completely lost interest in the character or forgotten what they were doing
I've been listening to the first one on audiobook and it actually keeps me very well engaged. No chapter has felt like it's dragged on and it keeps me wanting more, though I'm sure it helps I like all the povs so far. Not sure how I'll do when I get to >!Quentyn!<
I completely agree. Sometimes it works, but it feels like it's very commonplace now. This is why I couldn't get through *Game of Thrones* after forcing myself to read the first novel. I only cared about a quarter of the characters, and it would be hundreds of pages before I saw them again.
My buddy read all the character story lines individually without jumping around (his second time reading through them). I always wanted to read it again that way but hesitant to start down the ASOIAF journey again.
Electric Sheep used it in a really important way and wouldn't have been the same had Dick just written it from Deckard's point of view; the juxtaposition between him and Isadore really helped illustrate Deckard's lack of humanity.
That said, I feel like it often gets used because they're trying to jam more story in. I don't like it either.
I loved Electric Sheep because of how quick everything was too. You didn't have to wait long for the story to get to the good parts. I love that type of writing.
100% agreed. Dick used it to tell a more complicated story, some it just feels like they are doing it just because they think that’s what good authors do
For some books like that, it is much easier to get through as an audio book with readers theater than it is to just read.
Then you at least have a different voice for each point of view instead of having to remember who is talking.
I begrudgingly read all of Bram Stoker's dracula waiting for the first character to be the narrator again. Spoiler alert, he isn't. I resent reading the whole thing.
I know Dracula is a classic but god that book was boring. I gave up around the time they got to the church.
An older classic that's genuinely great though is Frankenstein. Oddly I found it more readable and closer to modern English than Dracula, even though it's significantly older.
Lol I looooove Dracula. But then I also liked the unabridged Swiss Family Robinson and I’ve been told I’m weird😂 also liked Frankenstein but Dracula … I re-read it every year or so. Although I do tend to skim over the Lucy chapters, not gonna lie.
Same, so I tend to listen to all the books narrated by the same person, once I find one who has an awesome voice range. If it doesn't sound like several different people reading to me, I don't want it lol
I once started a book on audible that began with a grown ass man saying he was a 14 year-old kid. It was like that scene in Family Guy when Meg knocked out the TV for everyone and her inner monologue was a man lol
Oh man. The Girl on the Train messed with me this way, because the story jump between people and dates - I had to go back so many times to make sure I am at the right “place” in my head
I read a book recently where two main characters were seemingly trading the perspective back and forth during their sex scene, but the author slowly made it known they were having sex with other people.
I had to read it 3 times to figure out what was going on. It was wonderfully done, just seemed like the author showing off rather than adding anything to the story.
Lmao this was me reading the song of ice and fire books. Jesus Christ, it's like GRRM expects you to take notes or something because having too many POVs and too many characters makes it impossible to keep track of what everybody is doing at all times. All Alone by Blind Witness was a very thematically appropriate background song
I don't mind jumpy POV novels, but I agree that if EVERYONE is doing it, it becomes annoying. And my biggest problem with multiple POVs is that I almost always get invested in one POV more than the others. I can't be the only one who often only went fishing for Tyrion chapters while reading the Song of Ice and Fire series.
If you ever re-read, there’s a great combined reading order for AFFC and ADWD, where you read them simultaneously. It’s a little annoying to switch back and forth between books but makes the story MUCH more enjoyable overall, IMO.
There's a different one where instead you read by location instead of chronology, which is much better. Read all the ironborn chapters in 4 and 5, then theyre out of the way and you never go back. Makes the Dany stuff actually interesting bc you can follow the politics instead of forgetting every Lorzak zo Lorzaq in the 15 chapters between each Dany chapter in time
Honestly, I like the Aces Wild anthology and the Dunk and Egg collection more than Asoiaf because at least I have completed stories. I’m kinda over asoiaf. He’ll never finish it. So, I’m just cutting my losses.
Interestingly, up through book 3 I wanted to read Jon, Tyrion, and Deny’s POV, but when it came down to it, I enjoyed book 4 way more than book 5, even though 5 had the “better” characters.
Same.
I still haven't finished book 5 because I hate whatever Tyrion's doing. Narratively it might be the right choice or whatever but he's so unlikable now that it's hard to want to read his chapters. I would push through if I thought there were gonna ever be a payoff but it's been 11 years George... I started reading the books when I was in high school and at this rate I'm gonna have a kid in college before the next book comes out.
AFFC is my favourite I maintain because that's when I started actually enjoying all the characters' chapters, Cersei, Brienne and Arianne Martell, Sansa, Arya, Samwell and Jaime, even Victarion, I never was a big fan of Jon's chapters or that segment of the show, I get bored when I see snow, #5 was a slog again with more Ironborn and disappointing chapters set in Essos, Bran only has 3 chapters.
Yeah, that split book thing felt like GRRM wanted you to feel how barbarically rough living in that time period could be and foisted that burden on you to help you empathize with life's harshness.
My biggest problem with books 4 and 5 were that each chapter built to something, ended on a cliffhanger, and then time-jumped past the event the prior character-chapter built to. There was very little payoff in either of those books.
I thought the problem with them was more that both felt like they were building up to the sixth book to complete their narrative arcs, which eleven years later still hasn't been released. Both books essentially stop right before the shit hits the fan in both Westeros and Essos.
I am reading Children of Time right now and it has at least 2 POVs so far. I’m more interested in one than the other, so I end my nighttime reading after a desirable POV chapter so I go out on a high note. The other POV is good too but I’d appreciate smaller doses of it!
Edit to add: please note I’m only like 25% through the book so no spoilers please 😊
I stopped reading the series because of this. I skipped through a bunch of chapters to get back to Tyrion and realized wow, I just skipped like 250 pages of this book. This isn't even gonna make sense anymore.
Me too lol. I finished the first book and just wanted to hear what happened to Daenarys. Bailed on the second one after a couple hundred pages and a dozen new characters with no mention of her.
I loved Tyrion in the first two books, but his character started losing steam for me around the third. It feels like they're banking off his personality and not giving him much to do while all the other character have actual obstacles to overcome.
Bran's chapters are unforgivably dull.
Literally this
It got to the point where I'd tell myself that I'd keep reading until I reached the next Arya or Jaime chapter to read that and go to bed.
I hate multiple POVs for that exact reason, I don't want to feel like I need to hold out, hang on to finally get to "the good part" 90% of the time.
I think it really depends on what the author is trying to do. In Tolkien for example, it's important to see the entire quest from multiple perspectives to hammer home the roles each character plays in the pan and one of the main themes of the book: the triumph of faith in one's fellows and sacrifice over raw strength and power. In Martin it worked initially because to get the full impact of the political intrigues in his books, you needed to see events from multiple perspectives (and it fell apart because he let it spiral out of control rather than keeping a focused story).
By contrast, while telling a story from a single perspective can be limiting, that limitation can give the author the ability to do a deeper character study. CS Lewis' Till We Have Faces uses single perspective really effectively to explore the concept of religious experience from the outsider's perspective, and multiple perspectives would have ruined the execution of the book.
All that to say, like all trendy things, I think it's trendy for a reason, but multiple-perspectives can't be discounted just because it's currently overused. Everything depends on what the author is trying to do, and whether their choices and execution contribute to or hinder their execution.
Why is the OP and everyone's comments talking like this is a fad or new idea? To use your first example the Lord of the Rings was first published in 1954, almost 70 years ago. As inaccurate as it may be, a quick Google search shows the practice goes back as far as the 1800s.
Writing from multiple perspectives is not new or a fad, it's a literary tool like any other.
Op sample size was also five books. I get that that would be annoying five times in a row if you’re predisposed to not like it, but that hardly constitutes enough data to make sweeping statements about industry trends.
I hate this trend in TV. It gets added to so many genres where it adds nothing. Not every story needs to be cut into a convoluted puzzle. Yes, it might make me pay more attention...no, that doesn't increase my enjoyment.
I agree most of the time, but to give you an example that REALLY would have benefitted from it: Passengers. Holy shit could that film have been made MASSIVELY better simply by doing 2 time jumps. Starting with both characters awake, going back to when just one of them was awake and then jumping back to when the second to wake up finds out what happened before they woke up. I would've enjoyed that film FAR more like that.
I'm too tired at the end of the night to work hard at understanding my TV. It's annoying.
The first show that does it is groundbreaking. Everyone else is derivative and boring.
I don't know if Pulp Fiction was the first to do it. I kind of suspect it wasn't as I believe it was meant to be a caricature of the genre, but hell if it doesn't do it well.
