A Quick Question I have

So, I'm working on a, possible, series of books. It rotates around three characters, named Cara, Ben, and Alex.

The thing is, I'm having trouble finding a way to transition from one of their point of views to another. They are separated during the first book, and I want to get all their points across, but that's where I'm running into trouble.


Any tips?

If you want to switch between viewpoints, the most common way is a chapter break. That means, some chapters in the book have different viewpoint characters. It's an easy switch, and so long as you get readers used to that formatting of book, you're fine.

Second most common method is scene-breaks. When you end a scene, just put a break of some sort (usually * ~ or some graphic is used) and switch viewpoints. Again, you need to show readers early-on that your book will switch viewpoints like this, but once that's set up you can switch as often or as little as you like.

Hope this helps!

~Rosey

Rosey is very right but I do want to make a few elaborations quickly.

Chapter Breaks: What you want to know is how much you’re going to give before switching characters. Christopher Paolini used chapter breaks in his second book to switch from Eragon and Roran. Say chapter one is Eragon and chapter two is Roran and three is Eragon and so on. Now these weren’t little chapters. These were decent, full-bodied chapters.

Scene Breaks: These are used if you’re only going to give a little at a time. The book I’m currently reading, City of Glass, uses a lot of scene breaks and it will often bounce between two or three characters before the end of a chapter. Still, the chapters do not become tediously long or severely short.

If any of that made sense, well then great. If it didn’t, PM me. I’d be glad to help. I’m a big fan of multiple POV.

~lilymoore