I have an idea for a short story, but it requires that I switch from character to character through out the story. I'm new at writing short stories, so I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of successfully accomplishing this? Thanks for any tips!
It would be useful to have some more details. How many POV's will you have? How long will the short story be, 500-1000 words, 1000-2000, more than that? Once I have that info, I'll be able to give you some advice. (Our timing has been really excellent today. You post something and I get on the forum like 5 minutes later. This usually only happens on the "Last person to reply wins thread. )
I ruined our timing! Uhm...I'm not sure. I don't have the details worked out yet. At least three points of view, I'd say. Maybe a few more. What's going to happen is the story is going to go through a series of years until the guy dies and goes to heaven...so it's going to be broken into several passages to build probably a 1000-2000 word piece. There are probably going to be one-two points of view on each little passage. I'm not sure how to go about that. I'm thinking maybe an omniscient narrator type deal? But I'm not sure how to go about doing that. Anyway...does that give you enough information to give me some advice?
Hm, tricky. Some short stories have the name of the POV character at the start of the new point of view. This can work, I've seen at least one good story done like it, but again its not common. You could just say to heck with it, and change the POV as if it was a novel, just throw in an extra large space between the two POV's. Its the easiest, but with a story that short, it might be annoying or confusing if not done well. Having an omniscient narrator will work, but I've never been a fan of it. Don't know why, just don't like it. Thats all I've got. I'd say pick one and start writing. If it doesn't seem to work try the next one. Repeat if necessary.
Thanks. I know what you mean about the omniscient narrator. I've never been a fan either. But it seems to be the best way to do it for this particular story. I'll take your advice. I'll just try a few ways and see what works. Thanks
I think you need to go ahead and write it, but I will say that so many PoV shifts in such a short story risks confusing the reader and also failing to engage the reader with a character through which to focus. There's no reason, though, why you can't write the same story more than once. Write it with multiple viewpoints then write it again through one character's PoV and see how it works out. It's all good practice. Cheers, Rob
Thanks for your opinion, Rob. Yeah...I think the general consensus is that I'm going to have to write this thing more than once to see what works best.