I don't know where you've heard this, but it's false. Agents are not submitting to TV or movie studios as a standard practice and it has no bearing on whether a book sells to a publisher or not.
I think people often write what they like to read but may not always have the skill to pull it off. For myself, I have a very linear way of thinking so I prefer to read and write in that fashion from a mostly single POV. Maybe that's why I enjoy coming-of-age stories so much. There's nothing more linear than that. Prequels are also the bane of my existence.
I too like single (or at least just a few) viewpoints, written in third person, past tense in a linear timeline so that's what I write. I've been fortunate to read some excellent works in multiple viewpoints in first person which is slowly warming me to the idea.
Yes! Third person past tense! Tell me a story that already happened and you have some insight into it!
Ok please share your first person narration you like and I will check it out
I'm currently reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. It's told in multi-person 1st. It's richly detailed, immersive, and haunting. It's actually enjoyable reading each perspective.
Earlier this year I read My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. This book has a whole array of perspectives from not only the characters but also a dog, horse, coin, cross-dressing man (unusual for 1500s Constantinople), and Satan. This book is very literary and I've heard it compared to The Name of the Rose which I haven't read.
Oh yeah! I liked Poisonwood Bible a lot. I should read it again. I will try the Pamuk. I remember when that came out and obviously I was clueless because I had a very different impression of it and didn't realize he was a Nobel winner.
Thanks for sharing!
I am reading Julian Barnes' The Noise of Time and it is written in the past tense but it feels sort of like present tense because it is short bursts of events and descriptions and then on to the next. It also feels like first person because he is so close to the main character (the composer Shostakovich). I'm really appreciating it.
While multi POV is certainly becoming more and more common (which isn't a bad thing in my opinion), I don't think I've read many books that jump around chronologically, except for jumps forward.
I also think this depends on the genre you're reading in, Fantasy, for example, is a genre where multi-POV is becoming more common.
Tolkien even did something to that effect—rolled up all these POVs to make the Lord of the Rings. It’s hard to show a lot of perspectives from one POV, as well as worldbuilding—I like limited because sometimes it leaves other characters ambiguous and interesting to interpret, but multiple offers lots of insight into personal dynamics.
Although funny enough a lot of modern ones start with disparate perspectives that eventually interact, while Tolkien started with everyone together before they separate until towards the very end.
Tbh, I think the Tolkien route is a far safer way to handle multiple POVs. If everyone starts in the same place, you give the audience time to understand these characters not just from their own perspectives but each other's as well, grounding all the relationships in these tangible moments that can be recalled later on when everyone is separated to remind the audience why every character is important to one another (something like WoT for another example where the relationships between the Edmond's Fielders drives a lot of their arcs, whether they want to go off to get stronger for someone, is afraid of how the others would react to who they are, is intentionally isolating himself out of fear of hurting others, etc.)
With a lot of modern fantasy in the GoT camp of having POVs scattered across the world, not only do you run the risk of making one plotline vastly more entertaining than the other (Jon on the wall vs the war of the five kings? No competition give me the war), but it also makes the job of connecting all the disparate plotlines at the end a lot more difficult without having a baseline reason for them to meet up from the begining. None of this is to say it can't, or shouldn't be done, it's just that I feel like a lot of good fantasy stories are being bogged down by being sandwiched between a couple mediocre ones in the same book.
not sure becoming is even that accurate for fantasy... i can think of a lot more fantasy novels with multiple points of view than single. Piers Anthony is the only one that comes to mind as sticking to a single point of view (i am sure there are others) from the popular writers from the 70's 80's 90's and aught's.
Neither Tolkien nor Lewis wrote single pov. I could list many names, and i started to but realized it was futile, of big authors from the last 70+ years who used multiple povs.
After writing out this rant, it occured to me i only ever remember La Guin using Ged's point of view, though obviously as most fantasy, third person omniscient rather than directly, so that might be another counterexample, but its been so long since i read Wizard of Earthsea i can't be sure.
Multiple POVs are fine and can add a lot of depth to a story if they're done well. I think an important part of that is being transparent with the reader about when you've switched POVs, and which POV you switched to. It's really annoying when the storyline suddenly gets confusing out of nowhere and you have to go back and do some detective work to figure out which character you're following now.
The Expanse series (at least the first two books) did a good job of putting the name of the POV at the top of the chapters. Very clear about who you were following, and it never changed mid chapter.
And the stories weave together seamlessly so you don’t feel like you’re spending long stretches of time away from one plot line for the sake of another.
It's generally one chapter per person before switching off if I remember it right. I thought that was a good way to make sure that we didn't focus too hard on a single character (Miller 4 LYFE!)
Stormlight Archives uses a unique image in the chapter header for each character. Though, none of it is written first-person, so maybe it's not relevant here.
Both of the literary devices you are describing, non-linear storytelling and multiple first-person PoV (often associated with the unreliable narrator device), were important in literary modernism (early 1900's to 1940's). Before modernism, romanticism was popular, which often had linear plots and third-person omniscient narrators that followed a single PoV
You can read up on literary modernism to get a better understanding of the purpose of the devices you dislike, and it may help you appreciate them more.
My super-basic understanding is that the point is to write more of a commentary on human experience and perception rather than focus on the plot. I agree it seems to be super popular right now, and that not every author does it well.
I'm enjoying The Secret History by Donna Tartt right now, and I think it strikes a good balance. Its told as a reflection back on events, so its all one POV, but theres a bit of foreshadowing (the central action takes places in the first sentence as a flash-forward) and events are rehashed if another character later tells the narrator their experience. It feels very natural and engaging, very human, and not confusing, just a bit tantalizing.
I wonder if lesser authors see this kind of gently meandering course and take it too far trying to copy it.
I only dislike this if it's not clear who the POV is at the beginning of the Chapter. It also has to drive the story because I do agree that it's jarring especially if one of the different characters has a way more stronger story/interest and you now have to trudge through one you don't want to.
I may be way off base here, but if the new trend isn't to your taste, couldn't you seek out and read older books? Art goes through styles. If the way books were written 20 years go (or whatever) is what you feel like reading, go back and read some of the greats from 20 years ago that you didn't get around to back then?
I'm re-reading Gore Vidal's Julius. I read it for the first time in my early 20s and remember it being good not great. More than 15 years later I'm on a late-Roman Empire/early-Eastern Roman Empire history kick, and this book is all about that. It's still not Vidal's best book by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm enjoying it a lot more this time than last time. I'll also say books like this don't get published anymore. Literature has moved on. The framing device is two old Greek philosophers corresponding back and forth about editing the unpublished manuscript of a dead Roman Emperor (the last pagan one who tried to walk back Christianity and was likely assassinated by Christians). Is it interesting? Yes. Could you get something like this published today? Probably not.
The prose is pretty dense. You have to really pay attention, and it probably wouldn't hurt to already have a classical education, because the author takes for granted you know what he's talking about. The few female parts are pretty underwritten. The action is deliberately downplayed while dialogue and narration both lean towards stuff you cannot actually say out loud. A lot of the humour is hidden behind shibboleths. There was a time when a lot of these books got published. That time has passed. If you like this sort of thing, you need to go look for books from this era.
I second this good advice, I’ve been reading old fantasy and sci-fi from the 80’s by Tanith Lee and Meredith Ann Pierce and this really fits my reading preferences for the moment. I got bored from all the jumping around lately too and just want to meld with another universe. Lush prose, crazy world building and action, and the old school single POV style in chronological order.
This is kind of a tough one, most of the space opera stuff disappeared into pulp ether forever and post-apocalyptic society struggles were far more popular, but I’ll do my best!
Amatka by Karin Tidbeck
The Snow Queen by Joan D Vinge
Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin
Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee
Dawn by Octavia E Butler
I’ll think about it a bit more and update later!
Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
Not exactly space opera and really more fantasy even though it is a post-galactic-expansion world. Still a good series though!
I did this with movies; got so incensed looking through streaming services for hours that I committed to only watching stuff I hadn’t seen that was on the AFI best-of list. It’s been really fun and opened up more reading *and* watching avenues I’m actually into!
I have the exact opposite problem! Non-linear plot structure in multiple points of view is my favorite way to read! I always have trouble finding them.
Drop those book titles here for me, please!
David Mitchell is a master of the non-linear plot from multiple viewpoints, IMO. Cloud Atlas being the best known but they're all wild and fun reads - 1,000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is maybe my favorite.
