2 POV

If I understand the question, that isn't usually done. You could divide the piece into sections with breaks in between and tell alternate parts of the story from one character's point of view and in the third person.

2 pov

I've written stories that alternate between 1st person and 3rd person. Its all up to you how you want to go about it, that is alot of the fun in writing. For me I started by having the main character talking about the main action in the story and then cut to a 3rd person description of him actually in the story. I'd say experiment, it can be fun to play around with various literary constructions such as POV.

Light of the World said:

How do you put first and third person point of view in one piece?

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The first thing to ask yourself is whether you really need more than one pov.

In a short story in particular, there are many benefits to be gained by sticking to a single pov - and there are dangers in deciding to have more than one.

However, if you have a good reason for using a 2nd pov the main thing you need is clarity whenever you switch. If the reader is confused and doesn't know whose eyes s/he's looking through, you will have problems.

Stick to one pov per scene.

Each time you change pov, start a new scene, and make sure we know instantly whose head we are now in.

Maye use a * * * break to separate the scenes.

Here's an example from an old story of mine. It was two 3rd person povs, but I've changed the first one to 1st.


Drizzle bleared my glasses as I locked the doors and set the alarm, and then I was running, my shoes pounding the wet tarmac, my feet competing to trip me as I swerved to avoid a woman pushing a pram. I by-passed the queues and cleared the ticket office - just in time to see the last carriage of the 8.05 disappearing into Packington Tunnel.


Mary checked her watch for the third time. With her car out of action she’d planned to take the bus, but if the girls didn’t get a move on they were going to miss the bloody thing. She bustled into the hallway and yelled up the stairs.

‘Kate! Susie! Will you please hurry up?’

Susie appeared on the landing, agitated, her twin plaits swinging.

You can probably switch POVs by chapter. I wouldn't suggest switching by scenes -- too confusing. You may need to tell us whose POV it is after you switch from 3rd to 1st. 3rd would be easy to know. E.g.:


Gary took a look at Christine and realized how much he loved her.


Christine:
I couldn't stand this Gary guy. He was foul....

In a short story it'd be easier to alternate between 2nd and (1st or 3rd) person, since it doesn't rely so much on emphatic breaks. Switching between 1st and 3rd can quickly and easily get confusing if there isn't a chapter break in between.

I'm using all three POVs in a current WIP, but it's a novel and therefore I'm afforded the luxury of chapter breaks.

BUT if the consensus is that it shouldn't be done, I'd take that as a direct challenge and do it anyway.

POV

Short stories have to be KISSed
It's a good rule when writing short stories to Keep It (the story) Short and Simple. Do you need those two points of view? Try writing the story in the clearest simplest way several times using both 1st and 3rd POV. It may help clear your mind as to what you're saying and how you need to say it. Then if you really have to have two points of view and your story is of a length to support it perhaps you'll see more clearly how to do it.
Good Luck!

NicoleJLeBoeuf said:

FWIW, one of my writing teachers was fond of saying that "In a short story, you don't have enough room to have more than one POV."

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I'd be inclined to be suspicious about that piece of advice. I've been re-reading a lot of Robert E. Howard stories recently (the original Conan stories, not the tripe that got written in the last twenty years with Conan in it). He often starts in one 3rd person limited, and then switches to another one (often Conan) at the end of the first scene. This way, he gets to describe Conan's appearance through someone else's eyes, and he doesn't have to resort to stuff like Conan looking in a mirror to get the physical description across.

Now, you may say that R. E. Howard's stories are pulp (they are), and that he wrote seventy-plus years ago or even that they're not of any great literary merit (which I'm not sure if I agree with, but ...), but the fact is, his stories are still being printed and re-printed seventy-plus years after he wrote--not only that, but he started a whole frickin' genre. How cool is that?

Elmore Leonard also switches POV mid-scene sometimes.

