I'd like to add to your comment about the rough patch we're in right now, that no matter how I am feeling, I remind myself that writing makes me happy, maybe even happiest. Even when writing is hard and difficult I get one of those little serotonin bumps from solving a difficult problem.
1.) Thanks, George, for the reminder that we're not alone! I'm in DC, scene of the crime, and it's been one crappy week all right. The goings-on are scary & dehumanizing & very much an indication of an evil history soon repeating itself. But the reminder that here at SC, and elsewhere, there is light & intelligence & good humor means that it will all be survivable. Not easy, but survivable. And then to top it all off, the awful mid-air collision last night of the plane & the copter which I did not see happen but which I heard as it happened before it all crashed into the Potomac. Jolting & unnerving & sad & avoidable & what with this last week plus the LA fires, 2025 is sure not off to a good start. But still, thanks for the boost!
2.) I loved "The Barber's Unhappiness", among my faves of yours. Couldn't imagine it and Al mashed up together when the barber is such a jewel on its own. I'm glad you just let these two stories be, be themselves. Which brings me to
3.) I understand that the questioner would so like the intersections to be neat & measured equally. I appreciate the need for & the beauty of symmetry. But asymmetry also has its beauty. What if Character 1 & Character 2 just were themselves & intersected as intended but not always at right angles. What if sometimes they were acute or obtuse or reflexive or however many other types of intersections there are? Wouldn't those very differences also help to indicate character & thus story? What if, like life, it wasn't all so neat? Just sayin'.
4.) As for examples of two-character constructions, the stories of William Trevor came immediately to mind, "Coffee with Oliver" in particular but there are many others. Trevor was a master of inhabiting more than one mind, all in the course of a single story.
And I feel for you, experiencing what we, elsewhere, can, if we choose, read about or scroll past, if only temporarily, to mitigate/avoid/postpone pain and sorrow for all who died in the plane crash.
Thanks, Jackie. As for recent events, here in DC & elsewhere, I think the best thing to do in these awful times is to be informed but not consumed, to be alert & prepared but not to the point of neurosis. I also think it's healthier to expend personal energy with the same care & regard as you might have for any other precious resource, which is to say don't waste it on what can't be changed.
Thank you so much for your point 3) and 4). I've also contemplated the asymmetry structure, or even the structure of two stories in one book (like the book Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday), but still cannot shake the mental feeling of unbalanced or not witty enough. I want to weave them together like a good Seinfeld episode, Cloud Atlas but I will keep my mind more open and not try to force things.
As for 4), I will definitely give Coffee with Oliver ago. Thank you so much for suggesting it!
I don't know the Halliday & never watched enough Seinfeld to fully appreciate but witty in itself may rest on imbalance. Right there, because it's a little off, you may have naturally come to wit. Or maybe not. I dunno. But I do know that you won't regret the Trevor. Good luck!
I recently read Good Material by Dolly Alderton. I don't know, it was on the shelf at the library and I picked it up. The book is told in the voice of the male character for the vast majority of pages. Then, toward the end, the female character suddenly pops in to tell her side of the story. I returned the book so I can't check how many pages were given over to the woman's POV, but suffice it to say: VERY lopsided in terms of balance of pages. But it didn't matter. It worked for this book. All of which is to say, maybe you don't have the problem you think you have, Questioner. But you're bothered by how things are going, so that IS a problem. I can't tell how close you are to finishing this book. My advice (not that you should take my advice and not that you asked for it) is to just finish the thing. Get to the end. Then look it over. Maybe an entire "voice" can be deleted, as George says. Maybe you have two books. Also, maybe you'll get to the end and think, hmmm, this actually should be written in third person. Stranger things have happened! Just keep going, in whatever way works for you on any given day. You really don't know what you have until it shows up on the page.
"Unusual week in American history." Now that's an understatement. Thank you, George, for the reminder that we are not alone. Last night, i had burgers with friends, lots of wine, and a pretty hilarious game of Rummikub. For a few moments, all felt okay. I'm looking for more of those moments, while remaining true to myself and my pledge to work actively on the things I believe in. I'm hoping for balance, just like our Questioner. Looking forward to Sunday. Love to all.
Thank you so much for the suggestions! I will put Good Material onto my reading list! The book is about 3/4 of the plot and the plan is to get it 1st draft wrapped up by the summer. I was actually shocked by my own worries of its structure after the holiday break (hence asking you for George's office hour email, haha!) and it's been a wonderful Thursday for me to hear detailed, executable advices from George, you and everyone from the club!
What a pleasant surprise on this Thursday and thank you so much for the suggestions! Lots of homework for me to follow up in the next couple of weeks! I especially love the idea of reading character 1's thread sequentially (instead of jumping back and forth between 1 & 2) and have a feel of how it flows. Maybe character 2 should be in another book. I will make a decision.
