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Topic : Re: Multiple Characters in one scene I'm a beginner at writing and am currently trying to write a more or less long story. Now the problem that I have is, that two of my Characters(a guy and - selfpublishingguru.com

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I have two comments, of which one will address your question, and the other will address the reception of your work.

The trick that I've found to any scene is to start very deeply grounded in one character's point of view. You have to imagine that we can only hear the thoughts in one character's mind, only see things from their perspective. Now, who should that character be? Your protagonist? The guy? The girl?

If you are writing a short story, they are most often told from only a single point-of-view (POV). So you should stick with the same POV character throughout, whoever that is. If you have a novel, you can do multiple point-of-view characters, but that's doesn't mean infinite. It means you can pick two or three.

If you have multiple options (e.g. if all of these three characters appear in many scenes and any could be a valid point-of-view character), then usually it makes sense to take the point-of-view of the character with the most to lose. So probably the guy or the girl, depending on where the emotional stakes are highest.

Now that you've decided on your POV character, you must tell the scene from their perspective. What they see, what they feel. This forces limitations on the story. If you tell the story from the point of view of the girl, but she's in a different room than the guy, then she can't know what's happening to him. This might seem hard to deal with, but that's the challenge you have to address as a writer.

Now a comment on your plot: If the only purpose the girl serves is to be forcibly undressed, then you are underutilizing that character. In fact, the scene sounds very cliche. Both the cliche and the threat of rape (realized or not) is going to turn off some or many readers.

What if the scene was reversed? What if the guy is being forced to undress? (Does that make you uncomfortable? Then imagine how your female readers feel.)

There are many, many ways you can raise the stakes that don't depend on a rape to demean a woman. Be creative!


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