How to balance two points of view?

I have to admit I would do this. I don't like negative writing. It's just common sense to me to avoid it. So you're right. In that sense it wouldn't be good.

 

Can you explain what you mean by "negative writing" in this context?

 

Are you saying that a story with zero protagonists would destroy the very fabric of space and time and cause a total universal collapse? Maybe somebody has a story that is nothing but characters with no redeeming quality what so ever. Though this would by definition be in opposition would not make sense. Or perhaps the entire thing is so mundane that there is no need for the good/evil distinction, and then what?

Crap! Sorry to go off on a philosophical dive down the rabbit hole.
Though it would be interesting to see all variables before jumping to a conclusion.

 

I thought the same thing after I wrote that. What I mean is that I avoid writing that makes me feel bad. Something very relative and probably doesn't work well in this thread, but what the heck.

I realize 'negative' writing can be written very well.

I haven't been very active here in threads like this so I'm trying to find my place. Please be patient. Just ignore me if you have to.

 

Protagonists don't have to have redeeming qualities. It's not about good and evil... Protagonists don't have to be heroes, or heroic. They just have to be characters the story is about.

 

I wasn't meaning to criticise, I just wasn't clear what you were talking about.

I think you're right, though, that there probably isn't much connection between writing that makes you feel bad and the number of protagonists. Not that I can see, at least...

 

I really appreciate that. There are so many people here who know so much about writing. I don't know much about it or how to write about writing - I just do it. And I also have lots of opinions about what I do and feel, though I'm not always good at describing or defining it. I have no doubt there's a place here for me. I just have to find it.

 

You'd arguably need to change characters from chapter to chapter, and have them be completely independent of each other. Perhaps have it be the story of place, instead of the story of a person?

 

I think in Poisonwood Bible one of the sisters is the story anchor. But when you are in a different person's POV that person is the protagonist in that chapter.

 

Here's the first one that popped up on the Google search:

protagonist
prəˈtaɡ(ə)nɪst/
noun
noun: protagonist; plural noun: protagonists
1.
the leading character or one of the major characters in a play, film, novel, etc.

(The second definition concerned somebody who advocates a cause. Not really relevant to this discussion, as it wasn't about writing or stories.)

I would say a novel can certainly have more than one protagonist. Another story that came to my mind that does this admirably is Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy. There are at least three characters who are major, and they all change fairly dramatically during the course of the story. Is Glokta the protagonist? Ninefingers? Or Jezal? There is a good case to be made for all three. But sometimes (as in Game of Thrones or a Michener novel) the story isn't so much about the development of characters as about 'what happens' to them. I'm not saying the characters in GoT don't develop, but their development isn't what makes the story—in fact it feels bloody irrelevant if they get killed off early or midway through the saga. It's the events that make that story run. And when you've got so many 'protagonists' you can hardly keep track of them all, and they are dropping like flies, I think the notion of 'leading character' is kind of pummeled into the mud anyway.

I don't think there is a firm line that can be drawn here, really. I would resist the notion that we have to 'decide.' We should probably just write the stories, and let other people tussle over the concept.

The only thing I feel needs to be crystal-clear, and that's the distinction between a POV character and a protagonist. They are not necessarily the same. Many tales consist of a minor character telling another person's story. In that instance, the POV character is not the protagonist.

 

And in romances where no one in a romantic relationship identifies as female?

 

I was thinking of First Law earlier but couldn't remember the name. I agree - it's another good example. I think it works fairly well when all the characters are separate, but then when Ninefingers and Jezal go adventuring together it still works. Their goals are so different, so there's no real repetition or redundancy. I haven't read the third book, so I don't know if things continue to go well when (I assume) their goals start lining up together...

 

It's such a great series. And you MUST read the third book. It has one of the most memorable punch-the-air moments I've experienced in a modern novel (series.) And one of the most enigmatic endings as well—enigmatic, yet totally right. I LOVE Joe Abercrombie. Even when he's not at his best, he's good. And he has nailed this trilogy. It's a classic.

 

Two points of view is common and easy for the reader to handle. It's a good format, be more confident about it!

 

As someone who has only ever written novels with a single POV character, my advice may not be exactly on point, so go grab your salt shaker now.

The way I see it, you can have protagonists who don't have a POV--as in, there are never any passages where the narration is filtered through that particular character. This is undisputed, specifically because there are books where the main character is not the narrator (The Great Gatsby being the usual go-to example). So in that sense, you can extrapolate to have many main characters who do not have a POV. I'd say the more characters you have, the harder it'll be to keep everything balanced.

You can also have multiple POV characters, which I think is far more common. Transitions from one POV to another can happen from chapter to chapter or even from scene to scene.

The thing to keep in mind, however, is that each main character has to be a main character for a reason. If I'm writing a story about a strained father-daughter relationship, I may want to have POV scenes from both the father and the daughter--but that also means that both the father and the daughter need to have their own stories, their own reasons for narrating from their POVs, and their own arcs that go from beginning to end. The story needs to be about both of them, not just feature both of them.

That doesn't mean every POV character needs to be a main character, just like every main character doesn't need to be a POV character. But I'd argue that the story should be about all the main characters. And that's how it's balanced--there doesn't need to be a scene-for-scene ratio or anything, as long as the reader feels that the story is adequately about each main character, I think that balance is fairly intuitive.

And now I return to writing a story featuring a single protagonist from a single POV.

 

I think this is the best advice I have read, thanks