McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Point of View Question

(1/3) > >>

Danny-boy:
Is it unheard of to write in first person, but to split the book between two or more characters. For example...say one is a vampire and is only awake at night...would it be too much to tell the story from that point of view when it is night-time and from another character's point of view in the day?

also what would be a good way of indicating which character was narrating at the time? One in italics maybe?

Danny-boy

Roaram:
its very uncommon, but probably not unheard of. I think it might be a neat way to tell a kind of story, though its artistic license may not meet a publishers idea of cool. In my opinion though, italics for a whole chapter would annoy me. name the chapters after the characters, or make them totally different "voices" If you have to do a font change, just use bold. maybe I just have an unnatural dislike of prodigous italics.....

CrazyGerbilLady:
Italics are hard to read.  I'd just indicate in the chapter name who is speaking.  One of my favorite authors switches voices between chapters ... I think it's Kelly Armstrong ...

ballplayer72:
It all depends what kind of book it is.

If its military based, you could like CGL says, indicate it at the beginning of the chapter. 

EX

0229 zulu time  06/21/2888        Date
   Captain Xyz                            Person speaking this chapter
   1st Marine Expeditionary Unit   Unit Affiliation
   Battlespace Gamma    Location



The animorph series of books usually changed pov every book, but some of them had multiple narrators.  At those times a face and name would indicate who was narrating at the beginning of the chapter. You might do something like that

Danny-boy:
thanks for the advice folks... ;D


I think I might have thought of a way...

I am thinking of a symbol - maybe the first initial of each character - placed at the beginning of each chapter, indicating which character is narrating. maybe the first two have the full name of the character (it's just two different characters), but then all subsequent chapters have only the initial. (somewhat stylized initials...both in some way reflecting the personality of the character they represent)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page