: Re: Switching POV from protagonist to antagonist? I'm writing a young adult fantasy with two main characters. Right now, I'm planning on writing it in 3rd person limited from the point of view of

@RJPawlick285

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It would entirely depend on the story you want to tell.

Single POV

If you are focusing more on the character development of your MC throughout the story, then definitely keep it from their POV. In order to get the reader to connect and empathize with the character, it would be better for them to experience the same confusion/ shock that is felt by the character as they are coerced into murder.

If you are going for the single POV angle, make sure that when the MC does the thing out of character, the reveal is made quite quickly afterwards. This will mean that the reader is confused for a short amount of time, and rather than having to adapt their opinion of the character as someone who is a killer (however hesitant they may be), and then change it back (oh, he was good all along) it will be more of an out of character occurrence that is given a reason as opposed to character development that is then retconned for the purposes of a shock reveal.

If the reader needs to know what the villain is doing and how and why he is doing it, then the only way you can do it when telling the story through the eyes of the MC is through an exposition dump at the time the reveal is made. This can be pretty boring for the reader to endure the entire "haha! You thought this was happening all along but actually it was this instead!" Not to mention they will feel cheated if they have been lied to for the entire story.

Dropping clues and setting up this reveal will get around this issue, so long as the groundwork has been laid correctly. Then once a single reveal has been made (you're from that country? It all makes sense now!), the reader will immediately understand the motivations of the villain without having to explicitly state everything.

Multiple POV

If your story is more focused on what occurs from the events that take place, then having the story from multiple POV's might be better. Telling the story from only one perspective means that the reader can only know what that character knows, therefore if there are extra events that the reader should be privy to then they may need to see it externally.

Going for the multiple POV angle, the villain will need to be a more well-rounded character. The reader needs to want to know about the villain, and why he is doing the things that he does, rather than just reading about someone for the sole purpose of developing the story for someone else.

If the villain parts are just chapters to continue plot points left off from the MC, they will become chapters the reader needs to endure instead of enjoy. It's difficult to read about a character with no redeeming qualities just for the sake of progressing the plot for a character that they want to read about.

Taking the reader out of the MC's experiences and putting them back in will cause them to feel less of a connection to that character, especially if they are seeing that character through the eyes of another (the villain).

In addition, having extra exposition from another point of view will mean that the reader knows more than that character, and they will feel less connected because they will understand what is happening to that character externally.

However if both characters are developed simultaneously, then the story can work to be more tragic, for example if the villain doubts that they are doing the right thing by fooling this other person. Then rather than having the "shock reveal", you can have the shock when he inevitably goes through with it rather than succumbing to his doubts.

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