I recently came up with an idea that I very much wanted to begin work on, the only problem is I am having difficulty what narrative I want to write it in. Essentially I originally came up with the idea as a comic book style idea, but I'm not keen on writing in script format so I decided I would write it initially as prose and then possibly change it later, with it being a comic book style I was wanting to do a lot of inner monologues from the main character so ideally I would have wrote it in a 1st person narrative from that character's perspective. However, something which always stops me writing in 1st person is that I feel I cannot write any scenes/events in which that character is not involved because they could not posssibly know what is going on in those moments because they are not there. It's just I personally can't do that knowing that they don't know what is happening at that moment. I should then logically just write it in 3rd person narrative but I really wanted to write it from the character's perspective so the reader could experience everything as he does and so I could do quite a bit of inner monologues. Any suggestions as to ways around my problem, how I should write it?
If you want to show events that your MC knows nothing about, These are the choices I would narrow it down to. 1. Write everything from a third person POV, centered on your MC, and limit your excursions to omniscient POV. I'd tend to shy away from this, because those flashes of omniscience can be pretty intrusive, and you risk a floating POV that lets the focus blur. 2. Utilize a secondary POV from a character that will know all those hidden details that the MC won't know, and manage the POV switches carefully. The other character may be the antagonist, which opens up a number of other good possibilities. But writing from multiple POVs is more of a challenge than a single POV. However, it is an excellent choice for building suspense, and for showing two sides of a conflict equally. 3. Stick with a POV that sticks tightly to your MC, and refrain from revealing hidden information to the viewer. This is often the strongest way to write, but it is weak for suspense - suspense depends heavily on information provided to the reader but concealed from the character. First person POV can be utilized with either option 2 or 3, but you should probably do so with both or neither to keep the tone consistent. First person may be better for following the character's changing thoughts and feelings, but third person can still come close. Third person is a wider view; think of first person as always filming through a close-up lens, and third person as shooting with a mixture of close up and telephoto lenses. Third person is more varied but slightly less intimate.
What I'm doing in my current novel is writing in 1st person narrative, but occasionally changing the character that's giving their perspective. This lets you include scenes that the main character may not see and also lets the reader see more opinions than just the protagonist's.
If you have ever read A Gathering of Old Men, you notice it is told from the POV of 15 different narrators. Ultimately, you could switch narration styles chapter to chapter, or segment to segment. Sometimes mixing narration up and allowing people to get a fresh view on a character ensnares the reader. I would like to see some of this if you do end up writing it.