I also love the idea of physically mapping out the intersections. I'll put my cork board (and reader's ears) to (hopefully) good use!
Thanks story club for being such a warm and long-attention span place. My Shangri-La in these tumultuous times!
This is such an interesting conundrum. I have a draft of a novel i’ve worked on for years, and it has this same problem. I started ouy writing a kind of 4-person pov ensemble-of-voices novel. Struggled along with it. Realized two of the characters were very important, one not very, one not at all. So much for outlining a plot/concept and sticking to it rigidly. I eliminated one of the characters and her whole story line. The not-very-important character i quickly demoted to secondary background. Then i focused on the two really important characters, and the novel started working much better. But THEN a different secondary character started muscling in. I need a big mallet to beat some of these guys off! Years later, I’m still struggling with the novel. I’ll stop for a while and do other stuff, then get lured back to this crazy obsessive project again. My characters are writing ME. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
I'm also on the Definitely Last Draft of a novel I've been living with for too many years. The character people like the most just walked cheekily into chapter 2 uninvited and stuck around. He is great fun to work with. But I have to remind him now and then that he serves the story and not the other way around. Like you, I've also rebalanced the story quite a bit over the various drafts. Plot too complex, or story maybe too dark. Ya. I definitely feel you!
"Yay, oh yay" spoke the novelists, wildly outstretching and lifting the limbs of their arms towards the sky and seeking to see into the blue yonder beyond, "our prayers are answered now that our created characters have taken over development of their stories!"
Quite a notion Carroll, conjuring with which sets the mind boggling 🤣
greetings from just-another-physicist-on-Story-Club! Seems like your beautiful question got you a few new items in your reading list, hope you'll forgive me for one more suggestion. This article about physicists-writers someone linked (here in SC? or somewhere else? I forgot) is worth reading:
A quote from it: "Novelists do not merely gaze inward to create new forms or invent new ways of saying. They look outward, too. They direct their experiments toward the greater patterns of the world. They also stretch space and time, and quiz the substance of reality."
So maybe there is a reason why time stretches and compresses in you novel depending on the point of view?
You are so lovely to reveal yourself as our questioner... and the advice you've been given by George seems very sound. I like also the suggestion offered by Mary G. of finishing --- writing to the end, and then see what you have. I don't write long fiction -- so not a task familiar to me. I do read long fiction --- recently (my winter novel) Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" which is 600 pages in predominantly 1st person. Murakami is clever however to share the narration through letters and stories told by other characters, who also, of course, use the first person. In reading this, i've thought about the challenge to the writer who uses multiple perspectives/narrators of keeping the reader engaged with the given "speaker" of the moment, not pining for another --- this could be a measure, as you're reading her perspective, her story, do you feel impatient to get back to him? or vice versa?
In any case I'm glad fiction found you. And you found Story Club. And glad I found it too!
The Wind Up Bird Chronicles...boy oh. I'm slogging through it. I adored IQ84 but then its subject matter was extreme & perverse & sexy (my favs things) This is just s o s l o w. I'm like "Get out of the damn well already." Not sure I'm going to make it to end. I also find the N dull as a dish. No wonder Kimiko split. 🕶️
Unless I completely misunderstand the question, I would, if I was in this situation:
1. Write all of Character #1’s scenes all the way to the end of the book since they seem to be coming through easiest for you.
2. Pause only in those sections where Character #1 & #2 overlap and write those next.
3. Go back, using the momentum you got from writing the overlap sections, and write all of the Character #2 sections from the beginning.
4. Revise (of course) which in this case would mentally look like, to me, when a cartoon cat is making a giant sandwich and shuffles the ingredients together like two stacks of playing cards.
Thanks Robert! Books is about 3/4 done and I was actually thinking about finishing character 1 and coming back for character 2! I think to come back developing from the intersections to develop character 2 is a good and new idea!
I rarely post here, though I am a faithful reader, and I second many of the sentiments expressed above. These are difficult days, and having this (always interesting and thought-provoking) series to follow is a real comfort. I am another one of those people who has been working on a dual protagonist novel with periodic “intersections,” so I too have experienced many of the problems that can come up. Mine also are not solved yet, but I wanted to second Rosanne’s paragraph 3 above regarding tying oneself to symmetry just for symmetry’s sake. A fairly aggressive pruning of some alternating chapters made the beginning of my story more polished, accessible and good enough to be accepted for a respected workshop.
As for examples of dual or multi-protagonists (though not necessarily first-person narrators) I might suggest Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land and All the Light We Cannot See. I think A. S. Byatt’s Possession is also sort of a version of this, though some of the “narration” is in epistolary form. And I’m tossing in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet for our STEM-inclined author, because Durrell says in his note at the beginning of Balthazar, the second book, that the structure of the Quartet is inspired by (his understanding) of Relativity. For our purposes here, Justine (the first book) and Balthazar cover the same events, but—no surprise—tell very different stories. I’m looking forward to the other suggestions people come up with.
