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Is it a bit crowded round here?

pbwpbw
edited June 2011 in - Writing Problems
Advice please...

Following a plot twist I no longer have a suitable candidate for an antagonist. I want to bring on a new one, quite late on in the story. In fact, my protagonists have been up against the bad things a corporation is doing, so they have been fighting 'the company' but now I want to give the corporate enemy his own voice by bringing forward one of the employees.

It means I'll have five POVs. Is that okay? Up till now I've just had the four.

Comments

  • CarolCarol
    What's the intended finished length PBW?
  • pbwpbw
    Yay! I've decided to go for the full seventy thousand words. I have fifty two thousand so far.
  • AmandaAmanda
    well done you! I would not worry about introducing another character (as by implication he's been there all along anyway) - but i did get told off for putting too many characters in (well they really wanted to join in and i couldn't refuse..)! Good luck :-)
  • Lou TreleavenLou Treleaven
    Does the antagonist have to have their own point of view?
  • pbwpbw
    This character is already familiar to us. He is the boss of POV 4. It's simply whether I give him a voice or not. The structure should fall ok, because he can come in at the natural start to Part Four. I need him as a device to show the other side of the antagonist. I have at the moment 'an evil company doing bad things' and I need to show how they don't see themselves as evil, etc etc.
  • heatherheather
    Does he have to have his own POV? Couldn't he be introduced within the POVs you've got?

    Another character late on, especially as he has effectively been there but hidden, sounds Ok, but another POV popping up late sounds a little odd to me - makes you wonder why he wasn't included before.
    Or could you drop short chapters of his POV in earlier, but as an unnamed shadowy figure?
  • pbwpbw
    [quote=heather]Or could you drop short chapters of his POV in earlier, but as an unnamed shadowy figure? [/quote]

    Actually yes, I could do a bit of that too. It would make the whole thing more consistent.
  • Phots MollPhots Moll
    Adding him in from near the beginning sounds like a good plan to me.
  • SilverLiningsSilverLinings
    Again PBW as I know you're writing in SF I wouldn't worry about the number of characters. Robert Jordans Wheel of Time sage has dozens. G R R Martin isn't short on them either.
  • Mrs BearMrs Bear
    I'd have thought you could seed him at odd moments through the first parts of the book, so that his popping up out of the woodwork with a voice isn't a "Surprise Guest" appearance.
  • pbwpbw
    Yes, I've just written a humdinger of a chapter for him. It's after he's had a meeting with the dev. team and clashed with them. We get his viewpoint first, and in the following chapter we get the dev team's viewpoint, and after that, things start to get nasty.

    And actually I think that one chapter will be enough. He has another clash with the dev. team later on and that is already told from the protagonist's POV, in quite some detail, so the reader has the continuity there, and when the antagonist reappears in part four of the book, the reader is quite familiar with him.

    Thanks guys.
  • AmandaAmanda
    That sounds really good.
  • Lou TreleavenLou Treleaven
    Or you could have his voice as a little mini prologue at the beginning of each chapter - or is that just getting too complicated!
  • MutleyMutley
    I would say that 5 points of view is pushing your luck, but then I'm often wrong. ;)
  • pbwpbw
    It's okay Mutley. It's working. He is not a major character but he needs to be the spokesman for the company at strategic moments. I'm pretty sure it will work okay.
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