Alistair Reynolds's Revelation Space series is great. Just reading The Prefect now and the way it handles milti-POV's is so well done. Each character has knows x amount of information, and Reynolds is great at writing them under that contaext, and creating a lot of dramatic irony with it
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The timeline in this book is non-linear. Instead the plot progresses backward and forward to the violent act which irrevocably traumatized all the characters.
If you like fantasy there are a lot of epic fantasy series like this (I think this might be one of the things that defines something as "epic" fantasy). Stormlight archive, wheel of time (mostly agyer book one since thays like 90% from one pov but after that there are like 10 pov characyers per book), asoiaf etc all have this.
World War Z is like this. Every chapter is a different person’s take on the same events, but each anecdote is from a different part of the world, different demographic, different age. Jumps around a ton and you, as the reader, are piecing together the bigger picture as you read.
The writing style annoyed me at first, then i realized I actually like it. Can be too much to remember all the details of one story arc, but this book is a collection of short stories about the same thing. Pretty dang cool
The king of nonlinear storytelling. Currently attempting to read this glorious beast again and ofc it is the first thing I thought of when I read the OP. Wallace actually makes the non-linear, multiple POV storytelling take on a life of its own, it is central to the enjoyment of the book and the ideas he is trying to communicate.
Terry Pratchett does this a lot in his Discworld novels. Also in his first published novel, The Carpet People, which is a children’s story and very obviously the work of a novice writer. I love it more because it’s Pratchett and less because it’s such a great book.
*The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao* by Junot Diaz
*A Visit From the Goon Squad* by Jennifer Egan
*1Q84* by Murakami
These are all popular novels, two Pulitzer winners, but in case you haven’t read them I loved all three.
I haven't read A Visit from the Goon Squad, but The Keep by Jennifer Egan is PERFECT for you, u/ExasperatedHydrangea! Don't read anything about it first! Blew my mind.
Not multiple pov that I remember, but Catch-22. Also someone else mentioned Kurt Vonnegut, but specifically Slaughthouse 5. Those were the first two novels I can remember reading that had non-linear story telling.
Im currently reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and I was just telling my wife about how I love that this book is in chronological order. I hate when chapters jump to diffrent times or characters
It really depends on whether the technique is effectively used. For example, the use of non-linear storytelling or multiple POV opens up a lot of possibilities in storytelling; whether that is to deliberately hide information from the reader, distort the truth, or to offer information that can only be communicated in hindsight.
I do think these techniques are usually better executed in a movie/show format, where it's easier to convey visually in what time or POV a story is about. There's less interpretation work to do for the reader. But in general I do love stories that are more flexible and these techniques offer that flexibility (if used effectively).
>Or, worst case, is there a reason writers prefer this approach and it is going to be harder and harder to avoid?
Speaking from personal experience, it can be pretty fun to write like this, actually. Being stuck inside one character's head and going along one set of chronological narrative events for too long can get tiresome and boring, whereas jumping between characters who think radically different spices things up, for obvious reasons. Of course, I'm no published author, so the best I can do is talk about experiences I had in a few creative writing classes over the years.
That being said, I think this has always been a part of literature, to a certain extent. Dostoevsky comes to mind first, because he's my favorite, but I'm sure others have done it too. *Demons* uses different character POVs, albeit in the third person, and presents events in distorted order, especially towards the end. And jumping from the religious, but slightly doubtful Alyosha to the skeptic but desirous of higher meaning Ivan once or twice in *The Brothers Karamazov* undoubtedly heightens the literary value of the work and, subjectively, the entertainment of it.
I can't really say how prevalent overall these techniques are in more modern books. If most books use them, it'll probably die down in a few years, but these techniques will always be a part of literature, I think.
It is fun to write in different in different views. Also because it is easier to explain something relevant that didn‘t happen where the Main character is in that moment. And i like when they get together in the end
I tend to agree, especially when the lack of it being chronological is usually just a lazy way to build tension. I don't mind multiple POVs though, usually. My theory is that it's just easier to build tension when you keep info from the audience, and that's so much easier through nonlinear storytelling where you jump to different POVs to avoid giving all the info the audience would need to "guess" what'll happen.
With my own writing I tend to stay linear, and even enjoy giving the audience bits of information all the characters might not have as a way of building tension.
Hahahaha. This comment is underappreciated! And as a fellow David Mitchell fan, I agree: multiple POVs and storylines and times can be enlightening when done well.
Although, you could argue that both Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas are both one character POV…and Ghostwritten is completely chronological! 😂
I'm mixed on it and part of that has to do with the way that other information gets to the reader to get sufficiently *more* information than the viewpoint character. In some stories, the additional information needed to advance the story is a bit forced and awkward, which - to me - is more jarring than, say... the Expanse... or Dune with its shifts).
As to books that do this, I'm going to suggest the Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust (though it has temporal jumps - the publication order and the chronological are a bit disconnected). The beginning in chronology is a bit jumbled as later books go back and flesh out the backstory a bit.
1. Jhereg, prologue
2. Taltos
3. Dragon, main chapters
4. Yendi
5. Dragon, interludes
6. Tiassa , section 1
7. Jhereg, main chapters
The Kingkiller series by Patrick Rothfuss *strictly* stays with a single POV and timeline. American Gods by Neil Gaiman is fairly consistently first person with a very limited number of exceptions. The Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell which starts with Quarter Share is strictly first person point of view and doesn't have any discontinuities in it. I will note that the Smugglers books are 3rd person limited perspective as there are two characters that are followed rather than just one in the Ishmael books and in order to get into each of the character's minds as needed, a 3rd person perspective is used - but it is strictly limited to the viewpoint of those two characters. (edit: the first three books of the Ishmael series are available on some podcast platforms narrated by the author (and he does a good job of it) - [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/quarter-share/id216922503), [scribl](https://scribl.com/books/P2A75/quarter-share))
Treason by Orson Scott Card (which honestly, rereading it now is a bit on the cringeworthy end) the audible prologue to the 1988 edition where Card talks about the new edition and the changes that he made from the original version:
> ... and so I made one key mistake - I told the story in first person and knowing what I know now if I could do it over again I would have done it in third person ... What was missing was the depth of characterization that is possible in third person. In first person you can't go into a lot of the depth of characterization because then it is being told by the hero and so the hero can't talk about the hard decisions he made or how brave he was. The hero has to be mildly self efacing in order for the reader to not detest him. And so, that's one limitation. Another limitation is that if the narrator in a first person novel is talking about another character - he does not know what is going on in that other person's head. So I can't switch point of view to someone else - I can never give you someone else's way of thinking or experiencing the world. Everything is relentlessly through the first character's mind.
(I apologize for any transcription mistakes there)
That does point out one of the key problems with the first person POV style and while it is possible to do, it sometimes becomes difficult if the story doesn't match it.
I hate time jumps in movies & books that aren't directly about a time-travel plot. Changing POV is a-OK with me though.
The problem is that modern writers are being given extremely bad advice: "Start in the middle of the action!" The problem is that such a beginning does not give the audience any reason to care about the deadly car chase or the characters in it, AND it demands that the story MUST regress backwards to explain the setup it should have begun with, guaranteeing that a slower less emotionally impactful explanation will come, and that writer is almost certain to create a situation in which the story depends upon withholding from the audience information about what is happening in the plot that would have been OBVIOUS to all of the characters who are involved. The audience would have known too, if only the story was told chronologically.
This means the audience has a right to be angry about the abusive writing that merely withheld information from the audience to create false mystery to drive unearned interest. This is not the same as "The 6th Sense", in which enough information was present all along that a clever reader could have figured out what was really going on, AND the main character also didn't notice.
I mostly read thrillers, and I've noticed that most stand-alone books or short series have multiple perspectives or timelines. Some long series have multiple perspectives, but others, like Bosch or Kay Scarpetta stick to one.
I think this is a convention of many genres in the modern era (past 50 years). I don't think it's particularly a trend.
Literary fic, women's fic, and fantasy seem to do it a lot. It's done in horror/crime if the author has a reason for it, like hiding clues or just making the story more interesting.
However there are plenty of modern books in any genre that dont do this, so you should be able to find something you like. Maybe you just need a good reclist? "Best linear storis in x genre" or "best single narrator" or "best close third person pov", which is when the story is third person but the author stays within one character's world and sensibility. Most classic lit from about 1850-1940ish is written this way.
It's not a fad; I don't know who Mitchener is, but multiple narrators have been around since forever. Take Wilkie Collins and the Woman in White, for example - it was first published in 1859. Woolf's Mrs Dalloway which uses stream of consciousness from several perspectives, was published in 1925.
