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Due to exhaustion brought on by spending the last several days at work packing up to move to new offices next week, I wasn’t able to write a new post for Writing the Romance Novel. But just in case you’re jonesing to read something about the craft of writing, check out these past posts on Characters and Point of View:

Creating Credible Characters (June 2007). See also Be Your Own Casting Director, Point of View
Creating Credible Characters—Introduction
Creating Credible Characters—Where Do Characters Come From?
Creating Credible Characters–Who Are You?
Creating Credible Characters–Culture Clash
Creating Credible Characters–Let’s Get Personal
Creating Credible Characters–Mannerisms and Quirks
Creating Credible Characters–What Do You Want?
Creating Credible Characters–What’s in a Name?

Point of View (June 2007). See also Creating Credible Characters, Showing vs. Telling
Point of View–Whose Story Is This? 
Point of View–How Important Is It?
Point of View–Semantics & Book List
Point of View–Giving POV the Third Degree
Guest Blogger Erica Vetsch–Making your Point (of View)
Guest Blogger Georgiana Daniels–Getting POV Right
Point of View–Showing vs. Telling

The strong, domineering hero of the romance novel has long been the subject of criticism. What critics don’t realize is that it is the hero’s task in the book to present a suitable challenge to the heroine. His strength is a measure of her power. For she must conquer him.
Robyn Donald, “The Hero in Romance Literature”

Most romance writers I’ve talked to, or whose critical writings or interviews I’ve read, say that their ideas for their novels begin with the characters. I’ve found this to be true for myself—and for me, it’s usually the hero who comes first. After all, the true romance novel is, as we learned last time, a story about the developing relationship between two characters. Meaning that it is the characters who are the central focus of the story, the characters who drive the plot, the characters whom, at the end of the book, the reader really cares about. Therefore, when setting out to write a romance novel, a considerable amount of care and attention needs to be paid to developing your characters.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “Begin with an individual and you will find that you have created a type; begin with a type and you will find that you have created—nothing.” Back in the glory days of the books that gave us the term bodice-rippers (the 1970s and ’80s, just in case you don’t remember reading them yourself!), most of us who were avid romance readers had our favorite authors, because we could count on them to give us the kinds of heroes and heroines we were looking for. Jude Deveraux, Julie Garwood, and Catherine Coulter were my three favorites. In fact, I didn’t read very many other authors at all, because I had all I wanted in their prolific writings. They gave their readers warrior-heroes who took what they wanted no matter the consequences, who resented the heroines for distracting them from their tasks, who felt love was showing weakness and would bring them dishonor; and heroines who were strong, sometimes well beyond what was realistic for the medieval or other historical time periods in which the stories were set, who put up with the men’s brutality and eventually came to not only love them, but soften/tame them as well—while never giving up their own identity.

I’ve recently re-read two old Julie Garwood novels, Honor’s Splendor and The Wedding, and I came to the realization that even though the heroes are technically different—one is an English Baron, the other a Scottish Laird—they’re basically the same. And the heroines are too. And I’m now remembering that even though I considered Julie Garwood my favorite of the three authors I mentioned, I never really did like her heroines. Like the heroes, they’re all very similar, and relatively silly. Jude Deveraux, while still giving the warrior-heroes at least didn’t make her heroines silly. But for the most part, all of them wrote characters that were stereotypical for their era: the warrior and the damsel in distress.

Sure, there are a lot of readers out there who still want those two archetypal romance characters. Or they want the Scoundrel and the Socialite, or the Rich Man and Poor Girl. And if we study all romance novels deeply enough, we’ll find that for the most part, all of our characters fall into some kind of “type” in one way or another. But we have to fight against the stereotypes to make our characters fresh and appealing.

If a romance novel features a heroine with red hair and green eyes, what kind of personality do you expect her to have? If there’s an African American man as a secondary character in a book and a crime is committed, who’s the perpetrator most likely going to be? Are all Italian men hot-headed, lusty, and linked with underground crime? Are all medieval men warlords, barons, or lairds? Do all historical heroines have to be feisty, spunky, educated beyond what is historically believable, hate their corsets, and want to run around all over the place unchaperoned?

