How to 'ping pong' between two point of views without it seeming formulaic?

[Demesnedenoir]

Anything can be done... however, if you don't "head hop" on a regular basis in a 3rd Om style, avoid it. The reasoning to do so would have to be sound. If you have a scene where it's critical or entertaining to show from more than one point of view... write the scene twice from two points of view. This can be good fun as a writer and reader, as you can see in detail how two people interpret the same thing differently.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

What you're facing is the single biggest reason to work from rough drafts, synopses, and outlines

Eeeeeewwwww, planning... The most common cause of death for all my early work was trying to plan everything.

 

[The Dark One]

Planning... none of my work would exist without it.

 

[Foxkeyes]

Following on from Finchbearer's suggestions, you could add some subtext to the dialogue and use the female character's body language to express how she's feeling. It's an idea to keep things simple in the beginning without jumping about too many characters in a single chapter.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

There is planning and there is planning. Multiple drafts and outlines are a death knell for my creativity. Others, like Malik, thrive with it. I'm more of a here's the story idea and here's the ending... Go! But! That is after years of planning the world and setting.

Planning... none of my work would exist without it.

 

[The Dark One]

Having been writing seriously for 30 years, my planning isn't that different from yours.

I do a lot of work in the first phase to set it all up, but then I just write towards achievable milestones and it happens more intuitively now than it used to.

Interestingly, despite my plans, I almost never use the ending I had originally intended. The unfolding of the story always results in a better idea.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

So true! There are a variety of ending results ranging from dead on to subtle changes to wow! That's how it needs to end. The Contessa was the first novel I wrote where I really didn't have a specific ending in mind, just a known direction. Instead of "I'm driving to Seattle" it was "I'm driving north."

Having been writing seriously for 30 years, my planning isn't that different from yours.

I do a lot of work in the first phase to set it all up, but then I just write towards achievable milestones and it happens more intuitively now than it used to.

Interestingly, despite my plans, I almost never use the ending I had originally intended. The unfolding of the story always results in a better idea.

 

[Malik]

Interestingly, despite my plans, I almost never use the ending I had originally intended. The unfolding of the story always results in a better idea.

Oh, hey, in every draft, the story shifts a bit. Scenes mature, themes change, subtext takes me for a ride. BUT . . .

But.

When these things happen, I keep an eye on them. Having an outline, synopsis, draft back-cover copy, and even an elevator pitch ready before I start writing helps me look at every twist the story decides it wants and lets me ask, "Does this REALLY need to be here?" If the answer is yes, I'll revise the outline, synopsis, jacket copy, and elevator pitch as necessary. If it gets too far out of the rails and isn't a story I want to tell, I scrap it, go back to that scene, and write it fresh, being sure to color inside the lines.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Wandering around while bouncing off off-topic walls...

I think screenwriting made me focus on endings. So many otherwise good movies have terrible endings... or rather, unsatisfying endings that make my wife and daughters howl in pain that I started wondering about the phenomenon. Lots of high-concept movies—and scripts I read from both hopeful and working screenwriters—lacked good endings, and when digging deeper, it seemed to be a problem with "high concept," the key being "concept" where the idea was SO GOOD that everyone just assumed the ending would blow people away even if they didn't know it yet.

"Well, I didn't know how to end it, so I gave it an artsy end" where artsy can be read as unsatisfying, was a common refrain that came in many variations.

Once I escaped the brain vacuum of H'Wood I retained my theory and tend to focus on the end even if I don't know the specifics.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I can't write without an outline. Or rather, I can't complete a story without an outline. I need to know what happens in the next chapters. Otherwise my stories just kind of fizzle out. I'll start writing, get to a point where my initial idea is down on paper, and then my brain just shuts down and claims it's done and has no idea where to go next.

So I write a list of waypoints, which end up being my chapters (it's usually a list of around 25-30 points for a novel). When I get to a chapter, I think about the waypoint I wrote down and what it actually means, and then start filling it in.

Sometimes these waypoints are very detailed "character X does Y to achieve Z", other times, especially later in the outline, they can be very vague. "They somehow win", that sort of thing. And the outline tends to evolve as the story progresses. Especially the last 3rd. It's the butterfly effect. A small change at the start has large ramifications at the end.

