Christomir Rackov asked Michael J. Sullivan:

I really like the multiple POVs in your "Legends of the First Empire" books :) But, when you have several main characters together (sometimes for a long time, like when a group of them goes on a quest - we notably had such group quests in "Age of Swords" and "Age of Legend"), then how do you choose which one of them should be the POV character at a certain point in time?

Michael J. Sullivan Hey Christomir, thanks for writing. Deciding which POV to use is sometimes tricky. There are some characters, whose heads I always avoid (Royce in Riyria and Malcolm and Nyphron in Legends of the First Empire). Yeah, every once in awhile, I'll be telling the story from their perspective, but those people have "things going on" that I want to insulate the reader from.

Usually, there are "primary" POV people, that I use because they have a good perspective that will tell the tale well. For instance, Brin, Moya, and Persephone are often used in Legends and Hadrian and Arista are the common "go-to" people in Riyria.

Every once in a while, I choose poorly and have to re-do it. For instance, in Age of Legend, I wrote a scene with Tressa and Brin, and it was originally in Brin's POV...my wife (and alpha reader) pointed out that I really needed to be Tressa's head because she thought Brin was trying to "pull something over on her" and without seeing that aspect being exposed to the reader her actions were hard to figure out.

In the book I'm working on now (Age of Death), I had a similar situation where I used Brin's POV, and "the group" is being escorted to King Mideon (a dwarven monarch), I wanted the reader to notice various aspects of the King and his home, but it didn't work through Brin's eyes, because just prior to this she went through something pretty emotional and as such she wouldn't be "casually thining." In that case, I shifted it to Gifford, who provides us with the "eyes and ears" during that scene.

So...99.9% of the time I use my "go-to" person, but sometimes I HAVE to see the scene from a different player for plot reasons, and when that occurs I shift to them -- even if I sometimes get it wrong and have to make some tweaks to bring it to the correct POV.

Great question! Thanks for asking it.

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