How to Write in Multiple POV’s?

By: Yeilyne Rodriguez

When it comes to deciding what point of view to write in. First, you have to decide if you want it to be first person, second or third. Then from there you decide if you want to tell your story through one character's eyes. Or if you want to be able to challenge yourself a little, do more than one point of view. I know for me I have been working on my novel that is under the perspective of two characters' minds.

One thing that helped me decide on writing 2 points of views is deciding on the aspect of which characters need to be heard. Doing more than 2 is good, but it’s the idea of knowing are there point of views necessary for your story. Are you sure that it's going to work for your story? And will it help you gain that audience you are looking for? Well to answer all these questions is to make a character development for yourself. Decide on what the characters needs, wants, who they are, what they want to achieve, etc. That will help you decide on which characters deserve a voice in your story.

Granted one character's point of view may come out easier to write in than the other. As writers though, we have to challenge ourselves. Get out of our comfort zones, and write something that we, as writers, never wrote before. For instance, writing from the girl’s perspective comes out naturally to me because I know how girls think since I am one. When it comes to writing from a guy's perspective, well that’s a whole other aspect. I have to tap into the mind of a guy, see what he would say or do. It’s pretty challenging, but I think I have figured something out.

I believe that you can do anything you set your mind too. So writing from multiple points of views may be challenging, but as long as you can understand what your characters are thinking, and what they would want from each other. You're off to a great start. One thing I have learned is to understand your characters, make them speak to themselves or the other characters. Do not make them seem like they are speaking to the reader because that’s not how you want your story to be structured.

Everything turns out for the better, and you learn to grasp what is needed for your story. Granted you may not know everything right then and there, but little things like creating a character development or a chapter outline help you decide what is going to happen within your story, and how your characters are perceived through the readers eyes.