Chapter Perspectives and How to Start Them

[Dresdenus Prime]

Strangely enough I was working on my story, setting on a first person perspective when a character currently unnamed came to me in my mind and said;

"It's bad enough I don't have a name yet, but you seriously forgot that there's a scene later in the book that I'm in and your main character isn't?! So how the hell are you going to work that Mr. Aspiring Author if your book is in first person?"

So after we fought with phaser sabers (yes I merged Star Wars/ Trek weapons, which I can do in my brain) I decided that I was confident that this book could be written in third person after all.

Anywho, to the point - When I start my chapters I had an idea of how to start them, and that was each chapters first sentence would start with the name of the character the chapter was following. So for example:

Chapter 1
John walked to the park.

Chapter 2
Sarah heard the phone ringing.

Chapter 3
Percy transformed into a herb eating velociraptor before his evening bath.

And so forth. If the following chapter stayed with the same person, then there would be no name. My question to you folks is - Would that bog things down to much? Or turn people and/or baby hippo's off of the book? Would it just be better for me to place the name under the chapter number ala Geroge RR Martin? If that is considered a no-no in the literary creation world I would prefer to stay away from it, but in my mind it seemed cool.

I appreciate all and any advice as I always do

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I've always disliked making a big point of showing the name of the character whose viewpoint a chapter is in, as a title or a starting para; it's kind of admitting in advance "I'm not good enough with voice to make these characters adequately distinct."

[Galvatron]

I have to agree with Neuro

If the characters have a distinct voice it will be clear who it is, there is no need to start off by saying it.

[Dresdenus Prime]

Thanks guys! It actually does sound kind of lame when you put it that way. Much obliged!

[Quantus]

Eh, I generally have lower standards and such things have never really bothered me.  It also may depend on your audience; I see such methods used more often in books that are aimed at younger readers, where such extra hints help them regain their bearings faster, especially if you are changing perspectives often, or switching to different views of the same events. 

But as Neuro and Galvatron said, it is no substitute for distinct character voices.  So Id say write the thing without them, but dont be afraid to add the extra hints in later if you think they'd be helpful

[drewavera]

i dont think you need to start each chapter with the persons name: John kicked the ball... sorta thing. but i do think its a good idea to put that characters name somewhere in the first paragraph. you could describe a setting or something and include the persons names a sentence or two into the paragraph. that way you take away the mystery of who the character is without writing it in an elementary way. just my 1.413 cents

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

i dont think you need to start each chapter with the persons name: John kicked the ball... sorta thing. but i do think its a good idea to put that characters name somewhere in the first paragraph. you could describe a setting or something and include the persons names a sentence or two into the paragraph. that way you take away the mystery of who the character is without writing it in an elementary way. just my 1.413 cents

Yah, but if it's a mystery who the character is after reading a paragraph inside their head, then (unless you're doing something deliberate with that mystery) you really want to look again at how distinct a voice each character has.

Describing the setting's a good way of doing this, actually.  (Everything is voice, and voice is character.) Because if you've got one POV character whose instinct on entering a new room is to check for access, doors, windows, points of escape, points someone could shoot at you through and so on, and a second POV character who on entering a new room immediately notices what colour everything is and thinks how it visually fits together, and a third who does not pay much attention to his surroundings because he's fretting over this plot he's got stuck in, a sentence beginning "He walked into the room and thought... " will be unambiguous as to which character it is within a few more words without needing you to explicitly say who "he" is. 

[drewavera]

if he is changing to third person perspective then the narrator is describing everything. i thought he mentioned that he was not gonna do first person perspective. if he does third person then there is no voice for each individual character until the dialouge comes into play. if its first person with multiple view points then it sounds like its gonna be a head ache trying to voice each person differently.

[Galvatron]

if he is changing to third person perspective then the narrator is describing everything. i thought he mentioned that he was not gonna do first person perspective. if he does third person then there is no voice for each individual character until the dialouge comes into play. if its first person with multiple view points then it sounds like its gonna be a head ache trying to voice each person differently.

Read the First Law books be Joe Ambercrobie if you think third person pov can't give each character their own voice.

[Quantus]

if he is changing to third person perspective then the narrator is describing everything. i thought he mentioned that he was not gonna do first person perspective. if he does third person then there is no voice for each individual character until the dialouge comes into play. if its first person with multiple view points then it sounds like its gonna be a head ache trying to voice each person differently.

Well there is Third-Person Subjective, and then there is Third-person Objective.  Subjective still has a voice, and is describing internal thoughts, feelings, opinions etc of the "voice" character, it just doesnt go so far as actually saying "I did this and that."  The Objective voice tends to be more neutral and dehumanized, but the Subjective one is more "over the shoulder" and still gets inside the characters' heads.  Given that he was switching from 1st POV to third purely to allow for multiple POVs in different scenes, I was assuming he was intending to use the subjective form.

[drewavera]

wow, i didnt know there was a difference between third person perspectives. im gonna have to look into that

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

if he is changing to third person perspective then the narrator is describing everything. i thought he mentioned that he was not gonna do first person perspective. if he does third person then there is no voice for each individual character until the dialouge comes into play.

Sure there is.

Everything a third-person character notices is voice, because different characters notice different things.. Everything a third-person character thinks is in their voice.  No difference between third and first in that particular respect at all.

[Quantus]

wow, i didnt know there was a difference between third person perspectives. im gonna have to look into that

There is a ton out there on it, here is a good place to start:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_mode

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

The Objective voice tends to be more neutral and dehumanized, but the Subjective one is more "over the shoulder" and still gets inside the characters' heads.  Given that he was switching from 1st POV to third purely to allow for multiple POVs in different scenes, I was assuming he was intending to use the subjective form.

I'm not sure I believe in the precise scale of distinction you are making; if you are going with a distinct third-person omniscient voice that's not associated with any specific character, it's not going to give you that distinction between POVs but the narrative itself will have a voice made manifest in every choice of words, of which detail to focus on and where to prioritise, even if it's not explictly an omniscient in-world narrator.  Doing that consciously has kind of fallen out of fashion this past while except in childrens' books, which I think is kind of a pity.

Otoh, if you're talking about a camera-eye third that follows each individual character around as they do their thing but never steps inside their heads, I still think that you would or should or can have the ability to tell the characters apart by them each behaving distinctly like themselves, even if you don't get a thought process to go with it.

[Quantus]

I'm not sure I believe in the precise scale of distinction you are making; if you are going with a distinct third-person omniscient voice that's not associated with any specific character, it's not going to give you that distinction between POVs but the narrative itself will have a voice made manifest in every choice of words, of which detail to focus on and where to prioritise, even if it's not explictly an omniscient in-world narrator.  Doing that consciously has kind of fallen out of fashion this past while except in childrens' books, which I think is kind of a pity.

Otoh, if you're talking about a camera-eye third that follows each individual character around as they do their thing but never steps inside their heads, I still think that you would or should or can have the ability to tell the characters apart by them each behaving distinctly like themselves, even if you don't get a thought process to go with it.

You are absolutely correct.  I was attempting to paraphrase the wiki entry, but by no means hit all the subtleties.  The main point I was after was just to show that you can indeed do third person while still being inside a character's head.