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A Dance of Cloaks
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DoC: Is anyone else sick of this type of chapter format?
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Sam
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rated it 2 stars
Apr 06, 2014 08:53PM
Does anyone else get annoyed when authors divide their chapters this way? Maybe I'm alone, but I find it very hard to follow when every chapter is a different plot and point of view. I know it's very popular format and can sometimes allow for more characters, settings, ect. But I am in general just over it. I find that the format greatly interferes with my enjoyment of A Dance of Cloaks especially. Every chapter just jumps around as it pleases and the author doesn't even bother to introduce the characters and the different guilds. I think maybe if he just explained a little more it wouldn't bother me as much. But in general I just want a straight forward structure. Am I alone?
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I've recently been thinking about posting this same topic. I think it's the "Game of Thrones" effect. The problems I have with it are that it can get confusing (I don't mind having to think when I read but I'd like to know who's "talking")and that I usually prefer some of the POV's over others which makes me want to rush through the ones I don't like..
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I haven't read the book yet, so I can't comment on the format of this novel. But in general I'm very fond of the multiple pov style.My personal enjoyment of a story increases, when I get not only one version of reality. Seeing the world through different eyes can be enriching.
Of course, this has to be done well and is challenging for the author. If you use build-up elements in 4-6 povs for 2-3 chapters each, it can be quite boring, if nothing really happens.
On the other hand, having different paces allows an author to have build-up elements interchanging with more action, plot advancement or character development.
And I like the complexity of multi-pov. With only one character, I often get bored and single pov books are ending with 2-3 star ratings for me and achieving a 5 star rating is almost impossible.
In the afterward of the book the author admits that he really didn't know where anything was going and thought his own novel was very mess. Which I think is part of the problem in this book. Almost every chapter introduces a new character, or a new plot there is very little time spent filling in details or building the back story or resolving the various threads. Instead the author is more focused in constantly bringing in something new.
I don't mind the structure here. Each of the POVs are in the same city and largely dealing with the same conflict. Where it bothers me is in books like David Drake's fantasies where they scatter a group of characters near the start and then they don't interact with each other at all until a deus ex machina brings them back together near the end of the book.
I don't think the multiple POVs are an issue. I think the plot lines aren't fleshed out enough to keep me engaged. It's like facts are thrown out there in a fairly brief chapter, but not enough is revealed about them to make me care, or, when I do care, it's jumping to a different POV. But that's popular with authors these days. It's kinda writing to the multitasking audience. Makes it seem like there's lots going on, because authors fear losing readers with short attention spans.
Sam wrote: "But in general I just want a straight forward structure. Am I alone?"To answer that, I need you to define what you mean by "straightforward structure".
If you mean classic, third-person omniscient narration, you might be out of luck, as I can't think of any novel written in the last 10 years or so--in any genre--that really makes use of that. They're mostly first-person with one or multiple POVs, or third-person limited, almost always with multiple POVs. And with the latter, sometimes the only difference is the lack of the pronoun "I".
Between those two choices, I tend to prefer the latter. With first-person narratives, I'm going to be spending a lot of time with a single character, and probably a lot of time inside their head. If I don't like that character, I'm probably going to end up hating the story. Whereas with multiple POVs, hopefully I'll like at least some of the characters, so I can suffer through the chapters of any characters I don't like knowing I'll eventually come back to the others.
Is it true or am I just oversimplifying that generally books with multiple POVs are about the world and books with a singular POV are about that one character's journey? If so, Dance of Cloaks could've chosen to be a single POV and been about Aron's origin story. If so, we might have lost some of the cooler scenes but it might have had a pretty interesting arc ...
Alan wrote: "Is it true or am I just oversimplifying that generally books with multiple POVs are about the world and books with a singular POV are about that one character's journey? If so, Dance of Cloaks c..."
Third person POV can easily tell the story of a character's journey. That's got nothing to do with it. And first person POV books can be about "worlds". Moby Dick was first person and it ha far more to do with Ahab and the whale than Ishmael. I am Legend was written in 3rd POV. I even like a mix. Patterson does a great job of keeping the main character's scenes in 1st POV, and keeping the bad guy's in 3rd.
I didn't describe what kind of book I would prefer instead more deeply because i'm not sure I really know. I do in general prefer first person narrative. I think it allows me to delve deeper into a character and lets me imagine that I am that character better. I also agree that with mutiple povs that I find myself less interested in some of the stories. I'd much rather give up on an entire book than to rush through half to get the parts i'm actually interested in.
Echoing what a few people have suggested already, I think the problem is not the multiple POVs themselves but that they're used to introduce too many different plots. It can also make hard to invest in the characters, especially if the characters are not well-distinguished. I'm about half-way through the book, and I'm experiencing both of these. It feels like the novel is wandering, and I don't have much of a sense of who these people are or why I should care about half of them.
Sam wrote: "I didn't describe what kind of book I would prefer instead more deeply because i'm not sure I really know. I do in general prefer first person narrative. I think it allows me to delve deeper into a..."Excellent point. I remember vivdly, skipping over the Merry and Pippin scenes in LOTR until I found out Gandalf appeared during one of the scenes. Sometimes, I think authors fall in love with their secondary characters a hell of a lot more than the reader does.
"With first-person narratives, I'm going to be spending a lot of time with a single character, and probably a lot of time inside their head. If I don't like that character, I'm probably going to end up hating the story. "Of course the inverse is equally true - if you like the character you get to spend the entire story with someone you like.
I find multiple POV books to be really dependent on a couple of things.
First, how quickly or slowly the stories merge. I want to read a novel, not a series of interleaved novellas, so I expect the points of view to converge in some manner.
Second, I expect there to be some payoff for making me switch points of view. Unique character voices, showing me different things that no single character could experience, etc.
Third, not too many points of view and for each to be needed (see point 2).
Finally, indicate with chapter heads which point of view I'm switching to. That can be as easy as "Chapter 5: Rick" or something less direct.
Michael wrote: "I remember vivdly, skipping over the Merry and Pippin scenes in LOTR until I found out Gandalf appeared during one of the scenes. Sometimes, I think authors fall in love with their secondary characters a hell of a lot more than the reader does. ..."
Of course, Gandalf is also a secondary character in LotR. It's Frodo's journey after all.
Yeah, Gandalf may have been a secondary character, but he was my favorite. That's one of the benefits of multiple POVs (though, technically, LOTR is omniscient, so we were never in any characted's head exclusively) that every reader gets to spend some time in a charater's head whose POV they enjoy, even if it's not the protagonist.
