The basic plot essentially follows a man through his lifetime adventure from his own comfortable world into one of magic. His story is very well developed and (hopefully) fairly powerful. The twist is this: he is not actually the main character at all. Instead the book is a tightly woven collection of short stories written in first person by the people he affected most. I'm doing this both to illustrate some of the themes in the book, but also to play off of the byzantine type politics that are prevalent in this world. Each story can stand alone but also has threads in common with all the others.

To do this, I need to be able to write in at least four distinct narratives. I'm hoping that if drop into each character deep enough that will mostly handle itself, but I'm open to any suggestions in conciously changing a writing style without sacrificing power.

Also, I need to be able to keep the reader constantly in tune and as sympathetic as possible to the protagonist without actually using his POV at all. Sometimes even from the POV of his perceived enemy. Anyone know anything about writing a main character who is not a main character?

Plot development is also a concern. Each story must have a beginning, middle, and end, but there must also be developements in the "master plot" that might not even be noticed if they were read piece-meal. I'm afraid I'm not too educated on the particulars of episodic writing.

To be honest, I'm a little apprehensive about trying it. I've only seen one book written this way, and I dare not compare myself to the writers of that one

Any words of wisdom will be taken to heart. Thanks.

[This message has been edited by Jsteg1210 (edited April 15, 2004).]
 

There's certainly no reason you can't do this, and as long as your characters are clear and interesting they will carry it.

 

Sounds like a great idea. My senior honors thesis was a collection of short stories that I tried to interweave a little more loosely than you've described - and I had varying degrees of success.

It is pretty ambitious.

My biggest problem was when a story that contained an essential element of the "master plot" wasn't working. Obviously wasn't working. I had one story that just didn't fit the collection stylistically, thematically, in a lot of ways. I had to scrap it (I still hope to revise it and submit it on its own), and taking that one story out left huge plot holes in three others.

I think that's something you'll have to face, but with sufficient time to rewrite, I think it's doable.

As for writing a main character who isn't - I think even though you'll never use his POV, he'll still be a main character, and I think that's fine.

The New Testament is a fine example of literature not written from the main character's point of view.

I'd say go for it. Even if you don't pull it off, but you'll learn a lot in the process, and you'll still probably come out of it with one or two stories that are really good on their own.

Edited to add:

Please don't anyone think I'm considering the NT as fiction. I'm only bringing it up as literature.

[This message has been edited by danquixote (edited April 15, 2004).]
 

As for your question of making the styles different enough for each story from a different point of view, if you develop your characters well enough, and really get into each point of view, your style should be different enough because each story will be told by a character who is different from any one else. There are character questionaires you can use to really "get into" your characters and help you know them very well.
 

Your POV character is going to be the filter through which all of these other stories are told. More than that, he's going to be the editor deciding which stories are told. Even more, he's going to be a factor in which stories even occur in your milieu.

Yes, Sherlock Holmes and The Great Gatsby and all that. Go back and read them, and realize something. The reason those stories work is because the authors never lose sight of the fact that it is Watson and Nick with whom we sympathize. We are reading their stories, not the stories of Holmes and the glitterati.

Sure, the story of a protagonist who basically concerns himself with understanding the people around him can succeed...as long as you don't make the mistake of thinking that because he's more interested in other people than himself, that we will be more interested in them. No, we keep reading because we find him interesting, it is his take on things that we want (obviously, the same things are true for a similar female POV character, but Jsteg1201's character happens to be a him of some sort).
 

The first rule of writing I ever learned is to write from the heart. I know it sounds sappy, but the truth is that even the most uneducated reader has an uncanny knack for knowing when a writer is being honest.

I like the input that everyone is sending, and my current "to read" list has a few more titles (although I already own both "Characters and Viewpoint" and "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy"). My thanks to all who replied so far.
 

Of course, now that I'm reading your original post, I see that my comments had nothing to do with what you're trying to do here. You see, when you said that the guy being followed is not the main character, and that you don't use the main character's POV, I assumed that this would be a story in a unified POV about four other main characters known to the POV character.

So here we go with clarifying a few terms.

Is this man the main character of the book or not? Is he the protagonist or not? From my re-reading of your post, I'm getting that he is not a POV character, his story is told by four other narrators. Why do all the stories involve him (to the extent of telling his whole story) if he is neither the main character nor the protagonist?

Going with DQ's NT angle, there are two questions. Are the accounts of the same events from several points of view or are they chronologically separated? Is there going to be a messianic theme to this central character (i.e. the reason you can't really use his POV)?

Also, how familiar are you with first person? Because multiple intertwining first person accounts sounds to me like a train wreck in the making.
 

Setting: Real world parallel about 1950's technology level with different geography. prehistorically people with magic ruled the human race, but as time progressed they became pursecuted and hunted, and now are have been wholed up in a remote empire for about 700 years building power so that they might take their rightful place again (Japan pre-world war two with a twist). The rest of the world has long forgotten about magic except in legend, but people with the Talent are still born occassionally out in the world. Specialized mages known as Seekers are sent to find and recruit them (or kill them if they refuse to come).

Caleb is the most powerful mage ever known, and he was born outside the empire. He doesn't know he has magic, although it has aided him in the rebellion he is leading (think about a cross between Ireland and Vietnam) when a seeker finds him. He refuses to go. Driven mainly by cowardice, the Seeker betrays Caleb by telling the "Enemy" where Caleb's family is. After they are killed, Caleb disappears for a few days and the Seeker gives up and goes home. When on the boat, the Seeker discovers two things: Caleb, having nothing left to keep him there, appears on the boat and agrees to go back, and the entire enemy army (about a million strong) has completely vanished.

