Hatrack River Writers Workshop: When to switch PoV & when to explain in retrospec?

This is topic When to switch PoV & when to explain in retrospec? in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/writers/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001839

Posted by benskia (Member # 2422) on :

Hello.

In this story I've started, the bad guy is doing a lot of stuff in the background that the main character isn't to know about until the end.
Part of this is all to do with how the bad guy tracks down and finally meets up with the good guy.
LOL - bad guys, good guys. Sorry, but I'm trying to keep this simple without having to write the whole of the novel out here so you get the idea.

Anyways, I'm pretty sure that the best way to explain what's going on is to switch PoV and have some very small chapters which tell what the bad guy is getting up to in relevance to the timeline of the rest of the story. However, I know that there's a lot of advise saying to stick with 1 PoV.

The only other way I could do it is wait until the end & the two characters meet up & then have all the stuff that the bad guy has been up to come out in one big go. This would mean that a lot of things get explained at the end, but a lot of it would sound like too much coincedence.

I think it would work out better the first way around.

Is this ok?

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

Please do switch POV's throughout the book instead of info-dumping the antagonist's motivations at the end.

So go with the first. There's no reason why you can't, unless you're writing the novel in first person. Then you absolutely must hold back that information. (But there are other ways of gently bringing it in with first person narrative without the classic villian spills everything at the end routine.)

Good luck.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

I don't think there's any risk in having multiple POV's in a novel. Go for it.

Posted by JBSkaggs (Member # 2265) on :

Hi I agree, switching POV (say a chapter of portagonist POV, then a chapter of Ant POV etc) is a good way to go.

May I recommend that you do something known as a novel or story diagramming (mapping)? This way you can see how it has been done before and if it is something you'd like to try.

Take a good book that does what you would like to do and make a brief chap by chap outline of what happened and then go back and make notes of what you liked and didn't like.

A great book I think that does what you are talking about is In the Corner of His Eye (or was it Out of the Corner of his Eye) by Dean Koontz.

Although: switching POV doesn't work well in short stories (in most cases there are exceptions)

JB Skaggs

[This message has been edited by JBSkaggs (edited March 14, 2005).]

Posted by Robyn_Hood (Member # 2083) on :

I agree with what the others are saying. I think the confussion about changing POV is that it can mean two things:

1) Changing character POV - changing the character who is telling the story

2) Changing the story voice - switching back and forth between first person and third person limited (for example)

While changing narrators can be fairly seamless (even in first person, if done well), changing narrative voice can be jolting and confusing -- it can be done, but it is difficult to do well even by experienced writers and is therefore not recommended.

Since all you want to do is change narrators and not narrative voice, go ahead and change the POV to fit the story. The only time to be wary of changing narrators is as JBSkaggs suggested, in short stories.