Deciding how many characters should tell your story is an important decision. Whether you’re writing young adult fiction, fantasy, romance, or any genre, this choice will determine the overall tone of the story and how deeply readers connect with the characters. So do you just need one perspective, or should multiple narrators be involved?
Here are some considerations to help you find the answer.
Whose Story Is It?
If your novel centers around one character—their growth, experiences, and worldview—then a single viewpoint may be the best fit. Think of Bridget Jones’s Diary. The story is wholly hers, exploring her goals, desires, insecurities, mistakes, and successes. It’s about her personal growth and what she learns along the way, so she’s the only narrator that makes sense.
On the other hand, The Stand or A Song of Ice and Fire have many characters traversing their own arcs and viewing plot events from their unique perspectives. If your story involves characters in different locations or time periods or it highlights events that impact many people, a multiple-viewpoint approach might work better.
Whose Story Do You Want to Tell?
‘Cause, honestly, any character could tell the story. Our passion as authors carries onto the page, so if you have options about who could narrate and you’re really excited about one or two in particular, let them do the talking.
Take Character Arc into Consideration
Which character will be most altered by the plot? You may have multiple characters that change over time, but which character’s arc is most dependent on the story? That’s the person (or people) you want telling it.
Don’t Forget the Theme
Do you have a central message or idea you want readers to explore through your story? A compelling way to achieve this is through characters who each have their own perspective on the theme. When they’re allowed to take the mic, their variations are contrasted, giving readers an opportunity to think about your theme in ways they haven’t before.
Don’t Choose Based on Convenience
My first novel was told from a single protagonist’s viewpoint, which was the right choice for the story. But as I drafted, I realized he wasn’t going to be present for a few key events. The solution? Throw in a few chapters narrated by secondary characters. Not surprisingly, this decision weakened the pace, created emotional distance for readers, and undermined my protagonist as the hero of his own story. In other words, it created a ton of revision to correct those issues and get things back on track. Had I considered my story with the preceding factors in mind, I could have saved myself a lot of frustration and wasted time.
To be fair, the number of viewpoint characters won’t typically make or break a novel, but this decision will impact the story you end up telling. If you don’t agree, consider how To Kill a Mockingbird would be different if it had consisted of alternating chapters from Scout, Dill, and Atticus’s perspectives.
So before you start writing, know whose story you want to tell, what themes might play a role, and how best to immerse readers in the viewpoint character’s (or characters’) experience. Armed with that knowledge, the decision of how many narrators to use gets a whole lot easier.
Looking for more point of view resources? Check out our Storytelling Elements page (and scroll down to the POV section).
