Keeping Viewpoints Relevant

There are stories in which a singular viewpoint will not suffice. In such stories, you will need multiple viewpoints to handle everything. And to do so well, there’s a few things you will need to keep in mind.

First of all, refrain from mind-hopping. If you start a scene with one character’s point of view, it’s a very good idea to finish it in the same character’s mind and not leave that mind in the meantime. Mind-hopping irritates and confuses the readers, because they can’t be completely sure which character’s viewpoint they’re currently seeing. There’s no need to keep to the same mind for the whole chapter, if there’s a reason to change it, but hopping back and forth madly is not the way to do multiple viewpoints. Announce changes in viewpoint clearly. If you switch between two scenes, you can use the scene-break symbols, if you use them, to indicate who the new viewpoint character is. Or you can just start the new scene by clearly announcing the identity of the character the readers will follow in that scene.

In addition, try to keep the characters you use for viewpoint characters to a minimum for your story. Many stories can be told very well in just one or two viewpoints, few need a host of ten or twenty. Ask yourself if it is necessary for the readers to see things from a specific character’s point of view. If all characters are going their separate ways and the reader needs to learn what each of them does, you will have to employ them all as viewpoint characters, but ask yourself if the reader truly needs to know what all of them do while they’re on their own.

Be especially weary of making your villain a viewpoint character. Villains thrive on being mysterious, on nobody, including the main lead and the reader, understanding completely what they do and why. If you’re making your villain a viewpoint character, readers will eventually learn their plans and motives and that can be bad for the story. If you have to introduce your villain through a viewpoint character, rather do so through one of his henches or associates. Or introduce them indirectly, through someone telling a viewpoint character about them.

One way to get around such first-, second-, or third-person viewpoint problems could be to choose the omnipresent narrator instead, but this one comes with its own set of problems. Since the omnipresent narrator usually also is all-knowing, there is no surprise for the viewpoint ‘character’ itself. The narrator knew it all from the very beginning. For some stories, where things happen on a global scale and have to be told that way, the omnipresent narrator is the only way to go. But a lot of stories happen on a much smaller scale. They happen to people, not to organisations or nations or whole planets. In that case, choosing one or more viewpoint characters to tell the story (usually in third-person perspective, because otherwise the changes get confusing) is the better way.

In such cases, the suggestions from above do still apply. Don’t use too many viewpoints and don’t do mind-hopping. Avoid the villain’s viewpoint, if you can.

There is, however, another problem with plotting out a story with multiple viewpoint characters. It’s to make sure not to tell two or more unrelated stories. It doesn’t necessarily start off like this. You have three viewpoint characters. Each of them works on the same problem, but they don’t know each other, they don’t know that they’re actually working towards the same goal. And you tell all of their stories, you tell how Character A works on the purely mechanical side, how Character B tries to solve the problem by talking to the right people, how Character C combines mechanics and electronics for a more efficient solution. But then, something veers off course. Character B stumbles over something else while talking to people. Some old secret which is dear to their heart. Something they’ve been looking for since they were much younger. They follow that trail. And step by step, they’re leaving the actual problem, the main plot, behind for a secondary one. This can still work, if the secondary plot at some point ties into the main plot. If that old secret has something to do with the problem Character B worked on in the first place. But what if not?

That is when you have to face something no writer truly wants to do: rewrites. You have to abandon that secondary plot, erase it from the pages, rewrite Character B’s story so it’s not included. You can keep it in mind for another story about Character B, but you need to remove it from this one. Because this isn’t just Character B’s story. If it were, the trip down memory lane to that old secret could still work, serve as a distraction until something reminds Character B of the true problem to solve. But while Character B is chasing that old secret, Character A and Character C are still working on the main plot and, suddenly, their unknown teammate has left them alone with it. Character B’s story is no longer relevant, because the real story still revolves around the main plot.

It confuses readers to have one character move away from the main plot, especially if it’s obvious they’re doing so. Still, readers will probably believe that there’s a reason to it, that this distraction will lead the character back to the main plot eventually. If it doesn’t, readers get irritated. That is why you should, if possible, avoid this pitfall.

Each character you use for a viewpoint should have their own thread of the main plot to hold. It doesn’t have to be clear from the beginning, especially in a long story, but over time, the threads must begin to merge, so the reader can begin to pierce it all together. If, while you’re writing or editing, you start to realize that you have more viewpoint characters than are necessary or useful for the story, the only thing you can do is to cut their threads and remove them from the weave of the story. It hurts, but it’s necessary.