End story one.

The other stories are equally intricate and consist of Caleb rising to essentially a General in the empire while working from the inside out to destroy it. In the end, it is not him at all who fulfills an old profecy and scatters the Guild, but a young man he became mentor to just prior to his death.

One good thing to note is that in this universe, Mages use a philisophical constant, or Truth, to amplify their power. There are schools for a few common Truths, but people who use their own are known as Rogues and are usually much weaker, except Caleb of course. Only in the end do you discover Caleb's Truth : I am alone.

Each story, like I said before, is told from someone who had close contact with him for that period (the first by the Seeker who found him, for instance.) There are a couple reasons. One: Caleb needs to remain mysterious in a lot of ways, I don't want the reader to see into his head. Two: Caleb is not a human character, he's superhuman. I think I might actually loose sympathy for him if I drop into his POV.

Does that answer your questions? I've got it all up here *taps head* except for the words.

PS-

If I read a story in a year entitled Marven and the Mage's Guild, I won't be happy
 

1. Seekers- I tried dusting off my rusty ol' brain, because I've heard this term before in another fantasy novel for people who did the exact same thing. Anybody else remember? You might want to use a different name.

2. BE SURE that your POV characters have VERY close interaction with the main character. Lot's of dialogue, lot's of interaction. You may not want to reveal too much about him, but you'll want to reveal ALOT from a secondary perspective.
 

So, as long as the first person accounts only have a minor amount of overlap, I think this is doable. We're back to Fitzgerald and Doyle again, of course, but that's okay (side note here, Lt. Hornblower is written in the POV of a contemporary rather than Hornblower's POV, the only one of that series to be thus written, and it was actually quite successful).

Your fellow Caleb is the main character, but the individual narrators each function as the protagonist of their own sections. I would suggest that you write this as four "books" in a single novel. The first book is "Seeker's report" or something like that, the last one is "Disciple's Testiment" or something.

For tips and tricks on making your main character sympathetic to the reader even when seen through the eyes of his enemies, read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis and Machiavelli's The Prince. The dramatic irony in Screwtape's view of the world is pretty simple, whatever he hates, we love, whatever he desires repels us. Machiavelli's irony is much more complex, and scholars could argue themselves silly over how much is intentional and how much is accidental, but it gives you a great voice for a villianous first person narrator. Also note that both are pretty good examples of making a completely unsympathetic narrator throughly enjoyable to read (which is going to be very important as well).

Some of your plot elements might need a little bit of de-hokeyfication...destroying the million man enemy army, for instance. But overall, I think that the idea should work okay.
 

I'll consider reducing the strength of the enemies army, but one of the plot points is that they had started a massive, unstoppable, invasion in response to Caleb's victories just before he is betrayed. I'm hoping that in the context of the story the readers will accept it the way they would a legend or biblical tale (some people like hokey).

There will likely be allusions to events from other stories. I'll have to be careful about recountings. Sounds like most of my problems are related to book-keeping and style.

Thanks for the help.
 

My wife says that Piers Anthony did the same thing/something similar in his old novel Battle Circle. Maybe look at it if you can find it. (think it's out of print)
 

Also read OSC's The Worthing Saga as a novel in which the story centers around a character who is almost never actually the viewpoint character. (Is Abner Doon ever a viewpoint character? I'll have to reread it one of these days.)

As for using different styles, I'll be the first to tell you it's hard to do. However, I think the first thing I would do would be to type a chapter or two of a novel that has the sort of voice you're looking for. Doing this will help you recognize little turns of phrase, quirks of the voice, etc. that will get you in the mindset for writing in that voice. I don't actually know if that would work, but it sounds like fun to me. . . .
 

JSteg- Yes, changing styles IS very hard, but not altogether that uncommon. A good example would be Anne Rice's Witching Hour series. Each chapter switches to a seperate viewpoint, and is written in a somewhat different style. In my recent novel, I took this concept a little further, making drastic style changes to each character's perspective.

A few tips I found: you can change PARTS of your style, but other parts need to stay consistant. For example, take each character and figure out stylistic quirks based on personality, education level, vocabulary, regionalization, etc. Make subtle changes to the way they speak, the way they describe things, etc. Once you get a "feel" for each character, you almost don't even have to make those style changes yourself---the characters do it for you.

Consistancy in style? You're going to want to use similar formats for overall dialogue and paragraph pacing and composition---i.e. I write a style of dialogue that intends to maintain a fast pace. Once character will cut another character off in mid-sentence, characters will stutter, take long pauses, etc. The tricks I establish must be consistant throughout the novel, otherwise the reader will get tired of "adjusting" to the new variances.

Really, one of the biggest pieces of advice I could give is make each character as real, vivid, and original in your mind as possible. In doing this, the style WILL be different, your technical aspects WILL be consistant, and you'll be pleased with the work when completed.

So what if, instead of the whole army vanishing, only the ammo disappeared? Then you would have mass surrenders, negotiations for the million odd prisoners, recognition of political whichness or whatness, and so on.

Or perhaps you want to be a bit more retributive?

Fine, make all their weapons malfunction. Anyone that tries to fire one just blows himself up. Same end result, with the grim subtraction of most of those stupid or malicious enough to pull the triggers.