A Characters View

There are two sides to every story. I especially love to know both sides. When it comes to a book, it is great to have another story from a different characters perspective. It's almost magic that we can honestly see both views of a story. When does that ever happen in real life? Right? Right.

I loved the fact that FREE FOUR by Veronica Roth came out (Fours perspective of the knife throwing scene) and I liked that ALLEGIANT, also by Veronica Roth, had dual perspectives too except that made the ending...possible... Anyways I can't wait to get a hold of the book that has all of Four's stories!

Marie Lu's LEGEND series was also like that (as far as I know, I still haven't gotten to book three yet) with the switching perspectives and whatnot.

Reading both perspectives of the story, gives the story line more depth. It gives characters more depth too. I believe, and this might be a totally wrong assumption, that authors create these stories in a separate characters perspective not just because it has a worth (that's just an added bonus) but because it makes the character deeper. It drives them to get in the other characters head. These perspectives make two dimensional characters come off the page in 3D, they make already alive characters more intense.

A character that was just a puppet starts to have a pulse, all because you found their perspective. They become understandable because you know their side of the story, or maybe even their own story. You start to know why they do things. Why they think certain ways.

With writing, even as an amateur, I've realized that knowing the why is important. It means knowing the characters.

So find the why. The best way to do that, in my opinion, is to write (of course!) their perspective, or even their story. Write the story that happened before the story. You may find out more than you thought you ever could.