Same scene, different POV?

First, changing POV in a scene is acceptable in principle. People do it all the time, and (supposedly) accomplished writers allude to it in the books they write. The one thing they all agree on though, is making sure that the POV change is clearly marked. The most common way is with a couple of extra line breaks between the end of one POV and the beginning of the other.

As far as tedium, you don't have to repeat the entire scene in both POVS. At minimum, just repeat the parts in the second POV that are different. Or skip over several lines of dialog that you've already reported with some variation on "there was a short sharp exchange of insults". (Show don't tell also be more of a guideline than a rule. Arrrrrrr...)

Anyway, try writing the scene several times, keeping each version. Then pick the best parts from the revisions that sound the best. You'll zero in on it.

IMO, pick the character who has the most to lose in that scene and write from their POV only. Then continue forward with the story. It'll be hard to not write from both POVs when you think it would be interesting to see both sides, but the reader only wants to read a scene once and from the most interesting POV, otherwise tediousness. In the first draft you can write both if need be, but pick the stronger of the two and file away or delete the other.

You can have different POVs for sure as long as they're well separated and easily identifiable as another person. But do they all have to be first person? That might be very confusing unless you're really skilled at it. I can see writing your MC in first person and others in third unless you're giving them their own chapter to tell their version.

What you want to do makes me think of that old Due South episode where everyone sees the murder scene from their own viewpoint. Visually, that can work but I'm not sure it would go over that well on the page. As others have said, it could get tedious unless the viewpoint is very different, like, say, from a human perspective and a dog's.

Be sure you are not just aiming for a gimmick - it is rarely necessary to actually repeat the same pages of dialogue to show the real intentions or reactions of each participant. Make sure the new interpretation or intent indicated is far removed from the impression given during the actual dialogue.

Have you considered switching POV after the dialogue and having the new POV comment or react in such a manner that any difference is evident. For instance-

Peter's POV - End of dialogue- George leaves, apparently in agreement with Peter or whoever.

## Or new chapter if preferred.

George closed the door behind him, then turned and raised two fingers at it. Effin' idiot.

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ETA- Sorry- you mentioned First and this is in Third, but the principle is the same..

Brief and crude but to the point and instantly shows George's real thoughts on what had gone before, regardless of how his dialogue and reactions were interpreted by Peter during the actual dialogue. And none of the dialogue needs repeating.

Just a thought. Good luck.

Also, remember that you can show a character's reactions without repeating the scene line for line, or even repeating most of the lines. Rarely does your story really need a line by line repeate.

Here are a few examples of some ways to show the reactions of both characters without boring your reader:

The easiest and cleanest way might just be to show the reader the other side's reaction. When the non-POV character takes over the POV, she/he can essentially comment on what just happened through internal monologue. Like, for (badly written, but just as an) example:
Jimmy thinks he's so smart, thinks I'm just going to go along. Well, he has another thing coming.

So, in my lame example in the other POV it looked like the non-POV character was going along, but then the reader gets to see that internally, the non-POV character was just faking it.

Another example, continuing my scenario:
Maybe in the scene, the non-POV character agreed to go to an event at her kid's school, rather than to the office. But when the scene shifts to her POV, you show that she has other intentions:
"Jimmy? Hi," I said, cradling the phone so Sarah couldn't see it from the car. "Listen, change of plans. I have to go to this parent-teacher meeting. But start the backup and then call me at two-thirty with a crisis. okay?"

That way, you don't have the POV character commenting to the reader through internal monologue, but the reader immediately gets that the non-POV character was just pretending to go along.

Or, another technique:
Don't repeat the dialogue, but show some overlap. Like, again, continuing my example scenario:
She yammered on about the parent-teacher meeting until I could feel the headache forming.
"Are you listening to me?"
"Yeah," I said. "Fine. We'll go together."
Still she wouldn't let it go...over and over until...
So, in the first scene there was a long conversation, but when you replay part of it in the other POV you don't go blow by blow -- you just show a line or two, or maybe a key event, to orient the reader, without bogging the pace down.

And there are likely other techniques, too. The key is to show the reaction without the repetition, whenever possible.

~suki

I'm not sure why, but one of the most common things I encounter with new writers is wanting to show the same scene for two POVs. From talking to writers at workshops, in writer's groups, etc., I think it's because they don't know how to get all the different character feeling, thoughts, and reactions in without doing this. This is especially true in first person.

The two most common solutions are telling the same scene twice, or changing to omniscient and doing a bunch of head-hopping. Neither solution usually works. Repeating scenes seldom confuses readers, but it will probably bore them. Anything can be done successfully, but I doubt anyone wants to read the same dialogue twice very often.

My experience is that you can get everything in from one POV, or there wouldn't be so many novels that do just this. If you do use alternating POVs, I think it's best to do so with new scenes. The POV character in that new scene can certainly get across whatever she saw, did , felt, thought. etc., during the old scene without actually repeating it.

I agree with the criticisms. It's tedious to go through the same scene twice. Perhaps you could have the other character briefly reflect on the scene afterwards.

It's not necessary to repeat. You can stay in one point of view and still provide plenty of insight into the other character using his physical reactions and dialogue and the pov character's interpretations of the other character's reaction.

