Writing From Different Perspectives
In principle, it is possible to write a story entirely from the perspective of a single character. In practice, however, it is much more common to write a story from the points of view of multiple characters. Although writing from different perspectives is a skill that develops with practice, there are a few things that you can take into account to make it easier:
- People are not omniscient
- People do not perceive the world the same way
- People do not speak or think in the same way
- People have different habits
- People act differently depending on whom they are with
People Are Not Omniscient
One of the most common mistakes when writing from multiple perspectives is forgetting who knows what. The fact is that people are not usually omniscient, and this should be reflected in their actions. Just because one character is privy to an important piece of information does not mean that all the other characters are too.
Consider the following situation:
- A group of rebels has a traitor in it.
- One character, James, discovers that the traitor is someone that everyone trusts, Tom.
- James discovers that Tom is a traitor by following him to a secret meeting with enemies of the group.
Unless James tells the other characters what he has seen, there is no reason for them to treat Tom any differently. The other characters should continue interacting with Tom as usual. In contrast, James’s interactions with Tom may be markedly different depending on whether he decides to share his knowledge with the others or to keep it to himself in order to take Tom by surprise at a later point in time. The big mistake in this situation is having everyone else act as though they know about Tom without giving a reason for why they are acting that way (e.g., having James tell them) since there is no way they should know about Tom at all.
The best way to avoid falling into this kind of trap is to keep track of essential pieces of information. In other words, by keeping of track of where characters are, who they’ve interacted with, and what information they have access to, you can make each of their individual points of view more authentic and exciting. After all, what better way to ratchet up the tension in the aforementioned situation than showing James and Tom matching wits against each other, all while trying to keep their awareness of the situation hidden from each other and the rest of the group.
People Do Not Perceive The World The Same Way
Different people do not perceive and interpret the world and their surroundings in the same way. This is because a lot of how we think about a range of different things, from relationships to reasoning problems, is a function of our experiences, our culture, our personality, our intelligence, and our upbringing. Thus when writing from the perspectives of different characters, we need to be careful to take this into account.
Let’s compare how two different people might perceive the same situation.
Stan has lived his entire life on a safe, prosperous world with low crime. Although Stan is considered highly intelligent, he has never handled a weapon or been in any situation more dangerous than piloting a spacecraft under highly controlled conditions. Most of his friends describe him as a happy, cheerful young man.
Amy has been raised to be a soldier on a world where war is extremely common. She has handled weapons all her life and has been exposed to both intense urban warfare and larger-scale space warfare. Although she has not received a strict formal education, she has spent years learning to survive in war zones with almost no support. Like most of the soldiers from her planet, she has been trained to disdain weakness and to display as little emotion as possible.
Now, let’s imagine that both Stan and Amy arrived via transport at a world known for its industrial capabilities. Stan is there to negotiate a new contract for the company he works for – they make furniture. Amy is there to try and secure a deal to manufacture weapons for the faction she fights for. Shortly after their arrival, the world comes under attack by a third party, which begins to launch landing parties while bombarding the planet’s defences from orbit.
Are these two people, Stan and Amy, going to see things the same way?
Of course they aren’t.
It is highly probable that Stan will panic and perhaps even freeze up. He has never been in a situation like this before. The story, as told from his perspective, will probably focus on the sheer terror and horror of what he is seeing. There are likely to be heavy casualties and massive amounts of property damage – things he has never experienced before. He may struggle to understand how or why the attack is happening, and he may struggle to deal with the physical and psychological wounds in the aftermath.
In contrast, Amy is far less likely to panic or freeze. She has been raised for this. She has lived it. The story, as told from her perspective, may focus on the attack as a threat to be dealt with. For instance, she may immediately begin cataloguing the possible courses of action that she has to take to survive and even retaliate. She may also begin considering who the culprits are, and she is unlikely to be bothered by the property damage or casualties because she has been raised to think that such things are normal.
