Changing character viewpoint

by Andrew Newall
17th March 2014

Hi folks

New to the boards and posting my first question. I've started a short story where I think changing the viewpoint of the story from one character to another would be appropriate. How would you suggest I format this? One suggestion I had was having a few asterisks between the paragraphs with the different viewpoints.

Has anyone else done this with their own work?

Thanks

Replies

In "Sexing the Cherry" Jeanette Winterson uses symbols at the beginning of each chapter(if I remember correctly - it's years and years since I read it). In the "Chaos Walking" trilogy Patrick Ness uses a different chapter and different font for each first person narrative voice. If you plan to flit back and forth between characters within chapters it'd be more difficult I'm afraid...sorry. Hope you find a way.

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Welsh
Dragon
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Welsh Dragon
18/03/2014

There's some great trickery going on by the Emily Bronte in 'Wuthering Heights'. It's a really good book to read for some unusual narrative voices. Here's a link to an essay my friend Penelope wrote a while ago. I hope this helps.

http://www.consideredcapricious.com/emily_bronte_wuthering_heights.html

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Renee
Paule
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Renee Paule
18/03/2014

Within a short story, I think asterisks work best. Alternatively, if you're being experimental and your potential publisher allows it, you could use different fonts for different characters.

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Varsha
Seshan
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Varsha Seshan
18/03/2014