Can I switch POV mid scene?

It can be done but it's something you'll have to treat carefully through. If you have any beta readers or friends like that, have them read it as you turn out a version to see if they can follow it. You could also try writing the scene a few different ways to see what works or if a combination would suit it better.

 

Just to be clear, there are a lot of writers and editors out there who would consider what you're describing to be a literary faux pas. Not making an argument either way, but you certainly risk judgment based upon it.

Were I to write a similar sequence, I'd:

1. Write from the MC's POV
2. Do the * * * thing and write from the villain's POV
3. Do the * * * thing again and write from the MC's POV

 

As a reader, I wouldn't have any problem with what you describe. The end of a fight is a fairly natural break point anyway, even if the scene technically continues, so switching POV wouldn't seem odd to me. Sometimes you writer people agonise too much over these things (IMO). POV changes only feel wrong (to me) if they aren't flagged up well enough and cause confusion, or if they are too rapid and make me dizzy. I did read one book where the author deliberately (I assume) switched POV more and more rapidly to emphasize the maelstrom of confusion going on at the time (and it worked! I was totally confused, so not recommended as a technique). But I think POV changes upset readers less than you might imagine.

 

I think it could be cool, like a scene within a scene. The thread of the MC's scene stops (after it's clear that she's not thinking straight), scene break, we're shown the antagonist's viewpoint and exposition in a synchronous way, scene break, then the heroine's thread picks up again as she recovers her senses. It shows the readers something important about the MC. We learn about the villain's character. We wonder about the MC's reaction because we already know what happened while she was out of it.

Yeah, it might be difficult to transition smoothly (well, it would be difficult for me ), but I think it would be fun. I'm sure it's been done before. It might be useful for closure if you reuse the technique closer to the end, to echo the first time but in a way that shows how far the character has come.

I'm not sure I fully understood what you want to achieve, but it doesn't hurt to try whatever you're considering.

 

You could do it, but I want to tackle the problem from an alternate angle - if you want to show anger, confusion, fear, etc. it might be easier to do that from the MC, since the confusion and rage overtaking her mind will translate better for the reader who knows her 'at rest' mentality and show that something is very, very wrong.

 

Sounds like the right method then.

You might want to split the scene (skip a line and all) when she starts berserking, but end the chapter when she stops or the villain escapes, so it's a new chapter when she comes to with that dazed "???? !"

It might be more effective to not use the villain's VP, but use her injured friend's half-unconscious one or some bystander's. If you want us to be afraid of the MC, it's harder when we're rooting for the new VP character to get killed, and disoriented by the fact that we're in such an evil skin anyway-- but in another VP we can feel that "Go get him, guess he deserves even that but what happened to you, what if you turn on me..."

(Though it depends on if the villain's the only coherent one who knows what's happening-- but that has its own problems if he knows so much more background than the MC normally does, which would make the MC afterward struggling with an ignorance the reader jumped past.)