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Q&A Is it a bad idea to have three protagonists?

I just finished reading Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence which does almost exactly this, although over five books. The first book has three siblings as main characters, book 2 has one boy...

posted 8y ago by Lauren Ipsum‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T12:00:35Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/21708
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T05:12:01Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/21708
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T05:12:01Z (almost 5 years ago)
I just finished reading Susan Cooper's _The Dark Is Rising_ sequence which does almost exactly this, although over five books. The first book has three siblings as main characters, book 2 has one boy (with many siblings), book 3 has the boy and a second boy both as main characters, and books 4 and 5 use all the kids.

I was fine with the idea of the story going back and forth; my only caveat is that it should be the same _kind_ of story. The three siblings were "mortals getting involved with magic" and the two single boys were "magical folks dealing with magical things," and those are not the same kind of tale. That created more whiplash for me than changing protagonists or POVs.

Anne McCaffrey did it better in her Harper Hall trilogy; books 1 and 2 are about Menolly and book 3 is about Piemur. Each is a minor character in the other's story, and the overall storyline is chronological. It works fine.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2016-04-13T16:48:21Z (over 8 years ago)
Original score: 1