In inspirational romance, we have our own set of stereotypes to deal with: the pioneer widow who must marry a stranger to survive; the nineteenth century teacher who’s gone west to teach and bring God’s word to the heathens; missionaries and preachers; secretaries; characters with jobs so vague as to be nonexistent; ranch owners who take in wayward boys; the good Christian girl who must “save” the backslidden or non-Christian hero; and so on.

Quite a lot has changed in the romance genre since the heyday of Deveraux, Garwood, and Coulter. We’ve seen the splintering of romance into subgenres: chick lit, paranormal, romantic suspense, inspirational, sweet, historical (which has its own genres, the two most popular being Regency and medieval), etc. We’ve also seen the decline in popularity of the warrior heroes and damsel-in-distress heroines. Oh, sure, they’re still out there, but modern readers are looking for something more. They’re looking for a twist on the type. They’re looking for unique individuals, so that each story they read seems different from the last.

One thing that has become possible in the last ten or fifteen years has been the beta-male hero. He’s Clark Kent without the Superman alter-ego. He’s Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. He’s the Hollywood mega-star’s personal assistant (George in Stand-In Groom). He’s most likely not buff nor capable of physically sweeping the heroine off her feet, doesn’t hold a “romantic” job (systems support analyst, anyone?), and definitely doesn’t go around intimidating people because of his physical prowess. Yes, typically, these beta-male heroes are found mostly in contemporaries. (We still like our historical heroes to be alpha-males.)

With the rise of the beta-male has come the rise of the alpha-female—the “bitch,” in other words. She’s the powerful woman who’s completely given up on men. She’s the attorney, the vice president of the company, the CEO, the governor, the senator. She has taken over as the character who must be conquered, whose stony dispassion must be chiseled away by our more in-touch-with-his-emotions beta-male.

But once again, in these scenarios, we tend toward types. Our job as authors is to make sure we’re not falling into the trap of beginning with a “type” of character. Is your character telling you she’s a teacher? Great. Make her a shop teacher at an inner-city high school instead of a kindergarten teacher at a private school where all the children are precocious little angels. He’s a medieval Highland laird? Super. Make him a pacifist. Do something to give some kind of twist to your character’s “type” to keep him or her from becoming a stereotype.

In inspirational romance, we’re so scared of giving our characters any kind of flaws, sins, or pasts that they come across as perfect, sanctimonious prigs. Let them have pasts that they’re still paying the consequences for. Let them say things that not everyone around them agrees with. Let them argue. Let them fall down and fail. Let them get angry at God. Let someone else take them down off of their holier-than-thou high-horse.

Because there’s no way to cover everything about romance heroes and heroines in one blog entry, we’ll continue talking about them tomorrow. But for now, let’s get some discussion going.

For Discussion:
In your WIP, what “type” is your hero? (Alpha? Beta? Highland laird? Nerd?) Your heroine? (Damsel in distress? CEO? Silly girl who gets into one catastrophe after another?) What have you done to keep them from becoming stereotypes? Do you have a favorite author who tends to use stereotypical characters in her/his novels? What are your favorite “types” to read in romances?

I had the opportunity during my Christmas vacation to read the ARC of a historical romance. The opening Hook Line was good, the first few paragraphs strong. But then as I read, I started losing confidence in the writer. You see, the story started with a bang . . . then went stagnant pretty quickly as the author had to go back and explain, in about two full pages of narrative, the events immediately preceding the opening line. Then, the hero, whose POV this is all seen through, not only comes up with an implausible plan—which takes several pages—he ends up accidentally taking an action that makes those pages and pages of his original plan null and void, as the accident sends him on the run. Then, once he’s on the run, the logic of the story falls apart even more with various and sundry minor characters suddenly popping up as someone he’s supposedly built friendships with, not to mention the poor historical research.

I put the book down at the end of the fifth chapter and haven’t picked it up since. What might have kept me reading? A character I liked. There are a lot of flaws I’m willing to overlook in a book if the author immediately draws me into the character, gives me a reason to care what happens to him. In that ARC, not only did I not care what happened to the main character, he was unlikable.

Once again, Creating Credible Characters is a topic I’ve already covered at length, but let’s take a few minutes to look at how, once we create them, we can use them to hook the reader into the story.

