Help with a two perspective story?

The novel I'm querying has 3 rotating POVs and I think if I'd done that, I'd not be here today to tell the tale of it.

With rotating POVs, one change can change everything, so, for me, it's so much easier and less insane-making to write everything together.

Depends a lot on how you write. Do you outline? Do you just sit down and start writing?

I can see this approach working with an outline because you'd already have a rough timeline in place. If you're a pantser, ie you don't outline, you just write, then I'd write the chapters as you come to them. Otherwise I can see the timeline getting bent all out of shape.

I had a problem like this with the denouement of the novel I'm currently editing. I have two POVs and I'd only written one of them. Now I'm trying to fit in the second POV and it's quite tricky because conversations happen between one POV and someone who's with the second POV and getting the timing right is...well, I haven't managed it, yet.

The thing I try to ask myself when I'm writing is... why? What purpose does it serve to have both of these POVs? Are they equally important? What is the audience going to get out of this?

I would not suggest writing both stories independently of each other and then trying to stitch them together, unless you have nothing but free time in your life. Write an outline down to the scene level, and determine which POV serves each scene best. Then write. A few scenes may surprise you once you're writing, but that's okay.

The biggest problem I can see with that is that you're starting in two different points in time. The cop doesn't get involved until after the fact and, in fact, perhaps not until several murders have gone by (if it's a serial killer). You might struggle a little getting the chapters to flow so they make sense to the reader. But if you can pull it off, it'll work fine.

Mine has several different points of view. I wrote them as though everything were proceeding in real time. It made it easier for me as far as reactions to events went, and to know that what came next for each character flowed well.

Cathy C said:

The biggest problem I can see with that is that you're starting in two different points in time. The cop doesn't get involved until after the fact and, in fact, perhaps not until several murders have gone by (if it's a serial killer).

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I don't actually think this would end up being a problem. You could start from the cop's POV of when he's brought in on the murder, and then work a little bit of flashback/reminiscence in the killer's POV if you needed to add more detail (if he's killed before, etc).

As for the how of alternating POVs, I think Buffy's right; it all depends on your process. I'm more of a pantser, so I ask before each scene what POV it would be best told in, and go from there. I've had to do a few POV rewrites in subsequent drafts (but that was more because I cut an entire character out, whoops). I probably wouldn't write the whole story for each character, though, as that seems like more work than necessary. If it was me, I would start out with "cop gets clued in on murders" and alternate as needed from there.

My answer would be to write it as it would be read. I have a novel I'm currently putting through final edits. It is two POVs with changing perspectives with each consecutive chapter as well. I think it would be to your benefit to write it from start to finish. It should be a cohesive story, right? I wonder how cohesive you would manage to get it if you wrote it as two novellas and merged them together like playing cards. I know I couldn't write it like that.

Good luck. I love shifting POVs when done well.

TNTales said:

the cop's story is his own story, not just the story of the crime. It's like two lives and the crimes are where they overlap since they are both residents of the same small town.

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I don't want to be a downer, but that sounds like kind of a red flag. IMO a thriller depends on a strong plot, and the interplay between pro and antagonist (whether or not the antagonist is "on screen"). Make sure that you have a good capsule summary of what you want this story to be, that the halves are strongly connected.

(Telling two stories that were too far apart was my major screw-up in my first novel.)

In looking at the first draft of my current WIP, I realized that the story of the antagonists needed to be fleshed out to add tension and clarity. I was in third close on the protagonist. I'm now adding whole sections on the antagonists and converting to third omniscient (I hope). I don't know what these sections are until I start writing them, but they are working and the timeline isn't getting messed up by the additions. I also have room to spotlight other characters along the way. The original draft is becoming a timeline for the current draft.

I have a trunked novel with four POVs. I separated all four stories once I realized it wasn't working. The separation showed me that one main character had half as many pages as two others. It served a purpose though it may not be the way to start.

My suggestion is to write three chapters of each person's story and then try to seam them together. You'll learn quickly whether others were correct about the difficulty. You can revise to make them seam or start fresh after this exercise.

If you haven't, you should definitely read Crime and Punishment. It might not inform anything explicitly to your book, but having it in the background of your head will only help.

I have 3 protags in my novel and when it wasn't working I took them apart. I could see the holes then and I wrote them separately and knitted them together afterwards. They don't meet very often so it was pretty easy to get the timeline right.

I wrote notes for each storyline as I wrote them to keep everything in the right place.

If you haven't already, you might want to take a look at House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus.

I did this with my last novel and was very happy with how it turned out. I'm doing it with my current novel and am ripping my hair out trying to make it work.

That's my experience. Good luck, which ever way you decide to handle it.

I think that one thing to remember is that the more you show of the villian, the less spectacular he will seem, unless it's a comic book villian...

I'm a pantser and writing a WIP w/multiple POVs and couldn't imagine writing them separately. Something that happens in one POV might affect events in another in my case so I'm not doing that. It largely depends on your writing style and details of your story.