Unique Voices, Unique Perspectives:

Overview: Write a narrativescene or storytold from multiple voices, perspectives, and points of view.

(Regulars) 1000 – 2000 total words told from TWO distinct voices.

(Honors) 1500 – 3000 total words told from THREE distinct voices.

  1. Develop a highly distinct voice/point of view for each narrator—dialect, diction, syntax, etc. Each of your three characters should narratesignificant portions of your story (or at least serve as protagonist). You may have a third-person narrator, but it might be more difficult to differentiate voices that way.
  2. Help us to empathize (that does not mean agree) with each character; they need not be equally reliable or relatable. But each should have his or her unique voice, including perspective, word choices, syntax, etc.
  3. This writing can be fiction, creative nonfiction, play form, or another genre approved by me.
  4. Helpful guidance:
  5. Write the three sections in a series, not integrated. Just narrate each one in turn. Focus on character and perspective and voice.
  6. Just get a simple plot first; know where it’s going, then allow the characters to retell it uniquely. You may not have a full story arc, so think of it as a scene with a beginning, middle, and end. Perhaps begin after the important event you wish to dramatize.
  7. Essentially you’re telling the same 500-1000 word (approximately) story/scenetwo or three separate times from unique perspectives.

Here are some ideas for trios of characters:

  • Three different soldiers (perhaps on different sides of a conflict) right before or after a battle
  • Husband, wife, and therapist after a traumatic or upsetting event
  • Three different kids from the same family, or three kids of the same age from different families
  • Three inanimate objects that were present for an important action/event.
  • Three witnesses to a crime with very different agendas and perspectives
  • Take a historical event and write from three people involved in the event (scientist, clergy member, layperson during the Renaissance; politician, activist, and child during the civil rights marches, etc.)
  • An event that you experienced from you and two others involved.
  • Three generations of a family (grandparent, parent, and child)

Full Second Draft due on ______.

FINAL draft due on ______.