A couple of weeks ago, my agent forwarded an e-mail to me from an editor at one of the big CBA houses in response to the proposal for the Ransome Trilogy. The gist of the very long e-mail was that while they like my writing, they don’t like how gloomy the heroine is when we first meet her. They wanted to know if there was a way I could either revise the opening or write a prologue that would introduce Julia when she’s in a happier frame of mind, so that the reader understands that Julia isn’t going to be like that throughout the whole book. Guess what I’ll be working on this weekend!

Last year, I judged an entry in the YA category of the Genesis in which the main character, in first-person POV, was so extremely negative, after a couple of pages, I didn’t want to read any further.

Yet there are some authors who are so adept at characterization, they can introduce a gloomy or negative character as a POV protagonist in the beginning of their novels and they don’t lose us. The secret is building the rest of the narrative around the character so that the reader feels invested in what happens to the character—whether for ill or for good—and wants to know what happens next.

One of my favorite quotes about writing comes from historical novelist Jeff Shaara: “When the characters are ready, the story will come out of me.” As a character-driven writer, this has almost become my mantra. For me, story comes from character. If the characters aren’t well developed when I start writing, or if I’ve misinterpreted who they are, I write myself into a hole and usually have to start over. When I start thinking of a story idea, I don’t just write out a summary of what the story’s about. I write page after page of backstory for each main character—figuring out who they are before I can figure out what the story’s about. Because I have to care about the characters before I can start writing their story.

Not only do they have to be real to me, they have to be unique. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “Begin with an individual and you will find that you have created a type; begin with a type and you will find that you have created—nothing.” I think that’s the problem with most books in which we aren’t immediately invested in the main character from the first page. The author didn’t spend as much time getting to know the character before they started writing. They just started out with a type—a “good guy,” perhaps—and worked that type into their story.

Readers don’t necessarily have to like our characters—I mean, look at the popularity of characters such as Scarlett O’Hara or Hannibal Lechter. They can be morally ambiguous or even morally reprehensible like those two are—and yet the authors managed to draw us in, to make us want to know what happens to them. Readers must have a reason to invest in the characters, to care what happens to them next—even if it is more of the morbid curiosity that makes us slow down to rubberneck at a car accident.

For Discussion:
Who is your favorite literary character? What makes you like (or even loathe) that character? How was the character introduced in the book? Why did you care what happened to that character? What was it about the character that made you want to read the book?

A somewhat controversial topic has been raised on one of my writers’ loops: the poster posed the question of whether giving specific descriptions of characters’ clothing and age is a convention of the romance genre, stating that she finds it annoying to have to read what color someone’s sweater is, and that a character’s specific age isn’t important unless it’s significant to the plot (i.e., a May-December romance). Several other people responded in agreement. Here’s what I said:

I guess because I’m a visually oriented person, I prefer to have more concrete descriptions of what people are wearing and what they look like. As an author, I have to know what my characters are wearing whenever they walk into the scene. Do I always mention it? No. But the specific details of what someone is wearing can say a lot about the character and who they are. A man who is almost never seen out of a full suit—designer, tailored for a custom fit—is different from a man who wears shapeless polos and worn-in jeans. Plus there’s the emotional (and sometimes physical) reaction we have when we see what someone’s wearing: we think he’s sexy or dignified or wealthy or poor or sloppy or clueless or nerdy or whatever. We all judge those around us not just by what they look like physically, but by the clothes they choose to wear—even if we’re not aware that we’re making those judgments—and it affects how we interact with people sometimes. That’s why I include descriptions of clothing in my writing, and why I prefer reading authors who do the same.

Now, all that said, I will say that I DO NOT believe that every character who walks into the scene needs to have a name, full physical description, and backstory, as I just suffered through in Julie Garwood’s latest, Shadow Music. She had characters crawling out of the woodwork, and then, after a paragraph or two, never showing up again. So there is an art to learning how much description is enough.

I touched on this subject in the Showing vs. Telling series (Mirror, Mirror on the Wall and In the Eye of the Beholder) with examples from different authors who have woven the description of the character’s clothing in so that it becomes a description of the character. When used right, specific details of what the character chooses to wear can help set the scene, create a certain tone or mood surrounding the character, and give subconscious clues to who the character is.

What do you think? Do you like specific descriptions? I’m not talking about over descriptions, where each character’s outfit has to be described down to the last detail every time they walk on stage, but a few well-placed descriptions here and there.

