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PROS AND CONS OF DUAL-POV AND MULTI-POV VS SINGLE-POV NARRATION

I’m going to expand a bit on my opinion about dual and multi-pov by talking about the pros and cons of this type of narration in comparison to single-pov narration.

First thing to clarify, I am not against multi-pov, and I’ve actually used this form myself in other stories I’ve worked with. I just do not believe all stories need multi-pov narration, and many times, it is used without any clear reason, or as a crutch to tell instead of show, specially in romance. Like with everything in writing, such as first vs third person, each form has strengths and weaknesses, but they also depend on how they’re used. It’s not just about using first person because it helps readers get immersed in the story, you need to be aware of the voice to avoid falling in a false third person by using an excessively poetic narration that doesn’t fit the character.

When selecting the POV of our stories, it is the same. What do you want to achieve? What’s the goal of the story? What’s the experience you want to give to the readers? If you’re going for a more detached narration, where the reader is a simple spectator, third person omniscient might be your best choice, but if you want to go for a more immersive trip of emotional and vital self-discovery, where you want the reader to experience everything through the eyes of a character, third person limited and first person single-pov might be a better approach. If you want a more intense, fast, immersive read, use present tense, but if you want to go for a more relaxed retelling of the events, past tense.

All of them are valid, and it truly depends on what you want to create.

The problem I see, I don’t think many writers sit to plan an outline of their story, much less the tone and type of experience they want to create. Many will, actually, do things because they’ve seen it done in stories they’ve read, without understanding why it was done in those stories to begin with.

Most of the arguments I’ve read in favor of dual-pov are things that writers must be capable of doing using any pov. If a writer can’t show a character’s personality using third person limited and they need to rely on inner monologues to tell us their personality, the issue is not with the form. Characters must have the same development in omniscient, limited, first, third, past or present narration. A reader should be able to infer a character’s personality without getting into their head, like we do all the time in real life (and I’m talking as someone with ASD).

That said, lets go with the PROS;

Multiple-Perspectives Let Us See More of the World

I’m going to use an example for this. Ken Follet’s Century Trilogy, which starts with The Fall of Giants, a book that displays the events that led to the First World War and the war itself. By having multiple perspectives, we’re able to see the different actors (nations) through the eyes of the characters that represent those nations. Even though each of these POVs is, in themselves, a single-third person limited pov, when put together, we get a broader picture of the story, something that would not have been possible if we focused on one single character for the entirety of the story. In this particular saga, using multi-pov helps with humanizing and giving personality to all the characters, so it’s not just German evil because I’m following the narration through the eyes of a British man, it shows both soldiers are equally human.

However, not all stories need this level of detail, which is my argument against using it just because. Not all stories require this level of depth into what all the actors are doing at any given time. Maybe your story is actually about that, about a British soldier fighting the Germans, thinking of them as inhuman monsters, and the goal is for him to see that they’re as human as he is, that they both have parents, brothers, sisters, wives, and they’re forced by their superior into a senseless fight when all they want is to go home. The “shock factor” in such a story, the discovery the character goes through, the emotional involvement in his hatred, growth and redemption ark, is heavily diminished when the reader already knows the German soldier and is aware that he’s just the same as the British soldier. We turn the reader less into a participant in the events and more into a spectator of events he is heavily detached from. Is less emotional reading and more “passive, retelling of the events” reading, akin to going through some historial account.

It Might Help with Reader Engagement

Sometimes, our main character might not be very interesting or likeable, and it might be our fault because we didn’t do a good job developing the character, or it might just be that we need an unlikeable character for that particular story. Most of the time it is pure luck. I had a character everyone hated, and he was not supposed to be likeable, he was a miserable, spoiled wretch who caused grief to both himself and his family through his actions. My best friend loved him because of his complexity, and she disliked the main character who everyone loved.

Sometimes, some readers just won’t click with some characters, and if your story is single-pov, a lot of readers might eventually decide to drop the story. I never clicked with Harry from Harry Potter. I always found him very unlikeable, bland and boring. The reason I’m a big fan of the books to the point my house is full of merchandise is because I loved other characters and the world J.K. Rowling created.

Having other characters might help engage readers into your story. A lot of japanese anime flesh out and use multiple characters in their stories, and sometimes these side characters become fan favorites. It is the case with My Hero Academia, where we all started the story because we wanted to see how Midoriya became the world’s most important hero, and many people got hooked to Todoroki’s family issues because of how complex, humane and interesting that character was, and how relevant he was to the story. Todoroki ended up becoming one of the main actors and a fan favorite.