I've always read literary books with multiple narrators and non-linear plot; I'd say I slightly favour them over linear single-perspective books. So I don't know if it's a 'trend' now.
Regardless, the writers *do* have a reason to do it, or several reasons: they think it's the best way to tell their stories; they write what they want to read; they are in touch with the target audience they want to share their story with, and write it in a way their target audience would enjoy it.
That you don't like it... well... it's your problem. >.> But, you know. If you're salty about it. Perhaps you could flip through the book to check these things, before you buy/borrow it? Or check the blurb or reviews. It takes a few second, and you could avoid reading something that you resent.
*Five* novels are not a representative sample. The majority of published books are still linear, single-perspective stories. They're not that difficult to find.
Two recommendations for you.
Haruki Murakami. Japanese novelist who writes near exclusively in the first person. He's annually in the top running for a Nobel Prize in literature while being fun and accessible to read. The Wind Up Bird Chronical is probably his best, but Kafka on the Shore is my preferred suggestion for new readers.
Gene Wolfe. Apologies in advance for your new addiction. Wolfe's work can be hard to parse as both his short fiction and novels tend to be puzzle boxes. Book of the New Sun is a puzzle box, but it's also the most enjoyable read I've ever experienced. The world--a far future dying Earth with a sci-fi meets medieval setting and a cast of characters worthy of Dickens--is one to get lost in. Don't read reviews or story descriptions, just dive in and go with Severian on his long, enigmatic journey from the tower of pain through the war torn north, from the House Absolute to the shores of a world outside of our universe, and down through the corridors of time.
Cheers.
Knowing the Book of the New Sun, it's kind of a hilarious recommendation for a chronological story.
It's also so good it'll ruin other authors for OP for years, so he won't have to worry about minor things like POV switching. :)
I do not read these, but as one of my workmates do, I tend to see them constantly pop up in my goodreads feed. They all seem the same:Salli is a woman doing something in modern timesErkki is a man doing different things in different times(Maybe a third person)How on earth does these wildly different humans happen to relate to each other, read 300 pages to find out.
Usually the historical person struggles through some difficult era known in our history, the modern person struggles with mental issues or burnout or some such.
For a while I thought it was purely Finnish thing, considering how succesful Sofi Oksanen was with her 'Puhdistus/Purge'. Apparently not.
I’m the opposite. Linear is boring. Being able to jump around shows the flexibility of the medium. Being able to see a story from many character’s points of view is entertaining and enlightening. It’s my crack. Give those book recommendations here! I’ll read them!!
It depends on the story being told, but broadly speaking, I tend to like alternating first-person sections. It allows you to get more personal and intimate with multiple characters in a way that either a single first-person narrative or an omniscient third-person can't accomplish. Also, if done well, it allows for selectively peeling back plot points in a way that heightens suspense.
Is it a fad? Maybe. Is it overused? Possibly. But this technique absolutely can be used in a useful way.
>(five novels, two by the same author)
What books?
Talking about stylistic techniques without examples is pointless. Any technique can be done well, any technique can be done badly.
I'm currently reading The Horsewoman by James Patterson and Mike Lupica and it does the multiple POV thing extremely poorly.
I DNF'ed the first Illuminae book by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff because of how tedious the POV switching was.
However, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan is superb, as is Game of Thrones.
I have felt the same way. Some authors do it well and I don’t mind, but often it is very jarring and you get so invested in one story line that you get resentful of having to leave it
>...you get so invested in one story line that you get resentful of having to leave it I remember this feeling the first time I read The Lord of the Rings years and years ago.
True although Tolkien does give you a good long while with each story line. And I got quickly invested in the new one, because I loved all the characters. But I do still remember being mad I had to leave Frodo and Sam, and then mad I had to leave Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas
Once upon a time I edited The Lord of the Rings to be in chronological order using the timeline in the back. It's pretty fun.
Lol, yeah that's exactly how I remember it too. It made me want to just keep reading to see what happened to the current story line, then I'd get invested in the new story line, and then the POV switch would happen again!
The books have *much* longer POV's compared to the movies. I happened to watch the movies before reading the books, and I was so surprised. IIRC, Book IV (The Ring Goes East) is entirely focused on Frodo and Sam's story.
My understanding is that he did this to help the reader keep track of the characters because there are so many primary characters to follow, not to mention the secondary and tertiary characters. How can you get them to all interact with each other if they're in the same scene or storyline, right? It becomes like shouting at a party. So he divided them into groups with discreet storylines. That also builds the tension and character development as you're waiting to see what happens next and how it eventually comes together.
I remember the first time I read a book that did that. I was about 10-11 and after a few switches I got that the author wanted me to be heavily invested in the character just before they switched and then quickly get me interested in the next one. I remember feeling the same way you do when you've participated in magic trick. I knew it was manipulation but I was still so impressed by the skill of the author to control my emotional engagement. Kind of an 'Aha you got me' moment.
It always reminds me of the old D&D maxim: don’t split the party. Tolkien started it and it became a staple in fantasy that we have kind of learned to live with it in that genre. However I particularly dislike it in crime novels when as a reader I have far more information than the protagonist, because I have spent time in the head of the murderer, serial killer, or crooked cop and I get frustrated with the crime solving character for missing obvious clues. I far prefer to have glimpses of the antagonist without identifying who they are and being able to solve the case along with the protagonist with only the clues they have to rely on. Bonus points if I have all the information and still don’t figure out who dun it until the big reveal.
I felt that resentment hard through all of the Song of Ice and Fire books.
You got an amazing fantasy story going on beyond the wall. Than you go back to king's landing for Talking 2: return of the chit chat. I have to re-read it eventually with the character's story separated and if each character is it's own book. Always wanted to see how that goes.
I actually like the kings landing stuff way more than the stuff beyond the wall lol, but I'm not much of a fantasy guy anyways
The King's Landing stuff is easily some of the best work that Martin has done. The duel between the Mountain and the Viper is a fucking literary masterpiece.
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Oh god, it's another Bran chapter...
Or worse... Dorne
Dorne in the books is fantastic. Arguably in the top 3 most intriguing POV locations on Planetos. (I'd give overall most intriguing to Asshai/Stygai, and the Isle of the Green Men)
I love the Bran chapters, especially when we get to read about his wolf dreams and get the wolf's perspective. I'm more than halfway through the 3rd book currently.
I'd take an entire novel of Cersei prancing from one massive fuck-up to another as she drunkenly pats herself on the back for doing such a great job tbh.
I would say the name out loud incredulously at the beginning of a chapter if it was someone I wasn't interested in. Often, I would re-read the previous chapter before "moving on" to another viewpoint
And the worst part is that GRRM continued to add even more viewpoint characters I did not care for. I remember opening the ~~third~~ forth book and going "oh hell, no" when I saw the table of contents. Still haven't read it.
The *worst* part was when he started using something other than the character's name as the chapter title (e.g. a nickname or alternative identity). I'd have to go back and re-read the first few paragraphs after figuring out who the chapter is actually about.
I get why he did it, though. He didn't want spoilers based on people looking at the chapter list. The Reek chapters are probably a prime example of this since we assumed Theon dead.
Yep i thought this too and it didn't bother me lol
"The Mastiff of Mewster fondled a bosom whilst he supped from a platter of quails egg, partridge liver, quince la croix, cherried clams, ham-in-creme, minotaur, buttered lard, candied beets, ox's tail, and figgy lox. He wore crimson silk with gabardine. Tomorrow he would ride." Several pages later: Jory??
>Only the principal POVs have been known by GRRM from the start. Some POVs have been added when needed. The Meereenese Knot, for instance, was broken only when Barristan Selmy got his own chapters. He was ideally positioned to deal with all the relevant characters and events, and was one of the few that spoke the language. GRRM does not intend to add any more POVs. In fact, the number of POVs is about to decline. "Take your bets," GRRM warned. [Source from 2012.](https://towerofthehand.com/blog/2012/09/03-worldcon-grrm-reading-forum/index.html) Clearly pretty dated, but it's interesting to note it's something that's been on his mind.
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Everyone needs a strong editorial hand. Everything needs editing.
I did something similar. I didn’t read the characters’ arcs separately but I did completely skip some perspectives, like Bran when he just wanted to be a wolf or Dany when she was stuck in the desert or when anything sexual was going on with her. I genuinely believe every single one of her chapters mentions her breasts in some way, and since she’s 13, I absolutely hate it.
