how many points of view can you have in one novel?

Question

I normally write my books in first person but my current novel seems to be giving me trouble. I started it in first person but i find that i want multiple viewpoints as my narrator is the kind of person that would be unrelaible.
Can i have first person, third person and Omniscient all in one book? I think it will work well. HELP PLEASE!

Answer 1

You can try it and see if it becomes too confusing for your reader. If so, narrow the focus to only two POVs--your first-person and one third-person omniscient. Or you can name each chapter by who's point of view it is from. One author who does this really well and quite successfully is George R. R. Martin in his "Song of Ice and Fire" series. Read a bit of that and see if that's what you're after.

Answer 2

Playing with multiple POVs in literature is a long tradition, and there are a number of ways of going about it. Writers like Faulkner hinge much of their work on multiple first-person narratives, while something like Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller are explicitly playing with viewpoint, using first-, second-, and third-person nattative. The central issue is the relationship that you want to establish with you audience. A first-person narrator is great for portraying subjectivity and limited awareness, while third-person generally leads to a transparent or invisible voice that exerts little effect on the story. A notable exception is Jose Saramago, who won the Nobel in 1998, who uses a deeply ironic narrator that only exists outside the narrative and constantly comments on it in ways that are sometimes omniscient, but at other times flawed or biased according to the author's needs at the moment. This "winking narrator" is highly tangential, but quite effective.

Think about what message or impression you are striving for, and choose a perspective or perspectives that best acheive that goal; any other approach is putting the cart before the horse.

Answer 3

Yes, you can use multiple POV's in a novel. In fact, Tom Clancy has used that style to perfection. I also use it in my fantasy books, sometimes with as many as five POV changes in the same chapter. You have to be careful to avoid making abrupt changes or POV shifts that aren't clear to the reader. Never overdo a good thing.

My rules of thumb are, 1) avoid first person and 2) if someone is not a major character in the story, don't give that person their own POV. Also, it works well if you use dialogue to indicate a POV shift, although that is not a requirement.

Good question. I hope this information is helpful.

Jon Baxley
Author
THE SCYTHIAN STONE
THE BLACKGLOOM BOUNTY
THE REGENTS OF RHUM

(For a free demo eBook, email me at [e-mail])

Answer 4

I don't see why not - you could even have some interaction between them, maybe your first person narrator talking to the omniscient narrator, so you're never certain if it's all a figment of his imagination?
Just make it clear who's talking when.
Lawrence Durrell, in his Alexandrian Quartet, did it very well (in my opinion) - 4 narratives about the same events, so you learnt another layer each time.

Answer 5

Absolutely--and there's precedent for it. For example, The Sweet Hereafter has multiple points of view. I think your idea sounds great. Too many novels now are safe and conventional in their narrative structures. Go for it!

Answer 6

Sure, why not? I love those kinda books that tell the same story from different point of views. Go for it! You'll enjoy writing it. You'll have more opportunity to display the different aspects of the same event.

Answer 7

switch who is telling the first person. try to keep it down to three peoplpe, though, otherwise it gets confusing. Like, you could start out with the mian character telling in 1st person, then switch to his two best pals telling in 1st person. Just be sure to have dialogue involving names so your readers know who's telling that part of the novel. Or you could have it in a situation, like, "Joe ran away.' and then Joe says, "I ran way faster than I have ever run' or something like that.

Answer 8

If you want multiple points of view, maybe you'd want to divide your novel into "short story" chapters and tell the story from different characters' points of view in their own dedicated chapters.

Answer 9

(Technically) as many points of view as there are characters, as well as the omniscient narrator (although caution should be observed if including the latter).

Answer 10

It sounds good to me.

If the book is ment to be then it will.
Just go with it, let the work take you where it need to go.

I want to read it already, are you going to be selling the book, or is it going to be on a website, Please let me know, I could do with a good read.

Good luck with it.