How do you switch POV/Narrators?

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I've been telling it from one person, but I need to switch to a third party so I can add things happening another room where the one isn't present.

Can it be done in a chapter, or should it be a new chapter?

I've tried to read some where that is done by a line of dashes or stars, but I find them hard to follow.

 

[TheRedChamber]

As a general rule its much better to bake the PoV changes deep into the story. That is to say, only include extra PoV characters if they are important to the story and are going to have their own arc. Having a story which is 90% one character and then 10% someone minor just to drop one scene or bit of plot where the MC isnt present is (imho) usually* a bad idea.

If you must do it, change chapters and make sure the POV switch section is meaty enough to stand on its own.

(*usually = geniuses know when to break this rule)

 

[Cagivagurl]

Could you not simply listen through the walls???
Or sneak a peek through a window???
Perhaps not knowing exactly adds to the suspense...
Just a thought.

Cagivagurl

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Could you not simply listen through the walls???
Or sneak a peek through a window???
Perhaps not knowing exactly adds to the suspense...

There is and will be some of that.

But Mom can't be home 24 hours, 365 days can she?

Narrator needs to change to another family member or an overseer narrator to fill in actions she isn't there for.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Tough transition to make work, whether it is done with a chapter break or simply a scene break.

If I was to attempt something like this, I would have the omniscient narrator start the story in some fashion, and segue into the first person portion with "Let's see how 'character A' tells their tale". Then, switching back to the 3rd person POV at a later point would make more sense.

 

[StillStunned]

I do it all the time, even within chapters.

Just make sure that there's a logical point for the switch, and if you can tie the next scene in with the first. The mother leaves the house, and the daughter hears the door close behind her. She turns to her brother, etc.

I'll sometimes use the device of starting a story from an unimportant POV to introduce the main character, then switch to the main POV. See for instance Lights, Camera, Blood: Ch. 02, which starts with the taxi driver and shifts to Mircalla when he drives off.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've been telling it from one person, but I need to switch to a third party so I can add things happening another room where the one isn't present.

Can it be done in a chapter, or should it be a new chapter?

I've tried to read some where that is done by a line of dashes or stars, but I find them hard to follow.

Going from first person to third person narration, if that's what you're thinking of doing, is a bit of a cheat. I reckon pick one or the other, but not both.

The alternative is close third person, using either section breaks

* * * *

to designate the shift between characters, or use narrative context to make it clear who your narrator is getting in close to.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Narrator needs to change to another family member or an overseer narrator to fill in actions she isn't there for.

Can your alternate narrator tell the story to Mom?

--Annie

 

[THBGato]

I've done alternating POV characters quite a lot. I just name the pov character in a sub-heading/chapter title.

@Limentina does this beautifully in Hope a little longer switching pov to a colleague (Angela) so we, the reader, can see the change in Ray after her first night with Sarah. It's a delight.

 

[Trionyx]

I've done alternating POV characters quite a lot. I just name the pov character in a sub-heading/chapter title.

This.

The alternative is close third person, using either section breaks

Or this.
I strongly recommend against switching from first to third person within a story.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I've done alternating POV characters quite a lot. I just name the pov character in a sub-heading/chapter title.

@Limentina does this beautifully in Hope a little longer switching pov to a colleague (Angela) so we, the reader, can see the change in Ray after her first night with Sarah. It's a delight.

In the example you provided, there isn't actually a change in the narrative perspective. It remains first person with the narration alternating between the characters. That is common, and easily accomplished, but it doesn't compare with switching the POV from first person to third person and back again. That is best done using techniques such a frame story to set the stage for POV changes later.

 

[Voboy]

In my world? The answer is "you don't."

I'd click out of that story at once and, if I remembered the writer's name, I'd probably avoid their future work.

 

[ronde]

I've been telling it from one person, but I need to switch to a third party so I can add things happening another room where the one isn't present.

Can it be done in a chapter, or should it be a new chapter?

I've tried to read some where that is done by a line of dashes or stars, but I find them hard to follow.

I've seen this question asked before and I always ask myself why an author would want to change from one character's narration to a different character's narration mid story. To me, it would be very disruptive to be reading one character telling his or her side of the story with all his or her assumptions and biases, and then change to a different set of assumptions and biases. I'd think it would also be difficult to maintain some sort of continuity if the point of view changes from one character telling the reader, "I did this", and then have another character begin telling the story using the same format of "I did this".

