Thursday 3 October 2013

Booking Through Thursday: October 3rd

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly meme held over at Booking Through Thursday.
What's it all about? Well it's simple, each Thursday they post a question, and then we (the bloggers) respond with our answers.

Q. Which is better (or preferred), books with multiple character points of view? Or stories that stick to just one or two at most? And Why?

A. I am a huge fan of dual narration. I've read a lot of books which have used dual narration and I always like seeing things from more than one perspective.
I also love writing in dual narration.
For me I do really like having just one point of view, but I would have to say that I always enjoy books more when there's dual narration. Particularly first person dual narration.
Examples of books that do this really well are Dash and Lily's Book of Dares and The Future of Us both of these books were written by two authors, so that really helps in developing the two voices.
Some books I enjoy that have dual narration that were written by just the one author are the Across the Universe series and Someone Else's Life.

What I don't tend to like is when there are more than two voices. I tend to find that when that happens, I'm more interested in one or two of the voices, and want to rush through the rest.
An example of this would be The Last Song, because although I liked this book, I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had only had two narratives.

The problem I think, is that if you're trying to fit so many voices into an average sized novel, you're not going to get the same depth of character development as you would in a story with only one or two.

So in conclusion (I feel like I'm writing essays for uni again!) I like both single narrative and dual narrative, but I don't like having more than two voices.
If I had to choose to only read one style for the rest of my life. It would be dual narrative.

How about you? What's your view on this topic? Leave me a comment and let me know, and don't forget to head over to Booking Through Thursday share your thoughts there as well.

2 comments:

  1. I am currently writing in dual narration, and third person- which is totally new to me, but surprisingly loving it. I actually find it a lot more interesting, since it does reveal more. I'm pretty much the same on more than two, a ton of personality gets left behind, and really, when there's more than two, the pacing gets mucked up too. Really thought out essay! :P

    Thanks for stopping by mine.

    Kirsty @ StudioReads

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    Replies
    1. Thanks.
      This is actually a subject that I've thought about a lot, so I had quite a bit to write about it. I'm glad you liked how I put it across.

      I used to always write in 3rd person, but now I've found that I love 1st person. So the book I'm working on at the moment is dual 1st person narrative.

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