Who's Telling the Story: Narrators, POVs, and Juggling

I don’t know about you, but one thing I find really satisfying is when an author is able to juggle a complex story seamlessly between multiple characters. A lot of stories I like tend to have an element like this, and it’s probably one of the things I enjoy most about the series I’m currently reading, Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles.

            Still though, telling a story through the use of multiple narrators can be a hard feat to pull off technically as a writer. First, you have to consider who is telling the story and why. Is your main character the most qualified and interesting person to tell the story? Are there multiple characters we’ll be hearing from or is someone outside of the story telling things?

Single Narrators

            As always, there are about a thousand different ways to pull this off, but execution is key when it comes down to who’s telling a story and why. If we’re talking about a single narrator, things typically shouldn’t be too complicated. The story is following one central person, but we have to keep in mind that single narrator’s perspectives are limited by what that character knows. A common example of this is, say, you have a character with an unknown parent of extreme importance. If the character doesn’t know of their connection to said person, that’s something you’re not going to be able to do much with until that information is revealed.

            Secondly, with single characters or multiple narrators as well, a writer should consider how reliable a narrator is. Off the top of my head, one example of this I really like is Jennifer A. Nielsen’s The False Prince, where your main narrator, Sage, tends to lead the reader into assuming certain things while not revealing all the information he knows, leading to some bombshell revelations later. (We have another blog on utilizing readers assumptions as a writing technique as well. Click here to teleport.)

            Some of what a narrator knows gets you into what type of point-of-view you’re dealing with (first person, third person, omniscient, etc.), but essentially, you as a writer have to peg down what your narrating character knows, needs to know, and how you can use that to your best advantage.

            While I’m still on the topic of single narrators, let me touch on a slightly odder scenario that I’ve not seen much of but really enjoy. As I mentioned before, a narrator can be someone that’s outside the main action of the story. (I’m suddenly picturing a school play with a kid standing at a podium at the front of the stage.) Anyway, this can be someone telling the story after the fact or maybe a main character in disguise- anything might work as long as this person makes sense to be telling the story in the grand scheme of things. But there are two specific examples of books I’ve read that take an outside narrator onto a completely different level writing technique-wise.

            First, we have Markus Zusak’s iconic book, The Book Thief, set in WWII-era Germany. Though it sounds a bit morbid, this story is narrated by Death and follows his connection to a girl who steals books throughout her life. Zusak is an author that I feel like uses a lot of personification in his technique and it’s very interesting to see him take an intangible narrator, outside of space and time, who in a larger sense is connected to all people (everyone meets death eventually) and have Death focus in on this one little girl he keeps crossing paths with who’s piqued his curiosity. Death as a narrator though is very interesting- for one thing, because he always has an unexpected compassion toward the humans in the story that gives him an interesting insight, but also because it works very well for functional story purposes. For one thing, Death is aware of events happening all over as the story’s world is engulfed in WWII and he can follow multiple characters in different locations. Secondly, Death also has knowledge of when and where he’ll meet someone, so his narration purposefully tips you off to when a character might face an ill-fated future later in the story.

            In a similar vein, Mitch Albom’s The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto personifies Music, following the life of a musician through decades of music history. Both of these books have very interesting writing technique, so if you want to nerd out over that like me, I suggest reading them. Personifying something omniscient does give you a lot of free reign when it comes to narrating, but you have to figure out how much information you’ll need to reveal and how to spin such a tale in a way that makes sense. Still, these two books were super interesting reads for me, and I think personifying something like Death or Music is a really cool idea.

Multiple Narrators

            Okay, new scenario. We’ve plotted out our story and have decided that one narrating character is just not enough to tell things. It does happen: having multiple narrators can help you connect different events happening in different places, can provide information the reader will need later from different sources, or just spice things up by adding in different perspectives and takes on things.

            First off, the same rules still apply. Make sure the chosen characters are the best people to tell the story. Be aware of what they know, how they know it, and what they don’t know. And, lastly, are they a trustworthy character for the reader to follow? Note: if the narrating character is not trustworthy, you probably need to introduce that possibility so that your reader isn’t blindsided later. (For example, making it clear that character has a tendency to lie or seems to be hiding something.)

            Secondly, let’s talk about the point-of-view you’re writing in. Most books are probably going to deal with first or third person. In case you need a refresher, first person would be something like “I hated when that happened” whereas third would be written like “Kamryn hated when that happened”, which doesn’t even get into things like omniscient narrating or a specific tense. I’m keeping this example simple for my own sake.

            First person tends to be a bit easier to write as it instantly puts you up in a character’s head, meaning you can easily know what they do and get their personal commentary and reaction despite what they do or don’t say. Third tends to be a bit harder to write, but it does maybe make it easier to follow multiple characters with less confusion.

            In both cases, it’s extremely important to make sure the reader doesn’t get confused when you switch from one character’s narration to another. Each character needs to have their own unique voicing, which will help make it clear who we’re following. I feel like I personally have a bit more trouble keeping narrators straight when all are in first person, mostly because you lose the context clue of people’s names to the “I”, but reading fast and not catching on to the more prominent name can also trip you up in third as well.

