How seriously damaging is it to use multiple characters for a first novel?
Even if apparently handled correctly, will the absence of a single towering protagonist likely prejudice against my work for publication?
Simply asking, because I know people here have a better experience of the sci-fi market, whether reading or submitting.
The question arises because the "how to write and publish" books I'm working through seem to expect/demand/advise use of a single protagonist. But for the epic I'm rewriting I feel a need for multiple protagonists.
posted
Do you mean multiple "all-at-one", or multiple "one-then-another-one-then-another-one". Because the second has been done enough times to be acceptable. For instance, I believe "Stonehenge" follows the tale of a family based around, funnily enough, Stonehenge. But it goes through a number of generations in the process, so single protagonists tend to die. So another one pops up. Is this what you mean? JK
Posts: 503 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I mean as in a small cast - a handful of central characters, who help provide the reader with an overall view of the situation in a way that a single protagonist cannot.
I bought a couple of sci-fi novels for research the other day, specifically because they use multiple characters and third person limited omniscent. But these are already well established authors.
I think at the end of the day I'm simply becoming nervous. Perhaps the best thing to do is to simply write it as I'm planning, taking into acocunt most of the comments from the "teach yourself writing and publishing" books. I'll then post some fragments of my work up when I feel ready - and then demand you all destructively critique it [ ]. That will allow me to see how durable it is.
More later.
[This message has been edited by Chronicles_of_Empire (edited August 02, 2002).]
quote:How seriously damaging is it to use multiple characters for a first novel?
I hope all first novels have more than one character – otherwise that character is going to do a lot of talking to himself!
In all seriousness though…
I’ve read many SF books with multiple protagonists. As for how that applies to first novels, I don’t know the statistics. My gut instinct says that if handled properly it shouldn’t be a problem. The books may just make an issue of it because it becomes more difficult to handle multiple protagonists because it is a more complex story structure.
posted
I wondered this before, but what you posted while I was writing my reply made me wonder more…
Are you talking about protagonists simply in a story sense – as in number of main characters? Or are you talking about number of POV characters? The two don’t have to be the same thing.
posted
Thanks for that, GZ. Character POV wasn't the concern - simply the lack of a single defining protagonist.
I was reading a book on the publishing process by Carole Friedman - a respected British agent - when I came across a comment about multiple protagonists being a complete no-no for commercial fiction. That's what sent myself into an utter spin.
But as she stated at the intro, she only wanted to introduce the "rules" so that writers would know exactly what and why they were bending them.
posted
I would hardly call not using multiple protagonists' POV a "rule." Multiple POV is a method. Whether it's better or worse than another would surely depend on the work and, I'm tempted to say the skill of the author, but that would be tested in any POV.
James Michener uses multiple POVs all at once--no scene changes between different POVs--which is generally believed to be inadvisable (not a rule, just not advisable). It works for him. And I've seen new authors--I've been guilty myself--who seem to blunder in with that method and it's a disaster. I think it just seems easier. Maybe that's what the author meant when she tried to make a rule against it. As I said, I think an author's skill is tested in any POV since each has its own pitfalls.
I guess the best advice I read about writing was that there are no hard and fast rules. However, like an artist who must understand his materials and how they influence the finished product, we should know what the materials are.
I used multiple POVs with scene changes in the book I just finished, CofE, so if there is a "hard and fast" rule against it, we're both guilty. I think it works, though. It remains to be seen if the publishing elite thinks it does as well.
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited August 02, 2002).]
posted
I think it should be okay as long as you don’t go crazy with it. I mean, don’t create like twenty characters and them separate all of them so the POV keeps changing. I would create between 7-8 and then keep them together the majority of the book. A lot of fantasy writers swear to having “companions” It’s never really made a difference to me one way or another as long as I can keep track of what’s going on. I think no matter what you do there’s going to be a central protagonist. Whether you intend there to be one or the readers pick one, it’s going to happen. Every group has a leader.
posted
I have read work (not published) that had so many characters at the start that a person got buried under names and couldn't keep them straight and they were all the "good guys". Then you had one or two bad guys.
I think what is meant is not to have so many characters that a person gets lost in a sea of names.
You will have one or two main characters, but don't try to tell every character's story. Been there, done that. It is too much and the book ends up being so long that it will not sell, and the reader never gets into the head of any one character.
I've read books like that where I skip through looking for the chapters told from one character's POV.
Not enough and the story lacks reality, too many and you lose the reader.
posted
For telling an epic story, you really don't have any choice about whether or not to use more than one POV character.
Generally speaking, the reason that you write in a POV at all is to allow the reader to experience the situation as it appears to a particular character. This is particularly important in science fiction because we always encounter situations that are too far outside the range of the audiences actual experiences for us to simply assume that the audience will know what that situation means. To retain coherence, and also to allow the reader time to get used to seeing events from a particular POV, it is best to remain in a given POV for the duration of a "scene".
When you must portray an epic story, you will rarely have a single character that is both sympathetic and present for all the scenes that are important to the story (this uses the term "epic" in its derivative meaning of "larger than life--or at any rate larger than a single character"). Therefore you have to pick out a number of interesting characters that are collectively present for enough of the action to tell the story. That is simply one of the costs of writing your story as an "epic".
posted
I think that using multiple characters can give a much more over-reaching view of the story and of the universe in which you set it.
Harru Turtledove, for example, uses a changing cast of characters in his novels, telling the story from all of the viewpoints, most particularly the obscure ones that one would not expect to see. This is what gives the story a true sense of reality, because you get a lot more detail than you would from one character.
quote:I was reading a book on the publishing process by Carole Friedman - a respected British agent - when I came across a comment about multiple protagonists being a complete no-no for commercial fiction. That's what sent myself into an utter spin.
Whenever you read or hear of something being propounded as a Rule, no matter how respected or well-known or well-published the person doing the propounding may be, the first thing you need to do is check to see whether there is evidence to support that thing being a Rule.
In this case, go look at the first novels of a bunch of writers you enjoy reading, and a bunch of writers who are on the best seller lists (I recommend both groups because there may not be much overlap in them), and see if they had multiple protagonists in those first novels.
Anyone can propound a Rule, but just because they do it doesn't mean you have to follow that "Rule." Find out by studying what has succeeded, for you personally (writers you enjoy) and for the market (best sellers), and see if it really is a Rule.
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]. That will allow me to see how durable it is.
