With multiple POV first-person characters...

You'd be running the risk of confusing the daylights out of your readers. Particularly in first person, you need a mechanism to let the reader know whose POV you're in. This is where the term "Head-Hopping" came from. The author shifts from Dan to Charlie to Sybil all in the same scene, and the reader has no idea whose head he's in.

I really don't see a way you can do it within a scene. Even switching scenes, you'll have a hard time getting the message to the reader that you are now in another character's head. Confuse the reader once, he'll get frustrated. Confuse him twice and the book flies across the room. And that's if it ever becomes a book. Most agents will shy away from what you're suggesting.

Scene breaks?

I use those when I switch from one POV to another within a scene.

First scene: Hector threw the stick much longer than he wanted to, but not long enough for Spot.....

Second scene: Rochelle breathed in deeply of gasoline, garbage, and all the home smells of New York....

Third scene: Raining again. Max put up his umbrella, but it made him feel like a wimp....

You did mean third person, didn't you?

bonitakale said:

First scene: Hector threw the stick much longer than he wanted to, but not long enough for Spot.....

Second scene: Rochelle breathed in deeply of gasoline, garbage, and all the home smells of New York....

Third scene: Raining again. Max put up his umbrella, but it made him feel like a wimp....

You did mean third person, didn't you?

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This. Just do a scene break and switch POVs. If you;re doing first person, you'll have to make it more obvious you've changed POVs. Like given the scenes a subhead with names on it or something.

Yeah, subheadings will be fine since it's first person and you can't understand who's talking to when they refer to themselves as "I". And don't forget the double space after each scene to break off ties.

Oops, yeah, I should have read the subject head. First person is harder. Even with subheadings, you may need to be very clear. Heck, you always need to be very clear; if anyone can misinterpret you, they will.

Goddamned dog. I must have thrown that ball a hundred times, and here he is with it again, barking, "Throw the ball, Hector, throw the ball!"

Four-inch heels aren't great for walking around New York, but hey, they look nice. I breathed in the smells...

Raining again. An umbrella makes me feel like a wimp, but you ever feel rain on a bald spot?...

Jamie Stone said:

When submitting something with multiple POVs, etc., if an agent or publisher doesn't like how you've formatted the subdivisions, etc., would that be a breaking point? Or as long as they like the actual MS, they can work on changing the formatting later?

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Blithely ignorant, I say, no one is going to care about the formatting if they are gripped by the story, and if the formatting doesn't actually cause confusion.

(Okay, if you formatted the different points of view in Impact, Futura, and Comic, that would turn anyone off. But you mean to leave an extra line, right? With maybe a subhead?)

Yikes, three first person narrators within the same chapter? Are you going to repeat that throughout the book? I hope you don't confuse your readers and I hope your characters have very, and I mean very, distinct voices. Yes, I would highly suggest subheadings... I have seen it done before to great effect. The Time Traveler's Wife does that. On the other hand, it has only two 1st person narrators.

Wow, that's gonna be really hard to pull off. If the voices are different enough between the narrators that should help some. In fact, I'd be willing to go so far as to say it's probably going to be dependent on whether or not the individual voices of the characters shine through. If so, then putting a heading at the beginning of each section will help, but the audience should be able to transition well into the next character.

This is why it's so difficult to do with first-person. When you're writing third, you have one narrator and you get to write in the same voice throughout. You can clarify easily by just showing which character is doing what at the beginning of the scene. For first, each POV is essentially it's own narrator. That's difficult enough to write, but also a little confusing for the reader because it doesn't make itself obvious when it's changing.

I'd say work on the voices first and foremost. Write the three sections and then maybe post them in SWY or something and see what people think of them, or have a couple of good, knowledgeable people look over them for you and see how the voices work when put together that way. If you can get the voices down and they're each unique, it should be much easier. Good luck! I always love a good challenge.