Ask The Book Doctor

About Point of View and Flashbacks

By Bobbie Christmas

Q: The book I am writing is a mystery. So far the only points of view I have used are the protagonist and her brother. All of a sudden in chapter five, I find I need a scene between my murderer and her husband. Can I do that, or should I go back and add the husband's point of view in earlier scenes so it won't seem to be such an abrupt change?

A: It's hard to say without reading the manuscript, but I suspect your gut feeling is correct, that readers shouldn't be blindsided in chapter five with a sudden shift in viewpoints.

Q: I need to make point of view transitions between my two main protagonists in the same scene. What’s the best technique for doing so?

A: The question has an inherent flaw. Conventional wisdom (or contemporary literature) has one point of view per scene, which is why I can’t point to a good model of how to show two points of view in the same scene. Instead, write the scene twice, once in one point of view, and the second time in the other point of view. Avoid using the same descriptions and information, so that the two points of view reveal separate sets of information to readers, and readers will “get it” and not be bored at all; in fact I’m sure they will be amused.

Q: How should I present a flashback? Should I begin it with any particular punctuation mark or formatting? For example, should I use a colon, indent the whole flashback more than the rest of the copy, space before it and after it? What are your suggestions?

A: Treat a flashback like a new scene, which it is. Add an extra hard return before it and after it, but do not introduce it with any punctuation other than what naturally would precede it. If the sentence before it ends in a period, that’s sufficient.

As an example, let’s say that a character finds a letter from an old girlfriend, and reading it makes him think back three years, to when she broke up with him. I’ll abbreviate the scenes, but the change from scene to flashback to scene might go something like this:

The words on the page made John’s thoughts drift back three years.

Marla stood before him, arms crossed and eyebrows knit. “I’ll never forgive you,” she said.

“But…”

“No buts. I’m out of here. That’s the last straw.” She turned on her heel, but stopped, looked over her shoulder, and added, “And to think I was going to give you this.” She slung an envelope at his feet and left the room.

John blinked, and his thoughts returned to the present. He looked at the letter still in his trembling hands and tried to make sense of Marla’s final letter, the one she wrote before her fatal accident.

Please note that the format I’ve shown above is not double spaced and may not be indented, because of the format of the periodical in which it appears, but a manuscript should be double spaced, and each new paragraph should begin with a five-space indent.

Bobbie Christmas, book doctor, author of Write In Style (Union Square Publishing), and owner of Zebra Communications, will answer your questions, too. Send them to Bobbie@zebraeditor.com. Read more “Ask the Book Doctor” questions and answers at www.zebraeditor.com.