3

I have several monologues of 6 characters. Each monologue starts with a little reflection, then tells an experience or an event the character had to deal with, and finally, concludes with something maybe useful for reader...

  • I have different number of monologues for each character (20-30)

  • Each monologue has length of 4-5 pages

  • There are multiple stories happening simultaneously and some characters know each other at some stage in history

  • Sometimes in a monologue a character is the narrator of the actions of other main characters

  • Later on, all characters will be involved in a main event, all of them will be part of a huge event to finish the story...

  • I have a complete story but told from characters POV, when mixing all monologues a story exposes, but I want to know the best aproach to develop it.

The way I have the story is:

1.Char 1, monologue 1 
2.Char 1, monologue 2 
3.Char 2, monologue 1
4.Char 2, monologue 2 
5.Char 1, monologue 3
6.Char 3, monologue 1 
7.Char 3, monologue 2
8.Char 4, monologue 1 
9.Char 5, monologue 1
10.Char 6, monologue 1 
11.Char 1, monologue 4
12.Char 2, monologue 3
13.Char 4, monologue 2
14.Char 4, monologue 3 
15.Char 5, monologue 2
16.Char 3, monologue 3
17.Char 6, monologue 2
18.Char 1, monologue 5
19.Char 2, monologue 4
20.Char 2, monologue 5
21.Char 2, monologue 6
22.Char 1, monologue 6
23.Char 1, monologue 7 
etc...

Why this order?

Each character tells their POV, and when sorting it in a cronological order, this is the result

I do not know if it will be convenient to tie each monologue with a short Narrators stuff, something that completes history or tells us something that characters didn't do...

Could you please suggest a way to make this kind of history formed by 6 characters POV nice to readers?

I was trying a 3rd person approach but when I red the history, I felt a lack of impact that is given by telling the history as POV...

I want the reader to feel close to a specific character's point of view

6
  • 2
    I must say reading the question was a bit confusing and chaotic to understand what you are trying to ask. But maybe that is the problem with your approach to this story too? I would suggest to try and write the main event first and then write a story up to that event for each character seperately. And only then try to mix them up like your example. That will make it much more easy to make the story readable. Commented Nov 6, 2018 at 9:11
  • I agree with @TotumusMaximus if they do not work separately meshing them won't help (it might cover issues but that is as likely to hurt as help) and mixing ready stories should be much easier than planning and writing them mixed up. By looking for synergies and connections between stories you can then do the planning properly. Commented Nov 6, 2018 at 11:01
  • Actually, I already have the material for each character, I even have them sorted, the issue is how to tell the story, I do not know if each monologue should be treated as a chapter, and just put them all together...
    – edgarmtze
    Commented Nov 6, 2018 at 17:52
  • Make the monologues journal or blog entries? This way the characters are writing for themselves and explains the structure of each monologue. Like "Each year it gets more difficult to keep meeting your friends. Today I ran into X in..." Commented Nov 6, 2018 at 19:48
  • And when it comes the final event, the issue could be solved to tell the history in third person?
    – edgarmtze
    Commented Nov 6, 2018 at 19:50

2 Answers 2

1

So I would highly recommend you look at K.A. Applegate's Animorphs series of books. The main series contains 54 books with 4 additional Megamorphs titles (featuring the Main characters but had little to no impact on the main title books... 3 of the four featured events that were undone by the end of their story) and 4 "Chronicles" novels which were pretty much prequel events to the main title. All books are written in First Person Prospective though the narrative character will change. Incidentally they had

The main book titles featured one of the six characters (Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, Marco, and Ax) doing the narration, with some exceptions (Books 19, 34, 42, 47, and 54). These books would also follow an ordered rotation of narrators that was changed late in the series. From books 1-40 (inclusive) the rotation was ordered such that each character got two books out of every ten, except Tobias and Ax (who got one book a piece out of every 10, due to being notoriously difficult to write). This saw that each character would consistently get books that ended in the following digits:

Jake (1, 6) Rachel (2, 7) Tobias (3)* Cassie (4, 9) Marco (5, 0) Ax (8)*

Starting on book 41 on, The rotation followed that the narrators would cycle Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, Marco, Ax so that the full rotation occurred every six books.

