: Re: Struggling to define a character without giving him viewpoint status I am a novice working on a historical novel with four viewpoint characters. Three of them will be involved in subplots connected

@Carla500

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So far as I can see, the extract you quote is having John as a viewpoint character, albeit only briefly. It is not currently hugely in fashion for writers to briefly dip into another character's head when apart from that the book has a format in which POV characters all have a significant fraction of the text to themselves. So, yes, in a sense you are violating a rule - but whether you care is up to you. You could regularize it by making a feature of having brief episodes at the beginning of chapters in which the viewpoint of people other than the main viewpoint characters is touched upon. If you do this, don't always kill them within a few pages, that's a cliché.

But that is not the strategy I would recommend. How can you give a sense of this character's lifetime of suffering and disappointment without giving him his own POV? Answer: by dialogue. He is the protagonist's grandfather so there is no difficulty in arranging circumstances such that the protagonist and he will converse. Whether the conversation that reveals how the grandfather has suffered will be one of many as part of a loving relationship or the sudden breaking of a long and bitter silence depends on your conception of the characters of grandfather and grandson.

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