The way that Stan perceives the attack is fundamentally different from Amy because he is different from Amy. A good way of approaching this situation would be to write in a way that emphasises this difference. For example, you could try to draw out Stan’s sense of disorientation and horror while highlighting Amy’s cold, analytical approach to survival and retaliation.
People Do Not Speak Or Think The Same Way
It is almost trivially easy to demonstrate that people do not speak the same way. Simply go out onto the street and listen to the people around you. It will soon become evident that different people have different patterns of speech. This isn’t simply a matter of different accents – it is also a matter of word choice, intonation, speaking speed, and volume. All of these are influenced by a range of both personal and situational factors (e.g., where someone comes from, how they feel, etc.).
It is slightly less obvious that different people do not think the same way either. This relates both to my previous point about how people perceive the world and to the fact that thoughts are, in a manner of speaking, simply private, personal speech. Again, how a person thinks is a function of both personal and situational factors.
We’ll start off with a very trivial example. Which of the following two samples of speech do you think best fits an elderly professor in archaeology?
- Although the Ancient Greeks had developed many of the mathematical concepts that would prove integral to the development of calculus, they would not actually manage to develop it on their own.
- The Ancient Greeks knew some stuff that helped make calculus, but they didn’t come up with it.
If you answered the second one, then you must have a very odd archaeology professor. If you’re writing from different perspectives, it is important that characters that are different from each other sound different (e.g., two characters who have very similar backgrounds can and should sound more similar than those with vastly different backgrounds).
This can also come through in the thoughts/interior monologue of the characters. Consider the way that an elderly archaeology professor and a young student perceive each other:
The young student’s thoughts may immediately go to the professor’s somewhat old-fashioned and formal mode of dress. They might immediately begin wondering if the professor is going to be as boring as all the others they’ve met and if the class will be worth attending. They might also wonder why the professor likes using so many big words.
The professor may ponder the student’s clothing, wondering when ripped jeans and brightly coloured shirts became popular. They may also begin wondering if the student will actually pay attention during class or if they’ll simply pretend to listen like a lot of others. They may also consider whether or not the student has decided to study archaeology because they think it’ll be an easy credit.
As you can see, the same event (a lecture) can be thought about in very different ways by the different characters involved. This can come through in the way the thoughts of each character are phrased:
- The old man up the front was like all the others, stuffy and overdressed. He was probably going to be boring too. Heck, he was probably just going to read off the lecture notes like all the others. It’d be better to stay home and read the notes later.
- He’d seen people like him before – dressed like university was a party. He wondered if the boy would even bother to pay attention, or if he had simply selected archaeology because he thought it was an easy course, another way to pick up an easy credit or two.
A few subtle differences in word choice and phrasing can add depth and shade to the thoughts of different characters, fleshing out different points of view.
People Have Different Habits
Almost everyone has a routine, and this routine will usually come into play when you’re writing from a particular character’s perspective. For example, a single mother with children will probably have a routine that involves helping those children get ready for school. In contrast, a retired couple whose children have all moved out and started families of their own will have a different routine.
Including a character’s routines when writing from their perspective is not something you should do every time – and it can get boring quite quickly. But including it a few times can help readers build up an idea of who the character is and how they are different from the other characters. Again, we can illustrate this with an example. Imagine that we have two sets of parents, both with young children:
One set of parents insists upon the children adhering to a strict schedule, with an emphasis on order and efficiency. The children are not allowed to be late, and the parents do not spend much time talking with them over breakfast before dropping them off at school with carefully packed lunches that are designed to provide the optimal level of nutrition.
The other set of parents has a more relaxed schedule, resulting in minor chaos each morning as the parents and children struggle to get ready on time. At breakfast, the parents often get caught up with the daily news and with what their children will be doing before driving them to school at breakneck speed with whatever lunch they’ve managed to throw together.
In a very general sense, the basic structure of events is the same: get the children to school. However, the routines for each family are quite different. As a result of these differences, readers can draw conclusions about how each of the families differs, not only in terms of routine but also in their approach to life and childrearing.