That won't happen if you wrote in third person, let the narrator "introduce" the speaker, and then let that speaker tell the story through dialogue. Changing speakers becomes a very simple matter then. The narrator just has to tell the reader which character is now telling their side of the story. There is no rule that says a third person narrator has to do all the telling of the story. The third person narrator is only an observer of the characters and situation and can tell the story by relating the words, thoughts, and actions of each character where that point of view is needed.

 

[THBGato]

In the example you provided, there isn't actually a change in the narrative perspective. It remains first person with the narration alternating between the characters. That is common, and easily accomplished, but it doesn't compare with switching the POV from first person to third person and back again. That is best done using techniques such a frame story to set the stage for POV changes later.

Actually, there is a bit of third person on Page 2. Only a couple of paragraphs.
That might be a good guide for the OP if that's what they want to do.

In my series, Love is a place, I used a close 3rd in part 1, first person for part 2, and an omniscient 3rd in part 3. Some commenters wondered why (I don't know - it just felt right) but it didn't stop them reading to the end.

 

[StillStunned]

There seems to be some confusion. I don't see the OP as switching from 1P to 3P:

I've been telling it from one person, but I need to switch to a third party so I can add things happening another room where the one isn't present.

"One person" here presumably just means the narrator (not necessarily 1P POV), and "third party" means someone else.

And switching between separate 3P POVs happens all the time. It's one of the great advantages of using 3P. It just needs to be handled carefully, to avoid headhopping within scenes.

 

[alohadave]

I've been telling it from one person, but I need to switch to a third party so I can add things happening another room where the one isn't present.

Can it be done in a chapter, or should it be a new chapter?

I've tried to read some where that is done by a line of dashes or stars, but I find them hard to follow.

You can do it however works best for your story. Generally there is a break between scene or chapter when you would change POV characters.

You could do it in the middle of a scene, but it can get confusing and you'd need to have a way of indicating the POV change.

You also don't need to make the scene in the other room a POV, you can do third person. In one of my stories, it's 1st person, except for one short scene where I wanted to convey an action but there was no need for me to use any of the characters' POVs, so I used 3rd person for that scene.

 

[alohadave]

To me, it would be very disruptive to be reading one character telling his or her side of the story with all his or her assumptions and biases, and then change to a different set of assumptions and biases. I'd think it would also be difficult to maintain some sort of continuity if the point of view changes from one character telling the reader, "I did this", and then have another character begin telling the story using the same format of "I did this".

It's a really common technique when you have multiple plotlines in a story. Usually they are related and merge at some point, or one storyline provides background for the story that the main character wouldn't explicitly experience or think about, but is relevant to the reader's experience.

 

[StillStunned]

Also, several reputable authors have done things like multiple different 1P perspectives. Heinlein in The Number of the Beast, for instance. I won't say it worked, but it's been done.

On a related note, I'm 6.5k words into a 1P POV story that does in fact shift to what seems to be 3P, but isn't actually. It's just the same 1P narrating the events as if they're happening to someone else.

 

[NuclearFairy]

You could also have mom still clearly be the narrator by having the narrator say something along the lines of, "I didn't know it at the time." Letting the reader know that this isn't something mom will be privy to yet, but mom is still telling the story and learned about this later and thought it an important detail to add now.

 

[Gamblnluck]

I've been telling it from one person, but I need to switch to a third party so I can add things happening another room where the one isn't present.

Can it be done in a chapter, or should it be a new chapter?

The way I do it is to have a person in that other room relate what happened to the 1st person.
"Dammit Jane, it sounded like a fight in there! What the hell was going on?" I asked.

She answered, "Well, to be honest, you aren't supposed to know about any of this, but...."

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

See, this is still in the works. Mom is telling the story. She is the prime narrator among dialog between all in her presence. But things need to happen between the triplets when she isn't in the room, or even the house. Plan as of now is that in a new chapter, one of the triplets takes over telling the story until Mom gets back. Then they carry on with the triplets hearing Mom's dialog.


Next scene/ chapter would go back to Mom being primary.


I don't really want to use an offstage narrator to fill in the gaps.

 

[filthytrancendence]

That won't happen if you wrote in third person, let the narrator "introduce" the speaker, and then let that speaker tell the story through dialogue. Changing speakers becomes a very simple matter then. The narrator just has to tell the reader which character is now telling their side of the story. There is no rule that says a third person narrator has to do all the telling of the story. The third person narrator is only an observer of the characters and situation and can tell the story by relating the words, thoughts, and actions of each character where that point of view is needed.

