Multiple POV?

Okay, so it's really only dual pov, however I have heard that publishers tend to shy away from multiple POVs... Now, I can predict a few responses "it truly depends on your story" but will someone please be blunt with me? Is this merely a rumor or does this perspective truly hinder your chances?
Thanks so much!

I'll be honest, I have no idea about publishing, but as a reader, dual POV puts me off. It has to be done just right or it can ruin a good story.

Multiple POV doesn't bother me as long as it is not confusing. Switching POV from one sentence to another, to be extreme, would be confusing and probably irritating.

But a section from one POV followed by a separate section in another is fine, as long as the section stays true to its POV..

I have no idea how publishers feel about multiple POV. I hope ok, because mine is in several POVs as well.

I don't know for sure how publishers feel, but I've read a lot of bestsellers lately that have multiple POV. Jodi Picoult always writes in multiple POV, and all three of Simone Elkeles Perfect Chemistry books are in dual POV. There are more, I'm sure, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

My advice is to write your story the way it needs to be written and go from there.

I would say to be very careful. You want the structure to be seamless to the reader so that they aren't focusing on the writing instead of the story. I've read stories that were in different points of view and I normally stumbled each time the POV switched. Made me focus on the writing instead of the story.

This is a little scary.

My novel has multiple POV. I don't want to change it, and don't feel that I need to; but ... thinking that it may be rejected because of its structure is still...a little scary.

But, this is good news. Now I know that I need to be very careful as I edit, to make sure that there is no confusion; and to be sure that my multi-POV doesn't come off as a gimmick or as an off-putting device. Forewarned is forearmed...right? (Is that how the saying goes? Hmmmmm.)

Nope, I'm sticking with my structure. It is, as ksue put it,
"...the way it needs to be written..."

Terry Goodkind wrote an eleven book series with MPOV. They're my favorite books. It can be done, it just has to be done right.

I would seriously not recommend trying MPOV with a first person narrative. That would be disastrous. But third person can work well. Make sure that you don't switch at odd points in the story and that you select only a few characters to POV. There should be clean breaks when you switch POV and the transition should be obvious.

I've read some really good multiple POV stories, and some stories where it makes me cringe. For example, Once a Hero by Michael Stackpole does a good job with two POVs--he also makes it very clear at the beginning of each chapter who is narrating, and one POV is first person while the other is third person (it does make sense how the story was told).

George RR Martin uses about sixty two POVs; this is one of my major complaints about A Game of Thrones. Most of his chapters were short, and several chapters would pass before he returned to the same POV character, by which point I'd completely forgotten who it was and what their plot thread was and why I should care about them.

I'm currently in the process of reading Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword, and I've found a couple jarring places where the narration will suddenly change POV within a paragraph, then change back again. That, to me, comes across as sloppy.

The Lord of the Rings--especially the second and third books--use multiple POVs to follow the different members of the Fellowship. Once again, Tolkien made sure to keep each section consistent from a narration perspective, but also gave the reader enough to follow the characters and stay in touch with their plot threads.

So be sure to keep an eye on consistency, and make sure you offer enough distinction between the POV character that it's easy for the reader to tell who's telling which part of the story.

First or third? It's a lot easier to get away with multiple POV characters in third.

In my current work-in-progress, I cut way back on the number of viewpoint characters. There are currently only eight. Yes, that is cutting way back. At one point, I had about thirty.
This is also for an epic fantasy adventure. Genre can influence the number of POV characters.

And then there's omniscient, which means there is no POV character. You can get into everybody's or nobody's head, all at once. I wrote a comedy like that last year where I quite happily jumped around from one person to the next to a shovel to nobody's. Since I did this right from the start, I think I could get away with it. (And yes, the Traveling Shovel of Death appeared as a full-fledged character.)

Agreed with the first or third. I really dislike flipping between first person POVs, but I don't even bat an eye at third person.

Gah, and here I have first person... I just cannot for the life of me figure out how to accurately describe the multiple necessary events from only one character! But thank you guys so much for the responses, maybe I'll have to take on that arduous task of completely switching... (1st to 3rd)

My 2011 NaNo story is dual POV. One is first-person and the other is third.

Also, my book is being published right now. It's not fatal, obviously, just depends on the publisher.

I am firmly in the "multiple POV, third-person perspective" camp - it never even occurred to me that someone might balk at this, cuz I've seen it done in SO very many books.

But, I tell you what: I am right now reading a book series that uses only a single POV (Jim Butcher's "The Dresden Files") and a couple of, let's call them weaknesses, are standing out to me:

1. Because there is only this one POV character, Harry Dresden, everything HAS to revolve around him. He has to have all of the adventure, and do all of the figuring-things-out, and if he's passed out or locked in a car trunk or whatever, nothing too major can happen to him because we won't get to see it. Maybe part of this is more about the author's choices than the limits of the POV, but it sure is wearing on me that nobody else is allowed to accomplish things.