Another example of how differing routines can express differences between characters that are experiencing essentially the same set of events is a combat situation. What does a veteran do to prepare for battle? They might calmly attend to their weapons and review the mission parameters. At the same time, the rookie beside them might be nervous, on edge, and wondering about whether or not they’ll pull through the mission in one piece. Once again, the same event can appear very different when you look at the routines of different characters.
People Act Differently Depending On Whom They Are With
How a person behaves can vary dramatically based on whom they are with. Consider a group consisting of the following individuals:
- James (Susie’s older brother)
- Susie (James’s younger sister)
- Tony (Susie and James’s younger brother)
- Melissa (Susie’s friend)
In this group, three are members of the same family. If the story is being told from the perspective of Melissa, it may include feelings of awkwardness and isolation since she may feel like an outsider. If the story is told from the point of view of Susie those feelings are unlikely to occur (assuming that the sibling all get along).
What happens if the group is reduced to just Susie and Melissa? Well, Melissa probably won’t feel like an outsider anymore since she isn’t outnumbered. Susie may even feel less confident since she is no longer surrounded by members of her family. It is also quite possible that the topics of conversation will change now that the group is composed solely of women.
If we imagine that both James and Tony are very attracted to Melissa, then the changes in the group dynamic are likely to be even more dramatic. In the group with all four of them in it, James and Tony may attempt to compete for Melissa’s attention, to the point that the situation becomes socially awkward. Susie may even feel marginalised. Reducing the group to just Susie and Melissa thus presents a drastic change – Susie might seem more outgoing now that her two brothers aren’t competing for her friend’s attention. If Melissa doesn’t actually like either James or Tony, she would definitely feel more comfortable if they aren’t around.
This logic also applies to different situations, not just different groups. People are often more confident and outgoing when dealing with things that they have expertise on. For example a professor of archaeology might be shy when talking to strangers but that shyness might vanish when the talk moves to archaeology – a subject that he is extremely confident about and familiar with. Similarly, a Special Forces soldier may be more at home on the battlefield than at home watching television with friends and family. Think of how the same situation – watching an action movie – would be like through the eyes of a trained soldier versus the eyes of a teenager.
As you can see, it is important to consider the dynamics between characters when writing from different perspectives. A character that seems highly confident in one setting may appear insecure in another. Likewise, a particular group might set one character at ease but make another feel very uncomfortable. The situation is also important, since different people will react to the same situation in different ways.
The final thing we need to remember is that people can act very differently when they are alone. A character may act very outgoing with others, quick to make a joke and have a bit of fun. But they may also be much quieter and introspective when they are on their own. When you are writing from the perspective of different characters, this is something you need to take into account.
Consider a character who likes to scheme and plot in private before modifying their behaviour to ingratiate themselves with every group they meet. Such a character could very easily be perceived as duplicitous. What happens if we then throw in the perspectives of the other characters, showing that they too act in a similar manner? This tells the reader that this behaviour is normal – perhaps even expected – in this setting. This might lead the reader to question the values of the society that the characters belong to (e.g., what kind of society encourages such treachery?) or even the values of the characters themselves (e.g., are these characters simply a treacherous subset of an otherwise normal culture?).
By showing the differences in how characters behave when they are with different people, you can help flesh out your characters for the reader. By doing this for other characters (i.e., from multiple perspectives), you can add even more detail and subtlety. Think of spy thrillers – so much of the tension and enjoyment comes from watching them play the game against each other, using group dynamics to trick, coerce, and otherwise manipulate people.
Summary
Writing from the perspectives of multiple characters is not always an easy thing to do, and it is certainly a skill that improves with practice. However, there are several things you can keep in mind to make it easier:
- People are not omniscient
- People do not perceive the world the same way
- People do not speak or think in the same way
- People have different habits
- People act differently depending on whom they are with
It is no coincidence that most stories incorporate multiple points of view. It can make the story much more exciting and add much needed depth and shade to your characters.
I hope you found this useful. If you want to know more about my thoughts on writing, you can find those here.
