5 Tips For Writing A Multiple-POV Novel

Many aspiring authors and enthusiasts know how to tell a good Story from one perspective, but a good number of them don’t know how to write a novel with multiple POVs.

Telling a story can be such a joy for story lovers like myself. Following a character’s journey from the start, up until the end and watching them grow is always a joy for readers and authors alike.

The great part about writing a multi-POV novel is that you get to tell a story from multiple perspectives and readers get to view different characters from multiple observers.

But how do you follow the journey of multiple characters all at once? Whether you are writing mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, romance, or any other genre, how do you write a story with multiple POVs without losing track of the story or getting things mixed up?

Below are a few tips that might help you get started.

5 Tips For Writing A Multiple-POV Novel

In truth, not everyone likes to read novels with multiple POVs. They would rather stick to a character to watch grow and cheer on. This is probably because they feel like it might be too bothersome to follow the stories of multiple characters instead of just one.

While it might be bothersome to follow the stories of multiple characters, there are ways to bring out a beautiful story from a multiple-POV novel that anyone would love.

Here are a few tips that can help you with your multiple-POV novel.

1. Protagonist

Firstly, before you get down and start writing anything, you should know that if you are going to write a multi-POV novel, you are not just head hopping, and every character through which your readers would be following your story should be intentionally chosen and have story arcs of their own.

They should journey with the protagonist and come out transformed at the end of their arcs.

Secondly, you need to decide if there would be a protagonist in your story, or if all your POV characters are just main characters and can be considered protagonists on their own.

Personally, I prefer stories where there is one protagonist as opposed to stories with multiple potential protagonists.

You need to understand that your main characters and your protagonist are both central characters, however, they are different. The protagonist is responsible for driving the plot, while the main characters are the ones affected by the plot.

I really don’t mind a multi-POV novel. I love following the stories of multiple characters and seeing how their stories affect and influence one another, however, as a reader, I love it when there is a character I can relate with and experience their life and growth through their story.

Whenever there is no protagonist, readers tend to lean towards or favor a particular main character that they have taken a liking to in the story.

This doesn’t mean that stories without a protagonist wouldn’t come out great. There are many popular novels and stories that were written like this, such as; Game of Thrones and The Chronicles of Narnia.

It’s up to you to decide if you want there to be one protagonist, or if you want all the characters that have POV time to be considered potential protagonists.

2. Select Characters

Now that you’ve decided if you want your multi-POV novel to have one protagonist or multiple protagonists, it’s time to select which characters would be given POV time in your novel.

As I stated earlier, it’s important to be intentional when choosing your POV characters through which readers would follow your story. Every POV character should have their own story arc.

While every character that you give POV time should have a story arc, you need to be careful not to veer away from the original story. Their individual stories should be woven with the main story and ultimately affect other characters while influencing your story as a whole.

It’s also important to make sure that they come out changed at the end of their arcs. This is called character development and many readers look forward to seeing their characters develop as they journey through the story with them.

But how do you do this? How do you make a character come out changed at the end of their arc?

To do this, you need to create an internal conflict. This is an idea, a popular opinion, or a concept, that your character is trying to settle within themselves, either to learn, accept, or reject.

Or you could simply create a list of their wants and needs. Your characters will be more developed if they have an external want that they are well aware of, and an internal need that they might not be aware of. This can be done for all your characters, whether they have POV time or not. Doing this would help give your story more depth.

Helping them resolve their internal conflict or realize what they actually need will help them come out changed or transformed at the end of their arc.

3. Character Trait Chart

This is an important part of writing a multi-POV novel. Having a character traits chart will help you remember the traits of your characters and help develop multiple scene ideas.

A character trait chart looks like this:

Let’s assume these three characters- 13-year-old Jack, 17-year-old Jess, and 23-year-old Johanna — are siblings from a novel called Filbert street (that’s just the name of a random street from one of my favorite novels).

Their story begins when the three siblings move out of their late parents’ house into a street in a neighboring town. But unknown to them, at the end of every year for the past 5 years, young people who live in that street always go missing, never to be heard from again.

This is a perfect story for a multi-POV mystery novel, and your character traits chart will be a great help for this especially if you are a plotter; however, pantsers will also find this chart very useful.

You want to start by listing out your POV characters’ wants, needs, secrets, motives, and personalities. More stuff can be added to this column like habits, profession, likes, dislikes, and other stuff; however, these are the most important things you need.