            Narrating characters need to be distinguishable from each other. This is where you can bring in a lot of backstory, worldbuilding, or dialogue to help. For example, Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman’s Aurora Cycle trilogy bounces between at least seven narrators, all of whom are in first person. As this is a sci-fi story though, you have characters from a lot of different planetary backgrounds, which opens different avenues for experience, how they speak, etc. Plus, this also gives you an opportunity to play around with character personality as well. One character in this series, Zila, is notoriously not a people person, and her first narrated character in B1, Aurora Rising, is essentially comprised of two sentences. In fact, her chapters are notably shorter for a period, as if she has to warm up to the reader before talking to them. It reads hilariously in the story, I think. Still, several of the characters, particularly the more alien ones, tend to speak or refer to things in a way that differentiates them, particularly from the human characters, either in views, phrasing, etc.

            Like I said, I always have to watch first person books with multiple narrators to make sure I don’t forget who’s talking, but the effect of multiple narrators in general can be fantastic if executed well.

            For example, I mentioned Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles series earlier, which tends to focus on a new character for each installment, yet never loses sight of the previous protagonist. For example, B1 Cinder follows Cinder and her brief romance with Prince Kai, while B2 Scarlet, follows Scarlet (a character who’s unknowingly tied to Cinder’s past) while continuing Cinder and Kai’s story where needed. B3 (Cress) follows Cress, a hacker we had a quick glimpse of in B1, paired with Captain Thorne, an accomplice Cinder picked up in B2. I’m not all the way through B4, Winter, yet, but it follows all the previous characters (most of whom have converged) and Princess Winter, who’s in the vicinity of several other main characters. As you can probably tell, these books pair up a lot of couples, but still, by the end Meyer is juggling like eight third person narrators, as she keeps bringing people in throughout each book. I genuinely have no clue how she’s able to juggle so many characters in so many places as well as she does, but look at what she’s doing just from me quickly describing the series. Every main character brought in has a core purpose to the larger plot, and even when she shifts onto a new character, you never lose sight of what the old ones are doing. Also, with both Cress and Winter, the main protagonists of the latter two books, they’re either seen or hinted at extremely early on even though it’s a while before the reader gets to them, which I thought was cool.

            We’ve talked about it a thousand times, but Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s Starbound trilogy works in the same way where each book follows a couple, but shifts onto a new pairing with each book. In both the second and third books, we see cameos from characters from the prior books, most prominently in B3 (Their Fractured Light) when all of the six main characters converge. I love it when everyone’s been separated out and then at the last moment you see everyone all merge to solve the last big section together.

            Going back to Marissa Meyer, her Renegades series also has a really interesting narration between multiple characters. Renegades sets up a superhero world that’s very clearly divided on “These are the good guys. These are the bad guys.” Which Meyer instantly begins working to prove wrong as everyone can choose to be good or bad. This series’ narrators are Nova (a presumed villain infiltrating the Renegades, the city’s peacekeeping and enforcement hero squad) and Adrian (a Renegade who’s gotten caught up in secret vigilante work), thus making the book a constant back and forth between characters with hidden agendas and secret lives. Nova doesn’t know Adrian’s up to his own secret policework, and Adrian doesn’t know Nova’s in league with Team Villain- which plays excellently as the reader knows all their secrets, even though they’re keeping things from each other. This way, if one of the characters is close to getting caught or purposefully elusive about a topic, the reader knows exactly why they’re not being forthcoming even if the other narrator does not.

            Kristin and I have run into the trickiness of swapping narrators several times in our own writing so far. For our own debut manuscript, The Visionary, we start off following one character, Jade, through the entirety of what we intend to be the first book, minus the epilogue where we introduce the narration of a character that will pick up telling the story alongside Jade in B2. The same will happen once we begin work on what will become the final installment of the series, adding in another character in B2’s epilogue. I’m being purposefully vague and not revealing said extra narrators as Visionary is not out yet and I don’t want to spoil anything.

            Still, this means that writing out what will become B1 was very different from B2. In Visionary, we’re only dealing with one character- one personality, one speech pattern, one set of knowledge to deal with (minus the epilogue). Writing B2 though meant splitting everything between two distinctly different characters, which inadvertently made us follow three separate plotlines: Jade’s plotline, Narrator 2’s plotline, and the plotline of things they do together. Luckily for us, Jade and Narrator 2 are usually in the same general place, so it wasn’t like we were following plotlines in completely different locations, but you’re still juggling. Plus, we had to ensure that it was clear when we switched characters, as we chose to write in first person. The extra insight into different character’s thoughts is really helpful in the way our story is set up, but we had to figure out ways all the narrators would sound different.

            I think I’ve gotten into this before but I don’t remember where to link to it, but Kristin and I initially didn’t want to write both narrators separately. While working on B1, we both tag-teamed writing Jade and were hoping the same could happen here. Still, we quickly ended up writing different characters, which did allow both characters to sound different in how they were written. Kristin also pointed out that we were dealing with different personalities- Jade tends to be a bit more confident (especially in B2) whereas Narrator 2 is a bit less self-assured. They have different backgrounds, different problems and concerns, and so all that’s easy to tap into. The main thing is, we had two characters that were doing things outside of each other’s knowledge (similar to the scenario I mentioned with Renegades) so one of the hardest parts was remembering who knew what. Still, this lets us be able to hint to the reader, who can make connections with the fuller knowledge they have of the story.

            Got any good tips or recommendations for stories with multiple POVs? Let us know!

            Thanks for reading. Write on.

            -Kamryn