POV question

I'm not positive, but I thought I would offer what I thought.

Coming from the Navy, I think the military vocabulary is going to be the same, the goal may be the same, but the way it is expressed will be different.

These are all different characters, so they are going to say their words, move, and gesture differently. It might help if you sit down with your "problem" characters and give them very detailed backstory, stuff that will never make it into the MS, but it may help you understand their voices. Once you know completely who these people are, you may know better how to show who they are to the reader.

Hope this helps.

I read Marie Lu's YA dystopian novel Legend, which alternates between two MCs' First Person POV, chapter by chapter. Each MC's chapter would have his/her unique font and color. It was pretty easy to follow.

Coco82 said:

Where I am stuck is w/the special operations guys and guerillas, how best can I differentiate them?

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The same way you would differentiate a pastry chef from a sauté chef – personality. If you have well rounded characters with their own patterns of speech, thought and action they will naturally come out sounding different from each other and telling them apart won't be that difficult. You won't even have to get gimmicky with typesetting.

I'm definitely not military, so just throwing out some ideas.

I'd expect a regular military unit to be firmly grounded on rules and following orders. Their uniforms would be neatly pressed, their standard issue weapons would be well maintained. The grunts would not be particularly bright but would follow orders without thinking. Procedures, regulation, heirarchy, tradition.

So it would follow that the personality of someone in that unit would fit that kind of thinking. A private would be very different from a colonel, natch.

By contrast, a special ops unit would be less formal. It would need to respond to unusual situations so would be more creative, less rule-bound. Its members would be elite soldiers so less likely to make mistakes, but more likely to take a risk. The grunts might choose their own weapons, for example. Uniform may be less rigidly adhered to. The command structure would be flatter, with even low-ranked soldiers allowed to think for themselves.

A guerilla unit would be based more on the conviction of individuals. Fewer rules. Possibly less professional. Not as well trained but arguably more passionate about why they are fighting. Inconsistent weaponry. More fluid. Patriotic. Desperate.

Then think about who would join each of these units - whether as private or leader. Give them a back story to explain how they came to your story.

For a shortcut, you might want to research sources about the regular army, SAS/Seals and something like the French resistance in WW2. Focus on the sorts of people who join each one. What drives them, motivates them, frightens them?

Your characters should drop out of that, like the pin falling out of a handgrenade.

In the same novel Legend I mentioned, the author also puts the MC's name in the chapter title, so that as the author jumps from MC to MC, it is always crystal clear to me who is talking.

I'm not very patient and get confused easily when I read. I know you can distinguish POVs by voice, personality, speech pattern, etc., but I don't want to read a few paragraphs or even a few sentences to figure out whose POV is it. That's just too much work. Plus, unless the different POVs are dramatically different, it might be hard for readers to distinguish them. I want to know, starting from the first sentence, who is talking.

But I understand others may have different preferences...

LAgrunion said:

I read Marie Lu's YA dystopian novel Legend, which alternates between two MCs' First Person POV, chapter by chapter. Each MC's chapter would have his/her unique font and color. It was pretty easy to follow.

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I am flabbergasted that a publisher would let anyone do that (I certainly wouldn't count on getting the same treatment). As a writer, I'm afraid it strikes me as lazy. As a reader, it would get under my skin in about ten seconds.

It's not at all difficult to mark the POV character within the first couple of sentences of a scene. Just give us something that's happening inside their viewpoint and refer to them by name.

Once! said:

I'd expect a regular military unit to be firmly grounded on rules and following orders.

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Not always true. If it's a unit where people are handpicked, it's going to be good quality people. But other kinds of units, maybe not so much. I was in a transportation unit, and this is an example of the things the soldiers did over the 6 years I was there:

• Drunk
• Taking an underage minor over the state line
• Theft of another soldier's belongings
• Theft in the PX
• Drugs, alcohol on urinalysis (in a transportation unit, this is an automatic discharge)
• Writing bad checks
• Rape
• Murder of a baby
• Sodomizing a boy

The last three occurred following Desert Storm, and may have been an indirect result of it. A lot of it is just dumb stuff that 18 year old people do, especially when influenced by their peers.

Once! said:

Their uniforms would be neatly pressed, their standard issue weapons would be well maintained.

