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 topic : Re: Multiple First Person Narrators: how should I differentiate? I am writing a novel (it will eventually be a series of five novels) and there are multiple first-person narrators. Each chapter starts

Kaufman555 @Kaufman555

So I would recommend reading the Animorphs and tie in series Megamorphs and "The _ Chronicles" to get an idea, but suffice to say, it's better to denote the speaker changes at the start of each chapter than to do font changes.

Animorphs franchise actually dealt with the same problem having Five first person narrators in the main titles and Megamorphs (all the same five) and later expanding to six. The "Chronicles" titles (includes "Visser" for convience) are first person prequels told by important secondary characters in the series and may have various narrators or a single narrator.

As a rule, in the main titles, one person would narrate one book, though there were occasional secondary narrators for books based on a story need (if this was done, the cover narrator would note it's going to happen in the first chapter. For the transition, see Megamorphs). This followed a distinct rotation, so four characters would narrate two books out of ten books and the remaining two characters initially had one book out of every ten, though late in the series, this became a proper one book every six books.

Megamorphs wold be narrated by all six main characters and usually were stories that required two lines of action going on, so the six would break into smaller groups. The narrator swapped every chapter but were not in their ordered format. The switch was noted by the character's cover photo by their name and the chapter number (none of the franchise had titles for chapters.). The new narrator was selected out of story need rather than order, though in a rare event where characters had back to back chapters, the convention was preserved (usually this didn't happen in favor of a perspective flip to a character who was in scene).

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