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I know it's hard to do, The First Five Pages encourages new writers to stick to one viewpoint character.
Then again, movie/television writers have it all. They can introduce many new characters, show the same scene from many viewpoints. It would be nice to aquisition this from them.
Is it bad form in the first thousand words to introduce three viewpoint characters, flipping from one to the other?
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I don't know about bad form, but I see nothing wrong with having multiple POVs in principle. However, 300 odd words isn't much for the reader to get to know the characters. If the readers can't get a start on identifying with POV characters, they may not read on.
Posts: 245 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Sometimes you never know until you try. While sticking to one POV character is a good rule of thumb,there are times when you can and should fly in the face of convention. Three POVs is a lot for 1000 words, but it isn't impossible. Write it. See how it reads. See how readers respond. You may find, after writing the multiple viewpoints, that you really don't need them.
Posts: 1473 | Registered: Jul 2004
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A picture (in this case, a shot from any given camera) is worth a thousand words. Movies typically don't introduce more than a couple of major characters in any given shot. In fact, if you pay attention to such things, it is only one character per shot, even though another major character may also be visible for the first time in that same shot.
Take that with a grain of salt, though. Movies are not books. Books are not movies. I'm just pointing out that movies don't really do what you're considering.
Looking at it from what I've seen in literature, it isn't bad form, it's just difficult to do well.
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