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Well ... maybe not. There's always a mix of soldiers with the uniform so starched it could stand up on its own and soldiers who looked like they pulled the uniform out of the laundry bag.

Weapons -- same thing (though may be different for an elite unit, since that's a hand-picked crowd). They'd periodically do an inspection and find weapons with lots of carbon in them.

Once! said:

The grunts would not be particularly bright but would follow orders without thinking.

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Again, probably not true. Yes, they will likely get some people who really aren't bright. The guy who committed murder was from a small town in Iowa and was just not very smart -- which was how he got into the trouble he did. But they are going to get all ranges, because some of those people become the leaders of the soldiers. And the better soldiers are the ones who think. We had a first sergeant who got a PhD over 20 years by going to school in the evening.

In the future, there's obviously going to be some changes, but people themselves don't change. They still have differing personalities, differing motives. Some are married, some are single, some are divorced. There could be a guy who fakes illness to get out of things. Or a guy who is permanently injured (knees will do it) and the other guys are riding him. There's always people who just want to finish their time and others who see themselves as moving to the top, as well as people who want to move to the top without doing the necessary steps. There's the immature sergeant who acts like a 16 year old, and the great officer you wish you had more of. Then there's officer who is such a poor leader, he nitpicks about insignificant things (dress right dress tents in a war zone). Lots of different things to work with.

@Linda - I find that the clue is often in the question. The OP's question was how to differentiate between three different types of military unit, so that his characters could look unique. So what he needs to think about is the defining characteristics of each unit. That will in turn help him to think about the backstory for his characters.

A regular military unit will probably have more adherence to rules than an elite unit, which will in turn have more adherence to rules than a guerilla force.

And, yes, we can all sit down and think of exceptions to these general principles, but these exceptions aren't really going to help him generate unique characters, are they?

There's some good advice on this thread already, but I might also consider differentiating the characters through rank as well. Instead of having three leaders, I would suggest having one leader, a sergeant, and maybe a grunt. While this certainly isn't necessary, it will give your readers a wider perspective of the different personalities and of the conflict, and it will also give you a chance to explore different subplots and motivations.

Coco82 said:

My problem though is I want my military POV characters to stand out as unique to each other to an extent. I know they may share some qualities, but at the same time I want the reader to be able to tell them apart. Where I am stuck is w/the special operations guys and guerillas, how best can I differentiate them? Granted some of the groups in the govt' in exile and insurgency have different motives, goals, etc. Should I accentuate there differences so the reader knows? And if so how would you go about that?

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What differentiates POV is not occupation. Rather, it's what the character wants and fears. Who he is at heart. Where she came from, where she wants to go. His or her unique perspective on the world.

Coco82 said:

It is broken up into different POVs to show the reader different aspects of the security state that has become imposed. One POV character is a leader of a conventional arm battalion, another a special ops unit, and one a guerilla group. It is very military based since that is my area of expertise.

My problem though is I want my military POV characters to stand out as unique to each other to an extent.

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I agree with BethS. The problem may lie in the way you're phrasing this question: you're asking how to differentiate three leaders of three groups. You should start by asking who these leaders are, what are their defining values and desires.

I like the idea of distinguishing b/t ranks, of course. A leader will be worried about strategy, resources, the mindset of his opponent. A colonel will be worried about morale, discipline, and getting from Point A to Point B. A grunt will be worried about food and rest, about being given the shitty jobs and the dangerous missions -- or he'll be excitable, eager to jump into the fray, and willing to dehumanize the enemies in his head (since he will be the one directly killing them).

You quote GoT, so think about that. Davos as ship captain has a different viewpoint from Jon, steward and grunt soldier -- who both have different viewpoints from Tyrion (in book 2, the Hand of the King). Start from where they are and what they are trying to do; think hard about how the individual characters respond to these situations. That's your character -- voice will develop organically from there.

In my experience, there are some differences in custom between various branches of the military, but they're all expected to behave professionally when they're on duty (and when they're off duty, but whether they do is up to the individual.) The higher in the chain of command you go, the more likely you'll find individuals who are straight-laced and serious, but that's not going to always be the case. I know a Senior Chief in the USCG who is about as much of a cut-up as you can imagine.