Drop your tips for telling a story via multiple characters here

Character trait?

Or just choose chapter titles as you would for a single-POV story, and use the distinct character styles to separate them?

Is this from 3rd person limited or first person?

My story is written in third person limited from the points of view of the two main (opposite sex) characters. I simply start a character's chapter by saying something that makes it obvious right away whose POV were in - if not in the first sentence, usually the second, and certainly by the end of the first (short) paragraph.

“It’s kind of like an old fashioned record shop,” she said. The sharp odor of turpentine stung her nostrils.

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He knew he’d screwed up before she even came out of the shower. He lay on his stomach trying to sort out where he’d gone wrong.

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You can use different character's point of view with a scene change or chapter change.

I do it like Devil; make it clear right from the first paragraph whose viewpoint the chapter is told through. Each character should have a distinct voice, even in third person.

Perhaps it would help you (it helps me) to write each character's story seperately, then weave them together on the next draft? I do that, but in reverse order: I write the first draft straight through, dropping in POVs when it seems right, then on revision I look at each POV character's story individually, looking for large gaps and personality changes (!!! gah.), and I'll end up adding scenes and deleting scenes, and then I have to stich the whole thing back together again.

You could also develop a pattern that the reader will get used to, to clue them to who's on stage next. Like give the main MC two chapters, followed by one of lover and one of pal, followed by two more MC chapters, one lover, one pal...but you still have to establish early who is doing the talking, and that's best done by distinctive voice. Or pronouns, or other characters speaking to the POV character by name, or bringing up something that happened only to the POV character, or using the feelings of the new POV character about the last POV character to make it clear there's been a transition (deosn't work real well with schizophrenic characters, mind you), or having the characters in different locations so you can use the location as the chapter heading instead of names, because you've already established that Sam is the character in London, and George is the character in Iraq...I'll stop now. You're a creative person. Get creative with it!

In Sometimes A Great Notion, Kesey suddenly slips in a first person narration by a character we haven't heard from yet. It takes awhile to figure out who it is, but becomes clear after a page or so. Lots of writing advice seems to think that audiences are stupid and need to be coddled. I'm not so sure that's true.

In Cuckoo's Nest, the narration of The Cheif is similarly mysterious. Kesey told me that he was wrestling with that book until he conceived of the Chief character, after which it fell into place.

I can think of two books, McMurtry's Leaving Cheyenne and Auchincloss' The Embezzler in which there are three sections, each telling the story from a different character's point of view. In fact I believe the latter uses first person. I like the Embezzler because it essentially tells the same story three times, but it is a different story each time. Not exactly Rashomon, but very cool.

What I'm saying is, there are different ways of doing these things and you can figure out what works best for your story. Don't worry if it's unusual and don't think your readers will be lost and befuddled it you don't spell it out for them. Personally, I think having to tag the characters...especialy if they are short sections...is clunky, and try to identify the characters in various ways in the first three or four paragraphs. I'm working on one like that now, in fact, which jumps to different story lines, most of which converge by the end. Two of the characters turn out to be the same person, in fact.

Have fun.

This probably won't work, but...

Can one character be written in a completely differenct format? Maybe one character is written in third person, and the other's story is told through letters or diary entries or something like that (I toyed with doing this in the novel I'm working on now).

Find half a dozen books written in the manner you are attempting. Read them. Study them. Use them as guides.

IThinkICan29 said:

I'm not convinced that I'm wording my request correctly, anyhooooo.....the only successful way I'm able to tell a story from multiple viewpoints is by titling each chapter with the corresponding character's name. This bores me to tears. I want to try something different. Is it possible to tell a story, with multiple characters, without slapping EACH character's name on their chapter? Does that make sense?

*Please grab an "I ROCK" sticker on your way out*

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So what you're doing now is:

Tom

Tom did this and that.

Mary

She did this or that.

You don't need to use the name as a heading. Just put a line break, three blank lines and start writing.

Mary stared at the phone. Why wasn't Tom calling her? She bit her nail.


Tom stared at the phone. What if he called mary and she blew him off?

That's it. Devil was right, though. make it clear.

kim

chaostitan said:

Find half a dozen books written in the manner you are attempting. Read them. Study them. Use them as guides.

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Sure, you could do that, or you could find a writer's message board and ask for advice from other writers.

Or you could just figure it out yourself.

Dancre said:

So what you're doing now is:

Tom

Tom did this and that.

Mary

She did this or that.

You don't need to use the name as a heading. Just put a line break, three blank lines and start writing.

Mary stared at the phone. Why wasn't Tom calling her? She bit her nail.


Tom stared at the phone. What if he called mary and she blew him off?

That's it. Devil was right, though. make it clear.

kim

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Quoted for truth.

