I think I’ve noted that my viewpoints tend to speed up as I approach the endings of books. Well, ELANTRIS is a perfect example. We’re hopping viewpoints like a crazed body-snatcher. At the risk of sounding redundant, I did this to increase pacing and tension. Quick-rotating viewpoints give a cinematic feel to the story, in my opinion—kind of like cameras changing angles. This keeps things quick and snappy, and keeps the reader reading.
It should be noted that writing and filmmaking are two completely different arts. What works in one doesn’t work in the other—action sequences, for instance, have to be written completely differently in a novel than they would be displayed on screen. However, both storytelling forms try to evoke similar feelings in their audiences. So, you can’t do the same things in writing as you can in filmmaking—but you can get a similar effect by using different tools. Here, I use viewpoint shifts, which is something a filmmaker can’t really access without first-person voice-overs. Viewpoint is, in my opinion, one of the prime unique tools that we have as writers. That’s why I think it’s important to understand, and to manipulate.
If you’re paying attention to such things, we actually get two complete—and well-rotated—viewpoint triads in this chapter. Again, this is to increase the sense of urgency and pacing.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.