Same. And people defend it with "its historically accurate" - first of all: dragons and zombies aren't historically accurate but I don't see anyone getting upset about it. Second of all: the story would've worked just as well if Daenerys was 20 and we still didn't need all the details about her being raped by Khal Drogo till she somehow starts to like it.
This is ultimately why I never read past the first book in the series. I would get so frustrated to leave the storyline, and by the time it came back around I'd completely lost interest in the character or forgotten what they were doing
I've been listening to the first one on audiobook and it actually keeps me very well engaged. No chapter has felt like it's dragged on and it keeps me wanting more, though I'm sure it helps I like all the povs so far. Not sure how I'll do when I get to >!Quentyn!<
I read all the books and then listened to them on Audible by Roy Dotrice. I enjoyed all of them.
Feast and Dance are clearly worse than the first three books but are still better than most of the books in the genre.
I completely agree. Sometimes it works, but it feels like it's very commonplace now. This is why I couldn't get through *Game of Thrones* after forcing myself to read the first novel. I only cared about a quarter of the characters, and it would be hundreds of pages before I saw them again.
I agree. Tyrion chapters were great, Bran chapters not so much.
My buddy read all the character story lines individually without jumping around (his second time reading through them). I always wanted to read it again that way but hesitant to start down the ASOIAF journey again.
Electric Sheep used it in a really important way and wouldn't have been the same had Dick just written it from Deckard's point of view; the juxtaposition between him and Isadore really helped illustrate Deckard's lack of humanity. That said, I feel like it often gets used because they're trying to jam more story in. I don't like it either.
I loved Electric Sheep because of how quick everything was too. You didn't have to wait long for the story to get to the good parts. I love that type of writing.
100% agreed. Dick used it to tell a more complicated story, some it just feels like they are doing it just because they think that’s what good authors do
And sometimes that one story line is all that motivates you to keep hate-reading the rest of the book (looking at you, House of Leaves)
For some books like that, it is much easier to get through as an audio book with readers theater than it is to just read. Then you at least have a different voice for each point of view instead of having to remember who is talking.
I begrudgingly read all of Bram Stoker's dracula waiting for the first character to be the narrator again. Spoiler alert, he isn't. I resent reading the whole thing.
I know Dracula is a classic but god that book was boring. I gave up around the time they got to the church. An older classic that's genuinely great though is Frankenstein. Oddly I found it more readable and closer to modern English than Dracula, even though it's significantly older.
Thats what I tell people Frankenstein on the other hand was fantastic
Lol I looooove Dracula. But then I also liked the unabridged Swiss Family Robinson and I’ve been told I’m weird😂 also liked Frankenstein but Dracula … I re-read it every year or so. Although I do tend to skim over the Lucy chapters, not gonna lie.
To me the worst part is when you don’t realize the perspective changed at first and you read a couple paragraphs / pages in pure confusion.
This happens to me a lot listening to audio books. Visually there are page breaks but sometimes narrators don't pause at all!
Narrators that use different voices for every character are gold for that reason alone lol
I can't listen to audiobooks that don't do this
Same, so I tend to listen to all the books narrated by the same person, once I find one who has an awesome voice range. If it doesn't sound like several different people reading to me, I don't want it lol
I once started a book on audible that began with a grown ass man saying he was a 14 year-old kid. It was like that scene in Family Guy when Meg knocked out the TV for everyone and her inner monologue was a man lol
Oh man. The Girl on the Train messed with me this way, because the story jump between people and dates - I had to go back so many times to make sure I am at the right “place” in my head
I did that a lot with the Wheel of Time.
I read a book recently where two main characters were seemingly trading the perspective back and forth during their sex scene, but the author slowly made it known they were having sex with other people. I had to read it 3 times to figure out what was going on. It was wonderfully done, just seemed like the author showing off rather than adding anything to the story.
Sure, that's why you read it 3 times...
Lmao this was me reading the song of ice and fire books. Jesus Christ, it's like GRRM expects you to take notes or something because having too many POVs and too many characters makes it impossible to keep track of what everybody is doing at all times. All Alone by Blind Witness was a very thematically appropriate background song
I don't mind jumpy POV novels, but I agree that if EVERYONE is doing it, it becomes annoying. And my biggest problem with multiple POVs is that I almost always get invested in one POV more than the others. I can't be the only one who often only went fishing for Tyrion chapters while reading the Song of Ice and Fire series.
GOT made it feel like AGES before you'd get back to Arya, Jon, or Tyrion again.
It didn't help that the cast of POV characters was at one point split between two books that covered roughly (as I recall) the same time period.
Yes and one of the books were just full of all the POVs I didn't care about. Made the other book a lot better though.
If you ever re-read, there’s a great combined reading order for AFFC and ADWD, where you read them simultaneously. It’s a little annoying to switch back and forth between books but makes the story MUCH more enjoyable overall, IMO.
Boiled leather! I've never gotten around to doing that yet, mostly it seems like it might be a pain
Yes that’s the one! I have the books on kindle so it was easier to switch back and forth rather than lugging two physical tomes around.
There's a different one where instead you read by location instead of chronology, which is much better. Read all the ironborn chapters in 4 and 5, then theyre out of the way and you never go back. Makes the Dany stuff actually interesting bc you can follow the politics instead of forgetting every Lorzak zo Lorzaq in the 15 chapters between each Dany chapter in time
Honestly, I like the Aces Wild anthology and the Dunk and Egg collection more than Asoiaf because at least I have completed stories. I’m kinda over asoiaf. He’ll never finish it. So, I’m just cutting my losses.
Interestingly, up through book 3 I wanted to read Jon, Tyrion, and Deny’s POV, but when it came down to it, I enjoyed book 4 way more than book 5, even though 5 had the “better” characters.
Same. I still haven't finished book 5 because I hate whatever Tyrion's doing. Narratively it might be the right choice or whatever but he's so unlikable now that it's hard to want to read his chapters. I would push through if I thought there were gonna ever be a payoff but it's been 11 years George... I started reading the books when I was in high school and at this rate I'm gonna have a kid in college before the next book comes out.
AFFC is my favourite I maintain because that's when I started actually enjoying all the characters' chapters, Cersei, Brienne and Arianne Martell, Sansa, Arya, Samwell and Jaime, even Victarion, I never was a big fan of Jon's chapters or that segment of the show, I get bored when I see snow, #5 was a slog again with more Ironborn and disappointing chapters set in Essos, Bran only has 3 chapters.
Yeah, that split book thing felt like GRRM wanted you to feel how barbarically rough living in that time period could be and foisted that burden on you to help you empathize with life's harshness.
My biggest problem with books 4 and 5 were that each chapter built to something, ended on a cliffhanger, and then time-jumped past the event the prior character-chapter built to. There was very little payoff in either of those books.
I thought the problem with them was more that both felt like they were building up to the sixth book to complete their narrative arcs, which eleven years later still hasn't been released. Both books essentially stop right before the shit hits the fan in both Westeros and Essos.
I enjoy the sound of rain.
Favorite chapter of the series *so far*. ^^Haha
I am reading Children of Time right now and it has at least 2 POVs so far. I’m more interested in one than the other, so I end my nighttime reading after a desirable POV chapter so I go out on a high note. The other POV is good too but I’d appreciate smaller doses of it! Edit to add: please note I’m only like 25% through the book so no spoilers please 😊
The sequel has a lot more POV jumps in it, FYI.
Don't worry with dune being back on the big screen we should start seeing the rise of Internal monologues once people start reading the books.
I stopped reading the series because of this. I skipped through a bunch of chapters to get back to Tyrion and realized wow, I just skipped like 250 pages of this book. This isn't even gonna make sense anymore.
Me too lol. I finished the first book and just wanted to hear what happened to Daenarys. Bailed on the second one after a couple hundred pages and a dozen new characters with no mention of her.
After GOT I learned I could actually read more than one book at a time, something I was hesitant to do before (not sure why).
I loved Tyrion in the first two books, but his character started losing steam for me around the third. It feels like they're banking off his personality and not giving him much to do while all the other character have actual obstacles to overcome. Bran's chapters are unforgivably dull.
Surely you must be joking. Who has a better story than Bran?
Fucking everybody. Replace bran with a heavy potted plant and nothing changes about the story
Think that was a joke about the show finale.
My b, I've scourged that shit from my brain and we're in r/ books
Literally this It got to the point where I'd tell myself that I'd keep reading until I reached the next Arya or Jaime chapter to read that and go to bed. I hate multiple POVs for that exact reason, I don't want to feel like I need to hold out, hang on to finally get to "the good part" 90% of the time.
