As a reader I am a fan of different POV’s in one book. I feel more connected to the characters and the story line when a story is written that way.
As a writer, multiple POV’s give me headaches.
There are so many rules for writers as to what you should and shouldn’t do in regards to multiple POV’s. Enough to make my head spin.
I can tell you that before I delved into the “world of writing” I didn’t even know what the phrase multiple POV meant. All I knew was, I enjoyed a book more if multiple characters had inner monologues(1 POV inner monologue tends to get boring and repetitive). I didn’t notice or have a preference for how it was done either. The only time I even put thought towards it was when it got confusing (meaning I had a hard time figuring out who was talking).
So why as writers do we stress over this technique so much?
Mainly, I think,  because we want to impress other writers who will read our work and of course the agent, editor, and publisher that will hopefully want to work with it.
I’m not going to outline the right and wrong ways of multiple POV’s. If that is what you are looking for check out the following articles:
- 7 POV Basics by Judy Hedlund
- 5 Dual-POV Writing Tips by Ava Jae
- Switching POV Styles by Janice Hardy
I want to talk about a POV style I just learned about. A good friend of mine who is an avid reader and who coincidentally dislikes confusing multiple POV’s texted me with the following message:
“I like this book. When it changes between Day’s voice and June’s voice the font and color of the print change.”
I saw that and immediately loved it! It’s brilliant. Yes I can hear some writers say it’s sort of “elementary in style” but as a reader I think this is a great idea. Most readers don’t care what style or rule of POV that writers are using (unless they have some background in writing). Average readers, from my experience, just care about whether or not they can follow it without getting confused and I think this style of multiple POV’s handles that problem beautifully.
In case you were wondering, the book pictured is Legend by Marie Lu
What do you think?
Are you a fan of this certain style?
What are your feelings towards multiple POV’s as a reader and a writer?
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