Years ago, when I wrote my very first novel, I did something at the start of part three that seemed perfectly natural to me: I split the core characters up. It made sense: you spend a good half or so of a story developing characters and allowing them to bond, then when the ending comes you split them up and force them to fend for themselves. It increases tension, ramps up the stakes, and gives the characters a chance to shine on their own.

By necessity, this meant I now had the story following different characters in some chapters. Thus began my first experience writing multi-POV fiction.

When I was writing Wide Horizon, it had been only a few years since James S.A. Corey released their masterpiece of modern science fiction, Leviathan Wakes. Fast forward over a decade, and multi-POV is all the rage. When I began writing Seven Days on Samarkand in 2018, it was already growing more common. And I’d learned a thing or two, so that novel was multi-POV from the start.

To me, multi-POV just feels like the best way to write a novel. Especially a sci-fi novel on an epic scale. It allows a writer to produce a more complex plot, with action happening in various locations. The POV characters essentially serve as “representatives”, allowing the reader a glimpse into what’s going on in various places. It was actually just a few years ago when I finally read up on the conventions, such as they are, regarding writing in multi-POV. As it turned out, that research wasn’t enlightening so much as reaffirming; I was already doing pretty much everything that was recommended. Because again, to me it just felt natural.

But multi-POV isn’t for everyone. In the modern literary market, where interiority is the difference between an okay novel and a good one, multi-POV requires a writer to dig into the feelings and motivations of more than one character. You have to really get to know these people. Otherwise the story falls flat. It just feels like someone describing a movie.

I scrapped my original idea for this post to discuss multi-POV amid some of the feedback from one of my critique partners on Seven Days on Samarkand. There are a lot of possible approaches out there, and a lot of them work. But underpinning them all are a few basic principles.

Writing in Multi-POV

Interiority is the biggest challenge in multi-POV writing. A standard novel revolves around a single character: the protagonist. The writer spends a lot of time with this character, learning who they are, how they think, what led them into the plot of the novel and how they’ll solve the various problems they face. After writing a novel, a modern writer feels like they truly know their protagonist. It’s like making a friend. In multi-POV, however, that process is multiplied. While preparing to write Aquarius 1 late last year, I went so far as to write short fiction pieces about several of the characters, notably the two main POV ones. I needed to know more about their lives and who they were.

The easiest way to keep things from getting out of hand is to select several main characters. Even in a multi-POV story, usually there is, in fact, a main protagonist. One character always rises up to steal the show. I’ve found that usually I can spin a story around a maximum of three main characters (I number them, with POV 1 being the protagonist, then POV 2 and POV 3).

Now, that’s not to say the entire novel must be told solely from those POVs. I often pass the proverbial mic off to other characters for a chapter or two, simply because the story needs someone to be in a certain place to tell it. In the portion of Aquarius 1 I’ve written so far, the ship’s pilot becomes a POV character for several chapters. I have no intention of keeping him around as a POV, but the chapters involved a spacewalk, which neither of the two primary POV characters had any reason to participate in. If I hadn’t chosen an astronaut on the EVA for a POV, I’d have been writing about people sitting around watching a spacewalk. And who the heck wants to read that?

However, it’s crucial to bring the story back to the main POV characters after a redshirt takes the mic for a bit. Too many POV characters can make it hard to follow the plot. Much as I adore The Expanse, beginning with the fifth book they really went wild with the POVs. At times it was hard to follow the story, and I began wondering why, exactly, I needed to know what some of the characters were thinking or doing.

Another thing James S.A. Corey have done that I try to avoid is depicting the same scene multiple times from different POVs. To be fair, they usually only do it once or twice in a single novel, and always during very tense and complex scenes. But it can get a little tiresome. I avoid this by maintaining my hierarchy of characters (POV 1, POV 2, etc. as mentioned above).

In Seven Days on Samarkand, Randall Holmes is POV 1. Several of his companions pick up the mic now and then, but almost never when he is present. Likewise for the commander of the Susan Constant, Franklin Bedford (POV 2), when action takes place aboard the ship. The other crewmembers take the stage once in a while, but never when he’s around. I also try to keep my POV characters in different places, so as to provide the reader a glimpse into different areas of the plot while avoiding telling the same story multiple times through different sets of eyes.

Beyond all of that, there are a few key guidelines to keep in mind:

Maintain Clarity

Naturally, when you’ve got more than one POV it can be difficult for the reader to keep track of who’s telling the story. Many multi-POV authors (James S.A. Corey, notably) do this by separating POVs into distinct chapters. In the Expanse novels, for instance, the title of each chapter is the name of its POV character.

I find this limiting, so I have to find other ways to keep the reader straight. When a chapter begins, I try to mention the POV character’s name within the first two lines so the reader knows who they’re following. I do the same when shifting POVs mid-chapter, and any shift in POV is denoted by a scene break. This also helps with the next guideline…

Avoid Head-Hopping

In multi-POV, “head-hopping” is the term for swapping POVs mid-scene. It’s generally frowned upon, as it makes interiority hard to maintain when rapidly shifting from one character to another. It is possible, but should be kept to a minimum.

I try to do this very rarely, limiting it to only very tense scenes, and only between two characters.

Help the Reader Keep Track of Characters

Once you’ve spent some time in a character’s head, you should expect the reader to be invested in them. Whenever the action moves away from a longtime POV character, I try to have periodic “check-ins” as long as the character is still participating in the story (they’re not dead, moved away, etc.). If I’ve done what I set out to do, even if they’re enjoying the story’s progress they’ll still want to know what so-and-so is up to. That said, however…

Allow Characters to Rise and Fall

As the story progresses, certain POV characters will move further from the plot. When that happens, it’s important to know when to let go. You can’t keep constantly breaking away from tense drama and action to see another POV character sitting at their desk, reading.

This can be hard to do. Like I said earlier, writers get attached to their characters. Why shouldn’t they? But continuing to focus on sunsetted characters can slow down the story. In Seven Days on Samarkand, phase two begins with me still juggling the various POV characters introduced through the opening chapters. But over the course of that stretch, the other POVs appear less and less frequently, as the action increasingly revolves around Rand and Nina and their struggle to survive.

In the end, multi-POV can appear daunting. It requires a writer to keep close track of numerous characters following separate but interrelated subplots. But if done right, the result is a novel that’s cinematic in the best possible sense: a complex plot capable of moving from scene to scene without leaving the reader on the outside looking in. It may not be easy, but it’s a lot of fun. And though it’s only my opinion, I really do think it’s the best way to write a novel. – MK