Look at it this way: In real life you get just one point of view -- your own -- yet you manage to muddle through just fine. Sometimes your assumptions about what someone else meant or thought or felt is off, but that's okay. In fiction we call that conflict!

Trust your reader. You don't have to tell them every little thing from each character's point of view in order for them to get it.

This.

Be sure you're not falling into the trap of thinking you have to explain everything so the reader 'gets it'.

The craft of writing is allowing the reader to 'get it' for himself via our use of clarity and flow.

rainsmom said:

It's not necessary to repeat. You can stay in one point of view and still provide plenty of insight into the other character using his physical reactions and dialogue and the pov character's interpretations of the other character's reaction.

Look at it this way: In real life you get just one point of view -- your own -- yet you manage to muddle through just fine. Sometimes your assumptions about what someone else meant or thought or felt is off, but that's okay. In fiction we call that conflict!

Trust your reader. You don't have to tell them every little thing from each character's point of view in order for them to get it.

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Imriaylde said:

But the response I've gotten is that it's a little tedious for the reader to read through the same thing twice.

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Yep, that would be tedious.

Write the scene in a single POV, but later have the other character react to it (if really necessary), either through dialogue, action, or internals (though do avoid making a habit of one or the other character spending a lot of time pondering after every scene).

As to examples--probably any multi-POV novel you care to read deals with this issue. And they almost never repeat scenes.

Imriaylde said:

@Angry Guy, thanks for the tips! I'm actually not changing the POV mid-scene, it's that each chapter is from a different POV so some of them have repeated scenes to show the event from both sides. But I'll definitely try rewriting and adding variation to make it more interesting!

@Tepelus, Thank you, too! I'll try doing that, I just worry that I'll lose a good part of the story if I don't show it from both POVs.

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Unless you are doing some sort of Rashomon-type story where one of the major themes is how divergent people's perceptions of the same event are, writers are generally strongly advised not to bother.

A lot of it comes down to this: assume your reader is reasonably intelligent. There's a lot they can infer from the behaviour and dialogue of the non-POV character - given the right word choice, obviously - to render such forms of repetition completely unnecessary.

Another point: why should the two POV characters remember their interaction in the same way? Maybe the dialogue in the recalled scenes should actually be different — similar enough to keep the reader grounded, but different enough to illustrate how each character filters the action through his/her own POV.

I have a scene that's from both POVs, and some of the dialog repeats. However the dialog is a trivial fraction of the text, most being the two POVs' completely disparate internal comments, opinions, reactions, and misinterpretions. So far no one's complained of it, but there's a lot of character-building going on which probably makes a difference. And the dialog isn't a full repeat, but rather overlaps tag ends as the POV goes back and forth.

What you outline here sounds pretty grim to me.

Good luck with it.

Reziac said:

I have a scene that's from both POVs, and some of the dialog repeats. However the dialog is a trivial fraction of the text, most being the two POVs' completely disparate internal comments, opinions, reactions, and misinterpretions. So far no one's complained of it, but there's a lot of character-building going on which probably makes a difference. And the dialog isn't a full repeat, but rather overlaps tag ends as the POV goes back and forth.

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Tepelus said:

IMO, pick the character who has the most to lose in that scene and write from their POV only. Then continue forward with the story. It'll be hard to not write from both POVs when you think it would be interesting to see both sides, but the reader only wants to read a scene once and from the most interesting POV, otherwise tediousness. In the first draft you can write both if need be, but pick the stronger of the two and file away or delete the other.

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What Tepelus said.

The only time I'd do the same scene twice in different POVs would be if it was a crucial, pivotal scene and the two POV characters had immensely different takes on what happened (that for some reason can't be conveyed by their reactions within the scene or in a new scene where they are thinking/talking/doing something about it), and those different takes drive the plot in some extremely important way.

IOW, I'd only do this if the story demanded it and there was no better choice.

ETA, I tend to write stories with more than one POV character, and if I'm not confident on which POV to use in a given scene, I sometimes write the scene twice using each POV, then award the scene to the character who told it best. This can work especially well because the character who doesn't get awarded the scene will naturally provide some things (reactions, etc) you can include in the POV character's scene.

suki said:

Also, remember that you can show a character's reactions without repeating the scene line for line, or even repeating most of the lines. Rarely does your story really need a line by line repeate.

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This. I sometimes show the same events from two POVs, but when I do I never show the whole scene twice - at most I will back up a few lines, show the other character's very different perception of what is going on through the narrative, and use the occasional repeated line of dialogue as a marker to let the reader understand the timeline. But then when I get to the place where I switched POV, I continue forward so the scene is developing. It always helps if you switch the POV on a mini cliffhanger, so that they reader really wants to know what happens next, but that's true for any POV switch I think.

Bufty said:

What you outline here sounds pretty grim to me.

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Actually it is pretty grim... a torture victim interacting with a fruitcake, all observed by a sociopath.

Bufty said:

Be sure you're not falling into the trap of thinking you have to explain everything so the reader 'gets it'.

The craft of writing is allowing the reader to 'get it' for himself via our use of clarity and flow.

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Wanted to pull this for emphasis. Trust us as readers to understand.

But in answer to your question, and having only done a quick scan of the answers so I don't know if I'm repeating anything, I have seen this handled by having one POV for the first half of the scene and switching (with a clear indication it is a POV switch, usually an extra space or a new chapter) to finish out the second half of the scene.