Readers will always have their favorites, and even though this will happen in single-pov stories too, as with Harry Potter, it might help engage readers if they can see their favorite character for some chapters. However, watch out, because many times fan favorites are ruined when given more screen time. I honestly do not think a whole book from Ron Weasley’s perspective would have been very good, and he remains a fan favorite because he didn’t have much screen time. Ron was petty, envious and vengeful, and he wouldn’t have improved had we been in his head. Jacob Black from Twilight is a good example of a character that got ruined by giving him more screen time. He was fun, good-natured, and he got turned into the same possessive, jealous creature Edward was when Meyer turned him into Love-Interest 2.0.

It Helps Create More Complex Stories

Sometimes, you have a story that needs to be told from several perspectives to get the whole of it, either because it involves different actors, or because it is unrealistic to have a single character do everything. An example of one such story would be Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series, where we get to see different characters doing different things, all geared towards the same goal. It is the actions of each individual character what drives the plot forward, and the actions from each of them also help the others. Not only that, but their subjective experiences also help the reader get a clearer idea of what’s going on. In Mistborn, Spook gets a hemalurgic spike on his chest, which gives him the ability to burn pewter, something he couldn’t do before. He also starts seeing Kelsier. This ties to Vin’s ability to hear her brother Reen in her head, and the fact her mother stabbed her ear with a ring she always carries with her. In both cases, it is Ruin (an evil force of sorts) speaking through the metal. I still remember how, when reading Spook’s questline, I noticed “wait a minute, this is very similar to what’s going on with Vin!”.

When done well, it is a great way to create and flesh out complex plotlines, like a rebellion, that a single character can do all by themselves. However, not all actors need to have their questline displayed in their very own chapters, and in some cases, we run the risk of revealing too much, not leaving much for readers to speculate, and also over-explaining, which can become tedious. In writing, sometimes less is more, so we must decide whether these chapters add something to the story, and whether they can be summarized in a dialogue line or paragraph. For example, imagine your team of adventurers need to get in a fortified bandit camp, and the rogue can sneak inside, knock out the guards and open the door. You might feel tempted to write a full chapters of the rogue being awesome, but unless something interesting happens, you might want to avoid cluttering the story with a chapter that’s not that much fun to read. After all, we know the resolution the moment the door opens.

I think these chapters help writers more than readers, as they serve as aid to know what the characters are doing when not directly on screen. However, they should be removed from a final version when cutting down the fluff. Harry Potter had plenty of characters who did things off screen, and which were later revealed, or which helped distract the readers as well by not providing the full information, leaving readers guessing and still involved in wanting to figure out what’s going on. One example is Snape, who had been portrayed as the bad guy, assaulting Quirrel in the middle of a corridor while Harry is using the invisibility cloak to creep around. It is later revealed that Snape was suspicious of Quirrel, and he had a reason to be, so the whole scene was misinterpreted from Harry’s subjective, incomplete vision.

So I insist again on this point. It can be a powerful asset when used well, but not all stories need it. Some, specially when not used well, or when the writer doesn’t understand its strengths and weaknesses, can be made worse. Using it because I’ve seen it used in other stories is the wrong approach.

It Allows us to Know Other Characters Better

This is one of the main arguments I’ve seen in favor of using dual-pov and multi-pov, and it is mostly focused in romance genre, which is the genre with more emotion and character driven plots… and funny enough, is where I believe multi-pov does worse, or is harder to pull off. However, it is true. Multi-pov, specially when linked to first person pov, will allow us to experience everything other characters are experiencing, including their inner thoughts, giving us a broader view of what these characters are like. However, this does not mean the character can’t lie or can’t be an unreliable narrator. A truly smart writer will take the subjective, limited vision of first person pov and use it to their advantage, so the character can be lying to the reader as easily as they lie to other characters, or their subjective vision might give us an image of the world that’s not accurate or realistic. Harry thinks Snape is assaulting Quirrel because he is prejudiced already against Snape, understandably so, but his own subjective vision makes him perceive the world, and thus narrate it to us, differently than if it had been an objective, detached observer.

