Another question...

[cookiejar]

I'm writing my Christmas story and I want it written from both perspectives. The man's perspective and the woman's because each are so vastly different. It's a piece that explores each person's feelings and motives and I can't see writing it from one perspective.

My question is: How do I seperate them or should I? Do I write as him, then switch to her? Each segment advances the story and as I look at it I don't think the reader will be confused.

How do authors here handle this? Do they put in *** between each segment or do you just switch? I know this sounds disjointed but I have a hard time explaining it. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[LadyJeanne]

I've seen writing where each time the perspective switches, it's the start of a new chapter.

You could also use the omniscient third person narrator who knows all and sees all.

 

[English Lady]

It's osmething that is done in romance type novels all the time. As long as you make it clear that it's now the male thinking then I don't think you need to mark it with anything else.

Make your male and female and their thought processes distinctly different and there shouldn't be a problem

 

[Guest]

 

[oggbashan]

If it works: submit it.

If I doesn't work: revise it until it does.

Having two viewpoints at once is difficult to make acceptable. Switching at chapter ends is more usual.

I ended one story with three separate viewpoints of the same event. It didn't work and needs revision.

Og

 

[cookiejar]

Thanks everyone. I am going away for 3 days and it gives me time to think on it. At least now I have a few perspectives on it.

 

[Guest]

I'm writing my Christmas story and I want it written from both perspectives. The man's perspective and the woman's because each are so vastly different. It's a piece that explores each person's feelings and motives and I can't see writing it from one perspective.

My question is: How do I seperate them or should I? Do I write as him, then switch to her? Each segment advances the story and as I look at it I don't think the reader will be confused.

How do authors here handle this? Do they put in *** between each segment or do you just switch? I know this sounds disjointed but I have a hard time explaining it. Any help would be appreciated.

Cookie, I tend to use multiple POVs a lot in my writing, and if one scene doesn't cover an entire chapter, and POV switches mid-chapter, I use the *** (or, as it should be correctly formatted, if sending to a publisher: #).

The reader will soon get the hang of it, if you use any kind of break or seperator.

Lou

 

[TheEarl]

Agreed with Lou. Another suggestion, something which I've seen implemented in a novel, is to use the 1st person character's name as the title for each chapter, or, if it's not being separated into chapters, as the sub-heading for each section.

The Earl

 

[SeaCat]

Agreed with Lou. Another suggestion, something which I've seen implemented in a novel, is to use the 1st person character's name as the title for each chapter, or, if it's not being separated into chapters, as the sub-heading for each section.

The Earl

This is how I've done it in the stories I have written with multiple points of view. Sometimes it's a bit of a pain in the ass but it works. (As long as you break it up, show each scene through each characters eyes before you go on to the enxt scene. Otherwise it gets hard to read.)

Cat

 

[fifty5]

I'm writing my Christmas story and I want it written from both perspectives. The man's perspective and the woman's because each are so vastly different. It's a piece that explores each person's feelings and motives and I can't see writing it from one perspective.

My question is: How do I seperate them or should I? Do I write as him, then switch to her? Each segment advances the story and as I look at it I don't think the reader will be confused.

How do authors here handle this? Do they put in *** between each segment or do you just switch? I know this sounds disjointed but I have a hard time explaining it. Any help would be appreciated.

My only submission did this - and used the *** convention (actually -----, but that's trivial). See http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=101427   It got a comment of, "I loved the intertwined points of view. (If you think that's easy, YOU try it!)" from millennium_bard, plus "I tried to do something like this, different points of view and different people type stuff, and blew it. You did it very well" from Lisa Denton.

Those quotes aren't (just) bragging, but more to give credence to my thoughts.

The other thing I did was to overlap the time-scales. Each time the POV changed, the story jumped back a bit, so that the next section re-described some of the action before going on to new material. My intention was for the reader to recognise / get used to the new POV before the story chucked new stuff at them.

According to the 2 authorities cited above, that worked (and the other 2 comments were also favourable, though not dealing with this particular aspect).

Feel free to nick anything you want.

Eff