As for swapping between 1st and 3rd person, I've only seen it done in a novels (and only in a couple of novels, at that). I found it very jarring at first, but as the novel went on I stopped noticing.

Anyway, just my 2c.

NicoleJLeBoeuf said:

FWIW, one of my writing teachers was fond of saying that "In a short story, you don't have enough room to have more than one POV."
.

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Change that to, "In general" and the statement will be more accurate. While it is a danger to switch the POV in a short story because there isn't enough room to justify the switch without it seeming arbitrary, it can be done.

F. Scott Fitzgerald switched from tight third limited in his story "Babylon Revisited" in one place at the end, when he moved the POV to the protagonists sister. In doing this, he subtly created sympathy for her, when she had been the antagonist up to that point. It works because it helped resolve the conflict with the protagonist and it gave the reader the payoff of understanding the sister a little better.

- Anatole

While it is a danger to switch the POV in a short story because there isn't enough room to justify the switch without it seeming arbitrary, it can be done.


I think the main point to bear in mind is that if you do it, you should do it for a reason. Not just as an exercise in pov-switching, but because the pov switch actually does something - actually adds to the story.

As far as I'm aware, I've only done it once in a short story. It was an early piece of mine, but I think I had valid story-reasons for doing it.

points of view should not be multiplied unnecessarily.

Exactly.

If you think about it, when a writer switches pov s/he's tampering with the way a human being experiences reality.

What I mean is, we all of us wander through life trapped in one head. We see the world through one pair of eyes, hear through one pair of ears etc. That's our reality.

So whenever we read a story that switches pov, we know deep down that this is a trick. We've learned to accept it - we don't even question it unless it's badly-done - but it does violate our experience of the world as it is.

If you're lost in the fictive dream, you don't want anything to pull you out of it and too many pov switches can do that.

So use 'em with great care!

POV

As someone once said, there is only one ironclad, unbreakable, handed-down-from-the-Mount rule in fiction: Thou shalt not bore the reader!

Everything else is just a suggestion based on the experience of many generations of writing. But if you can make it work without boring the reader, it's a legitimate technique.

But as John says, there needs to be a reason for anything. Too many new writers switch POV because they haven't learned how to get certain information across without switching.

Too laToo lazy to look it up, but J. D. Salinger did it masterfully in a short story.

I agree, you should only do it with a purpose. In one of my recent stories, I shifted viewpoint mid-conversation between two characters, but the whole story depends on their thoughts and perceptions during their chance meeting.

If you want to read a good story where POV shifts between first, second, and third person, look up Robert Silverberg's "Sundance."

POV

clintl said:

I agree, you should only do it with a purpose. In one of my recent stories, I shifted viewpoint mid-conversation between two characters, but the whole story depends on their thoughts and perceptions during their chance meeting.

If you want to read a good story where POV shifts between first, second, and third person, look up Robert Silverberg's "Sundance."

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I don't recall reading that one, but does Silverberg write anything that isn't excellent?

It's a pretty well-known story, and James Gunn included it in his anthology The Road to Science Fiction - Vol. 3. I'm sure it's in one of Silverberg's collections, too, but I don't know which one.

If any of you have ever read the novel "American Psycho" (You most likely have at least seen the movie with Christian Bale) There is an excellent example where The POV wich is almost completely first person for the entire novel (usually really annoying, but it worked in here because the narrator's view of the world is so screwed up) and the suddenly switches to 3rd person as the narrator loses control of himself completely and goes on a rampage.

What worked was that you felt yourself stepping out of his head suddenly (I believe it began mid-scene, if I remember correctly, and continued into another chapter) and you are jarred out of your seat, completely confused.

That is, of course, exactly what the author wanted you to feel, the same confusion and seperation from the story that the narrator felt, and it worked amazingly well.

Later, when he stepped back into the mind of the narrator to reflect on what had happened, it completed the illusion.

Really great book, great read, nasty, nasty scenery.

B.