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Q&A How should I handle writing a story where different portions of the narrative are told from the point of view of several different narrators?

This isn't a standard short story, so present it in the most clear and understandable format, so your readers won't have to play guessing games, like so: Mark: I met Jim when we were in third g...

posted 6y ago by Chris Sunami‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T10:03:23Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39777
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Chris Sunami‭ · 2019-12-08T10:03:23Z (almost 5 years ago)
This isn't a standard short story, so present it in the most clear and understandable format, so your readers won't have to play guessing games, like so:

> **Mark** : I met Jim when we were in third grade. He was a pushy kid.
> 
> **Jim** : I always thought Mark was such a wimp.
> 
> **Lisa** : It bothered me that Jim was always beating Mark up.

This will give it kind of a documentary feel. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it will be easy to comprehend, and could be effective if done well. It may look intrusive, but it will fade to the background pretty quickly, because it's functional (versus forcing people to guess, every 5 seconds, "well who is this now?").

From a writing standpoint, the typical challenges around multiple narrators are **(a) giving us a reason to care about each of them in this very short period of time, (b) giving them distinct voices, and (c) giving us a larger event that we care about to unify the narratives.** However, given your aims, it sounds like _a_ and _b_ might not be priorities for you. In effect, you don't really have 10 separate narrators, you have one narrator in 10 parts, or, in other words, a [Greek Chorus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_chorus). So in that case, your biggest challenge is _c_.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-11-01T13:45:43Z (about 6 years ago)
Original score: 5