Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Does point of view matter drastically?

There are better and worse ways to do this. It can be difficult and needlessly confusing to have multiple first-person narrators --difficult to give them authentically different voices, and confus...

posted 6y ago by Chris Sunami‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T09:43:43Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38616
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Chris Sunami‭ · 2019-12-08T09:43:43Z (about 5 years ago)
 **There are better and worse ways to do this.** It can be difficult and needlessly confusing to have multiple first-person narrators --difficult to give them authentically different voices, and confusing to the reader. "Close" third-person narration, which closely follows one specific character and his or her point of view, has many of the same problems with POV switching.

But the older style of third-person narration, with an "omniscient" narrator, who knows everything, is a stand-in for the author, is not any given character in the book, and has a "god's eye" perspective on the events, can accommodate following multiple characters relatively easily and gracefully. The basic trade-off is this -- **the closer you are to any given character, the more disorienting it will be to switch away from him or her.** So your best move might be to give yourself a little distance from your characters --describe them more externally than internally, more like a movie than like a diary.

With that said, the main concern I would have is that the omniscient narrator is somewhat out of style right now. Using one may give your book a bit of an old fashioned feel, since modern readers tend to find the technique a bit artificial and unrealistic. However, these trends change all the time. It might be the right time for the pendulum to swing back.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-08-31T13:26:00Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 4