Writing Multiple Perspective in Three Easy Steps

You have a killer idea for a novel. It has tension and climaxes and fresh circumstances and innovative worlds, not to mention fabulous characters, two or three, four, a soccer team’s worth, just more than one, each of which is integral to the narrative. You sit down to write. You crank out a few chapters in an omniscient point of view before realizing you’re not a Russian master of yesteryear. You pivot. You employ a limited third person POV separated by chapters. This falls a little flat with the same narrative voice bleeding into every character. Frustrated, you delete the entire file, to heck with rules and norms, and attempt multiple first-person narrators, all of which end up sounding like clones of the same emo tween.

(Writing a Novel in Three Months.)

Moments away from abandoning the entire idea—not to mention the artistic pursuit because it’s impossible and ridiculous and nobody reads anymore and you could literally be doing anything else and probably be enjoying yourself more—you come across this article. You’re nodding along. You’re thinking, Yeah, I do have an idea percolating with multiple characters essential to plot, and no, the answer does not appear to be a point of view concern. And when I tell you I have an answer, a solution, a tumbler to polish that rock into agate form, you’re probably saying bullshit. Yet you’re still reading. And I will reward you with the answer: perspective.

Perspective: a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view. It is through firstly deeply understanding each character’s perspective, and secondly, determining the best way to represent said perspective, that we can honor the unique essence of our characters while weaving together a cohesive narrative. The solution is in the definition. All you have to do is focus on the “attitude,” our characters “regarding something,” and “point of view.” Here are the few simple steps that I employed in my four-perspective novel, We, Adults.

1) Attitude

You need to know your characters. Like really know them. Like favorite memories and most embarrassing moments and first kisses (doesn’t take a Freudian expert to see my cards with the association I made there) and how they play Uno and their fears, not to mention desires, those on the surface they will share with coworkers and on Instagram, and those that will never be uttered to the closest of friends. 

However, it’s not enough to simply catalog these things in some Dungeons and Dragons character generating template. You need to take it one step further by imagining the sum total of these emotions and traits and experiences, i.e., the attitude your character has created to navigate through the world. It is precisely this attitude that will be your characters’ emotional starting points. It will color everything on the page (dialogue, thoughts, actions, reactions, etc.), and, in turn, it will be the reader’s entrance point into your characters’ existence.

2) Regarding Something

I use this portion of the definition as a prompt, not specifically designed to be part of the actual narrative. The results of this exercise provide a litmus test to see if my characters are embodying their intended attitudes, which is essential to successfully write in multiple perspectives. Here’s the prompt:

• Event: Come up with any event, big or small (being fired, witnessing a dog save a cat from a swimming pool, being undercharged at a restaurant, it really doesn’t matter).
• For each of your characters, imagine they are “regarding something,” where the “regarding” is concerning/witnessing/experiencing, and the “something” is whatever event you came up with. Write out the scene. Don’t worry about point of view or tense or any other craft element; focus on how your characters navigate this experience. Actions, thoughts, emotions, memories, observations, internalizations, blames…we want it all. Do this for each character.
• Reread your exercises. Are their reactions consistent with their attitudes (and if not, is there a good reason that can be used to develop character)? Are the ways in which they regard something different enough from each other to warrant their own perspective to be included in your novel? If not, what tweaks can you make?

3) Point of View/Modality

Now that you intimately know your characters and the attitudes in which they regard the world, it’s time to answer the question how the heck do I best present this on the page? However, let’s move beyond the “point of view” portion of perspective’s definition to also include modality. With modality, we’re concerned with the specific way in which something exists, is experienced, or is expressed. In other words, how would your characters want their stories told? What is authentic to each character’s attitude regarding the events that will unfold in your narrative?

In We, Adults, I employed several different points of view and modalities. From a straightforward, third person limited to first-person excerpts from a memoir to an omniscient, full-length screenplay to college application essays, I tried to match POV/modality to each character’s experience of a particular event (“regarding something”), which demonstrated their unique attitudes. This process is what allowed me to not only embody these characters as I wrote, but to convey their existences to the reader, which, at least I hope, created the experience of a reader’s full emersion into a multiple perspective narrative. 

So, no more saying it’s too hard or it can’t come together. Follow these three steps: Uncover your characters’ attitudes, take them for a test run, and determine how they would tell their stories told through point of view and modality. 

Check out Peter Stenson’s We, Adults here:

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