I've been starting to really flesh out the way I've used my MRU's and it's been helping IMMENSELY, however, I can't seem to figure out how to implement this with a story that has multiple perspectives. (Take Game of Thrones for example). I tried to deconstruct George's writing to no avail. What would you guys say is the most efficient way to use MRU's in conjunction with different perspectives, do you have a scene continue on with a new character even if the last character's perspective had ended on a sequel? How do you keep interest when perspective shifts and breaks it until the same character rotates back? Do you have the setting for the characters in the same place and they already meet? Or do they slowly intertwine? I'd really just like to hear how you guys go through your process of these things, struggling myself with breaking it down.
Is your question purely and totally about MRU's, so that someone who doesn't care about them shouldn't waste thread space answering? Or are you also interested in the general question of how to keep interest when perspective shifts, etc?
To me there should be a some kind of red thread between the different perspectives. Using several PoVs can for example allow you to give several different perspectives on a single event or character and its effects in different places. What I do not really like is when several PoV gets into separate stories that don't really have much to do with each other until the very end. I know that some like this but I like when the PoV have some kind of connection, directly or indirectly, with each other other.
I'm not responding to MRUs--while I won't go so far as to say that the concept is totally unproductive, it's definitely not productive for me. I'm just thinking about maintaining interest across POV changes. I've read a reasonable percentage of the Game of Thrones books, but not in order--I pick through the chapters, finding the ones about the characters that I like, and when I get confused, I go back and reluctantly read the other material that tells me what the heck is going on. And I only have the later books because Amazon had a near-free compilation of several books on Kindle--I never would have paid for them. So Game of Thrones may not be the ideal example for maintaining reader interest. Or at least I don't see how they maintain interest, because for me, they don't. Some books with shifting POV make the transfer at a point where one POV points to another POV or something happening in the other POV. Picking up An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden, the book I keep using as an example in spite of it not being modern (1955), I look at the transitions. I can't decide whether this book is omniscient or if it's shifting third person with occasional deliberate POV violations, but it's definitely aware of point of view--when there's a clear POV shift inside a chapter, rather than a brief aside, she marks that change typographically. Anyway, the transitions: - The first two chapters center on an issue that's concerning grumpy bureaucratic adults, and one woman that we identify with, because she seems the most human. It ends with her thinking about a child's footprint in a garden, wondering whose it is. She's thinking about the "sparrows", the unsupervised children running around on the street. - The next chapter shifts to Sparky, one of those children. We see how some other adults (including Sparky's mother) feel about the sparrows, after having spent two chapters with adults who, with the exception of Olivia, firmly disapprove of them. Sparky runs into conflict with a girl, Lovejoy, over a lost item that they both want to steal. - The next chapter shifts to Lovejoy. She goes home to the restaurant over which she lives, and there's some conflict with the adults who run the restaurant. - The next chapter shifts to the restaurant and those adults, and Vincent, the primary adult viewpoint character, and his hopes and frustrations and how he's seen by the people around him. There's a bit of a POV shift and we're firmly back in Lovejoy's head, talking to Vincent. Lovejoy bookends the adults, appears before and after them, and that works well because at this point we care more about Lovejoy than the adults. Later we'll care about Vincent, but not quite yet. - The next chapter starts with Lovejoy's mother coming to visit Lovejoy and that involves all those restaurant adults that we just met. Lovejoy's mother is disappointing, and Lovejoy comforts herself with the stolen item, a packet of seeds. - The next chapter starts with Lovejoy talking to Vincent about the seeds and about gardening. Vincent (Vincent interacting with Lovejoy) bookends Lovejoy's mother, appears before and after her, and that works well and maintains interest because Vincent is a much better substitute parent than Lovejoy's mother is a parent. The contrast makes both parts more interesting. Then we move from Lovejoy/Vincent/garden talk to Lovejoy/Sparky/garden conflict--Sparky, is a member of the gang that will hamper her desire to garden. And so on, and so on. Each transition takes us to a new element that feels like it's related to what we were just interested in, and sometimes echoes backward, highlighting, by contrast, what we just read. For each one, the transition tends to feel like, "Huh. That was interesting. Glad I read that. Ooh! What's that over there?" And when we get across the transition, there's often a backward look of, "Oh, now I understand the previous thing better. I see how they relate. I'm clever!"
What about if the events have something to do each other but only the reader knows and the characters must slowly find out/realize? Or if they know they are connected in someway through some event or are working together on a dilemma but are far away? It would be nice to get some more detail on what you mean with the last sentence.
That was a very nice response! That helped me a lot! Thank you! I agree, this seems like a more interesting way of doing thins, having the plot revolve around the character rather than how GoT does it (Around the event or the event to come, and yes Martin does this somewhat poorly, I feel.) Anyway, would you say that the way you listed is the only method you find engaging? Or was it just the first example that popped into your head with multiple POVs? In that book do the POVs rotate in cycles (Ex: John, Sarah, Lenny, John, Sarah, Lenny, John, etc) Or is it unpredictable/Changing in accordance to the plot? Do you think having predictable or non predictable POVs matter or is it irrelevant to you?
I think it was the first example that popped into my head. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find that most of my favorite multi-POV books do something similar, but I won't know unless/until I look. The POVs don't seem to rotate in cycles, and it's definitely not an even distribution--we have more Lovejoy than Vincent, more Vincent than Sparky, Sparky fades away and then we have some of...um...I forget his name, the older leader of the gang. I don't care about predictable or non predictable POVs, nope. However, I'm not a fan of braided plots with a ton of co-protagonists. As far as I'm concerned, An Episode of Sparrows is primarily about Lovejoy and Vincent (separate though linked arcs), with Lovejoy rather more important than Vincent. The other characters get POV slots, but they're there to support Lovejoy and Vincent's arcs.
Well, I think the examples you give above are things that would keep me interested in the story. As for my last sentence I'll try to give an example. Say that you've got two characters, Steve and Susan. Steve is in Chicago and Susan is in Dallas. They are far appart and won't interact with each other in a normal day of their lives because they have different lifestyles. But say they are both working for a company, and that company has gotten a new CEO who is cutting down and making changes. Then suddenly they've got something to connect them as the effects of these cuts and changes are felt by both but perhaps in different ways and they may hear about each other's divisions of the company and how its fairing. And as the story progress their common link through the company could make them come into contact with each other, perhaps through some conferance or meeting at the main office, and keep the contact due to personal reasons. If Steve and Susan had only been living their lives in two cities without much interact between them until the end, I would wonder why this isn't two different books rather than one as it would effectively, for me, be two stories and not one.
