So in planning for my last “Michael” novel I ran into a dilemma over POV. See because of the events in the story, I can’t have it be like the last three books - that is it CAN’T all be from Michael’s POV.
As I read through the previous iteration of “Saying No” the POV shifts a few times, to account for Michael being AWOL a few of the chapters as events occur. So my Experiment for this book is to try to write first-person, present-tense but from a limited POV.
Now I’ve done alternating chapters before between characters in third person, but this is first person, which gives an added dimension of difficulty, because a reader has to know who’s speaking within a few paragraphs in order to stave off confusion. Unlike third person, a first person POV offers less opportunity to introduce the speaker organically, because they’d be talking about themselves. I have some ideas that I’ll try to use but there are going to be moments where what I want to start the chapter with won’t readily introduce the speaker.
For now, and unless I can find a different way to do it more organically, I have put a subtitle of the speaker’s name (so far Michael and Haruka) just under the chapter title so readers have a way to know just who is in charge of the narration immediately.
It feels weird, because I know I’ve suggested to other writers not to do that… because it’s heavy handed and seems a bit of a crutch. (IE written well it should be obvious who is narrating.) However in this situation I can’t think of another way to consistently ensure the reader knows who is narrating.
The last first person book I read was Our Wives Under the Sea, which is told through the pov of two different characters. Each chapter is titled with the name of who’s speaking, and I think that’s pretty common with all these multi-pov books out there now. Nothing wrong with it, and it sure makes it easier on the reader. ( ˆ◡ˆ)۶ ٩(˘◡˘ )
