Young Writers Society

Hey guys. It's been a long time since I posted anything but I'm having a bit of trouble deciding on something and I thought I'd post this here.

In Mage Chronicles, I have two Point of Views that alternate between chapters. We start with Ryder and then alternate to Styxx. It does this through the whole book and I love writing it this way. However, I'm wondering if this might not be a little too confusing for some readers. Would this confuse you? (Keep in mind that each chapter is titled with the name of the character whose eyes we're viewing the story from.)

I'd appreciate any response you guys could give.

Shadow.

Hey there!

First off, is this first person POV?

From the way you're talking, I assume it is, in which case I'd caution you to make sure you focus on the individual voice of each character. Changing narrators in a first-person context is difficult, but not impossible; you just have to make sure that both Styxx and Ryder sound like their own people, rather than clones of each other.

A quick shortcut to developing voice (in the very short run) would be asking "what would Styxx notice or comment on that Ryder wouldn't?" and vice versa. Then you can get into the nitty-gritty of making them sound like different people, down to their personality traits impacting the connotations of the words they choose to describe something.

From what I'm saying, I think you can guess what my answer is, haha. It's definitely not impossible, especially if each of your chapters is titled with the POV character's name and if it's a reliable alternation (1 is Ryder, 2 is Styxx, 3 is Ryder, that kind of thing).

It's possible in third-person POV, so it's possible in first. You'll just have to put a little more work into making sure the characters sound distinct so your readers don't get confused, like if they put the book down in the middle of a chapter and come back and forget whose POV they're in.

Best of luck!

Thanks! I've decided to keep it the way it is. I had my best friend read my book and he was definitely not confused about the POV changes. And I enjoyed writing in both of their POV's.

There's definitely a lot of challenge with writing multiple POVs (I remember there was a story I was co-writing with someone and it had three different POVs in it, all in first person).

As Lariene commented above, I definitely think you should be careful when writing the dual POVs, especially if you start adding more in. One example of it done not so well is actually Rick Riordan's work, specifically The Blood of Olympus. I found myself having to re-read whole chapters because I got confused on who the narrator was for that chapter and it threw me completely off about the plot for at least a third of the book.

However, an example of it one well can also be seen in his work. There's a huge opportunity for growing as a writer when you do dual POVs because you can work on changing the narration itself to fit one of your MC's personality. Something that can be one page if narrated by Styxx, can be up to three pages with Ryder, because of different personalities. You can do a lot with personality building in your story. I think you should stick with it because it's always fun working on something challenging but rewarding. If you decide to post this on YWS, poke me; I'd love to read it and comment on the dual POVs!

The entire first draft is actually posted in Novel Workshop. I'd love it if you'd check it out. Styxx and Ryder do have very different personalities. Of course, they're also very similar in ways as well. I did this purposely, of course, because Styxx is drawn to Ryder BECAUSE he reminds him of a younger version of himself.