I'm working on my 8 millionth novel. I thought it might be fun to write one chapter from the perspective of each of the main characters. It's the chapter where they meet, so I'd write the chapter from her perspective and then re-write it from his. Cool idea or looks like I ran out of ideas for another chapter?

I like it when writers do stuff like that. I think it would be especially cool if the entire book could be in dual perspective, or if it doesn't start off glaringly obvious that the second version of the chapter was about the same event and then the reader gets slowly clued in until there's a light bulb moment where they realize both chapters were about the same thing.

^In this case, it would be obvious relatively quickly. Depending on when I decided to start it, it would only be a couple pages in that you'd know. I've just always wondered when characters meet and it's in first person, what's the other one thinking? Kind of like going on a first date, but you get the answer in the next chapter.

I really like that idea. Actually, I love it. It sounds like it could work really well.

It's a great technique, and it can work really well. However it can have a tendency to bore the reader if the chapters are too repetive, ie if the exact same things happen in both chapters, with only the perspective changed.

I don't know if you've ever heard of the nove "Queen Kat, Carmel & St Jude"? It's young adult fiction, by an author named Maureen McCarthy who's well-known in Australia (the book was made into a TV series, and I think it was also a class text for senior students?). Anyway, this novel uses the technique really well. The story's told from 3 different perspectives, but the actual events only overlap- each character has events going on in their lives that exclude the others, so it's not just the same story being told 3 ways, if you know what I mean?

Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski does this (though it's pretty unreadable). So does Carolyn Parkhurst's Lost and Found,. And there's another one, too. Well, Parkhurst's The Nobodies Album, but something else - Yeah, nope, not coming to me. It's a good plot device, works best in small doses. It's best to switch narrators immediately before or after the event in question, because you don't want to repeat dialogue and bore the reader. Even better, to repeat dialogue differently, showing how our memories play tricks on us, or how perception is everything.

God, I know there's so many other books. Curse this nasal congestion!

Lisa Alther's, Kinflicks, is a novel that does this back and forth pretty well. She uses a first person narrator alternating with a third person subjective in the form of her dying mother.

Also, Anne Tyler starts, Celestial Navigations,with the POV of a minor background character, then hits two of the main characters and a few others as it goes along. It was a nice technique.

It is also a great writing exercise to tell the same story from different characters' POV. Sometimes, just by going through the mechanics of doing it, it helps clarify "whose story is this, anyway?" You will certainly find that there are several stories within the story if you alternate POV.

Good Luck.

Keep On Dancing*

Check out World War Z that has one person per chapter and it uses it to paint a picture of the whole world post zombie apoclapse.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver also does this very well, alternating between 4 different characters.

It's worth a look

Hope your writing is moving along happily.

Keep On Dancing*