Great suggestions Cynthia and, in particular, I'm pleased to second your recommendation of a read of Anthony Doerr's 'All the Light We Cannot See'. For those for whom this is a-new-to-me novel here's an extract from Wikipedia's reference article about it: 'It revolves around the characters Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French girl who takes refuge in her great-uncle's house in Saint-Malo after Paris is invaded by Nazi Germany, and Werner Pfennig, a bright German boy who is accepted into a military school because of his skills in radio technology. The book alternates between paralleling chapters depicting Marie-Laure and Werner.'
Hi Cynthia and Rob, thanks for the suggestion! I've got quite a bit of thoughts on this book, as it has been mentioned multiple times by the fellow story clubbers last year, and therefore posted a separate, long-ish comment.
A.'s dilemma brought to mind wonderful multi-voiced novels, only one of which gives equal weight to every voice.
I wonder if turning, or returning, to works that deftly, meaningfully allow multiple voices to speak might provide some inspiration or guidance.
How about Go Tell It on the Mountain? It's one of those texts that seems to be about everything: desire, faith, doubt, race, racism, North vs. South, etc., etc. It begins and ends with patient, nuanced chapters focused on sensitive 14-year-old John Grimes. If the novel consisted of only these two chapters, it would be a wonderful thing. What Baldwin does in between those chapters makes the novel a masterpiece: each of the adults in John's life (especially his remote, hostile stepfather) gets a chapter of their own, a chapter that allows us to see what John can't.
Also wonderful: To the Lighthouse, where (though Woolf dips freely in and out of multiple consciousnesses) the focus of the long opening chapter is Mrs. Ramsay--a focus that Woolf deliberately shifts in the brief, ruthless "Time Passes" chapter, and then again in the end.
Also, every chance I get, I recommend Neil Mukherjee's A Life Apart. At first it seems to give equal weight to two characters : Ritwik, a brilliant young man at Oxford in retreat from a scarring childhood in Mumbai; and an idealistic 19th-century Englishwoman who finds the politics and mores of the Raj difficult to parse. The balance between the voices changes intriguingly...
But the exception:
Geoff Ryman's 253 gives every character equal attention. The novel takes place on the Tube, and every passenger (if I recall correctly) gets a one-page 253-word snapshot or vignette. There are 252 passengers; chapter 253 somehow (I read it years ago!) brings them all together.
Hullo, dear Peter, and Questioner, and All, such a surprising pleasure to meet VWoolf in this context!:))
…because yes, her shiftings in and out of characters perspectives are so precise in terms of meaning/reasons, portraying usually not only the character and/or situation, and/or possible antagonists etc., and situation and or internal priorieties as much as setting wise external ones, etcetc..
It’s economical a n d so rich at once.
When reading the first 3-4 pages, esp. the first 2, I was in awe how she made clear the little boys disappointment from the rude self obsessed „objectivity“ of his father, in just one short line the father says.
She prepares this first emotional climax, but so subtle prepared, it throws one right into the kid‘s soul, without any further bits.
So, I think, in terms of effective proportion, it may be not really be necessary to think in quantities..:) Sorry for all mistakes, I’m not a native speaker.:)
I'm revising my multi-viewpoint novel now. My character 1 is the protagonist, characters 2 and 3 have smaller parts. Character 3 is essential, but some beta readers tell me to ditch character 2 as too tangential, but I'm perversely trying to embed him more deeply. Not sure how that will turn out.
I love multi-viewpoint novels. Years ago I read Alison Lurie's Foreign Affairs--several times I loved it so much. With this caveat: times 2 and 3 I read only Characters 1's sections. She was delightful. Character 2 not so much. As I remember, their plots don't connect until the last chapter, though there's a thematic connection.
Mid Summer here in the South Pacific so lots of reading in the shade by the lake. (I'm reading book two of Cixin Lui's Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy in which this: "What a literary character does in ten minutes might be a reflection of ten years' experience. You can't be limited to the plot of a novel-you've got to imagine her entire life and what actually gets put into words is just the tip of the iceberg.")
So Dear Questioner, It occurs to me that you are creating not one but two literary figures in your novel. How well do you know them? Their entire lives? Are they speaking, acting of their own accord. Do they Wisper to you, on the train, at dinner, in your dreams and upon waking.
Great question, great answer, great conversation started-up and beginning to roll right along sparked by the opening Q & A.
So glad to find signposts to extant two character stories and novels. I'm looking to learn, for starters, from following up on the recommendation to take 'Coffee with Oliver'. Thanks.
