Following multiple characters

Sometimes stories will follow multiple characters.

You can do this in third person limited point of view by alternating the point of view characters at defined points.

In novels this is usually chapter breaks. In short stories, movies, and TV shows this usually scene breaks.

For example, here are snippets from the first two chapters of So Done, which has two main characters who get alternating chapters:

#1

For people keeping score: Metai Johnson didn't need anybody.

Not her father, who acted like he was sixteen years old.

Not her mother, who depending on which Cove rumor you believed, had either been sent back to Korea or was a manager of a hair-supply store her parents (Tai's grandparents) owned somewhere.

Tai didn't know if either were true, and all Nona, her grandmother, would say was, "She not around here, no more."

#2

Jamila Phillips was anything but excited to be back home. Curious was a better word. Something had told her her dad and brothers were somewhat of a mess without her. But when she walked through the door and saw the house clean and Jeremy, her eight-year-old brother, still alive and unbruised after a summer with their older brother, JJ, even curiosity wore off.

Between Tai's welcome back text and the mandatory game of Spades with her dad and brothers—her dad's attempt at family time—an entire summer was already starting to feel like wisps of a dream. She missed Aunt Jacqi, her sister, Cinny, and the small three-bedroom house in the Woods already."

So Done(2018)

Notice how each chapter describes one character's actions, environment, perceptions, thoughts & feelings, and doesn't go inside any other characters.

Each chapter obeys the rules of third person limited subjective point of view—but the story applies those rules to a different point of view character in each chapter.

The examples below alternate points of view. Do they obey the rules of third person limited subjective in each section?

#1

Adjouembe was just a normal guy. He'd grown up in Akron. Mama worked as a cleaner. His father worked in disability services. He'd had friends at school. Been good at basketball but not special. Went to community college, got a diploma, got an office job, got an apartment. Couldn't seem to get a girlfriend, but he wasn't stressing.

He still had friends from school and he knew how to cook three recipes. And on most days like today he sat at his desk and made calls to delinquent accounts and typed notes into the customer management system, until he was allowed on a scheduled snack break.

#2

Mr Malady, born Nigel Alan Dufnall, would not rest until he had the world clenched in his fist and begging for mercy (which he would not give).

His list of grievances were long and varied. For one, everyone else was stupid. Insufferably, monumentally, egregiously moronic. Wrong about everything from the economy to morality to climate to at least two of the basic laws of physics. And when he tried to tell people they were idiots, were they receptive? No! He was always the weirdo.

As he looked over the vast reactor complex under construction at the base of his volcano, he reminded himself that the only way to convince the world that he was right was to prove that everyone else was wrong.

#1

"Bruh!" the other surfer yelped. Casey looked over her shoulder and saw him wobbling on his board, eyes wide. He might have been Maori, but his face had practically gone grey. "That thing's massive!" he shouted at her.

Then she saw it too, a great grey shadow moving under her board, thick and round as a jet engine. She felt her heart start to race inside her chest. She'd hoped this was a grey nurse or a bull shark at worst, but…

#2

"It's a tiger," declared Kevin Morrison, as he watched the shark rise inside a glossy wave.

Trent rubbed his cap nervously. "Reckon we can scare it off with the boat, or is it gunna like Jaws us or something?"

"Nah, mate, don't provoke it. It's doing a circle, let's see if it comes back around." Kevin pointed at the two surfers. "But do aim the boat towards them and put a first aid kit in there as well. Get ready to launch if anything turns nasty." Then he picked up the megaphone and called out, "You two surfers, the shark's facing away right now. Paddle in slowly but be ready to stop if I tell you."

This is called alternating third person point of view.

One reason to do this is you want to tell a story that is bigger than one main character. By alternating characters, you can go places with one character that another character couldn't plausibly go.
Another reason is to broaden perspectives in a story. The main character gets a kind of privileged position in a story, where everything is filtered through their point of view. Switching to another main character offers a different perspective on the story. (The snippet from So Done contrasts one character who is independent with one who is connected.)

(Even though the storyteller is doing the telling, in third person limited the storyteller is constrained by whatever the main character could realistically know and feel. The storyteller account and the main character account need to line up.)

Write a snippet with two discrete main characters, as if they were in separate chapters or scenes, obeying the rules for third person limited subjective in each scene.

The simplest answer is that you want to dodge the fundamental limitation of third person limited, which is that the narrator can only tell the audience about what the point of view character perceives.

If the point of view character didn't hear, see, or know about an event, then the narrator can't tell the audience about it.

So one way around that is to alternate between characters who can experience different parts of the story.

But you have to commit to some reasonably equal allocation of time and attention across these characters, or else the switch can seem strange, which raises the risk that you as a writer get spread too thin across too many characters, and have trouble wrangling your story.

In this topic we've looked at third person limited point of view.

What does that limit refer to? And what happens when we remove it?

Point of view

Following multiple characters