In today’s post, I’ll share some thoughts about a situation when it might be hard to choose the point-of-view character for a scene.

There are many ways to write a story, though I’ve seen three main approaches: first-person narrative, third-person wide narrative (when the narrator isn’t limited to the view of a specific character), and third-person with a focus on one character’s view at a time. When you write in a way that strictly follows one character at a time, it’s easier for the reader to know which character’s thoughts and observations are being shared, though it also requires much more discipline to write (as I’ve learned in my beginnings).

However, there might be time where you might want to show the thoughts of more than one participant in a scene. This has happened to me, in a few ways, when working on my project.

A typical situation in a fantasy setting (as my main field of interest) that isn’t too challenging in this aspect is a multi-pronged attack against an opponent, where each is seen through a different character. In such cases, the key is to keep it down to one character for each group, choose whoever’s view is the most important, and figure out how to weave them so the PoV shifts aren’t too frequent and jarring. This might be challenging if the actions of individual groups affect the other group(s).

A bit more complicated situation arises when a group is splitting and grouping up again as they search for their enemies in a more chaotic situation. In such cases, it might be quite difficult to keep the PoV shifts low, and it’s one problem I’m struggling with in one chapter. Sometimes, a radical solution might be the best, even if it’s a lot of work – right now, I’m considering rewriting that particular chapter completely, to significantly reduce the amount of PoV shifts needed. This might be especially difficult if there’s something particular you wanted to show that you might need to heavily alter or cut completely. Such is never easy but is a part of the writing process. Feedback from beta readers and critique partners can be really valuable in figuring out a solution.

Where things can get a bit harder are situations that aren’t as much about action but about thoughts and emotions. There’s one such chapter in my project where two characters meet for the first time, and there’s a lot going through their minds at that moment. Even as I kept the PoV swaps limited, the feedback I received suggested it might be a good idea to stay with the main character only. Especially in my case, when the scene happens later in the second book and the second character is a new appearance – introducing a new PoV character late in the book can feel strange to the reader.

In such a case, the solutions are more varies, with their pros and cons. You can, of course, opt to keep the scene as it is, with both PoVs preserved, and try to fiddle with how frequent the changes are. Another option would be to keep each PoV uninterrupted and tell them in a sequence, though I guess this would disrupt the original goal of showing their thoughts and emotions (and their differences) side-by-side.

If one character’s thoughts aren’t that important for the reader to know immediately, you can also leave them for a later retrospective – a choice I’m leaning toward in my case. And, if the feedback is that the second character’s PoV doesn’t seem to add as much as you hoped, then there’s also the unpopular option of removing the scene completely and keeping that part as a part of deleted scenes archive you might then share with your loyal readers as an extra content via blog, newsletter, or a similar channel.

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I’ll wrap it here. I’ll welcome your thoughts – have you been in such a situation yourself when writing? What other solutions do you think can be considered to solve such an issue?