Young Writers Society

What are your thoughts on having multiple viewpoints from first person?

Personally, I think it's great: you can move around the story while at the same time managing to see everything from their point of view.

I think it's fine, as long as it's clearly defined where you change between people. It's also easy to cram hundreds of viewpoint characters into something, and between that and not making it obvious which bit is who, it's very easy to lose your reader.

(I have an old 'series' of 'books' where I did exactly this. I had a font for each character and everything... it's painful xD )

Cadi wrote:(I have an old 'series' of 'books' where I did exactly this. I had a font for each character and everything... it's painful xD )

...Omg, that's just beautiful. You were the cleverest little dragon.

I've always been very... well. I'm not a fan of multiple first person because it gets confusing. It confuses me a lot. xD If it doesn't, usually it's those novels that label the section so you know, "Hey, this is in Captain Smith's point of view!" or "We're in the ship chef's viewpoint, now!"

I personally think its pretty terrible and I'm not sure I've ever seen it in published works. I can see how it could be useful for the writer, but it's messy and horrible for the reader.

I like first person because it makes the characters more real. It's almost as if your the character and you seeing the world/viewpoints etc from them. Third person just separates the reader. When you do transition between a character POV you have to make sure that you know who is who. Quiet frankly, I like first.

Faulkner did it! In As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and probably more. Those were incredible stories.

Anyway, I have nothing against it. It can be very effective when it's used in a way that's not confusing or distracting.

Just make sure not to pull an Elizabeth Kerner. In Song in the Silence she abruptly switches perspective in mid-chapter and continues to do so, with several narrators, throughout the trilogy.

Wait, are we talking first-person omniscient? Or first-person plural? They are different.

The first has a narrator as a character in the story, but knows all the thoughts of the other characters. Think The Book Thief.

The second uses "we" as a pronoun and has a collective conscience. Think "A Rose for Emily" by Faulkner (who yes, was famous for employing that technique).

The Knight and Rogue series by Hilari Bell is a good example of young adult fantasy that uses alternating first person perspectives, and they're some of my favorite books. I write my book in alternating first person as well; I love first person for the ability to get inside a character's head and describe the world as they see it unfolding, but I also like switching between my main two (regularly, every other chapter) because it's also helpful to 'see the character from the outside' per se.

I don't mind reading from the first person POV of multiple characters however I think it does run the risk of making it hard to distinguish who is talking. When it's done well, and the chracters have distinct voices, it can be effective, but I have read a couple of books where the voices were too similar and I had to keep flicking back to work out whose POV it was. If it's done well, great, but otherwise it can be tricky.