In a post on Lit Hub, Sara Lippmann examines the polyvocal novel, a story with multiple points of view. “From a young age, I questioned the authority of a singular narrator,” she says. Lippman discusses several multi-POV novels that inspired her work, including As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner; The Waves by Virginia Woolf; Living Room by Rachel Sherman; The Farm by Joanne Ramos; Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo; The World Without You by Joshua Henkin; Northwest Corner by John Burnham Schwartz; and Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout.
Importantly, Lippmann says writers should check their egos before trying a multi-POV approach. “Projections, and individual agendas have no place in polyphony,” she writes. “Silence those impulses toward overdetermination. Let the characters speak for themselves. The unburdening is what we as writers can allow our characters, which may be the biggest gift: friendship.”