Frankly, if your point of view is only evident by heading a section with the character's name, it is shoddily written. POV will be self-evident, natural, and intuitive in a well-written passage.

As stated above, though, make it clear. And unless you have mastery of the technique (which, meaning no offence, if you are asking for the basics on switching POV, I doubt you have), do not switch POV in the middle of a passage.

You might consider using a different font for the chapter titles (named normally, like "The Awakening", or "Broken Trust" -- sorry, it's early in the A.M.) for each character's viewpoint. Such as, a little girly font for Mary, and a hulky and bold font for Tom. (Or vise versa depending on your story.)

But really, the POV should be evident from the get go. You might try one of these in the opening paragraph of each chapter:
1. Using the viewpoint character's name in the first couple sentences
2. Using slang that only one character uses
3. Showing thoughts for the character
4. Mentioning something that's only important to one character (Friends, occupation, family members, hobbies, etc.)
5. Mentioning something that only one character knows
6. Picking up the story at the location where that character was seen at last.

The book I'm reading now (Snow Crash) alternates between male and female POVs seamlessly without any external clues.

Nicole

If your narration is clear, there's no reason why you can't do multiple viewpoint characters -- just need to be consistent with your POVs. 3rd limited would be easy (separate each POV with a scene break). If you are good, you can even do it in first person without a "heading" if your characters have distinct voices.

I'm in the same boat right now. I just finished a chapter with a total of 5 POV changes from three characters, as in A B A C B. I might work to reduce that to 3 POV changes to A C B. I thought about chopping it up more into smaller chapters, but I have made an effort to be very clear about the POV changes. I'll have to see what my reader thinks.

Take this as a challenge...don't use chapter titles. Make your characters so unique, with such unique voices, and with interesting introductions, so the reader won't need their names in a "you-can't-tell-the-players-without-a-program" format. That's the goal of writing anyway, right?

NeuroFizz said:

Make your characters so unique, with such unique voices, and with interesting introductions, so the reader won't need their names in a "you-can't-tell-the-players-without-a-program" format.

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This deserved quoting. It's great advice for any sort of novel, but especially multiple third person POV.

I wrote a novel with seven (or thereabouts) Point of view characters, with the majority of them taken by the three main characters. The handful of readers who've given me feedback haven't complained about not being able to tell whose POV they are in.

It can be done, and there's lots of great advice in this thread on how to do it.

This thread is just on time for me.
My WIP has three narrators.
1 Main narrator but not main character. This is a policeman.
2 Diary of MC.
3 Police statement of two psychos.

The first two seem to be going Okay. Its No 3 that is giving me a problem. I wonder if I should change this into a narration of what these guys say as narrative given by character 1 who took the statements.

For time being I have left this part open. Are three first person narrators too many. I know its been done. Just wondering.

I used multiple POVs in my fantasy novel and found that I really didn't need to title sections as to whose POV I was using. I wrote in third limited and used a very different voice for each of the two main characters. The MC's sections were written much more conversationally than the secondary MC's.

It takes work but it's worth it.

One way to start is to select favored words and phrases and use them. Overuse them in the rough drafts, then trim as you revise. Give one character a more formal style.

Do little things like perhaps one character always notices walls where another looks at floors. This kind of thing where you show what details are important to someone can be a great way to illuminate character. X is a pretty hangdog character, and rather than saying they walk around with their head down, have them notice details on the floor a lot. Another who's more confident may see things on the walls, and occasionally trip over something on the floor they didn't see.

I don't use chapter titles. I also don't intentionally do anything to let the reader know which PoV I am in during a chapter. I find that it becomes evident on its own and if it wasn't evident in the opening paragraphs of a chapter it is because it wasn't relevent in the opening paragraphs of the chapter.

Throughout my fantasy series, I counted over a dozen different POV characters. Keeping them straight while writing could be difficult with that many, but I found that by going back to their previous scenes and reading the last one or two, I put myself back into their mind for the start of the next scene. I had to write chronologically to keep everything straight, but that was the toughest part I encountered. It worked, but since then I cut back to simpler stories and I've been writing in only two or three POV's since (My brain was fried by the the time I finished the last book.)

The first complete William Faulkner novel I read in college was As I Lay Dying. That book made me wacky, but it was ingenious in its presentation. Faulkner wrote from multiple character perspectives which seemed impossible to differentiate at first until I caught on to each individual's narrative voice. No chapter headings (IIRC) indicated who was talking and that was frustrating. I took more notes while reading that book than I did during class discussions.

I can't imagine doing such a thing for I can barely hang onto one voice in my novel narration right now, but if you can do it, kudos! And if you want to read a literary giant's example of the technique as well as lots of local color and use of the grotesque, I highly recommend AILD.