I also write original fiction (mostly fantasy). You can find that here. If you like humorous fantasy, check out my latest story, Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf . If you’re in the mood for something more serious, try The Last Huntress .
- People are not omniscient
- People do not perceive the world the same way
- People do not speak or think in the same way
- People have different habits
- People act differently depending on whom they are with
People Are Not Omniscient
One of the most common mistakes when writing from multiple perspectives is forgetting who knows what. The fact is that people are not usually omniscient, and this should be reflected in their actions. Just because one character is privy to an important piece of information does not mean that all the other characters are too.
Consider the following situation:
- A group of rebels has a traitor in it.
- One character, James, discovers that the traitor is someone that everyone trusts, Tom.
- James discovers that Tom is a traitor by following him to a secret meeting with enemies of the group.
Unless James tells the other characters what he has seen, there is no reason for them to treat Tom any differently. The other characters should continue interacting with Tom as usual. In contrast, James’s interactions with Tom may be markedly different depending on whether he decides to share his knowledge with the others or to keep it to himself in order to take Tom by surprise at a later point in time. The big mistake in this situation is having everyone else act as though they know about Tom without giving a reason for why they are acting that way (e.g., having James tell them) since there is no way they should know about Tom at all.
The best way to avoid falling into this kind of trap is to keep track of essential pieces of information. In other words, by keeping of track of where characters are, who they’ve interacted with, and what information they have access to, you can make each of their individual points of view more authentic and exciting. After all, what better way to ratchet up the tension in the aforementioned situation than showing James and Tom matching wits against each other, all while trying to keep their awareness of the situation hidden from each other and the rest of the group.
People Do Not Perceive The World The Same Way
Different people do not perceive and interpret the world and their surroundings in the same way. This is because a lot of how we think about a range of different things, from relationships to reasoning problems, is a function of our experiences, our culture, our personality, our intelligence, and our upbringing. Thus when writing from the perspectives of different characters, we need to be careful to take this into account.
Let’s compare how two different people might perceive the same situation.
Stan has lived his entire life on a safe, prosperous world with low crime. Although Stan is considered highly intelligent, he has never handled a weapon or been in any situation more dangerous than piloting a spacecraft under highly controlled conditions. Most of his friends describe him as a happy, cheerful young man.
Amy has been raised to be a soldier on a world where war is extremely common. She has handled weapons all her life and has been exposed to both intense urban warfare and larger-scale space warfare. Although she has not received a strict formal education, she has spent years learning to survive in war zones with almost no support. Like most of the soldiers from her planet, she has been trained to disdain weakness and to display as little emotion as possible.
Now, let’s imagine that both Stan and Amy arrived via transport at a world known for its industrial capabilities. Stan is there to negotiate a new contract for the company he works for – they make furniture. Amy is there to try and secure a deal to manufacture weapons for the faction she fights for. Shortly after their arrival, the world comes under attack by a third party, which begins to launch landing parties while bombarding the planet’s defences from orbit.
Are these two people, Stan and Amy, going to see things the same way?
Of course they aren’t.
It is highly probable that Stan will panic and perhaps even freeze up. He has never been in a situation like this before. The story, as told from his perspective, will probably focus on the sheer terror and horror of what he is seeing. There are likely to be heavy casualties and massive amounts of property damage – things he has never experienced before. He may struggle to understand how or why the attack is happening, and he may struggle to deal with the physical and psychological wounds in the aftermath.
In contrast, Amy is far less likely to panic or freeze. She has been raised for this. She has lived it. The story, as told from her perspective, may focus on the attack as a threat to be dealt with. For instance, she may immediately begin cataloguing the possible courses of action that she has to take to survive and even retaliate. She may also begin considering who the culprits are, and she is unlikely to be bothered by the property damage or casualties because she has been raised to think that such things are normal.
The way that Stan perceives the attack is fundamentally different from Amy because he is different from Amy. A good way of approaching this situation would be to write in a way that emphasises this difference. For example, you could try to draw out Stan’s sense of disorientation and horror while highlighting Amy’s cold, analytical approach to survival and retaliation.