The Megamorphs Titles were generally seen as not having much impact and were basically a few breathers before or after some major plot element. The big difference of the Megamorphs from the main title was that all books were narrated by all six characters over the course of the story, though it was as needed and not as in any particular order. Three of the four dealt with time travel in someway, so while the events are remembered by the characters, the events got hit with a reset button and undone at the end. And two highlight that these events were going to be reset, at least two books had a character die and thus, was not narrator until the death was undone... if at all for that book.

At the time they were written, main title books were written once a month, so the Megamorphs usually served to delay the release of the major event for another month... or serve to introduce a narrative device that the next book relied on (The first was after a major victory for the heroes in book 7 and just before the first book Ax would narrate in full, allowing readers to get a feel for his POV. The second one was right book was just after another major victory in book 18 and just before a very emotional book 19 which is the first one to feature two narrators (possibly placed to emphasize the way the switch worked). The third occurred before book 30, which was another emotionally heavy story and the fourth occurred before the new rotation was introduced.).

Finally, the Chronicles Books normally followed the POV of a secondary character in full, and deals with issues that occurred prior to the events of Book one, though all of them are framed as the protaganist recounting memories during some point in the main line series (The novel "Visser" does not have a Chronicles title, but it's structurally the same thing... it also is the only book to pick up directly from events of the previous main series). The Hork-Bajir Chronicles is the only Cronicles that featuse multiple First Person narrators (four of them) and, which follows the Megamorph format.

As the books had numbered chapters with no titles, any time a narrative transition occurred, it was always during a chapter break. The new narrator would be named (The Chapter would read "Chapter 6: Jake" and followed by a picture of the narrator, normally taken from the cover art or recent book with the character) and the next chapter would feature that chapter's narrator, even if it was the same character (though this was rare).

In the Main Line books that did this transition, the character who was the narrator in that rotation would not be introduced in every chapter in this format, but rather, only when the guest narrator was transitioned out and the regular would resume their narrative. The only exception to this was book 54, as it was the last story in the series, so it took turns describing everyone's reaction to the aftermath, though it did start with the proper character in the ordinary rotation (Rachel).

I know it's a lot to describe, but this was mostly to show that the system was largely consistent and was used to great effect through out the series.

/* The reason for this was that both characters were very hard to right consistent stories like the other four. In the case of Tobias (who had been trapped as a Hawk morph in the first book), he filled the team's scout role and spent significant time alone and isolated from the other characters. Most of his books were very introspectively narrated or required him to go on solo missions without much in the way of back-up. Ax, being an alien among five humans, was also featured in stories that were mostly him having long solo moments and often focused on him being put into moral dilema's that forced him to choose between his loyalties to his Honorable Warrior Race and his Human allies that he worked with, specifically Jake, who Ax early on professed an oath to serve (Honorable Warrior thing...) but realized Jake was not always the most orthodox leader by his alien standards. He would often keep information from the rest of the team because of this and had to work his way through the ramifications of those choices.

2
  • Nice answer, will check the books!
    – edgarmtze
    Commented Dec 1, 2018 at 5:37
  • Glad you like... they're fairly quick reads... I could do a single main line title in about a day if I was really enthralled with it. The trick will be finding them, as I think they are out of print and while there were websites that had a PDF of the book, but those have been taken down due to copyright issues.
    – hszmv
    Commented Dec 3, 2018 at 15:17
0

I would incorporate their "monologues" into the actual chapters, or have chapters alternate between story and monologue. With as many as 6 characters, writing from so many points of view can be really chaotic, so I would have someone read it and ask them if they are confused or lost. Depending on how you execute this, it could go either way.

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.