Friday, May 8, 2015

Fiction Friction (#18): Multiple POV Stories

These posts are meant to bring about some conversation, discussion, and perhaps even a debate. These discussion posts can occur at varying days of the week, mostly depending upon what's scheduled on the blog and what I feel like discussing.

I've always found myself conflicted about stories with multiple POVs, and in some ways, I'm still very conflicted. Sometimes, they're well done and well written, but other times, I find that they're not and that it doesn't add much to the story.

One of my first experiences with multiple POVs was the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini. I struggled with some of the books after Eragon because it began to have chapters with changing points of view. While I understand the intention behind it and while I see how it added to that story, it was much harder for me to handle, at least as a child. I found it confusing and at the time unnecessary. I couldn't understand the need for multiple perspectives, and it broke up my reading experience. For some time after that, I stayed away from books with multiple POVs.

But in more recent years, I've come to see the value of books with multiple POVs. Sometimes, I love that a book has that, I don't generally find it as annoying anymore. It doesn't break up my reading as much. I've seen books do it very well, and it's made me more appreciative of it. But there are still times when I still see it not done well. There are still some books where I don't find it completely necessary.

Now I take things more on a book-by-book basis rather than overgeneralizing a type of book as a whole. I don't have anything against multiple POV books anymore. I don't decide to not pick up a book purely because there are multiple perspectives.

What's your take on books with multiple POVs? Are you someone like me, who has had her opinion change over the years?

1 comment:

  1. I think multiple POVs can be nice but they can also be distracting. When there are multiple main characters, it makes sense to have a bunch of POVs but sometimes, it'll be alternating the SAME chapter and that just annoys the crap out of me because I'm reading the same thing twice.

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