Once again, this is timely. Thank you George. I am reading 'Horse' by Geraldine Brooks. I am about one quarter way into the novel and so far there are four very different voices and two time periods. Flicking through, I see more voices coming. I am amazed had how sthe author brings each character and their time alive. Some have intersected and some are yet to. I have been wondering how she chooses what to reveal at what time, the pace, the specific details in each characters' time, place and back story. Gradually my experience of each is adding up to themes that stretch across time and some persistent rough patches we still experience today. Also interesting, the impact of characters' conscious or not so conscious use of conversation and sensitivity or insensitivity to each other as a source of connection or disconnection that escalates and drives the story foward. Out of all her research she must have made many choices about what to include and when, and what to cut. I have not written anything novel length but am considering a persistent idea of an historical novel and ways to approach it.
Thank you so much Helen and will put Horse onto my list! What got me hooked on multiple POVs was Cloud Atals. But of course many books and TVs/movies before that. Also more recently All the Light We Cannot See. Something about the structure, like the Flower Duet!
Aw, that last comment... "By being in touch with our inner wisdom, via talking about stories, we remind ourselves that yes, outward conditions notwithstanding, wisdom does exist, and we can get at it (and get better at it)." Yes. I believe that stories connect us, and remind us of all that we share - the beautiful, the ugly, and all those complex shades in between. Perhaps this is why I can't handle the news, and read strictly poetry these days? I don't know. But I need my dose of beauty, and kindness.
As for the two narrating voices, this is all very interesting. I personally had a lot of fun in one story playing with being in one character's head, then the other's, then in neither, by writing dialogue only and not interpreting it in any way. So the only thing I have to add is: have fun with it. Play. See what direction excites you the most, or surprises you the most. I personally love being surprised! In the story I speak of, I had no plan to move the narration from one person to the other. I just sat down and began writing and this is what happened. I thought to myself, oh, this is interesting, and continued writing. In my experience, the excitement the writer feels usually transfers well to the reader. But so does struggle :)
I can appreciate the two character issues. I’m working on a novel and from the outset, I envisioned a story where two characters lived parallel lives, their journeys mirroring each other in unexpected ways before ultimately converging. I wanted to explore the tension of lives running side by side, seemingly disconnected, only for the reader to realize how intertwined they truly are.
But as I’ve been drafting, I’m starting to feel the weight of the structure. Switching between perspectives in each chapter is becoming unwieldy—sometimes I lose the thread of one character’s arc, or the transitions feel jarring rather than seamless.
George suggested a radical solution: write each character’s story separately. At first, I resisted. The whole point of the novel is the interplay between these two lives—how could I pull them apart? But now, I’m starting to see the value in this approach. If I write each story independently, I might be able to better define their arcs, make their voices distinct, and ensure that when they do intersect, it feels inevitable rather than forced.
There’s also the lingering question of whether I should strip it back entirely—remove one character’s perspective and let the novel unfold through the eyes of my original main character. It’s tempting. Simpler, maybe. But would it still carry the weight I want? Would it lose the sense of duality that first drew me to this story?
Right now, I feel caught between two instincts: to trust my original vision or to let go and experiment with a new approach. There’s frustration in that, but also excitement. The story is still revealing itself to me.
Noticing that you writing "strip it back entirely" gave me pause to find this query surfacing: what led you to conceive that the form that is right for the two-character story that you are working to help bring out is 'the novel'?
Might your endeavour, I find myself musing, be better framed as a goal of writing a novella or an extended short story or as a short story?
Sincere question, sincere interest in any reply you may care to make Lisa.
The piece started out as a short story. It’s a great point. It is more like a novella. I’m now considering two separate short stories one with each of the characters appreciate your comments.
Dear A in STEM. Aloha. Lawyer in STEM, just completed PhD and first novel so I'm feeling close to you in this strangish space but are you a bench scientist, like, as I worked my ass off during the pandemic, managing a large team which negotiated contracts for Covid and cancer research, so did absolutely no writing besides sending barrages of silent electronic messages to people after hours after wine alone in a flat. What a shit two years that was. Anyway, about your voice thing. My advice: go to or attend online readings, speak to the writers afterwards. If they're not too exhausted and are kind they'll give you advice like keep writing and the gestalt will emerge, or, you don't have to write the entire novel in the first person, or tell you about a book they read which deals with your issue in an amazing way. S.
I'd like to add to your comment about the rough patch we're in right now, that no matter how I am feeling, I remind myself that writing makes me happy, maybe even happiest. Even when writing is hard and difficult I get one of those little serotonin bumps from solving a difficult problem.
