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"It's hard for me to focus on very much these days, perhaps because, like Trudy and everyone, I'm waiting for this boring election to be over and I've run out of things to say about it." 

That's a a clueless academic poo-pooing the historic 2000 presidential election in Trudy Hopedale. In that satirical novel, senior New Yorker editor Jeffrey Frank sends two equally self-centered characters bumbling through the same comical plot.

Today, he tells us how he pulled off the multiple narrator trick in my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions.

In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
Your book takes two incredibly different narrators and drops them inside a complicated, hilarious political scene. Technically, that must have been a logistical nightmare to write. How did you map out the two POVs in this book and ultimately weave them together? Any outlining tips for fledgling writers looking to pull off this complicated trick?

Jeffrey Frank:
You're right; it was at times a nightmare. Continue reading...

I had to keep the story moving without being repetitive—even though now and then a single moment might require two POVs. (There was a particularly embarrassing party in the book where my two narrators—Trudy Hopedale and the vice presidential historian Donald Frizzé—saw the same social event through very different eyes.)

For me, it was never really a problem of mapping out separate points of view. It's more likely that I'll be surprised by where an unmapped narrative takes me.  It's more trial and error—and then more trial.

kmmad