: Re: When are single-use POVs a bad idea? I'm trying to reveal the main character's background without diving into flashbacks or actually setting parts of the story in his past. So on three occasions

@XinRu607

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First I would ask why there are three of them rather than one character whose recollections can be used as ongoing exposition about the main character's past. It makes more sense, to me at least, to use a single character who knows the protagonist's history than to use a number of bit players' single encounters. If only because of the amount of work needed to set up even a single use character within the narrative one-shot players are a lot of work for not that much gain.

The only other issue I see is in framing the recollections of the single characters so that they are believable one-shots where it is both obvious and also understandable that they're never going to be seen again. There's a lot of ways to do that and I'm sure you have a framework in mind so as long as you can and do clearly delineate these bit players they should not cause any problems.

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