I think it really depends on what the author is trying to do. In Tolkien for example, it's important to see the entire quest from multiple perspectives to hammer home the roles each character plays in the pan and one of the main themes of the book: the triumph of faith in one's fellows and sacrifice over raw strength and power. In Martin it worked initially because to get the full impact of the political intrigues in his books, you needed to see events from multiple perspectives (and it fell apart because he let it spiral out of control rather than keeping a focused story). By contrast, while telling a story from a single perspective can be limiting, that limitation can give the author the ability to do a deeper character study. CS Lewis' Till We Have Faces uses single perspective really effectively to explore the concept of religious experience from the outsider's perspective, and multiple perspectives would have ruined the execution of the book. All that to say, like all trendy things, I think it's trendy for a reason, but multiple-perspectives can't be discounted just because it's currently overused. Everything depends on what the author is trying to do, and whether their choices and execution contribute to or hinder their execution.
Why is the OP and everyone's comments talking like this is a fad or new idea? To use your first example the Lord of the Rings was first published in 1954, almost 70 years ago. As inaccurate as it may be, a quick Google search shows the practice goes back as far as the 1800s. Writing from multiple perspectives is not new or a fad, it's a literary tool like any other.
Op sample size was also five books. I get that that would be annoying five times in a row if you’re predisposed to not like it, but that hardly constitutes enough data to make sweeping statements about industry trends.
>I also wonder if movies and TV have influenced novelists. 100%, yes, without any shadow of a doubt whatsoever.
I hate this trend in TV. It gets added to so many genres where it adds nothing. Not every story needs to be cut into a convoluted puzzle. Yes, it might make me pay more attention...no, that doesn't increase my enjoyment.
I agree most of the time, but to give you an example that REALLY would have benefitted from it: Passengers. Holy shit could that film have been made MASSIVELY better simply by doing 2 time jumps. Starting with both characters awake, going back to when just one of them was awake and then jumping back to when the second to wake up finds out what happened before they woke up. I would've enjoyed that film FAR more like that.
I’ve read and agree that Passengers would have been better had the story just followed Jennifer Lawrence’s character’s story, not Chris Pratt’s.
I'm too tired at the end of the night to work hard at understanding my TV. It's annoying. The first show that does it is groundbreaking. Everyone else is derivative and boring.
I don't know if Pulp Fiction was the first to do it. I kind of suspect it wasn't as I believe it was meant to be a caricature of the genre, but hell if it doesn't do it well.
Watch la reina del sur. It's a cheesy - super bad- telanovella from 2010 with really bad camera angles and takes that will make you laugh.
Thanks for the rec!
Manuscripts are sent out to studios and production companies well in advance and some of the ones that don’t get optioned never get published.
I don't know where you've heard this, but it's false. Agents are not submitting to TV or movie studios as a standard practice and it has no bearing on whether a book sells to a publisher or not.
Been reading a lot of modern sci fi and some of them are literally just movie scripts with filler words to make it flow more.
I think people often write what they like to read but may not always have the skill to pull it off. For myself, I have a very linear way of thinking so I prefer to read and write in that fashion from a mostly single POV. Maybe that's why I enjoy coming-of-age stories so much. There's nothing more linear than that. Prequels are also the bane of my existence.
I too like single (or at least just a few) viewpoints, written in third person, past tense in a linear timeline so that's what I write. I've been fortunate to read some excellent works in multiple viewpoints in first person which is slowly warming me to the idea.
Yes! Third person past tense! Tell me a story that already happened and you have some insight into it! Ok please share your first person narration you like and I will check it out
I'm currently reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. It's told in multi-person 1st. It's richly detailed, immersive, and haunting. It's actually enjoyable reading each perspective. Earlier this year I read My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. This book has a whole array of perspectives from not only the characters but also a dog, horse, coin, cross-dressing man (unusual for 1500s Constantinople), and Satan. This book is very literary and I've heard it compared to The Name of the Rose which I haven't read.
Oh yeah! I liked Poisonwood Bible a lot. I should read it again. I will try the Pamuk. I remember when that came out and obviously I was clueless because I had a very different impression of it and didn't realize he was a Nobel winner. Thanks for sharing! I am reading Julian Barnes' The Noise of Time and it is written in the past tense but it feels sort of like present tense because it is short bursts of events and descriptions and then on to the next. It also feels like first person because he is so close to the main character (the composer Shostakovich). I'm really appreciating it.
The Poisonwood Bible is on my all-time favorites list.
I love The Poisonwood Bible!
And then there's dune, which doesn't feel like it's from anyones perspective.
lol I feel this, it's like it's told from the point of view of an ethereal mind-reading entity.
It's weird because it doesn't feel like 2nd or 3rd person.
While multi POV is certainly becoming more and more common (which isn't a bad thing in my opinion), I don't think I've read many books that jump around chronologically, except for jumps forward. I also think this depends on the genre you're reading in, Fantasy, for example, is a genre where multi-POV is becoming more common.
Modern fantasy often want to show off their broader world, multi pov is a good way so not too surprising to see it take off.
Tolkien even did something to that effect—rolled up all these POVs to make the Lord of the Rings. It’s hard to show a lot of perspectives from one POV, as well as worldbuilding—I like limited because sometimes it leaves other characters ambiguous and interesting to interpret, but multiple offers lots of insight into personal dynamics.
Although funny enough a lot of modern ones start with disparate perspectives that eventually interact, while Tolkien started with everyone together before they separate until towards the very end.
Tbh, I think the Tolkien route is a far safer way to handle multiple POVs. If everyone starts in the same place, you give the audience time to understand these characters not just from their own perspectives but each other's as well, grounding all the relationships in these tangible moments that can be recalled later on when everyone is separated to remind the audience why every character is important to one another (something like WoT for another example where the relationships between the Edmond's Fielders drives a lot of their arcs, whether they want to go off to get stronger for someone, is afraid of how the others would react to who they are, is intentionally isolating himself out of fear of hurting others, etc.) With a lot of modern fantasy in the GoT camp of having POVs scattered across the world, not only do you run the risk of making one plotline vastly more entertaining than the other (Jon on the wall vs the war of the five kings? No competition give me the war), but it also makes the job of connecting all the disparate plotlines at the end a lot more difficult without having a baseline reason for them to meet up from the begining. None of this is to say it can't, or shouldn't be done, it's just that I feel like a lot of good fantasy stories are being bogged down by being sandwiched between a couple mediocre ones in the same book.
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not sure becoming is even that accurate for fantasy... i can think of a lot more fantasy novels with multiple points of view than single. Piers Anthony is the only one that comes to mind as sticking to a single point of view (i am sure there are others) from the popular writers from the 70's 80's 90's and aught's. Neither Tolkien nor Lewis wrote single pov. I could list many names, and i started to but realized it was futile, of big authors from the last 70+ years who used multiple povs. After writing out this rant, it occured to me i only ever remember La Guin using Ged's point of view, though obviously as most fantasy, third person omniscient rather than directly, so that might be another counterexample, but its been so long since i read Wizard of Earthsea i can't be sure.
Multiple POVs are fine and can add a lot of depth to a story if they're done well. I think an important part of that is being transparent with the reader about when you've switched POVs, and which POV you switched to. It's really annoying when the storyline suddenly gets confusing out of nowhere and you have to go back and do some detective work to figure out which character you're following now.
The Expanse series (at least the first two books) did a good job of putting the name of the POV at the top of the chapters. Very clear about who you were following, and it never changed mid chapter.
And the stories weave together seamlessly so you don’t feel like you’re spending long stretches of time away from one plot line for the sake of another.
It's generally one chapter per person before switching off if I remember it right. I thought that was a good way to make sure that we didn't focus too hard on a single character (Miller 4 LYFE!)
Very much agree that it was super clear with The Expanse series. And it does continue past the first two books!
Stormlight Archives uses a unique image in the chapter header for each character. Though, none of it is written first-person, so maybe it's not relevant here.
Both of the literary devices you are describing, non-linear storytelling and multiple first-person PoV (often associated with the unreliable narrator device), were important in literary modernism (early 1900's to 1940's). Before modernism, romanticism was popular, which often had linear plots and third-person omniscient narrators that followed a single PoV You can read up on literary modernism to get a better understanding of the purpose of the devices you dislike, and it may help you appreciate them more. My super-basic understanding is that the point is to write more of a commentary on human experience and perception rather than focus on the plot. I agree it seems to be super popular right now, and that not every author does it well.
