How should changing the point of view be handled?
I am writing a book with the particular twist that between chapters it switches the point of view. For example, in the first chapter it is from the main character's point of view, then in the second chapter it is the sidekick's point of view.
How would I introduce the sidekick in that second chapter? I want people to know it is from a different point of view, but how?
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Label the chapters with the character names. George RR Martin does this at the top of every chapter of his monolith books, since he easily has a dozen POV narrators per book. No muss, no fuss, crystal clear. Roberta Gellis did the same thing in her Fires of Winter, and Patricia Briggs does it in her most recent book (which is mostly from the first-person POV of her main character but has two chapters from the POV of her husband, and those two are headed "Adam").
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No matter what else you do, make sure you do this:
Clearly distinguish the sidekick's personality from the main character's. Different attitudes. Different "voice," such as diction or accent or sentence structures. Different level of education. Different background. Different opinions about everything. Different desires and agendas.
Then write from within the sidekick's personality.
If you do both of those things, readers won't have trouble distinguishing.
If you want to give readers additional cues, you can label the chapters, as Lauren says.
Or use James Patterson's trick: Write the main character's viewpoint scenes in first person, and other characters' scenes in third person.
But never rely solely on chapter labels or first/third person to orient the reader. You still need to make the viewpoints distinct.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12512. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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