Four things:
1.) Thanks, George, for the reminder that we're not alone! I'm in DC, scene of the crime, and it's been one crappy week all right. The goings-on are scary & dehumanizing & very much an indication of an evil history soon repeating itself. But the reminder that here at SC, and elsewhere, there is light & intelligence & good humor means that it will all be survivable. Not easy, but survivable. And then to top it all off, the awful mid-air collision last night of the plane & the copter which I did not see happen but which I heard as it happened before it all crashed into the Potomac. Jolting & unnerving & sad & avoidable & what with this last week plus the LA fires, 2025 is sure not off to a good start. But still, thanks for the boost!
2.) I loved "The Barber's Unhappiness", among my faves of yours. Couldn't imagine it and Al mashed up together when the barber is such a jewel on its own. I'm glad you just let these two stories be, be themselves. Which brings me to
3.) I understand that the questioner would so like the intersections to be neat & measured equally. I appreciate the need for & the beauty of symmetry. But asymmetry also has its beauty. What if Character 1 & Character 2 just were themselves & intersected as intended but not always at right angles. What if sometimes they were acute or obtuse or reflexive or however many other types of intersections there are? Wouldn't those very differences also help to indicate character & thus story? What if, like life, it wasn't all so neat? Just sayin'.
4.) As for examples of two-character constructions, the stories of William Trevor came immediately to mind, "Coffee with Oliver" in particular but there are many others. Trevor was a master of inhabiting more than one mind, all in the course of a single story.
I enjoyed your ideas!
And I feel for you, experiencing what we, elsewhere, can, if we choose, read about or scroll past, if only temporarily, to mitigate/avoid/postpone pain and sorrow for all who died in the plane crash.
Thanks, Jackie. As for recent events, here in DC & elsewhere, I think the best thing to do in these awful times is to be informed but not consumed, to be alert & prepared but not to the point of neurosis. I also think it's healthier to expend personal energy with the same care & regard as you might have for any other precious resource, which is to say don't waste it on what can't be changed.
Thank you so much for your point 3) and 4). I've also contemplated the asymmetry structure, or even the structure of two stories in one book (like the book Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday), but still cannot shake the mental feeling of unbalanced or not witty enough. I want to weave them together like a good Seinfeld episode, Cloud Atlas but I will keep my mind more open and not try to force things.
As for 4), I will definitely give Coffee with Oliver ago. Thank you so much for suggesting it!
I don't know the Halliday & never watched enough Seinfeld to fully appreciate but witty in itself may rest on imbalance. Right there, because it's a little off, you may have naturally come to wit. Or maybe not. I dunno. But I do know that you won't regret the Trevor. Good luck!
I recently read Good Material by Dolly Alderton. I don't know, it was on the shelf at the library and I picked it up. The book is told in the voice of the male character for the vast majority of pages. Then, toward the end, the female character suddenly pops in to tell her side of the story. I returned the book so I can't check how many pages were given over to the woman's POV, but suffice it to say: VERY lopsided in terms of balance of pages. But it didn't matter. It worked for this book. All of which is to say, maybe you don't have the problem you think you have, Questioner. But you're bothered by how things are going, so that IS a problem. I can't tell how close you are to finishing this book. My advice (not that you should take my advice and not that you asked for it) is to just finish the thing. Get to the end. Then look it over. Maybe an entire "voice" can be deleted, as George says. Maybe you have two books. Also, maybe you'll get to the end and think, hmmm, this actually should be written in third person. Stranger things have happened! Just keep going, in whatever way works for you on any given day. You really don't know what you have until it shows up on the page.
"Unusual week in American history." Now that's an understatement. Thank you, George, for the reminder that we are not alone. Last night, i had burgers with friends, lots of wine, and a pretty hilarious game of Rummikub. For a few moments, all felt okay. I'm looking for more of those moments, while remaining true to myself and my pledge to work actively on the things I believe in. I'm hoping for balance, just like our Questioner. Looking forward to Sunday. Love to all.
Hi Mary,
Thank you so much for the suggestions! I will put Good Material onto my reading list! The book is about 3/4 of the plot and the plan is to get it 1st draft wrapped up by the summer. I was actually shocked by my own worries of its structure after the holiday break (hence asking you for George's office hour email, haha!) and it's been a wonderful Thursday for me to hear detailed, executable advices from George, you and everyone from the club!
Yes, we cheer you on!
Hi Anika! I'm rooting for you to figure this one out--I know you will!
Rummikub rules!
Hi George!
What a pleasant surprise on this Thursday and thank you so much for the suggestions! Lots of homework for me to follow up in the next couple of weeks! I especially love the idea of reading character 1's thread sequentially (instead of jumping back and forth between 1 & 2) and have a feel of how it flows. Maybe character 2 should be in another book. I will make a decision.
I also love the idea of physically mapping out the intersections. I'll put my cork board (and reader's ears) to (hopefully) good use!
Thanks story club for being such a warm and long-attention span place. My Shangri-La in these tumultuous times!
