Using multiple perspectives in fiction
The good, the bad and the sneaky!
The alternative title for this piece could be ‘Writing yourself into a hole, then digging your way out again’ – because even though I’m working on Story No. 10 (so you’d think I might know a bit about what I’m doing), this has been my experience lately. However, I’m making breakthroughs now, so I hope this personal ‘process’ post might be good for any of you working on multi-perspective stories, or trying to find your way into one.
My current work-in-progress is about a young woman, Cassie, who’s determined to prove that her boyfriend didn’t murder her father. Robert Darnell was found stabbed to death on his doorstep ten years ago, still dressed as Hercule Poirot after performing in the town’s much-lauded summer solstice Agatha Christie production, and Cassie’s boyfriend Theo was arrested at the scene and later convicted of the crime. However, new evidence has come to light just as the Fairbridge Players finally regroup to perform And Then There Were None in tribute to Robert – and as one among them prepares to kill again.
This has been a tricky book to write, because it’s pretty ambitious: a who-did-it twisty mystery that’s looking at themes of performance and authenticity, loyalty and belonging, with elements of the play inside the novel, a large cast, two timelines, and a big backstory. My ongoing problem has been that I want the reader to hear from all of the characters, because they each hold little pieces of the puzzle about who Robert was and why he died.
During my events last year I enjoyed telling readers that my new book has 13 different perspectives, even though half of them probably knew I was a) a bit crazy, and b) unlikely to pull it off. My agent also sounded a little worried but she’s kind enough to trust me and let me figure it out! However, as I went deeper into the story, it became clear that I was going to have to recalibrate somewhere: if I wrote these perspectives as straightforward switches between points of view, I was asking the reader to remember too much and would likely cause confusion. So, what to do?
First of all, I decided to give the story a rest – which was only possible because I’m out of contract so I don’t have publisher deadlines (more thoughts on that in another post). I’m also working on a few things at once – other stories and book ideas, and my self-publishing project – so I’m enjoying being able to rest my stories, because I find that when I return to them, feeling fresh, I often solve a lot of problems quickly.
Giving the story a rest also helps to:
1. check if it’s still breathing. I’ve never had a story die when I’m this far in, but I’m aware there’s always a first time, and if I truly fall out of love with the idea or can’t get it to work, I’d rather move on than continue going around in circles. Thankfully, during this most recent rest period, every time my story came to mind I was still excited and invested.
2. let life help with my ideas. Often, if I just stay with the problem but don’t force a resolution, something comes along to help my ideas click into place.
This time, the help came from my backlist. I was working in Vellum doing some checks to the back matter in my books (because I’m in the process of self-publishing them in different territories), and as I looked through the stories I began thinking about all the ways I’ve put multiple perspectives into my books in the past. Out of my earlier books, only Beneath the Shadows stuck to a single perspective, and that was to deliberately draw the reader into my main character Grace’s feelings of loneliness and isolation as she tries to solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearance on the North Yorkshire moors. Come Back to Me and All That is Lost Between Us are told from four perspectives – and Shallow Breath has seven! These are all slow-burn suspense stories around family secrets and contemporary issues, but after that I turned more to writing faster paced crime suspense, and most of my books since then have had two perspectives – except for my 2017 mystery The Hidden Hours, where I did something a little different. And it’s this book that has – I think! – helped me fix my problem with my new story.
The chapters in The Hidden Hours are all told from the perspective of my main character, Eleanor, who wakes up one morning with no memory of the staff Christmas party the night before, to find her boss is dead and her boss’s very valuable engagement ring is in her bag. The single perspective is important, because I wanted to stay close to Eleanor’s disorientation as we watch her struggle to figure out what happened, and we also need her backstory – however, I also wanted to represent London, my setting, in all its multicultural and multi-faceted glory. So I came up with the idea of having little italicised vignettes at the start of each chapter from a range of random characters – many of whom never appear in the main story (e.g. a hotel doorman, a tourist, a London Underground worker) but who all add little bits of information or help set the scene.
I suddenly realised I could do something similar for the new story – although I’ve chosen a slightly different vignette format that ties in with my themes, which I’ll keep to myself for now until I see whether it actually works.
This was an excellent reminder that multiple perspectives can come from all sorts of places and don’t have to intrude into your main story. For example, in The Hush, I used song lyrics from a secondary character at the start of one of the sections. Sometimes, widening our perspective in unusual ways not only builds a more original work of fiction, but gives us a chance to play around with form and character, which is one of the most rewarding parts of developing stories.
And now I just need to go through the rough draft of 60,000 words that I’ve already written, rework it all and see what happens next! I’ll keep you posted.
Here’s an interesting read on the different platforms available to authors in 2026, although it’s a little disheartening as there seems to be a plethora of ways to invest time for not too much return:
In this brave and quite shocking post, Kat Rosenfield gives us an insight into the life-changing ramifications of being cancelled:
I really agree with Rachel Morton’s take on author courses here - and I say this as someone who attends courses and who has also developed courses and may put them online. I fully support paying someone for help that’s grounded in experience and expertise, but many people seem to see authors as an easy meal ticket in all sorts of ways, from paid reviews to marketing support to the courses discussed here:
Finally, I loved this piece about flash fiction from Gillian O'Shaughnessy and had a great time reading some of them - so fascinating and inspirational - thanks Gillian!
Aside from having a good writing week last week, I was delighted to discover that When She Was Gone is on the Sisters in Crime long-list for Fiction Book of the Year. There’s some stiff competition there, including many books I’ve enjoyed over the past year, so congratulations to everyone on the list!
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MY AI REPORT: Nothing in this post was written by AI.
currently struggling with 4 perspectives covering 20+ years in my work in progress so I am feeling the pain. Congrats on the Sisters in Crime longlist - best of luck!
Congrats on the long list!! I loved that book 😃🥳🎉