People Do Not Speak Or Think The Same Way
It is almost trivially easy to demonstrate that people do not speak the same way. Simply go out onto the street and listen to the people around you. It will soon become evident that different people have different patterns of speech. This isn’t simply a matter of different accents – it is also a matter of word choice, intonation, speaking speed, and volume. All of these are influenced by a range of both personal and situational factors (e.g., where someone comes from, how they feel, etc.).
It is slightly less obvious that different people do not think the same way either. This relates both to my previous point about how people perceive the world and to the fact that thoughts are, in a manner of speaking, simply private, personal speech. Again, how a person thinks is a function of both personal and situational factors.
We’ll start off with a very trivial example. Which of the following two samples of speech do you think best fits an elderly professor in archaeology?
- Although the Ancient Greeks had developed many of the mathematical concepts that would prove integral to the development of calculus, they would not actually manage to develop it on their own.
- The Ancient Greeks knew some stuff that helped make calculus, but they didn’t come up with it.
If you answered the second one, then you must have a very odd archaeology professor. If you’re writing from different perspectives, it is important that characters that are different from each other sound different (e.g., two characters who have very similar backgrounds can and should sound more similar than those with vastly different backgrounds).
This can also come through in the thoughts/interior monologue of the characters. Consider the way that an elderly archaeology professor and a young student perceive each other:
The young student’s thoughts may immediately go to the professor’s somewhat old-fashioned and formal mode of dress. They might immediately begin wondering if the professor is going to be as boring as all the others they’ve met and if the class will be worth attending. They might also wonder why the professor likes using so many big words.
The professor may ponder the student’s clothing, wondering when ripped jeans and brightly coloured shirts became popular. They may also begin wondering if the student will actually pay attention during class or if they’ll simply pretend to listen like a lot of others. They may also consider whether or not the student has decided to study archaeology because they think it’ll be an easy credit.
As you can see, the same event (a lecture) can be thought about in very different ways by the different characters involved. This can come through in the way the thoughts of each character are phrased:
- The old man up the front was like all the others, stuffy and overdressed. He was probably going to be boring too. Heck, he was probably just going to read off the lecture notes like all the others. It’d be better to stay home and read the notes later.
- He’d seen people like him before – dressed like university was a party. He wondered if the boy would even bother to pay attention, or if he had simply selected archaeology because he thought it was an easy course, another way to pick up an easy credit or two.
A few subtle differences in word choice and phrasing can add depth and shade to the thoughts of different characters, fleshing out different points of view.
People Have Different Habits
Almost everyone has a routine, and this routine will usually come into play when you’re writing from a particular character’s perspective. For example, a single mother with children will probably have a routine that involves helping those children get ready for school. In contrast, a retired couple whose children have all moved out and started families of their own will have a different routine.
Including a character’s routines when writing from their perspective is not something you should do every time – and it can get boring quite quickly. But including it a few times can help readers build up an idea of who the character is and how they are different from the other characters. Again, we can illustrate this with an example. Imagine that we have two sets of parents, both with young children:
One set of parents insists upon the children adhering to a strict schedule, with an emphasis on order and efficiency. The children are not allowed to be late, and the parents do not spend much time talking with them over breakfast before dropping them off at school with carefully packed lunches that are designed to provide the optimal level of nutrition.
The other set of parents has a more relaxed schedule, resulting in minor chaos each morning as the parents and children struggle to get ready on time. At breakfast, the parents often get caught up with the daily news and with what their children will be doing before driving them to school at breakneck speed with whatever lunch they’ve managed to throw together.
In a very general sense, the basic structure of events is the same: get the children to school. However, the routines for each family are quite different. As a result of these differences, readers can draw conclusions about how each of the families differs, not only in terms of routine but also in their approach to life and childrearing.
Another example of how differing routines can express differences between characters that are experiencing essentially the same set of events is a combat situation. What does a veteran do to prepare for battle? They might calmly attend to their weapons and review the mission parameters. At the same time, the rookie beside them might be nervous, on edge, and wondering about whether or not they’ll pull through the mission in one piece. Once again, the same event can appear very different when you look at the routines of different characters.
