Whose story is this anyway? Managing multiple points of view.

The people in my books are pretty pushy. Each one likes to make sure they get their story told the way they want it. That’s why I write books with multiple points of view.

I saw a review of Farmer Needs A Wife which said something like.. “there are about 6 POV characters, but it’s well handled and I didn’t find it confusing”. That was nice to know – but there were actually eight POV characters in that book.

Eight! In my first book. What was I thinking?

A few fellow writers have asked how I managed them all. The answer is via a brilliant little graph.

Please note – I take no credit at all for this method.

It was passed on to me by the fabulous Annie Burgh – who writes complex, fascinating novels – with lots of characters and plots and sub-plots. She is also a fabulous teacher. This is what she taught me to do…

When I start a new book, I take a page of graph paper – and coloured pencils… one colour for each POV character.

As I finish each chapter – I draw a bar on the graph – just like back at school. The colour/s of the bar represent the POV character or characters – and the height of the bar represents the number of words in the chapter.

The secondary characters – those who don’t get a POV – are the little bits of colour above the chapter.

Thus – I can make sure each of my main characters gets enough room in the book to tell their story well. I can also keep track of the secondary characters – so I don’t lose them.

If I suddenly realise that there has been too much of one colour, or not enough of another, I know I am letting one character get far too pushy – and I can slap them down a bit and put them back in their place.

It also gives me the added reward of a few minutes playing with coloured pencils when I finish a chapter.

I write the chapter number under the bar every 5 chapters – so when I am editing and referring back to something I’ve written, I know where to go. I will also sometimes write a word or two to remind myself what is in the chapter – but just for the key turning points in the novel.

I’ve tried to get the number of POV characters down – my second book only had five. My third only three – but as two of them had two POV sections – one as a teenager and one as an adult – that sort of puts it back to five.

I’m being tougher with myself now. I swear I only have four in the new book. Honestly!

Four…

But then again – there’s that girl sitting over by the window… I think she wants to tell me her story.