Meredith Mansfield, Author

This is something I’m wrestling with a bit right now. I’m not talking so much about first or third person right now. That, for me, is mostly controlled by the voice of the story I hear in my head when I’m writing. If I hear “I”, I tend to write in first person. So far, I’ve only written two short stories in first person. I haven’t yet tried to do a whole novel that way. (Though if “Heart of Oak” ever grows into a novel, I may have to try.) Most of the time, I write in close third person.

No, what I’m talking about now is how many points of view to use in a story. I have a sort of general rule about point of view. (And like most rules in writing, it’s really more of a guideline than a law.)

For middle grade, I try to stay in a single, close point of view. Whatever doesn’t happen where my main character can see or hear it, he’ll have to find out about some other way. The first time I did this in MAGE STORM, it was a little challenging. How do you make your hero understand the antagonist’s goals?

MAGIC’S FOOL, so far at least, is working out fine with a single point of view. Which is interesting because it’s original incarnation as a mainstream fantasy called THE SHAMAN’S CURSE (I know, I hate that title, too.) had at least a half-dozen point of view characters.

Young adult stories I tend to tell in dual points of view. Archetypally, the boy and the girl, because young adult is always about romance on some level. SEVEN STARS flowed very naturally that way.

And in adult stories, I try to limit the number of points of view, but I will use as many as I need to tell the story. This is where I free myself to actually tell part of the story through the antangonist’s point of view.

Now, there’s nothing hard and fast about this, as I said. Anymore than there’s a strict rule that you must stay with a single point of view in a short story. Generally, short stories work out better that way. But I’ve broken that rule once (“Heart of Oak”) because there were things that I wanted the reader to know that my main character simply couldn’t understand. And I can think of perhaps a handful of good short stories that also broke the rule–and several not so good ones. Which is probably why it’s one of those rules you should think hard about before you break it.

I can think of middle grade stories that have multiple point of view characters. (John Flanagan’s RANGER’S APPRENTICE series comes to mind. Not only multiple points of view, but third person omniscient, in which he can tell us what any character is thinking or feeling at any point in time. It actually gets a little disorienting at times.) But the ones that I’ve enjoyed most usually stuck to just one point of view–or very close to it.

I can also think of lots of young adult novels told from a single point of view and a couple that have multiple points of view. The multiple points of view actually didn’t work so well for me in this kind of story. Either really close to the struggles of a single character or the intimacy of seeing how the two characters are trying to overcome their fears to come together seems to work best for these stories. Here again, I’ve got two young adult stories on the back burner now that might well be told from a single point of view. We’ll just have to see when I get there.

And, except for the third-person framing story, Patrick Rothfuss’ KINGKILLER CHRONICLES is told from a single, first-person point of view. There are plenty of other examples. Patricia Briggs’ MERCY THOMPSON series is one. You really don’t need multiple point of view characters. Not even for the romance part of the story.

See, no hard and fast rules.