POV Switching, Where and How?

[vividXP]

Hello, this isn't exactly my first post on Lemma Soft, but it might as well be, so I just want to say I'm glad to be here. I've been going through as many threads as I can and I just want to say that there are lots of talented people here. I'm hoping for some input/advice as someone completely new to the visual novel dev community.

I have a short story idea called "The Crying Rock". It's about a guitarist whose playing attracts the attention of a wandering god. It's basically fully fleshed out, if not properly written in a kinetic novel friendly format.

Which is the problem. The story requires a couple of POV switches at certain parts of the story. It's not more than 3 times...it's mainly to establish motivation of some of the divine characters. I've tried to play as many English Kinetic Novels as I can and for the most part they are 1st person. I have a couple of third person POV, but strangely enough I think they were stories where all the characters involved were in the same place for a majority of the story. So the transition between character perspectives was almost seamless.

To put it simply, how would you handle POV switching. I was thinking of doing the story in first person, but third person might make the switching easier to handle. If there are any demos/completed novels that are good examples that would be helpful too. If you're interested in knowing more about the story, I guess you can send me a private message and I'll let you know.

[Tsuyuri]

you can always switch the point of view 'into' the other character~ basically you keep the first person style but for that moment the focus of the story/the protagonist is swapped? But it's best to have that 'switch' not happen too often or people might get confused~ perhaps make it like an 'add-on' chapter (not like a dlc content thing but rather an additional part to the chapter of the story) where the perspective of the divine thingie their story is shown~

*hopes that makes sense*

[phoenixhymn]

I think you could stay in first person--you just have to be extremely clear about which character's perspective you're in. You could do a big splash page before the sequence begins listing what chapter/scene they're on and whose POV it's from. (This is how I've decided to handle the POV switches in my own vn. It's the first vn I've ever worked on, so other folks might have better solutions for you. >.>)

[Maelstrom-Fenrir]

Pov switching is not unheard of, however it must be done carefully. Aside from having a kind of transition as people above have said, and each character must have a distinct voice, that is how they do it in actual novels and the same format will work here. However you should never head-hop (jump POV) in a scene. Each scene should always stay within one person's head, this will help to avoid confusion.

So as long as you give the reader a little indication to the switch, give each character their own distinct inner-voice, and don't jump around during a scene you should be fine. But if you feel that isn't enough, you could change the GUI or GUI colors.