On Writing From Different POVs

Note: This discussion will involve the novel A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin and the novel The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, though it will not delve deeply into the plots or developments of either. Therefore, worry not about spoilers, folks.

At the moment, I'm reading A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, the first book in his A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series. Now, I don't read a lot of fantasy. I'm a sci-fi and literature (however pretentious that sounds... a lot pretentious) guy. It's not because I don't like fantasy, it's because my first experience with a huge, sweeping, fleshed-out fantasy story was Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I loved it. And ever since my mom introduced those books to me, nothing in the fantasy realm has been able to come close. It all felt derivative. So I just stopped reading it.

CUT TO: 2006: Two of my roommates while I was in college could speak of nothing but A Song of Ice and Fire. Fantasy? I thought... no thanks.

CUT TO: 2009: David, my writing partner, began reading A Game of Thrones. I'd just finished the book I was reading, and knowing that the novel had been optioned by HBO to become an hour-long format fantasy series, I decided I'd put off reading this book long enough. A few clicks later, there it was on my Kindle.

In Kindle language, I'm about twenty percent through the novel. And even though while I'm reading I'm enthralled and captivated, when I set it down for the night I have no burning desire to continue reading. It's a great story with great characters and has convinced me that not all fantasy is as derivative as I first suspected, but there's something missing. I still haven't been able to create any sort of personal connection. Why?

It's all in the way the book is structured.

Each chapter of A Game of Thrones is written from the point of view of one of eight different characters. Therefore, each chapter presents events, new and old, from that character's POV, shifting the reader's own POV of the event as more and more information unfolds. It's brave and bold and quite interesting. But the real kicker is that Martin employs a third-person limited POV instead of a first-person limited POV from the chapter-character's POV. It's that distance that is keeping me at arm's length. Instead of being placed inside those characters, chapter by chapter, I'm told about the hardships and changes and emotions those characters are enduring from a distance. It's the difference between reading a memoir and an edited recorded history of that memoirist's life. While the recorded history is interesting and filled with useful information and tons of knowledge, I'd take the first-hand, first-person memoir every time. There's a connection there that speaks volumes more than any history book can. And while I'm reading A Game of Thrones I feel as if I'm reading a recorded history of Westeros instead of the sweeping tale of Westeros' inhabitants.

What's most frustrating is that I've seen the chapter-by-chapter-POV-shift structure used to such great success in the past. My favorite example is Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Poisonwood Bible. Each chapter is narrated, from that characters first-person limited POV, by one of the five women of a missionary family while living in British Congo. Each of the women are of different ages, of different maturity levels, and of different experience levels, and each chapter (much like A Game of Thrones) presents events, new and old, from each character's different perspective. But the main difference is that, because Kingsolver employs a first-person limited POV, I'm able to make a genuine, personal connection to each character. Even further, Kingsolver alters her writing style and voice from chapter to chapter, depending on which character's POV we're seeing the world from. Not only is it a brilliant marker for the reader's brain to decipher who's speaking and how we're now seeing the world, but it's another layer of distance eliminated. Whereas Martin is keeping me at arm's length, presenting an even, historical representation of his world as it happens to his characters, Kingsolver invites her readers closer, embraces that her characters will have vastly different (and often conflicting) viewpoints and embraces that the personal connection gained by seeing events wholly through the eyes of a first-hand source is unmatched.

I just can't help but feel like I'm opening a history book every time I (figuartively) crack the spine of A Game of Thrones. It's a shame, too, because the story is quite good. And Martin is an outstounding author. But it's his choice to keep his unwaivering writing style throughout the book while using a shifted third-person limited POV that has driven a wedge between me and his novel. Above all, I'm reading to be entertained and enlightened, not because I fear that I'm going to be tested on the political leanings of the Starks and the Lannisters on tommorow's The History of Westeros exam.