Switching viewpoints

Last week, I got an interesting question in my email, sparked by the posts on multiple viewpoint. The writer wanted to know about switching types of viewpoint – that is, writing a multiple-viewpoint story in which some POV characters are written in first-person and some in third-person.

This isn’t a terribly common choice, but it’s not unknown. P.D. James’ The Children of Men uses it; Marion Zimmer Bradley did it more than once, most notably in The Heritage of Hastur, and George Turner’s Drowning Towers could be argued as an example. And then there are all those detective novels in which, somewhere along the way, the author included letters or journal entries from other characters. Technically, those letters and journals are first-person interpolations in a mostly-tight-third-person narrative, and would qualify as “multiple viewpoint switching from third to first-person,” though it’s not usually the first thing anyone thinks of as an example.

The reason why people claim that switching viewpoint types is “wrong” or “can’t be done” is the same reason most writing “rules” come about: it’s a technique that’s hard to make work. “Hard” does not equal “impossible and wrong;” it just means that the writer who wants to attempt it needs to be more careful, and may possibly need to hone his/her writing skills and/or make several tries before they can be sure of pulling it off.

The main difficulties a writer faces in writing a multiple-viewpoint novel with different types of viewpoint as well as different viewpoint characters are the same ones that any multiple-viewpoint novel has, only multiplied: clarity, transition, and holding the reader’s interest.

Clarity means making sure that the reader always knows where and when she is, whose head she’s in, and what type of viewpoint she’s reading. Providing clarity about time, place, and especially viewpoint at the start of each new scene is always important, but it is particularly important in a multiple-viewpoint story, and it is vital if you are shifting from one viewpoint type to another. If the shift in viewpoint character and/or viewpoint type comes between the end of one chapter and the start of the next, it is particularly important to let the reader know quickly and clearly whose viewpoint we’re in, what type of viewpoint we’re in, and where and when the new chapter takes place compared to the previous one.

Consider a chapter that’s been rolling along in Jennifer’s tight-third-person viewpoint. Jennifer’s scene ends, and the next scene begins: “The old Stone Manor sat on a hill overlooking a lake.” That sentence would be equally at home in a tight-third scene from Jennifer’s viewpoint, a first-person scene from Sam’s viewpoint, a flashback to someone’s childhood at the Stone Manor, or even the opening of a scene in which George is standing in the library looking at a picture of the Stone Manor. Unless the scene follows directly from the previous one and continues in Jennifer’s viewpoint, the reader is going to have to readjust every time she gets a new bit of information that contradicts that assumption, and if there are too many adjustments, the reader is going to get more and more confused and annoyed as she has to keep reevaluating stuff she has already read.

If the new scene had started “From my post behind a clump of lilacs, I studied the Stone Manor,” the reader would be sure the scene isn’t still in Jennifer’s viewpoint, even if it’s the second scene in the story and the reader has no idea who this new “I” character is.

Transitions are the way the viewpoint gets handed off from one character to another. In many novels, authors use a blank line or space break to indicate a change of scene, and as readers we’re so used to that that we just accept it as normal. Multiple viewpoint novels often require more of a handoff, especially early on when the viewpoints are still being established, and this goes double for switching viewpoint types in mid-stream.

The smoothest and most natural transitions are the sort I mentioned in the detective novels, where the third-person viewpoint character opens an envelope or book and begins to read a personal letter or diary, which is then presented to the reader. We expect letters and journals to be in first-person; furthermore, there is normally a salutation or a date at the top to signal that we’re switching from third-person-detective to first-person-suspect’s-journal. Finally, since we’re usually reading what the detective is reading, it doesn’t feel like a change in viewpoint at all; it feels as if we’re still looking through the detective’s third-person eyes and reading the letter along with him.

Doing first-person viewpoints as letters or diary entries is a useful technique for mixing first-person and third-person viewpoints even if the letters and diaries are a completely separate section that the third-person viewpoint character never sees. P. D. James uses this technique in The Children of Men. It’s not suitable for every story or every first-person viewpoint, but it’s worth considering. Alternatively, one can simply label each scene with a place, date, and viewpoint character’s name, or some subset of these, which is the approach Marion Zimmer Bradley takes.

Another way to do the handoff is from within the scenes. For instance, one character can wonder what’s going on with the next POV character, or hope she’s found the missing murder weapon, and then the next scene opens with the new POV character making a reference back to the previous scene. (“Jennifer sighed and went back to the paperwork, wondering when Sam was going to arrive.//A bullet whined past my ear as I ducked behind a car, and I promised myself that the next time Jennifer wanted me to come in early to handle paperwork, I’d say yes.”) This isn’t right for every book, either, and it can easily be overdone, but sometimes it’s just exactly the technique you want.

If the writer is working with a minimal number of viewpoint characters – say, two or three – he/she can set up a rigid rotation, so that after a couple of chapters the reader knows that all the even-numbered chapters are in first-person and all the odd-numbered ones are in third-person, or that every other scene is first-person. This can cause other difficulties, though, as when one viewpoint character has 15,000 words’ worth of important stuff happening to her and all your other chapters are around 6,000 words long.

Holding the reader’s interest as the viewpoint characters switch off is the final challenge, and at first it might look like a matter of content – giving the reader events that are interesting enough that they’ll want to keep coming back. But you can’t end every single scene or chapter on a cliffhanger without annoying a lot of readers, and there are also readers out there who will skip the next two or three viewpoints in order to find out what happens to their favorite character if you leave that character on a cliffhanger. So that technique is best used sparingly.

What most readers want is a sense that the story is getting somewhere – that each scene is building on what has gone before. The letter that the detective reads seldom knocks a reader out of the story or interrupts the flow, because 1) the viewpoint change is clear, and clearly signaled, 2) the transition is natural and easy to follow, and 3) the reader trusts that the letter is highly relevant to the central story-problem, because otherwise the writer wouldn’t have put the letter in the story.

And that’s the real key to holding the reader’s interest through the speed bump that is a change in viewpoint character or viewpoint type: the relevance of the new scene/new viewpoint, the sense that the story is getting somewhere, and the trust that the reader has learned to have in the writer.