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Q&A How should changing the point of view be handled?

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 se...

posted 10y ago by Dale Hartley Emery‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T03:39:37Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12512
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Dale Hartley Emery‭ · 2019-12-08T03:39:37Z (almost 5 years ago)
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.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2014-08-03T23:28:46Z (over 10 years ago)
Original score: 9