: Re: What are the advantages and disadvantages to changing the POV in the second and third books of a trilogy? Consider placing the second book of a SF/F trilogy into the point of view of a secondary

@Bethany377

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My understanding is that this is the staple of how romance series execute. You create a group of people and your meet cute couple hours it off in book one. The you pick a new mc from that group for the romance thread, but continue to evolve the world and events that surround everyone. Romance authors use this to explore different personas and plot threads within similar contexts; but it also let's them foreshadow and set up interesting hook-ups, for want of a better term, that you wouldn't believe until it happens.

What this comes down to is that romance is usually the story of how people get together. Also, you standardly take a character through a development arc. Often times you'll see authors play Lucy and yank the football to reset their characters, sometimes unfairly. Just think of serial TV, where every season feels the same. Romance has a harder time pulling this if, so they learned that the reset often paid off less than shifting to a new POV.

What you get by shifting is largely a new character to develop while your former characters tend to be background characters, or their new responsibility drags them away from pro-activity so you don't want to spend all your time with them.

Of course, many trilogies in the fantasy/sci-fi genres choose to take a character along the arc in the space of three books, so a reset is not needed. But it does happen, and the books that do it don't feel stale the way some others do. It's neither good not bad on it's own, but either way requires skill and success. And if you do switch mcs it should go without saying that the new needs to be at least as interesting as the old.

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