I’m trying a new thing in Farryn’s War: limiting myself to two point-of-view characters, and writing alternate chapters in each. As much as I like to head-hop, this is a challenge. I have to rein myself in and NOT write a scene from some interesting minor character’s point of view, though at least The Marann taught me to finish a scene — or even a paragraph — before switching to someone else’s head. But! But! There’s this really interesting character who just burst into the story, full-fledged and everything! And this other character whose head I’m dying to explore! What’s that fellow’s story? What’s he all about?

I’m not sure how far into the novel I’ll be able to continue the alternating chapter thing, but I should be able to limit it to just the two characters. All, of course, in my favorite voice, third person (he said, she said). Not that I mind reading books written in first person (I said), but I find it limiting as an author. Other authors, of course, view it as a challenge and write terrific novels in it. That’s fine — the world would be pretty boring if everyone wrote the same way.

I do find it disturbing as a reader, though, when an author switches point of view while writing in first person. I first encountered this technique last year, and it kicked me right out of the story. Writing a romance from alternating points of view is a common technique, but I’d always encountered it written in close third person. This book changed points of view with the beginning of each chapter — and stayed in first person. At first, at Chapter Two, I thought the protagonist had lost her mind. Then I realized I was in someone else’s head and spun my mental wheels for a paragraph or two, trying to switch gears. I stuck it out and finished the novel because the story was interesting, but the book as a whole was disorienting.

Then I encountered another novel in which the protagonist’s point of view was written in first person and the love interest’s was in close third. Again, kicked me out of the story and disoriented me. I sat staring at the first paragraph of Chapter Two for a bit, blinking. There’s really not a lot you can do in first person that you can’t do in close third, so if you’re already switching heads, why use first person at all? I’m not saying “don’t write in first person.” I would never say that. I just don’t see the point in using first person if you’re also using close third. It doesn’t make sense to me, just like using first person for multiple viewpoints doesn’t make sense to me.

Maybe this is just the crusty old woman beginning to show. I am middle-aged, after all, and getting set in my ways, waving my fist in the air and sounding the middle-aged battle cry of “Why do it a new way when the old way works?”

But I’ll continue to write in third person if I’m going to write in multiple points of view. So there. <grin>