Form an orderly queue

Confession: I'm not good in crowds, especially if I have to hold conversations with them. I always think that the exchange of talking to an individual and listening to what they have to say is a bit like throwing a tennis ball back and forth between you, and so holding a conversation with multiple people gets interesting as you have to field multiple tennis balls, adding one more for each new person joining in.

Now what, I hear you ask, does this have to do with writing? Well, over the past few years and in the process of writing several books with varying numbers of protagonists, I've come to the realisation that the tennis ball thing doesn't change just because the people I'm paying attention to are imaginary.

My first two novels (available from nice booksellers now and all that) didn't have this problem as they only had one protagonist each. The third novel I wrote (which may possibly appear at some point in the future in some form) had two, and writing it was hell. I never felt as if I was getting into 'the zone', so I spent however many months trudging through at a slower pace, convinced that I wasn't going to like the finished product. But when I came to read through it again at the start of the redrafting process, I was pleasantly surprised - I liked it a lot, and so I couldn't imagine what had made the process of writing it so difficult.

The next novel I completed was a one-protagonist disaster which I am determined will not see the light of day; and then came the behemoth: my lengthiest and most recently completed book which is now in the capable mitts of my agent and on submissions. That book has five protagonists, and to begin with, writing it was mind-boggling. There was, at one point, another reason for that which isn't related to the subject of this post; but even once that was past, I still struggled to stand in the centre of the circle my protagonists were forming, spinning around at the right moment and for the right length of time to catch the tennis balls they were throwing at me. It was maddening because I had an intimate understanding of these characters and the plot before I began; I knew what was going to happen in the book and had even written a condensed guide to it for my agent, so why the hell was I struggling so much?

Then I had an epiphany - I would write the central protagonist's scenes first (she was always going to get to the head of the queue; she's high-maintenance like that), from beginning to end without interruption; then begin work on the next character's story thread. Repeat the process for each of the five protagonists, then chop them up into chapters and shuffle the order until everything's in place. It sounded a bit scatty, but I was at my wit's end and figured it was worth a try. It certainly was - it worked so ridiculously well, it was as quick, easy and effective as switching on a light. I'd probably still be writing that book now if I hadn't done that.

So, the WIP. A smaller number of protagonists this time than I had then - just two now - but I still started out attempting to write both characters' scenes at the same time. It was like writing my third novel again, so now I'm doing what I did with the behemoth and taking them one at a time, and I don't want to speak too soon, but it seems to be working! I think I've worked out what my problem was when I was writing the third book, and if you find that writing multiple POVs at once confuses you, it might be worth you trying this tactic as well. It's a lot more fun than being pelted with tennis balls.