What could I do to write a fictional story with a lot of action without applying too many character perspective changes?

Question

I'm writing a fictional(science fiction) story. Currently, I'm on a chapter that has a lot perspective changes, and I'm writing in third person, so my readers can experience things near the protagonists or the main antagonist. I want to apply very little perspective changes to the chapter, but the whole story has a ton of action written into the core of the book's identity. What could I possibly do to apply less character perspective changes?

Answer 1

There isn't a correlation between the amount of action in a story and the number of viewpoints characters.

The determinant of the number of viewpoints is how you chose to tell your story. While it is easier to write immersive stories with fewer viewpoints changes because you don't have to invest word-count in re-establishing engagement every time you change your viewpoint character, George R.R. Martin's 'The Song of Fire and Ice' demonstrates that the viewpoint can change many times every chapter by changing the story thread -- going from King's Landing to Winterfell -- and make for an engaging story.

One method is to change to another viewpoint in another thread of the story at a moment of high tension when the first thread reaches a critical point. When readers are invested and anticipating what will happen and the thread shifts focus to other character in another storyline, they get frustrated -- in a good way -- and keep reading to find out what is going to happen in the previous thread.

Frustrating readers is an effective technique for keeping their attention, as long as they aren't aware of what you are doing -- because then they get annoyed, which is bad. Annoyed readers put down stories and don't pick them back up.

Alternatively, as has been suggested, you can write in an omniscient POV. Lord of the Rings is written in an omniscient POV. It used to be very much the norm in writing but its popularity has faded since the 1950s. While it seems easier to write at first, compared to 1st and 3rd person POVs, the omniscient POV is hard to use effectively.

Answer 2

Currently, I'm on a chapter that has a lot perspective changes....

What could I possibly do to apply less character perspective changes?

A lot of questions here are in the format "How do I do x without doing x.

Flippant answer: "Don't do so much x."
Real answer: "Writing is hard...."

Decide what's important

Make a short list of what's dramatically important for this chapter. Just the character realization moments where things change for them, something internal, an 'Ah-ha' or a 'You bastard!' moment.

There is probably a lot of plot going on, hence the need for so many perspective jumps to follow the action. Pretend for a minute the plot can take care of itself, readers will catch up. What's important is the character 'turns'.

If all the characters are experiencing/realizing the same thing (like a big battle) find the person with the most stakes, the one with the most to lose or the one who's been dealt the worst hand. These are the pivot characters in this chapter.

Robert McKee has a whole lecture on 'Do your scenes turn', explaining that every scene needs to have this character pivot, nudging them through their arc.

I'm suggesting something similar but more ensemble and plot focused. SOME of your characters are going through a 'turn' in this chapter – maybe not the flashiest or the baddest, maybe not the mastervillain or hero. Someone is having a reader-sympathetic 'crisis', whose day gets even worse.

Ignore chronology

Once you have decided what are the important 'turns' and who is having them, you will need to re-structure the chapter to tell that story.

A lot of other plot is still going on, but the reader is grounded in the most important character-turns happening right now. The whole planet is being bombarded, but the story focuses on the one character who colluded with the enemy..., or the character whose family is down on the planet....

Again, maybe not the hero or villain. Not the person whose wicked plans are unfolding, and not the obvious perspective of someone doing their duty on the front lines.

You can go back and explain the big plot later, but you cannot go back and explain the emotional impact of a moment. If the reader watches a character's motivations shift, they 'know' that character.

Leave some to the imagination

Readers are very good at filling in a big picture, often better than any author.

Genre tropes are shortcuts to the reader's memories. Tap their imagination to create an even bigger scope to the conflict, if a bit fuzzy.

Probably counter-intuitive but think what can be implied because it is a stock genre trope. Normally this would be some of your core story conflict, but if it follows the expected genre beats maybe you can get away with showing a smaller part of it, and suggesting the rest (it's done in television all the time because budget and time constraints).

Do less x

Somehow you'll have to do less perspective-hopping to achieve less perspective-hopping.

If this is a pattern set up in previous chapters, so what. This chapter breaks the pattern for 'reasons'.

If the plot is too big and too complicated with too many moving parts to loose any perspectives, this is maybe a structure issue. Too many plot threads are converging in this chapter. Spread them over the previous and next chapters by ignoring the actual timeline and telling the story dramatically instead.