Dealing with large casts

[graychalk]

Hiya everyone! I'm still fairly new to this community, but I've really been enjoying how helpful and encouraging everyone is here. I thought I should come out of lurkdom a bit and say hello. :)

I'd also like to bring up a topic that I hope could get some kind of discussion going, because I've been batting this stuff in my brain for months and I keep going back and forth on the best way to approach this. So... without further rambling, how do you guys deal with writing large casts - especially ones where there are quite a few key characters that would be important enough to warrant their point of views too?

Do you tend to prefer switching between POVs by a break of some sort, or do you brave the omniscient POV and hope it doesn't turn into a mess of head-hopping? And if you do dedicated switches between POVs, when do you make your switches? Within the same scene or do you make it a point to only do it when it's a new scene? Or something else entirely?

I would really love any input on this - it's driving me a bit nuts because I can't seem to find an approach that fits for my fic. :(

Thanks all!

Comments

[lesandytomato]

I think it's really important to decide what you want the readers to know, and which character's thoughts are instrumental in moving the plot along.

If you think it's best if everyone's thoughts are explored, then write in the omniscient P.O.V. Or, you could write the same scene in different character's P.O.V, although that could get repetitive if they're not going through different experiences at the same time.

In the end, how you decide to write should all tie back to you being in control of what you want your readers to know and experience and what will keep the plot going.

Hope this helped. :>