First person switching to third person

I'm writing a novel for JulNoWriMo and I just had an idea. I was wondering if anyone could give me advice on it, as in, "Is it actually a good idea?" Anyway, my idea is this: I'm writing my novel in first person and my MC's older sister is going to run away. I was thinking that maybe I could stop writing in first person for a little bit, write about her sister's small adventure, then go back to first person when my MC's sister returns. Er, was that confusing? Eh, sorry.
Well, I wasn't exactly sure where this should be posted but this seemed as good a place as any. Thanks for your help! Let me know what you think!
Oh! One more thing! If I do end up doing this idea, does anyone have any ideas on how I could execute it without confusing the reader too much? Maybe my MC could be wondering where her sister is or something and then switch to the third person? Sorry, I'm rambling. I'll just shut up now.... Thanks again!
~Soul

I was planning on doing that in my novel, so I'm biased to say that's a good idea.

What I plan on doing is chapter breaks. They are the easiest way to switch without being confusing. You can also have the MC talk/worry about her sister right before, so we have some idea as to who it is. But if you're going to be switching persons, the story itself should let readers know who we are looking at. However, that can still be slightly confusing (especially if the readers is bad at names. *Guilty*) so talking about the sister before hand is probably a good idea. And use her real name so it's fresh in our minds when we follow her adventure.

Hope this helps!

~Rosey

Thanks a bunch! That really does help. I'm planning (hopefully) to do chapters or even just like a "Part one", "Part Two", etc. Thanks for your help, Rosey!

My advice is to check out the formatting of other books that switch viewpoints. What I've noticed is that they use chapter breaks.
One chapter would be titled "Jenna", and would be from Jenna's point of view, or third person all about Jenna. The next chapter be titled "Anna", and, voila! It was about Anna.

Good luck!

--Antigone

Antigone and Rosey have it ^^

In my story I changed from 1st person POV's and sometimes I did 3rd person POV when necessary. The best way to do this is the change chapters and put the character's name there, or you could name it something like Anna's Adventure or whatever the character may be doing.

If you use 1st person POV more than once, you have the make sure that each character is distinct from the other.

Hope that helps ^^

-Shina

Because you only want to do it for one chapter it almost seems like those TV shows that have spin offs and throughout the episode they switch between shows and it makes it god awful to watch. So you reaaaally want to avoid that effect.

I think in a novel it would be hard to do so yes, i guess heed the advice of those who know and check out authors who have done it successfully. I've written a short story in which it goes from third to girst person halfway through and i just broke it up with monster hyphen that covered the horizontal. But i would think a chapter break would be the most plausible way to pull it off, and i think in the first paragraph of the switch, you'd need the narrator to clarify what is happening. And possibly even have the narrator be a peripheral character in the story.

I almost hate to bring this up, but Breaking Dawn did that...

Take that as you will.

I would put them both in first person, with chapter titles like Antigone suggested.

Jay wrote:I would put them both in first person, with chapter titles like Antigone suggested.

I agree with Jay here, just make sure the readers can easily tell which point of view it is, other than just chapter titles, in case some readers don't make the connection.