if you were to read a book about a asylum where the prisoners escape would you want to read from a Guards point of view or from a Prisoners?

those dont exist in the way they used to so it would be more of the hospital/ prison pastiche facility people are sent to after using the insanity plea in order to be relevant. ig if you used a unique intelligent inmate w some guard perspective occasianally i would read and enjoy, use an unexpected type of revolutionist prisoner/ patient like a psychotic person who sees 'patterns' that are easily understood by inmates/ patients who use meth thats smuggled in. you may need to do research into those communities by talking to homeless or getting yourself checked into a hospital inpatiant program extensively but youll prob have to take or ditch the meds youre prescribed for it to be a long enough stay or method acting and criminal behavior to be checked into violent wards idk i can see how it would work

No.

Is it going to be better than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? If not, why should I bother?

Kesey worked for several years in an asylum, so he knew what he was talking about, so he got the details right.

Maybe switch each chapter, as both sound cool!

It really depends. The two point of views would make for quite different stories, shift perspectives, possibly change which side our sympathy lies with. We would probably learn quite a bit about the POV character so think about the possible backstories of the two characters and see which one might be the better character to choose.

If the prisoner is insane, their point of view would probably be much more of a challenge to write. If pulled off well, it could make for a very interesting reading experience. If pulled off badly, the book would be a disaster.

A brilliant book involving an asylum is Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. You might want to read it in order how to write a really good story. (I know there's a movie which is an adaptation of this novel but it is worth reading the book.)

"AN asylum."

And it would depend on who had the more compelling story.

How about from the point of view of an inmate in an asylum who is completely delusional and thinks he's a guard? Then, it's revealed that he is in fact a guard, but is actually insane. And he's guarding a nuclear missile silo just outside of Minot. A little back-story... He and his best mate, Todd "Sweepy" Blankenship, were driving coast to coast from Gloucester, MA, to Grays Harbour, WA, when their old jalopy broke down in central NB, they didn't have enough money for a new transmission, so they took day jobs working as short-order cooks at a truck stop. Sweepy left town with Darla Peabody, they headed off to Vegas, so our narrator, (let's call him "Carl"), decided to head north. This was back in the 80s when all you needed to guard a missile silo was a pulse. At first, everything was great, sometimes the local farm girls would throw beer cans at the antennæ and Carl would go "investigate" and party with them. But unbeknownst to Carl, his neckties were too tight, and that caused him to mistakenly believe that he was an inmate in an insane asylum. What do you think? I call it "The Looking Glass Plain." Get it? You know because the Dakotas are part of the Great Plains. Anyway, this is choice material, kid. A-1 stuff. Don't squander it.

A asylum not an asylum. Like a apple not an apple. It even starts with a a. So a was your clew, gormless.

Whichever one best fits the story you want to tell. One suggestion I've seen is that the point-of-view character should be the one who has the most at stake, or the most to lose if everything goes horribly wrong. This can change over the course of the book.

The prisoner's.