Portraying Multiple Cultures

Hey, I'm running into a tiny problem with my novel before I even start it. I have a solid amount of unique-ish cultures across the whole land, but I can't decide whether to just have one main character whose perspective is shown the whole time, or to have multiple characters and multiple perspectives.

I'm disinclined to have a one main character story because it only lets me show side-characters as side-characters, and only their relationship with one person, the main character.

I'm disinclined to have a multiple main character story because A Song of Ice and Fire did it, and I would feel like I was skirting too close to my inspiration.

Is there another way of doing it that lets me make my side-characters less flat while having a clear main character? My writing isn't good enough to finesse it on my own.

edited 10th Apr '12 5:53:06 PM by MS4K

That sounds like (apologies in advance) a dumb reason to not do it. ASOIAF was hardly the first book to do this. It's a fairly standard epic fantasy thing, in fact. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings does this up to a point; Frodo is the main character, undoubtedly, but as the main party splits up at the end of book 1, we follow each of the four hobbits' storylines, each of whom is the main character in part of the story. For a long time, in fact, Frodo's storyline is pretty boring stuff by comparison to what's going on with the others.

You can certainly have one obvious designated main, though — the person who is a critical focus in important parts of the storyline — and still have other characters as subsidiary mains, the main characters of secondary plot threads.

Go with several viewpoints. Not doing something because somebody else did it first isn't a good enough reason if whatever it is you avoid doing has a reason and a function that you should fulfill. Besides, you can show multiple viewpoints in a wide variety of ways. You can do a Tolkien style omniscient, or a Brandon Sanderson style 3rd Limited, or a Terry Pratchett... Weird but cool slightly more distanced 3rd Limited, or a "viewpoint per chapter" 1st person kind of thing, or...

I think I made my point. Good luck