I just finished a very interesting (but unscientific) survey of trends in character names in Christian fiction. I received the CBD catalog in the mail today, and when reading through the blurbs, started seeing a few same names pop up again and again. So I went through and listed all of the character names that appear in the blurbs in the catalog. I left out Biblical, fantasy, and YA/chilcren’s books and just focused on adult fiction—345 titles.

I found some very interesting trends. To see the lists I made—all names separated M/F as well as M/F lists broken down into contemporary, historical, and Amish—click here.

There were some names/variants that do tend to be used quite a bit:
Anna/Anne/Annie—6 times
Elizabeth/Beth/Liz/Lizzie—10 times
Catherine/Katherine/Caitlin/Kate/Katie/etc.—19 times
Grace—6 times
Julia—5 times
Maggie—5 times
Molly—5 times
Rachel/-ael/-elle—6 times

Because there are more women’s names mentioned in blurbs than men’s (probably about 2/3 the number of female names), there are fewer to compare, but there are still some obvious overusages:
Ben/Benjamin—6 times
Dan/Daniel/Danny—6 times
Jack/Jackson—7 times
Jacob/Jakob/Jake—9 times
John/Jonathan/etc.—9 times
Lucas/Luke—6 times
Mac/Mack/Max/Mick—7 times
Mat/Matt/Matthew—7 times
Michael/Mike—5 times
Pete/Peter—5 times
Sam/Samuel—5 times
Will—6 times

I guess it goes to show that there is a little more variety in female characters’ names. I was very disappointed to see how many times the name Julia popped up, since it’s the name of the heroine in Ransome’s Honor. Anne, the name of the heroine in Stand-In Groom, wasn’t as much of a surprise to see the number of times variations appear on the list. I didn’t see one George, though! And no Williams, just a bunch of Wills and one Bill. And the names of the hero and heroine of Menu for Romance weren’t in there at all!

What about your characters? Are their names on the list? How many times? If it’s a name that’s on there quite a few times, would you consider changing your character’s name to something unique? Does it bother you to see the same character names pop up over and over in the books you read?

I am about to become a John Wayne aficionado. Or at least well-versed in his movies. Why? Because I needed a cultural reference as a continuing theme in my follow-up book to Anne & George’s Story. In the first book, Anne and George both love Dean Martin’s music. A couple of pieces of his music actually play a significant role in key turning points in their relationship (“That’s Amore” and “Return to Me”).

In trying to figure out what cultural reference I wanted to use as a running touchstone in Major and Meredith’s story (which for the current lack of title I’ll reference as M&M for the time being), I thought about music, but as I developed them, they both told me they have different tastes in music—Meredith likes Jazz/Blues while Major likes Country/Southern Gospel. Plus, it would have come across as too contrived to use the same cultural theme, even if I chose a different genre of it. I thought about books. But then Meredith revealed she isn’t much of a reader (Major is, and right now his favorite author is Ted Dekker). I thought about art, since Meredith’s background has shifted from psychology to art history, but that doesn’t translate well onto the page—and Major, while he can appreciate it, isn’t really into it. So I settled on movies. But I didn’t want anything too recent, and I didn’t want anything that might contain any potentially offensive material, so I knew I needed to go classic. But in this day and age, so few people watch classic movies any more, I needed something that would be iconic, without being cliche.

And almost as soon as I had that thought, I flipped the channel and came across an old John Wayne Western. Now, while this could initially seem like the most cliche direction to take it, using John Wayne as the cultural icon gives me a lot of flexibility. As I watched Comanche Moon this week, I started developing the idea that Meredith would love the Duke’s Westerns—which tend to have an element of romance to them—though her favorite JW movie will be The Quiet Man, a great romantic comedy in its own right even apart from the JW cannon. But Major prefers the Duke’s war movies—World War II or Korea or whatever; the bigger the battle scene, the better. This then led me into thinking about why each of these characters would be drawn to each type of story. For Meredith, it’s the draw of the romance, the nostalgic quality of the relationships between men and women, the ideals of the “old West.” For Major, it’s the strong, masculine leadership figure he didn’t have growing up in a single-parent home. In a way, John Wayne is his father-figure. The way Duke leads on-screen is incorporated by Major into how he leads in the kitchen . . . and I might throw a Duke quote or two in for good measure. (Hmmm . . . and while the name “Major” originally was supposed to come from his mother’s family tree, I’m now thinking John Wayne’s movies might have played into that too . . .)

