Ways to tell a "wide-angle" story
I've been wondering lately about how to tell a story that has multiple perspectives giving no strict preference to one or the other. Say there are N main characters and I want them to get a roughly equal share of the "running time." Three possibilities:
- Alternate between perspectives each chapter. Chapters in the same "set" are of roughly equal length. Usually a fixed order works best because it makes this very very clear. This works pretty well for a story with three or four main characters; see for example Elantris and A Game of Thrones. I think The Way of Kings does this too, but not as regularly, and I don't like it enough to check.
- Take an omniscient perspective. Sort of a variant of the above. Dune does this. It also changes focus between chapters although not on such a regular schedule I think.
- Use a single viewpoint character, the "camera," but somehow get them close to all the main characters. This can feel weird — conventionally if there's one perspective character, that character is the protagonist. So this could be confusing to read.
I phrased these in a prose-centric way because that's what's familiar, but I think these could apply in other media.