When Multiple Characters' Stories Intersect

Writing the crisis of a story with more than one point of view

Photo by Josephine Bevan on Unsplash

For some time now there’s been a distinct trend in published novels to have multiple viewpoints and shifting timelines; a story told chronologically, from the lens of one character—first or third person—is feeling rare at this point.

But regardless of number of voices and threads of time, regardless of what went before, or how denouement takes shape, the point of convergence is the crisis. Or, the crisis takes place at the point-of-convergence.

This is yet another principle you can mess with—if you want. But you might be struggling with a story right now, and the struggle might be with the principle.

Each POV character has a reason for being. You can have other characters populating the story; they do tend to show up for the party. But your POV folks need a reason for this status; why does your reader need to be inside this person’s mind, heart, and soul?

The question: how many POVs can the story sustain? Again, the nature of the crisis, and who is part of that, might serve to answer this question. You might discover, as you near the point of crisis, that a secondary, even tertiary, character has a more significant role than you’d anticipated, and may require earlier and full development.

In the photo of the band: a bass player, a banjo, a soprano sax, a singer. Everyone made it to the gig. Or if there’s a no-show keyboard player it’s because her instrument got lodged into the subway door and her whole day’s been like that, and that is going to connect with this. The fact that she missed the gig, and what that means, will be her intersecting with the crisis. If you’re struggling with this character—your analogous one who didn’t get to the gig on time—question what is the significance of the “missing.”

What is “crisis”?

Back in school days it was called the “climax,” back when we were handed the Freytag pyramid of “conflict,” “rising action,” “climax,” and “resolution.” But there’s significant difference between “crisis” and “climax” as it was explained all those years ago, and that difference is key when dealing with more than one viewpoint character.

‘Crisis’ is the time of reckoning, a final challenge that emerges, sits at the edge of blowing up—then blows up mightily!

‘Conflict’—just to clarify the school-days terms—is the daily grinding that shapes and polishes us. As students, we were handed those models of ‘human vs self;’ ‘human vs human;’ human vs world.’ We can add: human vs technology or machine, — vs nature, — vs supernatural, — vs monster…

Here’s another look at ideas of conflict.

An Alternative to that Other Old Pyramid

The crisis is the “versus” piece, and the external, or some event the world throws in the character/s’ path, or the culmination of challenges evolving from the conflict. The event can have a traceable path leading to it, or might be triggered by some coincidental piece.

And a few thoughts on the possible role of coincidence.

Just One Thing... Coincidence!

With your entourage of characters, there is one point of crisis that connects all in varying degrees and ways.

Climax

And ‘climax’? There can be as many climaxes as there are characters. That is, each might have their own path, their own fall-out from the crisis, and their own resolution.

Perhaps the conflating of crisis/climax occurs because it surely can be a rapid one-two, with climax more often than not immediately following crisis. And if your story is a one-viewpoint story, it’s not so significant to separate these two.

But with multiple viewpoints, it’s becomes so. And makes it interesting. This is, no doubt, part of the draw to including multiple POV. (Though at times I wonder if it’s just an inability to make a decision… )

We’ve talked before, about the ways in which writing principles come about, emerging from being “what works” many times over. Because there is the fact that there are always exceptions. It has to come down to “what serves the story”—all ideas that we’ve discussed before here.

Working forwards and backwards

You might have clear thoughts as to the timing and role of the crisis in each of the lives of your characters. Or you may have approached with only one character in mind, and are now working to see it in relation to the others. Or you may have an idea of how it all shakes out for each one of your set o’ folks, but you’re not exactly sure how they get there.

You may be looking backwards to build to the crisis that’s in your head. What is going to happen with and to your characters in order to get where they’re going? How are they going to react? What choices are they making?

Sideways — or centre-out

A “sideways” approach is when you know how the crisis will affect one or more of the characters, but not all; you can see in your mind (or you’ve already written through) how this has worked, but now other characters are stepping up to experience their time at the plate.

An example: a family is coming to pieces, with one spouse wanting to walk away from the marriage and the other wanting otherwise, and with one teen-aged kid dealing with depression, and the other, a younger ’tweener, has some enormous surprise to spring on the family.

Let’s say, in our illustrative story, that the point of crisis is a house-fire. All you know at this point in your writing process is that the tweener is the one to discover the fire and sound the alarm—and save the entire family. This is going to be a watershed moment for this character—his internal drive has been a need to be seen, heard, and recognized.

From this point-of-crisis, you might build the story, centre-out. You might ask yourself questions of: is the fire started—deliberately or accidentally?—by one of the characters? What is the nature of the fire? How much damage does it do? And to what? Is something significant—beyond the family members—saved?

How does each member of the family react to the fire and the loss? Is there any way in which it is not wholly a negative for one?

As you sift through, and write the stories of each of these characters, in relation to the fire/crisis, motivations, values, emotions, reactions, etc., emerge.

You could take the point of crisis, and write and re-write from each character, leading to each iteration of growth and realization (or lack of).

Some time ago now, I posted about internal and external motivation and goals. It connects with what is here. You might think of the crisis as external/tangible, and the climax as internal, the emotionally-driven piece. I say “might”—a crisis can be an intangible piece. I don’t want to create boxes here! This is about approach, a way to see your process.

And mostly a way to work with a set of point-of-view characters; at some point, they do come together. If someone is left out of the critical moment, there’s probably a solid reason why—and that’s part of the story, too.

The band begins to play. Everybody gets their 32 bar solo, and there’s improvising. But there are returns to the melody too, to a particular riff, or to a mood. The key holds as does the time signature. Until it changes, they’re a group.