On Switching Perspectives

It’s been a while! I’m back to throw out a few tips on switching perspectives: one last hint about The Otherfolk before my official announcement post in February.

Switching perspectives. What does that mean? Well, I tell people it’s like Gordon Korman. Gordon Korman is a middle-grade author with awesome books that I loved like Restart and The Unteachables. You can see his website here. One of the things that makes Korman so recognizable is the way he switches perspectives in each chapter - one chapter will be from the main character’s perspective, then from his teacher, then his friend, then his enemy. When I first started writing The Otherfolk, one of the only things I knew about the book was that I wanted to switch perspectives.

So, I did. And… yeah. Not great. Really, you won’t hear me say many good things about my first draft - I don’t like to talk about it. A lot of things went wrong, the writing was poor, you know what I mean. But it got me to where I am now, and I’m thankful for it. So that you don’t have to have the same problems I did, here are my tips for writing from multiple perspectives.

One: don’t have a set order.

I started with Anna’s perspective - my main character. Then Peter, her best friend. It alternated for a while, then a third character got added to the mix. Except it wasn’t a mix. It was more like stripes. Alternating between Anna, Peter, and Eli. Anna, Peter, Eli. Again. Again.

I’m sure you could figure out alternating order (especially if you only have two characters), but my instinct now is to say, don’t do that. I ended up with far too many filler chapters - Anna and Peter would be in one place, but it was Eli’s turn, so what was I supposed to write? I’d really need to see into Peter’s head, but it’d be Anna’s turn, so how would I get through hers? And then another character began to become more and more important - but she’d been there as long as Eli, so I couldn’t add her to the list now.

In short, it made some chapters like a task to get through. Boring to write, boring to read, and useless to the plot. When I rewrote the book, I decided to do it differently, letting the characters and plot decide who should be next. Now I’m able to sit back and think, who hasn’t had a chapter in a while? Who’s going to be in the right place at the right time so I can add to the plot rather than take away? Not having them in a set order helped me have a character-driven plot rather than dry chapters that lacked character, personality, and plot.

Two: know your characters well, and make them think uniquely.

My second problem was that my characters blurred. They all talked and sounded the same - I just didn’t know them well enough. I would read a chapter and get confused, thinking the perspective was from one character when it was really another. Not a good sign.

Now I make sure to give my characters unique voices. Of course, that’s what you’re supposed to do anyway, but it helped me to try to see into their heads a little more. One has a very sunny outlook on life - I make sure she sees everything a little happier than the others. One is very practical. One has an accent, so I make sure to tie that into his thoughts and narrative voice. It helps to only do the most main characters - they’re all a part of me, so I can use that part of me to drive my writing voice.

Three: make it clear whose chapter it is.

This is a little different for me than my other points, in that this is a mistake I made in some of the more recent drafts of The Otherfolk. It was especially noticeable while I was editing - I kept reading chapters and getting confused about whose chapter I was even reading. Again, not a good sign.

I’ve seen this solved in different ways. I’ll confess, I don’t think I’ve actually read any of Gordon Korman’s books - only listened to them. They’re very well done as audiobooks, though - he has a different person read each character’s chapters. If I were to record an audiobook, I would do the same. I’ve also seen books with different text colors for each character. That made it easier for me to follow, but it was hard to read at times.

Finally, I realized my problem was headings. The chapter headings were the same size as the normal text, which made it easy to miss that one chapter had ended and another had begun. Now, my chapter headings are big, and there are subheadings beneath them with the character’s name. Each character has a different font that matches their handwriting. This way, it’s eye-catching and easy to recognize without being hard to read. I also try to name the other characters in the first couple of paragraphs to eliminate confusion.

Four: think about the reader.

One of my best friends once told me that she doesn’t like to read books that switch perspectives because they’re just a series of cliffhangers. I read a book like this once where something really big was about to happen in one place - and then it switched to another perspective, then another, and didn’t go back for around thirty pages. And, you know what? I skipped those pages. I just went straight to what I was anxious to read. I guess that says something about me as a reader… but really, it was a good lesson. I love to leave my readers waiting for what’s next. But the reality is that you lose readers if you get them too excited and then expect them to drag themselves through chapters they don’t want to read. Just like filler chapters, they’re boring.

It’s definitely been a learning curve for me, but switching perspectives is a really fun way to write. It helps the characters feel real, and it helps the plot flow better. Have fun, and write on!