Editing Out of Order

Multiple POV characters is like having ten voices in your head. I’m worried I got the voices mixed up. Or worse, they all sound the same. Writing ten POV characters is tiring. Sometimes I just throw stuff in because I don’t want to deal with them. In the editing stages, how do you make sure the different voices are consistent throughout the novel?

I’m getting comments on Chains of the Sciell from my beta readers. The novel’s going through its last round of edits. This time, I’m reading the entire story from one character’s perspective, then going to the start and reading it from another’s perspective. This way, I can catch any inconsistencies with the voices.

Funny enough, my notes and the Word document make sure reading this way is easy. I didn’t plan that.  As I read Chains of the Sciell the first time, I created this chart to keep track of time passing. It has the chapter, the day and the POV character.

Then, in the Word document, I turned each chapter into a Heading to make sure the numbering was in order for the beta readers.
It’s interesting reading the story from one character’s perspective. I’m starting with Divine. It’s like I’m getting to know him all over again!
Since I changed the story’s font color to red, the size to 16 and the style to Calibri Light, it’s like reading a new story. I’m catching errors I missed during the first re-read.