The Writer's Guild

[The SheoDovah]

Personally, I haven't tried using chapters as I usually have my stories be self contained apart from ones that I have split in half. I usually just name them Part 1, Part 2 when naming the story.

As Union said, having line breaks helps to indicate character perspectives. Wouldn't recommend just using speechmarks to indicate other characters are talking unless it's short but brief. E.g.

"Hello. How are you?"
"I'm Fine."
"Good to hear."

I do like using that for minor flashback type stuff by having it.


Never heard of the Archive website. Will take a look at it. FF.Net is good for reading imo.

I am pretty much rebooting my stuff atm on here. My COC was a dull/bordering towards Mary Suedom and I caught that just a few stories in. Am aiming for a more realistic, believable character. Made some notes on what her personality is and planning ahead.

[BetaB17]

Thanks for the quick reply Union

There are a lot of variables here though. Like, are both of your perspective holders together at all times? Is one more significant than the other? Is the story short short? If so then I would perhaps recommend an omniscient third person point of view instead.

To answer this in the shortest verse: 1)Not always 2)Yes 3)Yes

I guess in better explanation,1) the short story focuses on each character's account and interactions with the other, told very much so as if written in their own personal journal >_> till the climax, at least.

2) Both sides differ so, like a priest to a wandering beggar, true optimism vs harsh reality, or even good and evil. They contrast in the roles they play even if they share the same stage, one holds all the questions while the other has the answers. Very much, one of them holds a larger significance to the plot

3)You've read some of my more lengthy RP sheets. Wouldn't be terribly longer

Also I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the omniscient 3rd view? Do explain?

[Unionhack]

3rd person omniscient is presented in such a way that the reader knows everything that goes on, regardless of what the characters might do. Sometimes they might even get glimpses into the character's thoughts.

In these stories the reader also gets occasional side glances at other characters, like the villain or maybe a deuteragonist.

For example, general story passages would be along the lines of the following.

__________

Jim quickly turned the corner of the dark street, moving as fast as his legs could take him. In the pouring rain he could hardly make out the shape of a puddle; too late, he realized, as his foot was caught. He fell to the ground, bringing his hands up just in time to save him from a few lost teeth. He felt something hit the ground besides him, but in his panic he neglected to look and instead returned to his feet to keep running.

There he went into the dark night, fleeing whatever evil hounded him.

__

Investigator George kneeled over and examined the shimmering glint beside the small, rain-filled pothole in the city streets the following morning. It was a pocket watch, encased in gold and likely bought to hand down to future generations.

George clicked the pocket watch open, noting that the time had stopped; likely from physical trauma, no doubt; and the inscription on the face read "J.M".

"Jim Mansfield." the inspector muttered to himself. "You won't be gone long now."

One of the inspector's assistants from the police force looked over. "Have you found anything, sir?" he asked. George grunted. The boy probably hadn't searched the scene at all, instead waiting for the detective to do all the work.

"Yes. Yes, I think we have something to go off of." replied the inspector. "Contact all of the watch makers in the city. I want to know as much as we can find out about our fleeing convict."

________

So like, there ya go. In 1st person, things would be like "me" and "I" and all that. Sometimes you can have 3rd person without omniscience; you only follow one character and know only what they know. Hell, sometimes you can have 1st person omnjscience, often when the story is a retelling from the perspective of a character who has already gone through the events of the story and has thus more knowledge than someone who hasn't.

When it comes to perspectives there's a whole world out there. You can even do weird things like second person where the book talks to you specifically. A lot of games that don't put you into the role of a character, like say the Stanley Parable, use this POV.

[BetaB17]

Ah, thanks for the explanation(And that wonderful example). Reminds me a bit with how alot of format is displayed in RPs, especially that of a good DM

Tho, I'm not 100% whether this is what I want :/ if you want, we can discuss this more in private

[Lord Timster]

When it comes to presenting a story featuring two different perspectives(I.e that of individual characters) covering essentially the same account of events mixed in with their own personal thoughts. How best is to display this in a story format? Especially when both views so drastically contrast the other

Yeah it will depend a lot on exactly what you're trying to do here.

Writing out the story with paragraphs/sections alternating between the different character's perspective might work fine, although I think if there is a lot of speech and not much else you may end up drifting into the "omniscient third person point of view" anyway. If you want to go a bit deeper exploring each character's response then splitting the story into separate 'Story according to A' and 'Story according to B' sections might be better, as long as you can avoid repeating huge chunks of text in each section.

And then if the characters are sometimes separate from each other and sometimes sharing the same event then you might even want to mix the different styles... The ideal position, I think, is to be able to use the style of writing itself as a means of communicating elements of the story, of how the characters are feeling etc.

tbh the best thing to do is probably to just jump in, write up your story using a few different writing styles and get a sense yourself what works and what doesn't. Which I guess might seem like a cop out answer but the only way you're going to build up your own 'feel' for how different story structures help or hinder the story you're trying to tell is by writing them up yourself.

/imo