sorry if this is a really stupid issue.

[intertribal]

I'm about 20% done with Under The Dome.  It is over 1000 pages, for serious.  So far I can definitely say that it is not as good as The Shining or Pet Sematary, but it is of a similar vein as - ok, it's almost identical to - Storm of the Century, which I like for totally different reasons... and anyway, it's fun to read, but the good guys and the bad guys are carved in the fuckin' granite, man.  I read a description and I'm like, "Good" / "Bad" / "Expendable."  Very politically-tinged.  King's always been dead-on with his Big Bads, though.

ANYWAY.

Under The Dome has been "inside the head" of almost every character it's introduced (which is like 30).  Including people that are introduced/get killed within two paragraphs.  And woodchucks.  The Godhand of Stephen King is pretty heavily felt here, but it alternates with what's got to be Deep POV, or something close.  He even headhops sometimes (which is not really what I'm talking about here, because I don't do that anymore). 

And I was talking to my mother about this, and my mother says the last book she read - Snow Falling On Cedars (not something I would have chosen, but whatever) - was all over the place in terms of perspective too. 

And TBH, I don't mind it.  To be sure, there is overkill.  But I get it, it doesn't bother me, and it's the style I write in most naturally.  Or, um, used to.  It's been a long time since I sat down and tried to write anything over 5,000 words.  I probably picked it up from King and Michael Crichton (RIP).  When I first started writing longish stuff, I was reading Jurassic Park.  I have been culling multiple POV like hell from short stories, but I don't think I can cull it from The Novel.  The story would literally not get told. 

OTOH, I've read blogs that tell writers to be super-duper careful about multiple POV, let alone Cast of Thousands POV.  And they always say, well, you can try having three or four, but only if you are a uranium expert like Faulkner, or only if you clearly label each chapter with the name of the character whose perspective you're following for that chapter (like ASOIAF).  One argument I've read against multiple POV is that readers who don't like a particular POV character will want to skip that character's sections, and I do indeed want to skip a certain character's sections in Under The Dome... but honestly, I'd dislike her even if I wasn't inside her head.  And shit, isn't it supposed to help you empathize with the character to see things from their perspective? 

OTOOH, I can think of more books I like that stick to single-person perspective.  I can definitely see why it's tried-and-true, and recommended.  It works. 

So WTF, here.  Is using Cast of Thousands/Multiple POV really unrecommended?  Thoughts?  Preferences?

Comments

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

The proscription against multiple POVs is misunderstood.

What is problematic is shifting of POVs within a single scene or even a sentence, or shifting POV simply to obscure rather than illuminate information (e.g, we hear the hero's thoughts until he or she comes up with a Secret Awesome Plan, then we move to the villain's POV so the plan can be a surprise).

For sweeping epics or panorama—like pretty much any 1000-page novel—of course there is no problem with multiple POVs.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

That makes sense, and was my gut reaction. Funnily enough, I just read somewhere that "multiple POV" means shifting POVs within a single scene (which confused the hell out of me because it contradicted everybody else's definition), and I know I've read warnings about having more than 3-5 POVs total in a book, even taking into account big chapter-by-chapter shifts - I should just stop looking things up on the internet.

Thanks.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

George Eliot used multiple points of view, and it felt totally natural and fine. Or hey, War and Peace (lol, wrote "Piece" first)--you're in Natasha's head; you're in Andrei's head; you're in Pierre's head--and you want to be. I think Nihilistic Kid is probably right that it works better when you have a big scope, but I think you can even do it in short stories.

Styles change, though, and one limitation that a lot of writers seem to have embraced since ... since I don't know when, but it's common nowadays-- is the limitation of seeing through the eyes of only one character (whether the story's told in first or third). So when readers are used to that style of storytelling, I think they find it harder to accept lots of multiple points of view.

I beta read a novel by someone who has lots of multiple points of view. She writes long, long novels; she's got space for multiple POVs. But I was totally jarred when she was in one character's head and then suddenly out of left field we'd get a thought from someone else's POV. THAT, I think, is a problem. (And I think she did too--when I pointed it out, she said she'd change it.)

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree that single-character POV is en vogue right now. Which is probably why some blogs stress single-character POV unless the book is being presented as like 4 different "voices" (like The Sound And The Fury). And see, I used to change perspective literally from paragraph to paragraph - it made total sense to me, but I shudder to think what it was like to read.

But yes, I will press on with multiple POVs.