fiction POV question

It's generally not a good idea to have first person and third person in the same book. It's messy and does throw the reader off their stride. If you want to experiment with first person, try it out in a different work; 'rotating first person' is the term for having different main characters take turns narrating chapters. Or 'alternating first person' if there are only two main characters.

I'm honestly not quite sure if you mean changing the PoV as in which character is the focus or if you mean changing as in switching from writing in third person to first.

You can switch the perspective the story is told from provided you give the reader ample clues as to when it switches. In About a Boy by Nick Hornby, for example, some chapters are told from Will's perspective and others from Marcus'. Still, when Hornby switches from Will to Marcus he is still telling the story in third person limited - he's just changing which character the story is following.

Unless you are incredible masterful, I would not switch from a third person point of view to a first. Picking a POV is a commitment. You have to pick the PoV that best serves your story. Each comes with advantages and limitations you have to work around.

That you can do. I wouldn't head hop within the same scene (it can be done but it can be confusing to the reader and really hard to pull off).

As long as you're clear whose head you're in you're fine changing POVs. Writers have done first and third, but it's VERY hard to pull off well. The ones I've read who have managed it always have solid structure in place, and don't pop into first person randomly.

sunandshadow said:

It's generally not a good idea to have first person and third person in the same book. It's messy and does throw the reader off their stride.

Click to expand...

But it's been done with great success. I know John Irving has used this technique, as one example. It's certainly not the common way to do narrative, and you better have a real good reason to justify it for the reader, other than "I'd like to try it." It has to make your story better, or it's not worth doing.

caw

Why would you be switching to 1st person? If can be done, but if the POV character for the 1st person scenes has already been a POV character in the 3rd person scenes, I think that would be messy.

Flashbacks come to mind. Or other structures where the plot may not be chronological. Letters and things that are already set off from the plot somehow - maybe things that you might italicize.

I'm not saying these all should have a POV switch, just that it could be logical and effective, imho. Not necessarily a mess at all.

Don't switch perspective like that unless A) You know what you're going, or B) You create a clear division in the prose so that the transition can be easily digested.

An example...
Not calling myself an expert, but I've recently decided to write one of my future manuscripts from five different perspectives, and divide the perspectives into separate sections of the story--one character has a section written in third person omniscient, another character has a section in third person limited, then first person, epistolary, and second person, and a sixth section that combines all five narrative modes that will be told by multiple characters. By the time I get to the sixth part, it should be sufficiently clear who "belongs" to which narrative mode.

Perhaps you can do something similar, where one of the MCs narrates in first person, and the other in third person limited, or even second person, as if the first person MC is telling the perspective of the other character to them...hmm, interesting...

One mystery author I know has really pulled off the 1st/3rd POV concept. J.A. Konrath writes the "Jack Daniels Mysteries" and does first person in the heroine's POV and third person in the villain's. It really adds an interesting level of distance and mystery to the villain to do that. Fun reading!