Before you compose your response to my post-title, hear me out.
One of the stories I’m currently working on takes place from the perspective of two different characters. Essentially half the scenes from one POV and half from the other.
The thing about these two different perspectives is I wrote one person’s half of the story first. Long before I realized I wanted to add a second perspective. So when I went to add in the second perspective, I had to make things like time lines match up, so when they interact with each other or events occur in one that impact the other, it all makes sense.
This has had an interesting side-effect. I can see scenes now in the original that don’t make sense when viewed from another perspective.
It goes a step further, because I got some feedback on my first chapter the other day. And it told me exactly what I suspected, but didn’t want to hear. The scene doesn’t work. It’s got so many flaws I won’t list them here. But the scene exists because it one of the scenes where both characters appear, and it gets continued later in the story from the other character’s perspective.
So my CP said (I’m paraphrasing) “This doesn’t work, it doesn’t show your MC clearly…”
And in my head I said “Well, I know, but this is where he first encounters the other character. It’s where his story starts. I can’t change that.”
Except I can. Being able to see it through this second character’s eyes has made me realize that neither version of the scene is appropriate. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the story. This gives me a chance to go back and fix something I’ve never liked about the book, because I was able to see it through new eyes.
So I’ve decided, even though head-hopping in story narrative is frowned upon, being able to do it in your head serves a fantastic purpose. It shows so much more going on than the story does, and allows us as writers to flesh a scene out. To tell our POV characters where to look, essentially.
Do you ever imagine a scene from a different perspective to help you get a fuller feeling for it?
I often think about scenes from another person’s perspective. Because I write mainly first person narratives, I know every situation is seen through the narrator’s eyes, and recognize that through another set of eyes, any situation can been seen differently.
By imagining the same scene from another perspective, I get insight into what my MC might look like to others, and if he or she is coming across the way I want him or her to.
Me? Change POVs? The person who’s got what, like five POV characters?
Never! 🙂
Great idea for an exercise if you’re stuck too – think/write a scene from another character’s perspective. I’m going to use that!
There are some excellent books written using multiple points of view. As long as you tell a great story, it won’t matter through whose eyes we see it.