People Act Differently Depending On Whom They Are With
How a person behaves can vary dramatically based on whom they are with. Consider a group consisting of the following individuals:
- James (Susie’s older brother)
- Susie (James’s younger sister)
- Tony (Susie and James’s younger brother)
- Melissa (Susie’s friend)
In this group, three are members of the same family. If the story is being told from the perspective of Melissa, it may include feelings of awkwardness and isolation since she may feel like an outsider. If the story is told from the point of view of Susie those feelings are unlikely to occur (assuming that the sibling all get along).
What happens if the group is reduced to just Susie and Melissa? Well, Melissa probably won’t feel like an outsider anymore since she isn’t outnumbered. Susie may even feel less confident since she is no longer surrounded by members of her family. It is also quite possible that the topics of conversation will change now that the group is composed solely of women.
If we imagine that both James and Tony are very attracted to Melissa, then the changes in the group dynamic are likely to be even more dramatic. In the group with all four of them in it, James and Tony may attempt to compete for Melissa’s attention, to the point that the situation becomes socially awkward. Susie may even feel marginalised. Reducing the group to just Susie and Melissa thus presents a drastic change – Susie might seem more outgoing now that her two brothers aren’t competing for her friend’s attention. If Melissa doesn’t actually like either James or Tony, she would definitely feel more comfortable if they aren’t around.
This logic also applies to different situations, not just different groups. People are often more confident and outgoing when dealing with things that they have expertise on. For example a professor of archaeology might be shy when talking to strangers but that shyness might vanish when the talk moves to archaeology – a subject that he is extremely confident about and familiar with. Similarly, a Special Forces soldier may be more at home on the battlefield than at home watching television with friends and family. Think of how the same situation – watching an action movie – would be like through the eyes of a trained soldier versus the eyes of a teenager.
As you can see, it is important to consider the dynamics between characters when writing from different perspectives. A character that seems highly confident in one setting may appear insecure in another. Likewise, a particular group might set one character at ease but make another feel very uncomfortable. The situation is also important, since different people will react to the same situation in different ways.
The final thing we need to remember is that people can act very differently when they are alone. A character may act very outgoing with others, quick to make a joke and have a bit of fun. But they may also be much quieter and introspective when they are on their own. When you are writing from the perspective of different characters, this is something you need to take into account.
Consider a character who likes to scheme and plot in private before modifying their behaviour to ingratiate themselves with every group they meet. Such a character could very easily be perceived as duplicitous. What happens if we then throw in the perspectives of the other characters, showing that they too act in a similar manner? This tells the reader that this behaviour is normal – perhaps even expected – in this setting. This might lead the reader to question the values of the society that the characters belong to (e.g., what kind of society encourages such treachery?) or even the values of the characters themselves (e.g., are these characters simply a treacherous subset of an otherwise normal culture?).
By showing the differences in how characters behave when they are with different people, you can help flesh out your characters for the reader. By doing this for other characters (i.e., from multiple perspectives), you can add even more detail and subtlety. Think of spy thrillers – so much of the tension and enjoyment comes from watching them play the game against each other, using group dynamics to trick, coerce, and otherwise manipulate people.
Summary
Writing from the perspectives of multiple characters is not always an easy thing to do, and it is certainly a skill that improves with practice. However, there are several things you can keep in mind to make it easier:
- People are not omniscient
- People do not perceive the world the same way
- People do not speak or think in the same way
- People have different habits
- People act differently depending on whom they are with
It is no coincidence that most stories incorporate multiple points of view. It can make the story much more exciting and add much needed depth and shade to your characters.
I hope you found this useful. If you want to know more about my thoughts on writing, you can find those here.
I also write original fiction (mostly fantasy). You can find that here. If you like humorous fantasy, check out my latest story, Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf . If you’re in the mood for something more serious, try The Last Huntress .
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