Hello everyone, I wanted to hear some thoughts about changing perspective mid chapter, like switching from 3rd person in one paragraph to 1st person in the next, the context is a description of a traumatic experience the character just went through, and I really wanted the aftermath to be personal so it felt right.
What are your thoughts?
Hi! Welcome to r/Writers - please remember to follow the rules and treat each other respectfully, especially if there are disagreements. Please help keep this community safe and friendly by reporting rule violating posts and comments.
If you're interested in a friendly Discord community for writers, please join our Discord server
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
I can see why you’d want to shift into something more personal after a traumatic scene; that instinct makes sense. If the goal is dealing with trauma, you might not need to jump into first person to get there. A well-executed limited third-person POV can still dig deep into your character’s emotional state especially if you lean into their internal thoughts and sensory reactions.
That said, if you do want to break the POV convention for impact, you could signal it with a stylistic shift: maybe use italics, a scene break or a stream-of-consciousness section to show readers that we’re dipping directly into the character’s head. Just be intentional with the transition so it feels like a deliberate artistic choice and not a POV mistake.
I did a little trick with a first person internal monologue that slowly shifted into a full first person view, the transition is meant to be a visible, deliberate shift for the sake of landing the payoff.
I think that should work fine! The key is that you don't want to confuse your readers or make the shift seem abrupt.
I grew up on novels where perspectives changed 5 times in a chapter between 5 different characters.