So I'm sure there's more academic terminology for this, but I see a huge distinction between 3P omniscient and what I usually call perspective-locked 3P.

I'm a big booster for perspective-locked 3rd person. Partly because it makes it seamless and painless for the reader to switch perspectives, but it maintains quite a bit of the intimate feel of 1P if you do it right. In this frame, your perspective character is the narrator, but they use 3rd person perspective. Nothing occurs in the narrative that they do not personally see, feel, hear, taste or smell, just like 1P.

I mostly loathe omniscient 3P because it evokes in me the feeling @Voboy describes whenever the perspective floats to somebody else. I do not like it when there seems like a narrator entity that is not participating in the story (unless that actually becomes part of the story). That just does not feel human to me (which can be good, actually, if that is the point).

Anyway, the best way to do this in my experience is to swap perspectives between chapters. I also generally steal the James SA Corey convention of giving each chapter simply the name of the perspective character so the audience cannot miss it. There is SO much narrative utility in this approach, I just cannot recommend highly enough everyone try it if you have not. There's so much free narrative tension to be had by limiting your description of something important in a realistic way through the eyes of one character and then re-contextualizing it with the subjective perspective of another.

It is not really, however, something you can just do ad-hoc. It's a structural choice you kinda need to make up front, or else re-factor your draft to accommodate it.

 

[iwatchus]

Also, several reputable authors have done things like multiple different 1P perspectives. Heinlein in The Number of the Beast, for instance. I won't say it worked, but it's been done.

On a related note, I'm 6.5k words into a 1P POV story that does in fact shift to what seems to be 3P, but isn't actually. It's just the same 1P narrating the events as if they're happening to someone else.

My WIP is 1P about someone who just became able to read minds. He often both sees what he can see and what the other person, most often his love interest, sees. It has been interesting writing and a challenge. My prediction is that this becomes my lowest rated non-LW story, but it's been fun. The editing is going to be a bear on this one. I had fun with this paragraph I wrote this morning, still raw, as it poured through my fingers.

I can feel her touching her clit. I can feel the sensation so thoroughly it is my clit now, too. She brings her second hand in, pushing her fingers into her pussy. My pussy. Our pussy. She is imagining that I am fucking her as the fingers drive in and out. I can feel our clit throbbing with excitement. Its explosion is flowing through us. Our fingers are being squeezed by our pussy. I am ejaculating, shooting across the room. The two orgasms swirl and unite, creating one fantastic chimera, two different sensations, different climaxes becoming one inside me. I wonder if anyone has ever experienced this before.

 

[StillStunned]

I mostly loathe omniscient 3P because it evokes in me the feeling @Voboy describes whenever the perspective floats to somebody else. I do not like it when there seems like a narrator entity that is not participating in the story (unless that actually becomes part of the story). That just does not feel human to me (which can be good, actually, if that is the point).

Omniscient 3P probably works best when the story isn't about people, but about events. An account of a war, or the history of a family, or a tale of a disaster. When you're telling facts, huge numbers of facts, and it's about what actually happens and not so much about personal development in response to what happens.

 

[filthytrancendence]

Omniscient 3P probably works best when the story isn't about people, but about events. An account of a war, or the history of a family, or a tale of a disaster. When you're telling facts, huge numbers of facts, and it's about what actually happens and not so much about personal development in response to what happens.

Maybe? I mean, I can see that. I'm sure it could work, and I'm not trying to say omniscient is bad 100% of the time.

But like... The Expanse, my favorite series and the thing what got me hooked on 3P locked tells the story of humanity going from successfully colonizing the solar system to becoming a galaxy-spanning civilization without ever leaving a human perspective (kinda, there's some cheating, but its minor and brief).

I'm also reading Red Mars right now, which is even more of a sociological story than The Expanse in that it covers the entire process of colonizing Mars through a dozen different perspectives, but the whole thing is perspective-locked too. Probably some of where Ty and Daniel got that frame from in the first place.

Point is, especially if what you're doing is creating speculative fiction about future extremely important historical events/wars/disasters, it works shockingly well to filter that through a human perspective and not an omniscient one. It hits a lot harder if one of the facts is that your MC's friend or lover was killed or maimed, for instance. They can learn later that 1,000 other people were killed in the same event, but even that gives a more realistic perspective to the audience than recounting the facts would.