I'm writing a dark fantasy story with a strong focus on coming of age, character and character interaction. But I have yet to decide on the narrator type. I'm mainly between: -First Person -Third Person Omniscient To give more details, the story has one protagonist but is focused on a group of seven. I want to give each of them good development and have the reader get to know them deeply. I'd also like for the secondary cast to be well developed. But I'm unsure of which narrator would help me with this. I know first person narrator would usually be the choice to go for a character based story but since I have so many, I started to think that maybe an omniscient type would be more useful than showing things from a single character POV or risk head-hopping. What do you think?
Hi. I agree that with it being so many characters, an omniscient narrator would be the better choice rather than giving each character a first person POV. However, I think first person is a perfect alternative if you can make each character unique through their dialogue with the protagonist and their choices in situations. Also, you should introduce the characters gradually to not overwhelm the reader, but still not too far into the story. I think this perspective is the more difficult one to pull off. I'm not sure if this made your choice any easier.
It depends on what you are comfortable with. I'd write in reserved third, personally. However, I can't write in first person and have found that omniscient third does not provide me with enough connection to the characters. Anyway, I'd suggest picking three characters for POV unless it's a series. You need time to introduce your different characters, and it would overwhelm the reader if all seven are POVs from the start. Pacing yourself in interdictions is hard, but doable.
I don't think an omniscient POV is great for getting the reader deep into the characters and connecting with them. For third person, I think a close, limited POV would be better. There's no reason at all you can't change POV characters, especially in Fantasy where it is very common to have many POV characters and readers are accustomed to it.
