ever told a story from 2 POVs, one 3p limited and the other 1p?

[joy_of_cooking]

Thanks, everyone. I think I'll try the change in perspective but tell both points of view from third person limited.

 

[StillStunned]

So, now that this question has been resolved, let's take it up a notch. How about a story in multiple 2P POVs?

 

[YmaOHyd]

Still bad!

 

[alohadave]

So, now that this question has been resolved, let's take it up a notch. How about a story in multiple 2P POVs?

Stop trying to make 2P a thing. Gah!

 

[ElectricBlue]

Thanks, everyone. I think I'll try the change in perspective but tell both points of view from third person limited.

Good choice. It's grammatically correct, and you can get in just as close as you can writing first person. It's a good writer's tool to have in your toolbox.

 

[MrHereWriting]

Good choice. It's grammatically correct, and you can get in just as close as you can writing first person. It's a good writer's tool to have in your toolbox.

Books that have different narration perspectives:
The Martian
The Outlander Series
The Lovely Bones
Slaughterhouse-Five
Bleak House
The Alex Cross series
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Stephen King has done it in several books
The Sound and the Fury
As I lay Dying
Atonement
Wuthering Heights
Frankenstein
Heart of Darkness
Gone Girl
The Girl on the Train - 1st person by the 3 leads and "in some editions/interpretations" 3rd person police and background scenes.

I'm sure there's more.

 

[TheLobster]

So, now that this question has been resolved, let's take it up a notch. How about a story in multiple 2P POVs?

Well, "you" can already be a plural, so the multiplicity is implicitly handled

 

[Rob_Royale]

Sort of. In Dreams of Him, much of the story is as written in a diary (1P) and the ending is in third person. The sequel will be in 3rd person until the ending and then revert to the diary again.

 

[OralAllOver]

Orson Scott Card, fantastic author, has nitty-gritty pro tips on his site

http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/index.shtml

Warning: his politics careens off the road's right shoulder

 

[ronde]

When I see one of these threads about changing POV in the middle of a story or a series the first thing that comes to mind is, "Why." Other than as an exercise as part of a creative writing class, I can see no need to change POV. A reader will get comfortable reading in 1st POV or 3rd POV and then bam, the story switches to another POV. That has to be confusing for the reader unless the series isn't really a series, but is one of a "serial stories".

 

[YmaOHyd]

I don't like it unless there's a specific reason for the shift, like a nested-narrative, a flashback or dream sequence; something like that. There are a couple very good 1P stories that occasionally jump into 3P close for a different character, properly sectioned off, and every time it happens it just makes me think that either the whole story should be 3P close or it should be 1P for that second character because her perspective is more important than his.

Edit: I'm willing to accept it when the shifted perspective is cordoned off as prologue or epilogue, too. I don't mind a 3P omniscient gods-eye prologue to handle basic worldbuilding prior to zooming in into a specific POV.

I dislike changing perspectives, but I just did it. The story is written in first-person past, and at the start of a new section I switched to 2P present as she experiences a nightmarish lucid dream, shifting back to 1P past as soon as she wakes. Not sure if I like it, but it was how it flowed out of my fingers as I wrote it. Normally, when I finish a chapter, I do a content edit right away, but this time I think I'll let it sit for three or four days so I can evaluate that section more honestly to decide whether it should stay how it is or go to 1P present or 1P past.

 

[alohadave]

When I see one of these threads about changing POV in the middle of a story or a series the first thing that comes to mind is, "Why." Other than as an exercise as part of a creative writing class, I can see no need to change POV. A reader will get comfortable reading in 1st POV or 3rd POV and then bam, the story switches to another POV. That has to be confusing for the reader unless the series isn't really a series, but is one of a "serial stories".

This assumes that you think readers are incapable of dealing with a change in POV. If you work off that assumption, you might think that changing the POV character would cause similar confusion. However, chapter-to-chapter POV changes are extremely common in trad publishing.

As we see in Post 31, switching from 1st to 3rd has been done by authors many times. Perhaps you are expressing your dislike of the practice and projecting that onto a theoretical reader.