On Not Writing a Novel with Multiple Viewpoints*

*(In Multiple Times and Places)

For my Creative Writing MA students at Birkbeck College, I put together a Short Story Primer that I used to give out week by week.

Most of the time, it was intended to give permission; I was trying to encourage, rather than put off.

Elsewhere, I’ve even said, Don’t do don’ts.

Because in most cases there are exceptions for every don’t — and sometimes very good reasons for ignoring the abstract ban, trespassing on the specific ground.

But after several years of teaching, and then marking with dismay the resulting dissertations, I decided to include the warning below.

Already, in the comments to yesterday’s entry, I’ve heard back from writers who happily began by writing multi viewpoint novels.

Of course, that’s more than possible. And it’s a way to draw attention to yourself as a virtuoso. If pulled off, it will impress publishers, and delight readers.

My warning, though, is more specific than just saying beware of whirling from narrator to narrator. I’m also saying, if you add on top of this jumping around the world, and zooming around in time, then you’re being too ambitious. (Not to mention actual time travel, parallel worlds, etc.)

Rather than learning to write a novel by writing a novel, you’re learning to write six or ten novels at once — all of which require equally convincing narrative voices and worldbuilding and a good plot reason for existing.

So this warning shouldn’t put the downer on anyone who is midway through a first novel, which is merely multi viewpoint. I’m looking towards, and cautioning against, more extreme narrative overreach than that.

There’s more to say, in the next few entries, but this alone will do:

Every transition within a novel, every start of a new chapter or switch of narrator, is a chance to lose the reader.

The simplest way of avoiding losing the reader is minimising the abruptness of those transitions.

Conveying You have to find out what happens to her next keeps them more securely with you than Let’s go all the way over here to see what’s happening with this stranger.

(Yes, but in 300 pages that stranger is vitally important.)

(Yes, but 300 pages.)

Of course the opposite problem, wearying the reader with an 80,000 word monologue, also exists.

A novel is a huge technical challenge for any writer. The more complicated the form, the harder the technical challenge.

I could fudge it, and say this: ‘Please think very, very carefully before you decide to write a novel with multiple narrators which takes place in multiple locations at multiple times in history.’

But I’m going to be more direct: ‘Do not write a novel with multiple narrators which takes place in multiple locations at multiple times in history.’

Too many first novelists undermine their own chances of writing a good (and publishable) first novel by technically overstretching themselves. A strong, linear story told with total assurance will impress far more than a strong, complicated story told with almost total assurance.

If you decide to go against my advice, and go multiple, then you have my best wishes.

But, after reading this page, you will be in no doubt that you are going against my advice.

Wow, I do sound stern and teachery, don’t I?