This is such an interesting conundrum. I have a draft of a novel i’ve worked on for years, and it has this same problem. I started ouy writing a kind of 4-person pov ensemble-of-voices novel. Struggled along with it. Realized two of the characters were very important, one not very, one not at all. So much for outlining a plot/concept and sticking to it rigidly. I eliminated one of the characters and her whole story line. The not-very-important character i quickly demoted to secondary background. Then i focused on the two really important characters, and the novel started working much better. But THEN a different secondary character started muscling in. I need a big mallet to beat some of these guys off! Years later, I’m still struggling with the novel. I’ll stop for a while and do other stuff, then get lured back to this crazy obsessive project again. My characters are writing ME. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
I'm also on the Definitely Last Draft of a novel I've been living with for too many years. The character people like the most just walked cheekily into chapter 2 uninvited and stuck around. He is great fun to work with. But I have to remind him now and then that he serves the story and not the other way around. Like you, I've also rebalanced the story quite a bit over the various drafts. Plot too complex, or story maybe too dark. Ya. I definitely feel you!
Sounds like your book is alive and kicking!
Are you sure about that? It seems to me to be an answer to prayer when characters take over the development of the story.
"Yay, oh yay" spoke the novelists, wildly outstretching and lifting the limbs of their arms towards the sky and seeking to see into the blue yonder beyond, "our prayers are answered now that our created characters have taken over development of their stories!"
Quite a notion Carroll, conjuring with which sets the mind boggling 🤣
Both/and 😬
Dear Anika,
greetings from just-another-physicist-on-Story-Club! Seems like your beautiful question got you a few new items in your reading list, hope you'll forgive me for one more suggestion. This article about physicists-writers someone linked (here in SC? or somewhere else? I forgot) is worth reading:
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-novel-became-a-laboratory-for-experimental-physics
A quote from it: "Novelists do not merely gaze inward to create new forms or invent new ways of saying. They look outward, too. They direct their experiments toward the greater patterns of the world. They also stretch space and time, and quiz the substance of reality."
So maybe there is a reason why time stretches and compresses in you novel depending on the point of view?
Have fun with problem-solving in your writing!
Anika.
You are so lovely to reveal yourself as our questioner... and the advice you've been given by George seems very sound. I like also the suggestion offered by Mary G. of finishing --- writing to the end, and then see what you have. I don't write long fiction -- so not a task familiar to me. I do read long fiction --- recently (my winter novel) Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" which is 600 pages in predominantly 1st person. Murakami is clever however to share the narration through letters and stories told by other characters, who also, of course, use the first person. In reading this, i've thought about the challenge to the writer who uses multiple perspectives/narrators of keeping the reader engaged with the given "speaker" of the moment, not pining for another --- this could be a measure, as you're reading her perspective, her story, do you feel impatient to get back to him? or vice versa?
In any case I'm glad fiction found you. And you found Story Club. And glad I found it too!
The Wind Up Bird Chronicles...boy oh. I'm slogging through it. I adored IQ84 but then its subject matter was extreme & perverse & sexy (my favs things) This is just s o s l o w. I'm like "Get out of the damn well already." Not sure I'm going to make it to end. I also find the N dull as a dish. No wonder Kimiko split. 🕶️
I haven't picked up a Murakami since high school! Will give it a go!
As for through letters and stories, you mean an epistolary novel like Bram Stoker's Dracula!?
Unless I completely misunderstand the question, I would, if I was in this situation:
1. Write all of Character #1’s scenes all the way to the end of the book since they seem to be coming through easiest for you.
2. Pause only in those sections where Character #1 & #2 overlap and write those next.
3. Go back, using the momentum you got from writing the overlap sections, and write all of the Character #2 sections from the beginning.
4. Revise (of course) which in this case would mentally look like, to me, when a cartoon cat is making a giant sandwich and shuffles the ingredients together like two stacks of playing cards.
… hope this helps in any way.
Thanks Robert! Books is about 3/4 done and I was actually thinking about finishing character 1 and coming back for character 2! I think to come back developing from the intersections to develop character 2 is a good and new idea!
I rarely post here, though I am a faithful reader, and I second many of the sentiments expressed above. These are difficult days, and having this (always interesting and thought-provoking) series to follow is a real comfort. I am another one of those people who has been working on a dual protagonist novel with periodic “intersections,” so I too have experienced many of the problems that can come up. Mine also are not solved yet, but I wanted to second Rosanne’s paragraph 3 above regarding tying oneself to symmetry just for symmetry’s sake. A fairly aggressive pruning of some alternating chapters made the beginning of my story more polished, accessible and good enough to be accepted for a respected workshop.