This truly is a strength, as it allows to create truly remarkable, powerful stories, like with The Usual Suspects, and how Keÿser Soze used the whole narration to throw investigator Kujan off his trail. However, when used in romance, while it can work depending on the type of story we’re crafting, we risk falling into over-explaining, dragging and telling instead of showing.

CONS;

Excessive Reliance of Telling

Related to the previous point, the biggest drawback of dual-pov in romance is that it usually falls into lazy writing, as writers might become dependent on the inner monologue to portray emotional and personality depth without having to show it in the story itself.

Inner monologues can be a powerful tool to show a character’s thoughts, but as with any info-dumping, it is always better in small doses. A lot of writers fall into the trap of starting with some thought and getting lost in a long-winded rambling that ultimately leads nowhere, and which is tedious to follow. It might also make the author stop showing us what a character feels because the character has already told us through an inner monologue, which is something that happens very often in first person pov. A character might go out of their way to tell us how angry they are, but there is no action anywhere on the story to show that. So it feels like the character is sitting in their house, blank staring at the wall, and inside their head they’re “oh, I’m so furious I could punch a hole through the wall”. No, show us the punch. Show the fury. Show the seething anger. Show the character trembling, restraining themselves from pouncing at the guy that almost unalived his beloved. That is way more powerful than telling the reader how angry he is.

A character should be able to stand on its own even in third person. A character shouldn’t need inner monologues to show their personality or their emotions, and if the writer or the reader needs that crutch, the writer is doing something wrong. Show, don’t tell. It is the most basic principle of writing, but this is where it applies the most, and where it fails the most. Readers should be able to infer a character’s personality based on their actions, voice and words alone, like we do in real life. If your character needs chapters of their own to show that they’re enjoying a spicy moment with their beloved, you’re doing something wrong. Multi-pov should be used as an asset, not because we don’t know how to show enjoyment by using third person perspective.

Risk of Overtelling Which Reduces Tension

This is another huge drawback. While multi-pov allows us to experience more of the world, giving us a more immersive experience, and it allows to know the characters better as we experience the story through the different actors, this can be a drawback for some stories, specially romance driven plots.

Romance is a huge genre, with multiple possible stories, but a huge part of the genre is about the tension between the characters, the “will they won’t they”, it’s about reading the little details about their behavior. Does he feel the same way as the female MC? Is he blushing? Is he smiling at her? Is he going to confess? Romance usually creates a very immersive experience where emotions, hints, the flirting, are the things that drive the story forward. All of that is meaningless the moment the reader is transported to the other MC’s inner thoughts and it is revealed that they both feel the same. The reader stops being an accomplice to the main character, like that best friend who is having the time of her life at all the gossip, and they become the poor soul in the middle of two fools who won’t admit their feelings to each other for no reason. The reader is pulled out of the story and turned into a spectator to a train wreck they know is going to happen but can’t do anything about it.

In romance, there really are not many surprises most of the time. We know how it’s going to end, so placing us in both of their heads isn’t going to add any fresh perspective that we weren’t aware of. In most of the cases, the romantic interest basically mirrors the MC’s feelings, and chapters can feel tedious, repetitive and stale. The worst offender in these cases are the writers who tell the same scene from both perspectives. Look, unless there is a very good reason to do that, avoid it. I have never seen in romance one single time, not a single time, where this has worked. Every time, it has been a drag.

Multi-pov is also a drawback when you’re trying to create twists in a story, which is hardly possible when the reader knows everything about both characters, to the point they’re saturated with information. If your goal is to give the story a unique, surprising ending, it’s going to be a lot harder by following both characters unless your characters are masterful at being unreliable narrators or you pull out a shocking end while simultaneously making it feel believable. It’s… not an easy feat.

Concealing information can actually be great when you want to play with the reader by dropping hints and trying to confused them. The best example I can think of is one of my own stories, where I actually do this. I use the whole Hidden Identity trope, so one of the reasons why there is not a single chapter from the male character’s POV is because the whole point of the story is to be experienced through Sofia as an unreliable narrator as she discovers who he is. There is a particular scene where she is almost shot, and the mysterious werewolf she’s been following pushes her aside and takes the bullet instead. He is wounded, but he flees and drives the hunters away from her. She tries to follow but loses him, and when she tries to get familiar with his scent, which should be on her clothes, the only scents there are hers, her best friends (who she had spent the afternoon with) and her dog’s. She starts to suspect that the werewolf and her friend are the same, but he throws her off (and I try to throw the reader off as well) when he messages her on her cell phone while the full moon is still high in the sky. If I had written a chapter from his point of view showing him running away wounded, while in wolf form, it not only would not have added anything to the story, it would have ruined the whole experience of finding out who he is through Sofia’s eyes. My story is an example of the type of story where multi-pov would actually make it worse by telling too much.