As for the pingponing question: it's worth remembering that most readers have no idea about different types of Points of View and what they mean and which rules they have. They can distinguish between a story written in first person and in third person (the I vs he is a useful hint). Other than that, they don't know you've broken some rule if you give a glimpse in another character's head. They might know something's wrong with a story if what you do doesn't work, but they won't know why.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Planning is great for planning POV's when you have more than one. It lets you preview your scene and ask who has the most at stake, where is the story happening? It also helps to keep from having a character on screen who isn't actually there. Sometimes you have to change POV, and sometimes you have to rewrite chunks to make it work. Even with the most detailed outline, change happens. Characters surprise you. And you adjust and move along.

 

[The Dark One]

Wandering around while bouncing off off-topic walls...

I think screenwriting made me focus on endings. So many otherwise good movies have terrible endings... or rather, unsatisfying endings that make my wife and daughters howl in pain that I started wondering about the phenomenon. Lots of high-concept movies—and scripts I read from both hopeful and working screenwriters—lacked good endings, and when digging deeper, it seemed to be a problem with "high concept," the key being "concept" where the idea was SO GOOD that everyone just assumed the ending would blow people away even if they didn't know it yet.

"Well, I didn't know how to end it, so I gave it an artsy end" where artsy can be read as unsatisfying, was a common refrain that came in many variations.

Once I escaped the brain vacuum of H'Wood I retained my theory and tend to focus on the end even if I don't know the specifics.

A satisfying conclusion is integral to a satisfying reading (or watching) experience. The only caveats being Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. Both had dreadful conclusions but are still remembered fondly for long periods of super high achievement.

I'm always amazed when I read a bad conclusion - especially by a big name author. How did it ever get published when the end was completely wrong? One of the biggest books in Australia in recent times was Boy Swallows Universe. It's a work of pure genius, with the exception that the author had no idea how to end it so rambled on for 50 pp too long and (for me) seriously detracted from the brilliance that had gone before.

I'm very proud of my endings (which always involve a twist or two) and wouldn't dream of letting them be published if I wasn't. That's the only benefit of working with small publishers - you have a lot more control in making a book publishable rather than merely saleable.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

H'Wood has a lot of excuses for finished products. They are legit reasons for things getting botched, but you'd hope in a multi-million dollar projects they'd learn to avoid it... but nope! Human nature. Too many cooks in the kitchen is one. And of course, endings don't work for everybody, that's a given.

It was the sheer number of weak endings before all those cooks got ahold of the story that was shocking. Now sometimes a plan just doesn't work. What sounds like a great ending just doesn't work. I had this happen with a Western screenplay that I loved and when I got to the end, it fell flat for me. I never shopped it and never did coe up with the ending I needed. Someday I hope to stumble on it. I really want to write the novel, but I'll write the ending first to make sure it works, LMAO. I beat my head on that one for days before I had to switch projects..

A satisfying conclusion is integral to a satisfying reading (or watching) experience. The only caveats being Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. Both had dreadful conclusions but are still remembered fondly for long periods of super high achievement.

I'm always amazed when I read a bad conclusion - especially by a big name author. How did it ever get published when the end was completely wrong? One of the biggest books in Australia in recent times was Boy Swallows Universe. It's a work of pure genius, with the exception that the author had no idea how to end it so rambled on for 50 pp too long and (for me) seriously detracted from the brilliance that had gone before.

I'm very proud of my endings (which always involve a twist or two) and wouldn't dream of letting them be published if I wasn't. That's the only benefit of working with small publishers - you have a lot more control in making a book publishable rather than merely saleable.

 

[Devor]

For me, I have two POV characters, and I write in 3rd Person Limited. I write a scene from one character, then I leave a blank line, then I have the scene from the other character (sometimes a character gets two scenes in a row, but not usually). But they're often in the same place at the same time, so the next "scene" will often pick up immediately where the last one left off. In those cases, I'll open the next scene with the character reacting to whatever the other character did, or by showing what the character was doing that maybe helped the last character.

Usually it follows the one that's leading the action, or the one who's going through the most emotion.

As a writer - I won't say as a reader, because lots of authors pull off stuff I can't - but as a writer, I hate the idea of jumping between characters in the middle of a narrative for split seconds of time. I want to explore the character's headspace and give them a lot more time than that to develop the layers of what they're feeling at the time.