Wants

These are the things the character desires. What they know they want and sometimes try their very best to get. They don’t realize that the things they are chasing after are not what they truly want but the feeling that comes with it.

This is what makes them behave in a certain way and make certain decisions. For instance, Jack doesn’t like their new home and wants to move out. Hence he is more reserved and doesn’t come out much, except when he goes to school.

Jess is a frivolous teenager who wants to travel the world but can’t afford the lifestyle, while Johanna takes upon herself the responsibility of taking care of her siblings.

She gave up on college a long time ago and is looking for a new job around their new home. In her case, what she truly wants is the feeling of security for herself and her siblings.

Needs

These are the things your character doesn’t know they need. Accepting their needs will help them resolve their current conflicts, giving them a sense of relief or happiness. However, they don’t know this and would only realize it at the end of their story arc.

Jack wants to move out, however, he doesn’t realize that if he could just get some friends he would finally be able to accept his new home and wouldn’t be so keen on moving out anymore.

Jess wants to travel the world partly because she’s bored and has no way to channel her youthful passion. She doesn’t do well with friends and her siblings aren’t that fun to hang out with.

Her elder sister Johanna is never around to talk to, and Jack never leaves the house. However, if she gets the attention she needs from her siblings and friends, she might realize that she doesn’t need to travel the world to get that happiness she truly desires.

Then there’s Johanna. She is so burdened with the duty of caring for her siblings and is so focused on finding that new job that she doesn’t realize all she needs to do is relax, open her eyes and accept help from those willing to give it.

Secrets

This is an important factor especially if you are writing a mystery crime novel where everyone is treated as a suspect.

Giving your characters a secret will make them behave in a certain way especially when their secret is hinted at by another character. This will make them look more suspicious, making the readers suspect them as well.

When writing mystery crime, I usually like to keep myself in the dark. This way, your readers can’t guess who the culprit of the crime committed is because even you as the writer are not sure yet. However, this method works best for pantsers.

This works for all kinds of genres and not just mystery crime.

The secret doesn’t have to be a big thing. It could simply be something the character feels a little embarrassed by, or it could be a major thing that could really influence the story.

For instance, Jess has a big secret. After a few weeks of moving in, it’s safe to say that the three siblings were well aware of the problem that faced Filbert street. Hence, they have become much more vigilant than ever before.

However, Jess witnessed a crime being committed by their next-door neighbor. Perhaps she worked late that day and while on her way back home, she witnessed their neighbor dragging a body into his apartment. And this occurred around the time of the year when young folks go missing. A suspect of the Filbert street kidnappings.

Now she’s scared and doesn’t want to tell on him, perhaps because he’s their most friendly neighbor, or perhaps because she has a crush on him.

This is an example of a big secret that can potentially have a huge impact on the course of the story. Now it’s up to her to decide if she wants to report to the police or do some more digging herself.

And she probably would do the latter because she feels their neighbor wouldn’t be capable of committing such a crime when he was the one warned then about Filbert street in the first place.

Jack’s secret doesn’t seem like one that can influence the story much; however, it’s a good opportunity to add a crazy plot twist. Part of the reason why Jack wants to leave their new home is that he’s being bullied at school.

Perhaps he eventually makes some friends at school who truly care about him, and they decide to do some digging on the bully, to get some dirt on him.

They did some research and discovered he also lives on Filbert street. They decide to sneak into the bully’s house and realize that the bully lives alone with an old man as his guardian.

They do some sneaking around and find a room with a trap door. Upon opening the trapdoor, they find all manner of torturing devices. They conclude that perhaps, the man probably has a weird habit of collecting strange items, but that is until they try sneaking out and find the old man in the backyard with a shovel, digging up something.

They take a closer look and realize that he wasn’t digging up anything but instead burying some bloodied clothes.

Now, we have two suspects in this mystery crime novel.

You see how secrets can be a major part of shaping a multi-POV story, especially in the mystery crime genre.

So, let’s move to Johanna’s secret. She was unjustly fired from her first workplace before moving out with her siblings.

However, let’s presume she told her siblings that she quit due to some other reasons, perhaps because they needed to move or something. But in reality, she was fired because she happened upon a scene where her boss was harvesting human organs in a lab. Dark right?

She was caught and then fired; however, she believed that they might be after her life, hence, they had to move out of their parent’s house to Filbert street.