You Really NEED to do Great with Distinct Voices and Personalities

Pulling off first person multi-pov is incredibly difficult, and it takes a truly skilled writer to do it right. As I’ve already stated, a character should be able to stand on their own even in third person, but it is easier to make a character feel deep and fleshed out in single-pov, as the character relies mostly on a few snippets of information which are more digestible. In first person multi-pov, every single character needs to feel distinct and have their own voice, because we’re not going to just see him having some dialogue lines and interacting with the main character, we’re going to spend a whole chapter in their head. I need to be able to know who I’m reading about without telling details, just by hearing their unique voice. Readers will notice if you’re not able to pull it off.

There is also the risk of making a character, that is otherwise interesting, feel tedious and boring when they bombard us with too much information. Info-dumping is always an issue with any story, and we writers have a tendency of wanting to explain everything to the smallest detail, which is honestly not necessary. Being inside a character’s head might mean the character is telling us way too much about themselves, including things we don’t really care about or which don’t add anything to the story. Lets be serious, your character’s hobby with clay sculpting might make him feel tridimensional, but you should portray that in a more organic way, not by having them tell us how much they love clay sculpting in some long winded monologue about themselves.

It is always better to show characters doing things instead of having them telling us about the things they like, feel or want to do.

Readers Might Not Like Some of your Characters

Sometimes, with multi-pov stories, specially when those stories follow different questlines that don’t immediately merge, if one or several of those stories and characters are not interesting to your readers, you’re absolutely lost. There is a particular book that portrays this, The Mystic Warrior (The Bronze Chanticles trilogy) by Tracy and Laura Hickman. It shows three worlds united by magic; the human world, the faerie world and the goblin world. I absolutely loved Galen’s story, the mage from the human world, I was indifferent to the faerie world, and I totally hated the goblin world.

In some cases, readers might outright drop the story if you dedicate too much time to a character they don’t like, and they might feel frustrated when you pull them away from a character they’re enjoying, specially if you end their part in a cliffhanger of sorts, to force them to slug through some tedious, unoriginal, boring globin they couldn’t care less about. I did not drop the book, but I did not reread it either, and it’s not a book I easily recommend. Needless to say, it has a rating of 3.41 with most readers giving it three starts, which is something I have never seen in a book, and the main complain is the characters.

Multi-pov breaks the flow

Something to also consider when using multi-pov is that the story’s pacing might be slowed down, and not many readers are going to put up with that, specially if the extra chapters do not add anything interesting to the story. Readers become invested to a fault in whatever is happening to the character, moreso in the case of romance where they are emotionally invested in seeing the romance develop. Bringing that experience to a halt to force them to read through another character’s experience, specially when this is basically more of the same thing, but from the guy’s pov, might create more frustration than interest in them.

In the cases where, as with the book I previously mentioned, the three characters are like three different stories that never interact, the frustration is increased by the fact the reader is forced to endure reading through something they don’t care about, when they’re invested in someone else’s story. This is inevitable in multi-pov, as whatever plot you were developing will be brought to a halt to bring forth another.

Even in the cases where I’ve seen the same scene being displayed by using alternating povs in alternating chapters, it’s been more confusing than interesting, to be honest, and the pacing is still affected. Third person omniscient solves this issue, as you can alternate the pov depending on the paragraph without breaking the flow of the story, but it is another form that needs to be used well to make it work.

To finish, because I think this is long enough, I want to bring forth an argument that has popped up several times, and that is the need to know everything. Readers do not need to know everything. A story doesn’t need to explain everything. Over-explaining destroys the magic in many stories. If my fantasy land I’ve made up has dragons, I do not need to recreate the evolutionary path with fossil record of how and why dragons evolved according to modern scientifical understanding. The story doesn’t need to reveal why dragons exist, because it’s not about it, it’s a fantasy land about warriors, elves and dwarves fighting evil minions. The dragon is part of the world.

Multiperspective is a powerful tool to tell a story, but like all tools, it needs to be used well and in the right place. When executed poorly, it will inevitable lead to a boring, frustrating and unremarkable story.