As for examples of dual or multi-protagonists (though not necessarily first-person narrators) I might suggest Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land and All the Light We Cannot See. I think A. S. Byatt’s Possession is also sort of a version of this, though some of the “narration” is in epistolary form. And I’m tossing in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet for our STEM-inclined author, because Durrell says in his note at the beginning of Balthazar, the second book, that the structure of the Quartet is inspired by (his understanding) of Relativity. For our purposes here, Justine (the first book) and Balthazar cover the same events, but—no surprise—tell very different stories. I’m looking forward to the other suggestions people come up with.
Great suggestions Cynthia and, in particular, I'm pleased to second your recommendation of a read of Anthony Doerr's 'All the Light We Cannot See'. For those for whom this is a-new-to-me novel here's an extract from Wikipedia's reference article about it: 'It revolves around the characters Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French girl who takes refuge in her great-uncle's house in Saint-Malo after Paris is invaded by Nazi Germany, and Werner Pfennig, a bright German boy who is accepted into a military school because of his skills in radio technology. The book alternates between paralleling chapters depicting Marie-Laure and Werner.'
Hi Cynthia and Rob, thanks for the suggestion! I've got quite a bit of thoughts on this book, as it has been mentioned multiple times by the fellow story clubbers last year, and therefore posted a separate, long-ish comment.
A.'s dilemma brought to mind wonderful multi-voiced novels, only one of which gives equal weight to every voice.
I wonder if turning, or returning, to works that deftly, meaningfully allow multiple voices to speak might provide some inspiration or guidance.
How about Go Tell It on the Mountain? It's one of those texts that seems to be about everything: desire, faith, doubt, race, racism, North vs. South, etc., etc. It begins and ends with patient, nuanced chapters focused on sensitive 14-year-old John Grimes. If the novel consisted of only these two chapters, it would be a wonderful thing. What Baldwin does in between those chapters makes the novel a masterpiece: each of the adults in John's life (especially his remote, hostile stepfather) gets a chapter of their own, a chapter that allows us to see what John can't.
Also wonderful: To the Lighthouse, where (though Woolf dips freely in and out of multiple consciousnesses) the focus of the long opening chapter is Mrs. Ramsay--a focus that Woolf deliberately shifts in the brief, ruthless "Time Passes" chapter, and then again in the end.
Also, every chance I get, I recommend Neil Mukherjee's A Life Apart. At first it seems to give equal weight to two characters : Ritwik, a brilliant young man at Oxford in retreat from a scarring childhood in Mumbai; and an idealistic 19th-century Englishwoman who finds the politics and mores of the Raj difficult to parse. The balance between the voices changes intriguingly...
But the exception:
Geoff Ryman's 253 gives every character equal attention. The novel takes place on the Tube, and every passenger (if I recall correctly) gets a one-page 253-word snapshot or vignette. There are 252 passengers; chapter 253 somehow (I read it years ago!) brings them all together.
Hullo, dear Peter, and Questioner, and All, such a surprising pleasure to meet VWoolf in this context!:))
…because yes, her shiftings in and out of characters perspectives are so precise in terms of meaning/reasons, portraying usually not only the character and/or situation, and/or possible antagonists etc., and situation and or internal priorieties as much as setting wise external ones, etcetc..
It’s economical a n d so rich at once.
When reading the first 3-4 pages, esp. the first 2, I was in awe how she made clear the little boys disappointment from the rude self obsessed „objectivity“ of his father, in just one short line the father says.
She prepares this first emotional climax, but so subtle prepared, it throws one right into the kid‘s soul, without any further bits.
So, I think, in terms of effective proportion, it may be not really be necessary to think in quantities..:) Sorry for all mistakes, I’m not a native speaker.:)
Hi Peter, thank you so much for the suggestions. I haven't read those books except Woolf's and will give them ago! Would start from Baldwin!
I'm revising my multi-viewpoint novel now. My character 1 is the protagonist, characters 2 and 3 have smaller parts. Character 3 is essential, but some beta readers tell me to ditch character 2 as too tangential, but I'm perversely trying to embed him more deeply. Not sure how that will turn out.
I love multi-viewpoint novels. Years ago I read Alison Lurie's Foreign Affairs--several times I loved it so much. With this caveat: times 2 and 3 I read only Characters 1's sections. She was delightful. Character 2 not so much. As I remember, their plots don't connect until the last chapter, though there's a thematic connection.
Yet another pattern for knitting a two character or more viewpoint novel. Fascinating!
And I've added 'Foreign Affairs' to my look-out-list. Than you Joan.
Mid Summer here in the South Pacific so lots of reading in the shade by the lake. (I'm reading book two of Cixin Lui's Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy in which this: "What a literary character does in ten minutes might be a reflection of ten years' experience. You can't be limited to the plot of a novel-you've got to imagine her entire life and what actually gets put into words is just the tip of the iceberg.")
So Dear Questioner, It occurs to me that you are creating not one but two literary figures in your novel. How well do you know them? Their entire lives? Are they speaking, acting of their own accord. Do they Wisper to you, on the train, at dinner, in your dreams and upon waking.
