I’ve been going on (and on) about the importance of not ‘head-hopping’ between characters in a different scene, to take things easy on the reader. Today I say: mix it up! Make the reader work for their entertainment!

The Prompt

Write A Story From Multiple Perspectives

Tips

• You might have had some experience with this already this week, if you’ve been following my suggestion that you rewrite your first story from a different perspective every day. If not, now’s your chance.
• Think of an interesting ensemble (a family, a sitcom ‘family’, an office full of coworkers, the witnesses at a trial) and get each of them to tell all or part of a story from their unique perspective.
• You can break from the traditional narrative form here and still end up with a successful story. Don’t feel constrained by the ‘beginning, middle, end’  format, except in the sense that you’ll hint at ‘the truth’ more at the start of the story and leave the reader able to reach an ‘end’ or a conclusion by themselves by the time you finish up the story.
• Include some of the same ‘facts’ in each character’s account of events, but add to, subtract from, contradict, deepen, confound our understanding as you allow each character’s voice to come out.
• This doesn’t have to be a long story. You can do this in a series of verbal exchanges and be finished in ten sentences!

Go!

How did this story feel after a week of focusing on different perspectives? What format did you use? How long was your story today? Leave a comment or talk about it in the community.