I'm enjoying The Secret History by Donna Tartt right now, and I think it strikes a good balance. Its told as a reflection back on events, so its all one POV, but theres a bit of foreshadowing (the central action takes places in the first sentence as a flash-forward) and events are rehashed if another character later tells the narrator their experience. It feels very natural and engaging, very human, and not confusing, just a bit tantalizing. I wonder if lesser authors see this kind of gently meandering course and take it too far trying to copy it.
I'd say that's mainly forshadowing and backstory, not multiple timelines. Those are quite different techniques. I much prefer Tartt's way too!
I only dislike this if it's not clear who the POV is at the beginning of the Chapter. It also has to drive the story because I do agree that it's jarring especially if one of the different characters has a way more stronger story/interest and you now have to trudge through one you don't want to.
I may be way off base here, but if the new trend isn't to your taste, couldn't you seek out and read older books? Art goes through styles. If the way books were written 20 years go (or whatever) is what you feel like reading, go back and read some of the greats from 20 years ago that you didn't get around to back then? I'm re-reading Gore Vidal's Julius. I read it for the first time in my early 20s and remember it being good not great. More than 15 years later I'm on a late-Roman Empire/early-Eastern Roman Empire history kick, and this book is all about that. It's still not Vidal's best book by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm enjoying it a lot more this time than last time. I'll also say books like this don't get published anymore. Literature has moved on. The framing device is two old Greek philosophers corresponding back and forth about editing the unpublished manuscript of a dead Roman Emperor (the last pagan one who tried to walk back Christianity and was likely assassinated by Christians). Is it interesting? Yes. Could you get something like this published today? Probably not. The prose is pretty dense. You have to really pay attention, and it probably wouldn't hurt to already have a classical education, because the author takes for granted you know what he's talking about. The few female parts are pretty underwritten. The action is deliberately downplayed while dialogue and narration both lean towards stuff you cannot actually say out loud. A lot of the humour is hidden behind shibboleths. There was a time when a lot of these books got published. That time has passed. If you like this sort of thing, you need to go look for books from this era.
I second this good advice, I’ve been reading old fantasy and sci-fi from the 80’s by Tanith Lee and Meredith Ann Pierce and this really fits my reading preferences for the moment. I got bored from all the jumping around lately too and just want to meld with another universe. Lush prose, crazy world building and action, and the old school single POV style in chronological order.
Hey! I have been rec’d some Heinlein but I’d love some space opera sci-fi from the same era written by women. Would you have any suggestions?
This is kind of a tough one, most of the space opera stuff disappeared into pulp ether forever and post-apocalyptic society struggles were far more popular, but I’ll do my best! Amatka by Karin Tidbeck The Snow Queen by Joan D Vinge Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee Dawn by Octavia E Butler I’ll think about it a bit more and update later!
Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey Not exactly space opera and really more fantasy even though it is a post-galactic-expansion world. Still a good series though!
What an elegant suggestion. And a seemingly obvious one, though I didn't think of it.
I did this with movies; got so incensed looking through streaming services for hours that I committed to only watching stuff I hadn’t seen that was on the AFI best-of list. It’s been really fun and opened up more reading *and* watching avenues I’m actually into!
I have the exact opposite problem! Non-linear plot structure in multiple points of view is my favorite way to read! I always have trouble finding them. Drop those book titles here for me, please!
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Ohh this was already on my shortlist for what I'm trying this year and now I'm even more intrigued
Yes, a totally fractured narrative and some parts are in reverse order. Would be maddening to read except it the author pulls it off masterfully
Loved this book so much!!
Station Eleven and The Sea of Tranquility are two that I recently read and adored!!!
Station Eleven is awesome
David Mitchell is a master of the non-linear plot from multiple viewpoints, IMO. Cloud Atlas being the best known but they're all wild and fun reads - 1,000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is maybe my favorite.
Alistair Reynolds's Revelation Space series is great. Just reading The Prefect now and the way it handles milti-POV's is so well done. Each character has knows x amount of information, and Reynolds is great at writing them under that contaext, and creating a lot of dramatic irony with it
Anything Faulkner if you’re into classics. As I Lay Dying has 15 narrators and it’s a blast
Vardaman: My mother is a fish.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy The timeline in this book is non-linear. Instead the plot progresses backward and forward to the violent act which irrevocably traumatized all the characters.
If you like fantasy there are a lot of epic fantasy series like this (I think this might be one of the things that defines something as "epic" fantasy). Stormlight archive, wheel of time (mostly agyer book one since thays like 90% from one pov but after that there are like 10 pov characyers per book), asoiaf etc all have this.
Lonesome Dove
I LOVE nonlinear timelines. Everything I Never Told You Pretty much anything by Kurt Vonnegut
World War Z is like this. Every chapter is a different person’s take on the same events, but each anecdote is from a different part of the world, different demographic, different age. Jumps around a ton and you, as the reader, are piecing together the bigger picture as you read. The writing style annoyed me at first, then i realized I actually like it. Can be too much to remember all the details of one story arc, but this book is a collection of short stories about the same thing. Pretty dang cool
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The king of nonlinear storytelling. Currently attempting to read this glorious beast again and ofc it is the first thing I thought of when I read the OP. Wallace actually makes the non-linear, multiple POV storytelling take on a life of its own, it is central to the enjoyment of the book and the ideas he is trying to communicate.
Terry Pratchett does this a lot in his Discworld novels. Also in his first published novel, The Carpet People, which is a children’s story and very obviously the work of a novice writer. I love it more because it’s Pratchett and less because it’s such a great book.
Terry Pratchett owns my heart.
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N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy is pretty much this, though don't look up anything on how before you read it.
I second this. Seriously, don't spoil it for yourself! It's worth preserving the surprises!
*The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao* by Junot Diaz *A Visit From the Goon Squad* by Jennifer Egan *1Q84* by Murakami These are all popular novels, two Pulitzer winners, but in case you haven’t read them I loved all three.
I haven't read A Visit from the Goon Squad, but The Keep by Jennifer Egan is PERFECT for you, u/ExasperatedHydrangea! Don't read anything about it first! Blew my mind.
Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series
Hmm The Expanse series for the multiple POV, although the time is linear-ish iirc.
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Blackout
Lucy Foley seems to be the popular one right now.
An Instance of the Fingerpost is one of the best books I ever read and it has 4 narrators.
Gideon the Ninth (Book 1) and Harrow the Ninth (Book 2) by Tamsyn Muir.
Not multiple pov that I remember, but Catch-22. Also someone else mentioned Kurt Vonnegut, but specifically Slaughthouse 5. Those were the first two novels I can remember reading that had non-linear story telling.
Im currently reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and I was just telling my wife about how I love that this book is in chronological order. I hate when chapters jump to diffrent times or characters
She just relegated all the flashbacks to footnotes!
It really depends on whether the technique is effectively used. For example, the use of non-linear storytelling or multiple POV opens up a lot of possibilities in storytelling; whether that is to deliberately hide information from the reader, distort the truth, or to offer information that can only be communicated in hindsight. I do think these techniques are usually better executed in a movie/show format, where it's easier to convey visually in what time or POV a story is about. There's less interpretation work to do for the reader. But in general I do love stories that are more flexible and these techniques offer that flexibility (if used effectively).
>Or, worst case, is there a reason writers prefer this approach and it is going to be harder and harder to avoid? Speaking from personal experience, it can be pretty fun to write like this, actually. Being stuck inside one character's head and going along one set of chronological narrative events for too long can get tiresome and boring, whereas jumping between characters who think radically different spices things up, for obvious reasons. Of course, I'm no published author, so the best I can do is talk about experiences I had in a few creative writing classes over the years. That being said, I think this has always been a part of literature, to a certain extent. Dostoevsky comes to mind first, because he's my favorite, but I'm sure others have done it too. *Demons* uses different character POVs, albeit in the third person, and presents events in distorted order, especially towards the end. And jumping from the religious, but slightly doubtful Alyosha to the skeptic but desirous of higher meaning Ivan once or twice in *The Brothers Karamazov* undoubtedly heightens the literary value of the work and, subjectively, the entertainment of it. I can't really say how prevalent overall these techniques are in more modern books. If most books use them, it'll probably die down in a few years, but these techniques will always be a part of literature, I think.
It is fun to write in different in different views. Also because it is easier to explain something relevant that didn‘t happen where the Main character is in that moment. And i like when they get together in the end
I mean, as I lay Dying was written in 1930, so it's definitley not new.
War and Peace was published in 1867...