If so,
They will tell you what to do.
Great question, great answer, great conversation started-up and beginning to roll right along sparked by the opening Q & A.
So glad to find signposts to extant two character stories and novels. I'm looking to learn, for starters, from following up on the recommendation to take 'Coffee with Oliver'. Thanks.
Once again, this is timely. Thank you George. I am reading 'Horse' by Geraldine Brooks. I am about one quarter way into the novel and so far there are four very different voices and two time periods. Flicking through, I see more voices coming. I am amazed had how sthe author brings each character and their time alive. Some have intersected and some are yet to. I have been wondering how she chooses what to reveal at what time, the pace, the specific details in each characters' time, place and back story. Gradually my experience of each is adding up to themes that stretch across time and some persistent rough patches we still experience today. Also interesting, the impact of characters' conscious or not so conscious use of conversation and sensitivity or insensitivity to each other as a source of connection or disconnection that escalates and drives the story foward. Out of all her research she must have made many choices about what to include and when, and what to cut. I have not written anything novel length but am considering a persistent idea of an historical novel and ways to approach it.
Thank you so much Helen and will put Horse onto my list! What got me hooked on multiple POVs was Cloud Atals. But of course many books and TVs/movies before that. Also more recently All the Light We Cannot See. Something about the structure, like the Flower Duet!
Aw, that last comment... "By being in touch with our inner wisdom, via talking about stories, we remind ourselves that yes, outward conditions notwithstanding, wisdom does exist, and we can get at it (and get better at it)." Yes. I believe that stories connect us, and remind us of all that we share - the beautiful, the ugly, and all those complex shades in between. Perhaps this is why I can't handle the news, and read strictly poetry these days? I don't know. But I need my dose of beauty, and kindness.
As for the two narrating voices, this is all very interesting. I personally had a lot of fun in one story playing with being in one character's head, then the other's, then in neither, by writing dialogue only and not interpreting it in any way. So the only thing I have to add is: have fun with it. Play. See what direction excites you the most, or surprises you the most. I personally love being surprised! In the story I speak of, I had no plan to move the narration from one person to the other. I just sat down and began writing and this is what happened. I thought to myself, oh, this is interesting, and continued writing. In my experience, the excitement the writer feels usually transfers well to the reader. But so does struggle :)
I can appreciate the two character issues. I’m working on a novel and from the outset, I envisioned a story where two characters lived parallel lives, their journeys mirroring each other in unexpected ways before ultimately converging. I wanted to explore the tension of lives running side by side, seemingly disconnected, only for the reader to realize how intertwined they truly are.
But as I’ve been drafting, I’m starting to feel the weight of the structure. Switching between perspectives in each chapter is becoming unwieldy—sometimes I lose the thread of one character’s arc, or the transitions feel jarring rather than seamless.
George suggested a radical solution: write each character’s story separately. At first, I resisted. The whole point of the novel is the interplay between these two lives—how could I pull them apart? But now, I’m starting to see the value in this approach. If I write each story independently, I might be able to better define their arcs, make their voices distinct, and ensure that when they do intersect, it feels inevitable rather than forced.
There’s also the lingering question of whether I should strip it back entirely—remove one character’s perspective and let the novel unfold through the eyes of my original main character. It’s tempting. Simpler, maybe. But would it still carry the weight I want? Would it lose the sense of duality that first drew me to this story?
Right now, I feel caught between two instincts: to trust my original vision or to let go and experiment with a new approach. There’s frustration in that, but also excitement. The story is still revealing itself to me.
Noticing that you writing "strip it back entirely" gave me pause to find this query surfacing: what led you to conceive that the form that is right for the two-character story that you are working to help bring out is 'the novel'?
Might your endeavour, I find myself musing, be better framed as a goal of writing a novella or an extended short story or as a short story?
Sincere question, sincere interest in any reply you may care to make Lisa.
The piece started out as a short story. It’s a great point. It is more like a novella. I’m now considering two separate short stories one with each of the characters appreciate your comments.
Dear A in STEM. Aloha. Lawyer in STEM, just completed PhD and first novel so I'm feeling close to you in this strangish space but are you a bench scientist, like, as I worked my ass off during the pandemic, managing a large team which negotiated contracts for Covid and cancer research, so did absolutely no writing besides sending barrages of silent electronic messages to people after hours after wine alone in a flat. What a shit two years that was. Anyway, about your voice thing. My advice: go to or attend online readings, speak to the writers afterwards. If they're not too exhausted and are kind they'll give you advice like keep writing and the gestalt will emerge, or, you don't have to write the entire novel in the first person, or tell you about a book they read which deals with your issue in an amazing way. S.
The first novel that came to mind with separate POV characters is Penelope Lively's The Photograph.