the thrill of the chase, the problem of POV

[marycatelli]

You have two characters.  One is chasing the other, and the sequence is a major plot point.  Whether it's for a crime, because the other is captive, or even to bring good news doesn't matter much.  What matters much is whether they are both point of view characters.

Because they are necessarily going to be treading the same ground, facing the same landscape, wrestling with the same problems.  More or less.

One can wring some variation into the matter, making it less rather than more the same; one should wring as much variation as is possible, just to help keep the audience awake.  Especially useful would be the pursued setting traps for the pursuer.  But there's a limit to that.  Particularly if they are passing through a landscape with perils of its own.

Juggling points of view can be interesting, especially when there are questions about survival when you omit one side or the other for the sake of avoiding monotony.

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Well, that was what I originally intended for the project I'm working on - each chapter told from the other's point of view. It proved very awkward, as the demands of the story really required an omniscient narrator. But I liked the idea, as their points of view were quite different indeed, very much Angel and the Badman style. It was simply producing very short chapters!

There was a funny article published some years ago I will try to find, supposedly an interactive storytelling class project where a guy and girl's writing clashed more and more allergically as they wrote alternating sequences of what was supposed to be a story…

[marycatelli]

lovely chance for dramatic interchange there

Here it is!

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Bless Google's library-computer heart.

http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/tandem.html

Re: Here it is!

[marycatelli]

o my

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

It's also great fun when you overlap the time lines somewhat, so that Pursuer/Rescuer finds traces of some disaster that he thinks Pursued must have perished in, and then in the next chapter you jump back in time to Pursued's POV to show her experience in actually coping with it successfully.

[marycatelli]

Ample chances for dramatic irony. Above and beyond the advantages of multiple points of view.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Yes, but there, you need to avoid the Lost in Space cliffhanger bit - the flaming cheesecloth meteor is seen scant feet away from the Snowcat Chariot, I mean there's no way - but the opening of the next episode now shows that meteor wa-ay far off and plenty of time to escape from the peril, and the perceptive viewer says, “Now, wait a minute -!”

I think that's called “bait and switch.”

[marycatelli]

Making both cliffhangers and their resolutions satisfactory is always a trick. Much though I love the old Doctor Who serials, there's no denying that they sometimes tweak it past the edge of reasonability.