Unfortunately for her, upon getting to Filbert street, she discovers that her new employer works for her former boss, now she’s thinking of getting a new job because she’s scared that they would discover her secret and have her captured.

This is how secrets can influence decisions and ultimately direct the flow of a story. With just these secrets, I can picture a lot of scene ideas for the story.

Motives

The motives of your characters are what fuel or drive their wants. Jack’s desire to move out was fueled by his feeling of loneliness.

He missed his old home and the few friends he had; hence his desire to move out. The motives of your characters can also help you when working on character development.

Jess is afraid of reliving past memories; hence, she wants to travel the world, to forget about the past. But as she grows and experiences life on Filbert street, she forms a stronger bond with her siblings and realizes that she would rather not go anywhere without them.

Johanna’s motive for finding a new job becomes more than one as the story progresses. At first, she just wanted to care for her siblings and would do anything that could provide adequate income, however, now she is running for her life while protecting her siblings as she discovers a link to her past life, who might also be the culprit of the Filbert street kidnappings.

Personality

The personality trait is on the character traits chart to remind you of the behavioral characteristics of your POV characters, and any other character you might decide to add to the story.

You want to ask yourself; “how do I want my readers to see describe this character upon meeting them for the first time?”

Jack is naturally timid, so how do you think he would react in a given situation? He would probably be scared to sneak into that bully’s house and terrified when he sees the bloodied clothes of the old man with the shovel.

Imagine how he’ll react when his friend tells him that they would be doing a personal investigation on the kidnapper of Filbert street.

It’s the same with Jess and Johanna. How would an extrovert and an austere person react in a given situation? This would help you when developing scene ideas. If you’re a pantser like me, you would probably find that the story would begin to drive itself in a certain direction.

4. Timeline

For greater depth, you’ll want to create a timeline of your characters’ backstories, especially the parts that are relevant to your plot. You want to do this to identify linchpin moments that will most likely, affect the progress of the story.

The timeline of your story would depend on the genre of the story you’re writing. An epic fantasy might have a timeline that dates back thousands of years earlier because of the age of the world you might have created.

A mystery crime or contemporary novel might date back to a few decades or maybe even a few months as long as there is an important event that happened back then which may be relevant to the plot of your story.

Your timeline can be very flexible, you can add, change or remove certain information from it however you like.

Having a timeline will help solidify your characters’ backstories and ensure that you don’t make any needless mistakes or clashes with the backstories of your POV characters. Furthermore, you could always make references to the past without leaving any loopholes in the plot. This helps give depth to your novel.

Having a timeline is very important if you are writing a mystery crime novel. This way, you can easily link the events of your POV characters together in such a way that readers connect the pieces of the puzzles and attempt to solve the mystery themselves.

5. Scene Ideas

Now comes my favorite part; generating scene ideas. First, if your multi-POV novel has a protagonist, you’ll want to make your readers experience the major part of the story from that protagonist’s POV.

Aside from allocating more POV time, you’ll want that character to experience or reveal the most important part of the story.

Your protagonist is the one who drives the story forward, while your other POV characters are the main characters that are affected by the plot.

If I wanted to select a protagonist from this mock novel, I would probably pick Jack because he seems like the character in need of the most development in the story.

Perhaps he’ll also become a victim, driving the plot forward, and this will ultimately increase the bond between the siblings as they realize they can’t live without one another.

I could start with a scene where the three siblings are just moving into Filbert street. Jess and Johanna would probably be too busy moving boxes into their new apartment, while Jack would probably wander down the street, wondering why there are so few young people to be seen.

I can always refer back to my character traits board and timeline to develop more scene ideas.

If your novel doesn’t have a protagonist, you might want to allocate equal POV time to your main characters and have all of them drive the story equally, while building their characters together, letting your readers experience important parts of the story through all of them.

Remember, when writing your story, you need to think like a reader and not like an author. Make sure that you carry your readers along all the time, and try to keep them curious, always wanting to know what would happen next.

So that’s how to write a novel with multiple POVs in a nutshell. If you have any extra tips, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section below.

Samuel is a creative writer and a freelance ghostwriter. He has written books for a number and clients and published two of his own. He’s a lifelong learner and teaches others what he learns through his writing journey.

You can check out more about his service here

How To Write a Novel With Multiple POVs was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.