2. Because there is only this one POV character, any reader who doesn't happen to like his personality is going to be turned off to the whole book. There are other characters, but they don't do nearly enough to carry the story by themselves - if you don't like Harry, you might as well pitch the books out the window.

3. Because there is only this one one POV character, anything he would not notice or think about or want to talk about goes unremarked - we are bound 100% to the limits of his perception and interests. There is no way to clue the reader in to something that Harry himself doesn't know yet, which would come in useful for creating "will he find out, what will he do?" suspense.

So I guess what I'm saying is, don't for a minute worry or apologize for having multiple POVs: as these other fine folks have said, LOADS of truly excellent books have been published with exactly that feature (and maybe you want to do some homework on your particular genre - certainly I know it's nothing too unusual up in the Fantasy neck of the woods - but really I would be surprised if it turned out to be a major roadblock.)

What I would worry more about is making sure that you make things easy on your reader by not having more POV characters than necessary (with a tip o' the hat to George R.R. Martin, who has far FAR more than he needs), by (ideally) spacing out their introductions a little so we can learn them one at a time, by making the shifts between them real clear and easy to identify, and by making sure that that they are *interesting* and to at least some extent likable people whom we can care about. It is probably all right to have a jerk or two in the mix, but most people will not want to hang around a scumbag's head for any great length of time.

Good luck, regardless - as diligent as you are about asking yourself these important questions, I expect you are probably in better shape than you give yourself credit for!

I have never heard concerns about multiple POV books. I have literally read hundreds of how-to writing books.

I just finished reading a couple of mysteries by an author who usually has about 5 different viewpoints, or more.

The only concern I ever heard was about how to change viewpoints effectively. (At scene or chapter breaks, etc.)

Most of the books I have read are multiple viewpoint.

As a former used bookstore owner (about eight years) and now an owner of several thousand books at my home, I can assure you that tons of books have multiple viewpoint.

Make the shift in a way that the reader is clear about the change.
Make it clear what the viewpoint is.
Don't confuse the reader.

Other than that, write the way that is best for the story.

Hope this helps.

I was feeling discouraged too about this until I realized something: if your genre is literary fiction this can work really well. David Levithan pulls it off in The Realm of Possibilities, and when I read As I Lay Dying I was pleasantly surprised to find that Faulkner uses that multiple POV as well (though he's a literary God and the pace is a little skittish).

I think it can work it you do long enough segments to get inside the character's head; don't just yank the reader from one POV to the next.

I have dual POV, and I was wondering if it helps to seperate the POVs and just make each a seperate chapter... My boy character doesn't really talk all that much so that would make some really, really short, but I'm worried about just skipping around in the middle.
Should I still seperate them into different chapters or yank the dual thing completely? Advice?

Interesting issue. I've found my structure falling between two stools. Originally I planned multiple POV because there was no real main character - GRRM style, with a chapter to each POV 'episode'. Quite early in the writing, one character jumped out as the main. I carried on trying to write MPOV but the new main character has ended up with two thirds of the chapters. So I still have multiple POVs but it's largely a single POV with a few others thrown in.

I want to finish my first draft before I make any major changes, but I know to make it consistent I'm going to have to do one of three things:

1) Amend the structure so the POVs are more evenly spread - this will probably involve adding two or three additional POVs from the existing characters
2) Reducing it to a single POV, rewriting the bits that happen to the secondary characters from the perspective of the main character
3) - and this really is a long shot, but the idea excites me - rewriting the whole novel from the perspective of multiple characters but leaving out the main character, so she gets no POVs at all.

Any thoughts or suggestions welcome...

The draft I just finished has multiple POVs, though mostly going back and forth between two characters and all in third person. The fact that this could be a concern with publishers worries me, as the multiple POVs are important to the story. It wouldn't work as well otherwise.

I'm committing a terrible crime - yes, I'm doing multiple POVs in first person ....

I tried writing in third but I didn't feel like I knew my characters. By writing in first person I get much more depth in my characters and the story is richer. I'm splitting them by chapter (so no switching POV within chapters, which I find confusing) and each character does have a separate style/voice.
I think I must have some sort of personality disorder as I find writing the voices for different characters quite easy :-/

I'm getting nervous about the second two books in my trilogy.
See, both have a lot of different POVs, and while most are in 3rd person, some of them are in 1st. The reason they're in first person is because they aren't actually "human" but Elementals. I was using the different type of POV to accent their differences from humanity but now I'm not sure what to do...