What do you think about switching POV midway through a chapter? Labyrinth by Kate Mosse uses POV and its massive cast creatively to position you in the most relevant moment in each scene. Is this something you should try?
This review may contain some spoilers!
I want to see the brilliance behind the POV switches in Labyrinth. I believe all writing rules can be broken in a way that creates a powerful story. There were certainly instances where an abrupt change in POV worked. The common thread with these were that the chapter started with a secondary character with appropriate context for me to confidently identify them and know what is going on. The abrupt cut would be to a more central character who is recognisable instantly without context, even if we’d also jumped to an entirely different location.
However, in many cases the POV switches make for cluttered scenes. In one case, we see Oriane’s husband get in a huff in her bedroom and set off looking for her. In the next line we are with Oriane’s lover, also looking for her, in conversation with her maid. With so many character’s to keep on top of, this transition was jarring. I had to remember who the heck this maid even was before continuing, by which point I am thrown from the narrative. This sort of transition works very well on screen to show irony and conflict in a shorthand form; on the page, it comes across as sloppy. In another case, a very short chapter starts with Shelagh and then after two paragraphs jumps to Alice in a scene that has little to do with Shelagh. Again, this works on the screen. On page, the readers are left confused as to what the link should be.
In my opinion, many of the POV switches could have been avoided by better cultivating chapters to deliberately release information in the appropriate order. When you’re already trusting your readers to remember the details of a large cast, you can probably trust them to remember details of the plot. But what do you think? Have you come across a good use of mid-scene POV switches?