I keep reading so many fics where the author keeps switching places and characters constantly. I read stories where there were 10 scene or character switches in a single chapter.

Why do people do this?

It just completely destroys the immersion, the mystery, the intrigue and my interest in a story when every minor action a minor character does is shown to me.

Why switch to a different scene and character if you are just going to write a few sentences, then switch again? Just explain it to us in a dialogue. Do i really need to be told from Mundugus's POV that he is stumbling out of the Dursley's home after Harry took his wand and injured him? After we have seen the same act happen, except from Harry's POV.

NO!

Not only that, but the whole story gets spoiled if i am shown the motives of the bad guys, and what they are doing. Constantly. I also do not like how with every single switch in a scene or environment, we get a time and date and location. Generally i don't mind this as much, only when it's done in a way that we see Harry doing X at location X, then the next "switch" we continue with Harry but in a sub location of X doing Y a short while later. We don't need to be told where or when it is if the location and time is basically the same. Just explain or show it to us IN the story itself with a simple, single sentence if it really needs explaining, which a lot of the time it doesn't. We aren't stupid you know. As for the time and date. Why do we care? We know what year the story takes place, we generally know the season, do we really care about the exact day or time?

Anyway, back to my previous point. It is especially true in manipulative Dumbledore stories, where the authors keeps showing us readers the plans of Dumbledore. Shouldn't that be the whole point of the manipulative Dumbledore trope, that we don't know what he is plotting and how Harry is being manipulated, or how Dumbledore is going to try and manipulate him? It adds to the suspense of it all, and actually gives Dumbledore more character. He can be a bumbling buffoon, a senile old fool, and it would be enjoyable, but we aren't going to care much if it's being fed to us from his POV.

Imagine if Rowling started switching between Quirrell, Dumbledore, Snape, Ron and Hermione in book 1.

Imagine if we got to see Quirrell plotting to steal the stone, Dumbledore setting up the whole maze for him, Snape trying to save Harry, etc... The whole suspense, mystery and world building would have been completely lost!

Another big example would be trial scenes for Sirius. I have seen many in fanfiction and they were mostly the same with minor differences. There are very few that i have enjoyed or was interested in.

First off, they are boring and predictable at this point, and they always have full evidence of his innocence. There is no tension. We know what happened to him, and that night, we know he is innocent, and we know he will be declared as such, especially if Pettigrew is present or if Veritaserum is used (which happens almost all the time). Do we really care about a bunch of political dialogue and legal mumbo jumbo, lawyers, laws, etc...? Why not just explain his trial in a newspaper article, or in a letter that he sends to Harry? Or have him show up in Hogwarts as a free man, surprising everyone present? Then if there are some important details, like he sues the ministry, some ministry official resigns in shame, or gets fired, or demands compensation, or whatever... it can be explained there over breakfast in the great hall, or wherever as the characters react to it. I mean having a 13-14 year old child take part in a political trial or even present in the court room, is another can of worms that i'd rather not go into.

In OoTP, the trial worked because we have never seen a magical trial before and we didn't know what the outcome or consequences of it would be for Harry. After all, there was no real clear evidence for Harry that he acted in self defence and whether or not the ministry would believe him. At least until it was revealed that Mrs Figg had been a squib all along.

Take this story for example. 600k words and only done up to year 3 so far. Not trying to bash this, it is quite well written and well thought out, but god damn the constant switches are annjoying and present in full force:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13507192/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Ashes-of-Chaos

I simply cannot immerse or invest myself in this. And i like long stories, in fact i prefer them. I read and enjoyed fics of over 1million words in the past.

Now, there are times when it's not a bad idea to switch scenes or to show what a main or important character is doing, if it adds to the overall storyline, or if the story's focus are on small set of characters. However, again, having dozens of different characters be the focus just overcomplicates everything and creates a big mess that you will spend more time trying to untangle than writing the story. Kind of like GoT where dear Martin probably wrote himself into a corner, hence why we are still waiting for the next book.

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Thoughts?