: Re: How to execute a change of the POV in a first person novel POV? I am writing a novel and I am about 1/3 into it. It is in first person, past-tense. I am at a scene where the main character

@Correia211

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I have seen this done once before in a professional book. That book is by Seanan McGuire, though I can't recall the exact title. It's in her Incryptid series.

What she did was start an entirely new chapter, with a different chapter decoration, and opened the chapter up announcing that her cousin (technically her aunt) was narrating. These other chapters were also written in first person perspective, but it was made clear that the narrator was someone else.

An alternative might be to tell that bit as if this second character is explaining what happened to the first, though what you seem to want to do should be fine.

P.S. Another alternative is to rewrite the story in third person. The transition from one character's reference frame to another's isn't as troublesome if you aren't using first person, and close third person isn't that much different from first person in my opinion.

Rewriting might seem daunting, but I've done this myself. It isn't as bad as it sounds. It isn't fun, but its doable. In my case I was changing tenses which can't be done with simply changing the suffix on a verb. I had to rewrite it at the paragraph level, and in some parts rewrite entire scenes from scratch.

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