4 Steps to Writing a Multiple-Point-of-View Novel or Series Without Getting Overwhelmed

Hey everyone! I’m super sorry about getting this out so late. Christmas preparations really bogged me down this week, and I completely forgot to post this!

But, now I’m back with a writing tip, and this is taken from what I myself do, and it works for me. For those of you who don’t know, I am a panster, which means I typically don’t outline before writing. That being said, the tips I am going to share will work equally well for plotters, with one difference. Plotters will basically start from scratch, whereas I used my first draft which I wrote with only a vague outline. I actually explained how I “plotted” my first draft as a panster in this post I wrote years ago. You can check it out here, if you want.

Anyways, I started my medieval fantasy series a few years back, and wrote the first book’s rough draft in three months. I had no intention of writing a series and wanted it to be a standalone, but eventually one of my friends convinced me to write a sequel, so I decided to do it just for her.

My plan–to have twenty-one chapters about the son of the original main character traveling cross country to make an alliance with another country and thwart a war.

What I got–currently six years later, I’m still not finished with this story, which is almost 2,000 pages and one million words, told from multiple points of view.

Obviously no single book can be one million words and expect a lot of readers. So, a couple years ago, I decided to split it into multiple books. However, I quickly realized that I’d need some sort of outline to help keep everything and everyone straight, add the necessary foreshadowing, and make sure I didn’t leave any plot holes or contradictions, especially since I have many points of view. So as I have been rewriting the story into separate books, I have come up with a plan that works for me, and may work for you too. And that is what this post will be addressing.

Step One: Make a List of Every Story Event 

I used a notebook for this step, since it’s easier to write things from a computer to a notebook. You could use your notes app, a notebook, or whatever you use for your writing. 

Whatever you use, put one event per line. You can skip lines if you want, but you don’t have to. You also don’t have to have the events in perfect order of how they happen. Just write them all down for this step. 

For example, say you have two point of view characters, Jessica and Mary, and they are at separate places in your story at this time. Your events might look like this:

Mary runs away from home.

Jessica and John get caught train hopping.

Jessica hears that John’s cousin Mary has gone missing.

Mary comes across a traveling circus and joins it.

Jessica meets John and they attend the ball together.

Jessica and John set out to find Mary (morning).

Step Two: On a Separate Page, Order the Events, Separating the Points of View

If you use a note app or your computer to do this, you could create different documents for each point of view you have. Just make sure they’re separate. It’s very important for this step to view each point of view as it’s own story.

Then, order the events in that point of view in the order they happen. For me, I organized them by “days”. Using the example of Jessica and Mary, Jessica may have something happen on Day 1 and then Day 7, while Mary has something happen on Day 4. Write down under Jessica’s section the events that happen on Day 1 and 7, and under Mary’s, Day 4’s event.

Example:

Jessica

Day 1

Jessica meets John and they attend the ball together.

Day 7

Jessica hears that John’s cousin Mary has gone missing.

Day 8

Jessica and John set out to find Mary (morning)

Jessica and John get caught train hopping.

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Mary

Day 4

Mary runs away from home.

Day 8

Mary comes across a traveling circus and joins it.

Sometimes, you might get multiple POVs having scenes on the same day. Something that can help you later on in the plotting process is if a certain scene takes place at a certain time of day (morning, afternoon, evening, night, midnight, early morning, 3 am, etc), to notate that time of day it’s supposed to happen beside the event (like I have in Jessica’s section).

Do this on a separate page for each point of view you have, then you can move onto the next step. 

One thing to watch out for: if your story requires a lot of traveling via foot, car, horse, plane, etc, make sure you gauge the travel times correctly. You don’t want someone to depart and arrive someplace by car in the same amount of time that another person did by foot.

Step Three: On Another Page, Write All the Events in Chronological Order

If you’re writing on a computer, you could put this in the same document as the one you used in Step One if you wanted, but make sure you keep them separate. 

In this one, you will be combining the events of ALL points of view in order that they happen, again, putting each event on its own line.

Using the above example with Jessica and Mary, this is how you would write it:

Day 1

Jessica meets John and they attend the ball together.

Day 4

Mary runs away from home.

Day 7

Jessica hears that John’s cousin Mary has gone missing.

Day 8

Jessica and John set out to find Mary (morning)

Jessica and John get caught train hopping.

Mary comes across a traveling circus and joins it.

If two separate POVs have events on the same day (like I have happening in Day 8 of the example), don’t worry about figuring out which one goes first yet. Just write them all down under the day you have them happening. 

If you’d like, you could even use a calendar in real life to help order days and such. Even an outdated one works. I use a calendar from 2018 to number my days and hook them up with certain in real life dates. 

Step Four: Number the Order of the Scenes Within the Day

This is where you order your scenes, according to how you will write them in the actual story. If there are four scenes taking place in one day, you number them one through four. This is where the time of day notations come into play. If one scene is set in the early morning, you probably want to write that one first. 

Using the above example’s Day 8, here is how I would do that on a computer.

Day 8

Jessica and John set out to find Mary (morning) (this goes first because it must happen in the morning)

Mary comes across a traveling circus and joins it. (Chronologically, in my mind, this scene happens before the train scene.)

Jessica and John get caught train hopping.

This is the last step if you are doing this on a computer.

On paper, I write the numbers beside the lines in Step Three like below:

Day 8

Jessica and John set out to find Mary (morning) (1)

Jessica and John get caught train hopping. (3)

Mary comes across a traveling circus and joins it. (2)

Then write the events in the order you’re going to write them, onto your computer or preferred writing platform (like the first example). I keep them below my actual writing so I can reference them if needed while I’m writing.

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These are all the major things needed to help keep everything straight for when you go to write. However, there are still four other things I do AFTER writing a chapter which further help keeping things clear and running smoothly. If you want to find out about these things, they will be in my newsletter next week, so sign up for it! 

(If you are reading this post after the newsletter is sent, sign up for it and contact me requesting the Four Things I Do After Writing a Chapter in an Epic-Length Story/Series. You can either do that by using the contact page here or by replying to the newsletter e-mail (which I will probably reply quicker to).) 

What is the longest story you’ve ever written? Are you a plotter or a panster? What is your favorite genre to write? Let me know in the comments below! ~ Kay Adelin