Is this realistic or is this just a device used in fiction? Well, all I have to do is think about a guy that I worked with at the newspaper who quoted lines from the movie Office Space at any given opportunity, even adopted Gary Cole’s voice and mannerisms a couple of times a day. When I was in college, my friend Amy and I could look at something happening, then look at each other and pop off with the same line of dialogue from Steel Magnolias that just encapsulated the moment perfectly. Ruth and I cannot watch a movie with British actors in it without recognizing at least one—if not a dozen—of them from other British films we’ve watched and loved. So, yes, using movies as a touchstone for characterization is one of those things that we can observe in “real” life and translate into creating our characters.

Cultural references are used, primarily, to ground readers in the “reality” of our stories. But, we must be cautious in how we do this. The Chick Lit genre does it in such a way that it creates problems for itself. Either the cultural references are too specific to a very narrow portion of the population (shopping at Bergdorfs, which pair of Manolo Blahniks to buy, living in New York in a $5,000/month apartment and never having to actually work to afford it, being more concerned with what people are wearing that who they are, etc.), or the references are to current pop-culture events/icons that come in and out of favor so quickly that five years later, the book hasn’t aged well. Writers of Regency romances used one specific cultural icon of the era so much that he probably has more precedence now than he ever had during his own age: Beau Brummell. If modern-day Regency romance authors hadn’t picked up on his fashion-forward persona and used him as the be-all-and-end-all of fashion leadership of the ton in London, would history even remember him as more than just a blip on the social-history radar?

Rather than get into the trap of “aging” my book by using pop-culture references (well, I threw in a few, like having Anne pull out the DVDs of Return of the King to watch when she’s moping around in one scene), I’ve chosen to use classic-culture icons (Dean Martin, John Wayne), as they’re more universal, more readily accessible to the majority of people who might come across my work. They also have the added advantage of being dead, therefore I know that they’re not going to do anything that will make me regret including them in my books. Yes, I know Dean Martin had a horrible reputation when he was alive, but now so much time has elapsed it’s really just his music we remember.

What about you? What are some cultural references you’ve included in your work? Did you have a purpose—for setting, for characterization, or just for fun?

Or maybe that should be The Perception of Age. I heard several things on the radio this morning that really got me to thinking about how we perceive age:

–Today is LL Cool Jay’s birthday. He’s forty. Yes, FORTY.

–The new governor of Lousiana is thirty-six. I am thirty-six.

–Presidential candidate Barak Obama is forty-six—he would be the fifth-youngest president ever inaugurated if elected (behind Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, U.S. Grant, and Bill Clinton—by 15 days). John McCain is seventy-one. If John McCain is elected, he will be the oldest first-term president we’ve ever elected/inaugurated (Reagan was 70).

–A woman living in a retirement community in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was interviewed about their lawsuit to keep a funeral home from being built directly across the street. She is sixty-five years old. My parents, who both work full time, drive back and forth between their home in Dallas and vacation home in Arkansas at least once a month, and live very active, independent lives, will turn sixty-five this year.

–My grandmother, who is eighty-six, lives by herself, spends weeks cooking when we’re all going to be there, teaches Sunday School, travels regularly (went to Vermont, Savannah, Florida, Texas, and several other places last year), and is very independent (now you know where I get it from!). I’m constantly seeing people ten or fifteen years younger than her who need canes, who can barely see, who don’t drive any more, and who look like “little old ladies” (or men).

–My niece, who was born a few months before I moved to Nashville, is twelve years old. She’s about to get braces. She’s in junior high school. She’s starting to be interested in clothes and hair and makeup and stuff like that (though with five brothers, not as much as some girls at that age). I was twenty-four when she was born, and I sure don’t feel like I’ve aged twelve years since then (most days). It doesn’t seem possible that she’s at an age that I can very clearly remember myself at.

Where am I going with this?

