I'm currently working my way through the first few chapters of my latest novel attempt. I had initially planned for the story to have one main protagonist with a couple of other characters having a few POV chapters as the story progresses. The issue I'm having is the story has developed slightly differently than initial planning and I'm now some way into the story without introducing the two characters, although one has been mentioned and the other will be appearing shortly. I'm just looking for some thoughts on this. Does anybody think it would be too late or too jarring to introduce a new POV by Chapter 6 or 7 of a story?
It sounds fine to me - it can be jarring if it's unexpected but if the reader can see the need for another pov on the same story we just adjust.
It's possible you haven't really got to the beginning of the story yet. The advice I see most frequently when there are chapters before the MC and other important characters get introduced is to see if you can cut those early chapters or redistribute the necessary information elsewhere in the story. It seems to happen when people try to fill in too much backstory or exposition or something similar, rather than open on characters interacting, which is the heart and soul of story. It was common in Victorian times and earlier to write big long chapters full of exposition before introducing the characters, but that's fallen by the wayside as writing has taken its more streamlined and character-driven modern form. All that said however, there's nothing wrong with writing it however it comes out and then looking to see where the story really begins and what needs to be reworked or removed in editing.
My bad, you're not withholding the main characters for exposition, but to present a different group of characters first? Why is it necessary to switch from one group of characters to another so late in the story? Are they important to the rest of the story? And are you making it clear that they're not really the main characters? What happens to them once you switch to the real main cast—do they disappear? If so it might be best to do away with them or minimize their time. Hitchcock did something like this in Psycho. Marion Crane was the MC, until all of a sudden she was dead, then the MC was the psycho who killed her. It was unheard of, and shocking. He made it work though, and nobody thought she was going to come back, because she was dead!! The only character we could focus on now was Norman Bates. And Hitch actually made us feel anxiety for him when he was trying to hide the evidence and the car wouldn't sink into the swamp etc. What a trick!! Make us feel sympathy for a psychotic murderer. But he was doing it partly because he had the skills to pull off such a unique trick, and partly to try out this strange broken story idea. I think if you want to do something similar you need to have a good reason for it and find some way to make it really work. It should be necessary to the story somehow, and not confusing to readers. I don't think I'd attempt such a thing unless my skills were so sharp I felt ready to try something so advanced and difficult.
I probably wasn't very clear in my first post. The character that is getting introduced is a "main" character, probably the third most prominent character in the story with a major role to play. Let's call her 'C'. I appreciate I'm not going into much detail about the story itself but so far the story has followed the primary protagonist, A, from his POV. I had planned to introduce C through her own POV chapter prior to her meeting A.
Thank you for clarifying. It does seem like waiting 6 or 7 chapters is too long. I think I'd look at some way to insert a chapter or part of one from her POV earlier, so people understand she's going to be a POV character. I haven't actually written using multiple POVs myself yet, but the advice I usually see is to introduce them early on, otherwise readers think it's a single POV story. Basically you don't want to spend too long in any one character's mind or they forget it's a multi-POV story.
