Befuddled_Stoner
Banned
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2005
- Messages
- 845
- Reaction score
- 305
- Location
- Ohio
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
Hey guys, I’ve recently started reading Greg Keyes’ Age of Unreason series and came across a pet peeve of mine: constantly shifting perspectives.
I’m talking about when every other chapter alternates between several different characters that have no/little interaction up until the climax of the story. You’re reading a chapter, engrossed in the action and seeing things from the protagonist’s perspective, things start to get tense and then BAM! the chapter ends and the next one cuts to an unrelated character. Why do authors organize their **** in a way that forces you to either skip ahead to keep following the same character, or to slough through some unrelated character’s chapter?
Normally, I skip past all unrelated chapters and keep on reading about the one protagonist up until the other characters come up, and then I’ll go back and read their chapters. Really, really annoying to have to use thirty zillion bookmarks just to keep track of all of the chapters that I skipped.
How about you guys? What do you think about this narrative style? Am I the only one bothered by it? Am I breaking some sort of unwritten assumption when I sit down for an extended period of time and read 10+ chapters?
I’m talking about when every other chapter alternates between several different characters that have no/little interaction up until the climax of the story. You’re reading a chapter, engrossed in the action and seeing things from the protagonist’s perspective, things start to get tense and then BAM! the chapter ends and the next one cuts to an unrelated character. Why do authors organize their **** in a way that forces you to either skip ahead to keep following the same character, or to slough through some unrelated character’s chapter?
Normally, I skip past all unrelated chapters and keep on reading about the one protagonist up until the other characters come up, and then I’ll go back and read their chapters. Really, really annoying to have to use thirty zillion bookmarks just to keep track of all of the chapters that I skipped.
How about you guys? What do you think about this narrative style? Am I the only one bothered by it? Am I breaking some sort of unwritten assumption when I sit down for an extended period of time and read 10+ chapters?