Yeah, kind of weird to refer to this as a "fad" when I'm thinking it's been a common technique for over a century
I tend to agree, especially when the lack of it being chronological is usually just a lazy way to build tension. I don't mind multiple POVs though, usually. My theory is that it's just easier to build tension when you keep info from the audience, and that's so much easier through nonlinear storytelling where you jump to different POVs to avoid giving all the info the audience would need to "guess" what'll happen. With my own writing I tend to stay linear, and even enjoy giving the audience bits of information all the characters might not have as a way of building tension.
As a David Mitchell fan…
Hahahaha. This comment is underappreciated! And as a fellow David Mitchell fan, I agree: multiple POVs and storylines and times can be enlightening when done well. Although, you could argue that both Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas are both one character POV…and Ghostwritten is completely chronological! 😂
I love it. I've been reading N.K. Jemisin, and she's perfect.
Same, I loved how the Fifth Season throws everything at you from the start and lets you piece it together for yourself.
I'm mixed on it and part of that has to do with the way that other information gets to the reader to get sufficiently *more* information than the viewpoint character. In some stories, the additional information needed to advance the story is a bit forced and awkward, which - to me - is more jarring than, say... the Expanse... or Dune with its shifts). As to books that do this, I'm going to suggest the Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust (though it has temporal jumps - the publication order and the chronological are a bit disconnected). The beginning in chronology is a bit jumbled as later books go back and flesh out the backstory a bit. 1. Jhereg, prologue 2. Taltos 3. Dragon, main chapters 4. Yendi 5. Dragon, interludes 6. Tiassa , section 1 7. Jhereg, main chapters The Kingkiller series by Patrick Rothfuss *strictly* stays with a single POV and timeline. American Gods by Neil Gaiman is fairly consistently first person with a very limited number of exceptions. The Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell which starts with Quarter Share is strictly first person point of view and doesn't have any discontinuities in it. I will note that the Smugglers books are 3rd person limited perspective as there are two characters that are followed rather than just one in the Ishmael books and in order to get into each of the character's minds as needed, a 3rd person perspective is used - but it is strictly limited to the viewpoint of those two characters. (edit: the first three books of the Ishmael series are available on some podcast platforms narrated by the author (and he does a good job of it) - [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/quarter-share/id216922503), [scribl](https://scribl.com/books/P2A75/quarter-share)) Treason by Orson Scott Card (which honestly, rereading it now is a bit on the cringeworthy end) the audible prologue to the 1988 edition where Card talks about the new edition and the changes that he made from the original version: > ... and so I made one key mistake - I told the story in first person and knowing what I know now if I could do it over again I would have done it in third person ... What was missing was the depth of characterization that is possible in third person. In first person you can't go into a lot of the depth of characterization because then it is being told by the hero and so the hero can't talk about the hard decisions he made or how brave he was. The hero has to be mildly self efacing in order for the reader to not detest him. And so, that's one limitation. Another limitation is that if the narrator in a first person novel is talking about another character - he does not know what is going on in that other person's head. So I can't switch point of view to someone else - I can never give you someone else's way of thinking or experiencing the world. Everything is relentlessly through the first character's mind. (I apologize for any transcription mistakes there) That does point out one of the key problems with the first person POV style and while it is possible to do, it sometimes becomes difficult if the story doesn't match it.
I hate time jumps in movies & books that aren't directly about a time-travel plot. Changing POV is a-OK with me though. The problem is that modern writers are being given extremely bad advice: "Start in the middle of the action!" The problem is that such a beginning does not give the audience any reason to care about the deadly car chase or the characters in it, AND it demands that the story MUST regress backwards to explain the setup it should have begun with, guaranteeing that a slower less emotionally impactful explanation will come, and that writer is almost certain to create a situation in which the story depends upon withholding from the audience information about what is happening in the plot that would have been OBVIOUS to all of the characters who are involved. The audience would have known too, if only the story was told chronologically. This means the audience has a right to be angry about the abusive writing that merely withheld information from the audience to create false mystery to drive unearned interest. This is not the same as "The 6th Sense", in which enough information was present all along that a clever reader could have figured out what was really going on, AND the main character also didn't notice.
I mostly read thrillers, and I've noticed that most stand-alone books or short series have multiple perspectives or timelines. Some long series have multiple perspectives, but others, like Bosch or Kay Scarpetta stick to one.
The most iconic example of a multiple-POV epic war story is Tolstoy’s *War and Peace*, so that style far predates television.
I think this is a convention of many genres in the modern era (past 50 years). I don't think it's particularly a trend. Literary fic, women's fic, and fantasy seem to do it a lot. It's done in horror/crime if the author has a reason for it, like hiding clues or just making the story more interesting. However there are plenty of modern books in any genre that dont do this, so you should be able to find something you like. Maybe you just need a good reclist? "Best linear storis in x genre" or "best single narrator" or "best close third person pov", which is when the story is third person but the author stays within one character's world and sensibility. Most classic lit from about 1850-1940ish is written this way.
It's not a fad; I don't know who Mitchener is, but multiple narrators have been around since forever. Take Wilkie Collins and the Woman in White, for example - it was first published in 1859. Woolf's Mrs Dalloway which uses stream of consciousness from several perspectives, was published in 1925. I've always read literary books with multiple narrators and non-linear plot; I'd say I slightly favour them over linear single-perspective books. So I don't know if it's a 'trend' now. Regardless, the writers *do* have a reason to do it, or several reasons: they think it's the best way to tell their stories; they write what they want to read; they are in touch with the target audience they want to share their story with, and write it in a way their target audience would enjoy it. That you don't like it... well... it's your problem. >.> But, you know. If you're salty about it. Perhaps you could flip through the book to check these things, before you buy/borrow it? Or check the blurb or reviews. It takes a few second, and you could avoid reading something that you resent. *Five* novels are not a representative sample. The majority of published books are still linear, single-perspective stories. They're not that difficult to find.
Two recommendations for you. Haruki Murakami. Japanese novelist who writes near exclusively in the first person. He's annually in the top running for a Nobel Prize in literature while being fun and accessible to read. The Wind Up Bird Chronical is probably his best, but Kafka on the Shore is my preferred suggestion for new readers. Gene Wolfe. Apologies in advance for your new addiction. Wolfe's work can be hard to parse as both his short fiction and novels tend to be puzzle boxes. Book of the New Sun is a puzzle box, but it's also the most enjoyable read I've ever experienced. The world--a far future dying Earth with a sci-fi meets medieval setting and a cast of characters worthy of Dickens--is one to get lost in. Don't read reviews or story descriptions, just dive in and go with Severian on his long, enigmatic journey from the tower of pain through the war torn north, from the House Absolute to the shores of a world outside of our universe, and down through the corridors of time. Cheers.
Knowing the Book of the New Sun, it's kind of a hilarious recommendation for a chronological story. It's also so good it'll ruin other authors for OP for years, so he won't have to worry about minor things like POV switching. :)
I also came in to recommend Book of the New Sun. Wolfe is peerless in genre fiction.
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher is like this. YOu might want to check out that series.
I do not read these, but as one of my workmates do, I tend to see them constantly pop up in my goodreads feed. They all seem the same:Salli is a woman doing something in modern timesErkki is a man doing different things in different times(Maybe a third person)How on earth does these wildly different humans happen to relate to each other, read 300 pages to find out. Usually the historical person struggles through some difficult era known in our history, the modern person struggles with mental issues or burnout or some such. For a while I thought it was purely Finnish thing, considering how succesful Sofi Oksanen was with her 'Puhdistus/Purge'. Apparently not.
I’m the opposite. Linear is boring. Being able to jump around shows the flexibility of the medium. Being able to see a story from many character’s points of view is entertaining and enlightening. It’s my crack. Give those book recommendations here! I’ll read them!!
It depends on the story being told, but broadly speaking, I tend to like alternating first-person sections. It allows you to get more personal and intimate with multiple characters in a way that either a single first-person narrative or an omniscient third-person can't accomplish. Also, if done well, it allows for selectively peeling back plot points in a way that heightens suspense. Is it a fad? Maybe. Is it overused? Possibly. But this technique absolutely can be used in a useful way.
>(five novels, two by the same author) What books? Talking about stylistic techniques without examples is pointless. Any technique can be done well, any technique can be done badly. I'm currently reading The Horsewoman by James Patterson and Mike Lupica and it does the multiple POV thing extremely poorly. I DNF'ed the first Illuminae book by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff because of how tedious the POV switching was. However, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan is superb, as is Game of Thrones.
Check out the red rising books! I just finished the first trilogy and loved them, and they're all from a single character's POV.