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

[amaresu]

I'm so glad my parents never caught that particular thing, or ignored it entirely, either or. Did it go hand in hand with the D&D will 'turn your kids into satanists who'll axe-murder you in your sleep' thing?

It's okay to dislike 2nd person. I won't judge you for it. ;)

[dhae_knight_1]

Mostly I think he just lumped the whole thing together under the heading of 'role-playing' and thought it was all the same.

Whew! I'm so relieved! :-D

[amaresu]

Ah, I've never understood how role playing is evil. I mean at what age does playing make-believe become satanic? Like eight or so? Or is it the grown adults shouldn't play games things? This is a topic of eternal confusion for me and I think I like it that way.