This train of thought got me to thinking about characters and how we choose the ages of our characters when we start writing. When I was fourteen or fifteen, I was writing about “adults” (late teens or early 20s)—of course, I was fourteen or fifteen going on twenty-six, and I was reading mostly adult-level fiction. The piece I wrote on for most of my 20s was based on me and my friends from college . . . but it started out as imagining where we’d all be five years in the future. When it changed from just having fun imagining into fiction, all of the characters were at least three years older than their original templates. In my late 20s, when I started seriously pursuing writing, I wrote two manuscripts with heroines who were around the same age as me, but surrounded by other POV or supporting characters who were a little bit older. When I started writing Anne and George’s story, Anne was three years older than me. (However, when the book comes out, she’ll be two years younger than I will be!) In Peace in the Valley, almost all of my characters are over forty.

So how did I choose these ages?

Audience.

Whether consciously (Peace in the Valley) or subconsciously (everything else), I’m writing characters of a certain age based on my perception of who the audience for my books is. In the proposals for my romance novels, I indicate that my targeted audience is women ages 25+. That’s not to say that college-aged girls aren’t going to enjoy reading my books (I hope they will!). But it’s common knowledge in the industry that older characters tend to draw older readers. Younger readers (college-aged and under), tend to read books with characters less than five years older than them . . . mostly because those are the people they tend to look up to—the freshman looks up to the senior; the twelve-year-old wants to be like the fifteen-year-old.

Age has a lot to do with content/conflict in our books. A twenty-year-old heroine is going to react in a completely different manner to a conflict than a thirty-five-year-old will. Why? Life experiences. The thirty-five-year-old has a lot more experince, knowledge, and wisdom to draw upon when it comes to making decisions or getting herself out of conflicts. Sure, she may not be able to run as fast as the twenty-year-old, but it’s like the scene in Fried Green Tomatoes when the two young girls steal the parking space, then laugh at Kathy Bates’s character saying, “Face it, lady. We’re younger and faster.” She rear-ends their car six times. When they ask her if she’s crazy, she smiles and says, “Face it, girls. I’m older, and I have more insurance.”

I guess what I’m saying is that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to enjoy writing characters who are older and have more “insurance,” because it allows me to draw upon my own personal experiences. Even though my mother is one of my best friends, it would still be really hard for me to write exclusively in the POV of someone in her sixties (as the main character . . . I have a couple of sixty-something POV characters in Peace in the Valley, along with fifty-something, forty-something, and thirty-something), because I do not have the kind of life experiences someone of that age has attained. Nor am I all that interested in writing characters in their teens or early twenties—unless it’s necessary to the story for them to be that age—because they’re so young and haven’t really experienced much in life yet, which to me, gives the character a much narrower scope.

I have a very strong feeling that as I age, my characters will continue to age with me. And that’s okay. If I’m going to be spending so much time with them, I want them to be my contemporaries, my friends.

As promised, today I’ll give you a list of questions to consider about characters as you read. If you need a refresher on what makes characters credible, check out the Creating Credible Characters series.

1. What is each POV character’s goal, motivation, and conflict?
2. Is each POV character well-developed and three-dimensional?
3. Are secondary characters realistic and completely developed? Are they necessary? Do any secondary characters steal scenes from the main characters? Are there any secondary characters whose roles could be combined to cut down on the number of characters?
4. What are the conflicts that arise to keep the characters from reaching their goals?
5. Do you care about the characters and what they’re going through?
6. Do the characters have a PHYSICAL presence in each scene? (Do you see them through movement, actions, and description?)
7. Is each character’s internal conflict realistic and believable?
8. Is there ever a time when a character does something out-of-character for the way the author developed him/her?
9. Does any character ever become whiney or overly angst-ridden in such a way that they just come across as annoying? Do you ever find yourself wishing they would just shut up!!!?
10. Are the character’s strengths and weaknesses real? Are they used to good effect as the character meets conflicts?
11. Do you like the main characters enough to want to read a sequel featuring them?
12. If a sequel featured one or more of the secondary characters, would you want to read it?
13. What do you like best about the characters?
14. What do you like least about the characters?
15. Is there one (or more) character(s) you think the author should have left out?
16. If you could steal one character from this book and use him/her in your own story, which one would it be? Why?

Today, I’m pleased to have my other critique partner Georgiana Daniels as a guest columnist . . .

Kaye has done an excellent job in giving us the information we need to maintain a consistent POV. Believe me, had I read up on POV prior to venturing out, I could have avoided many a train wreck. Early on, I had a tendency to drag my readers through multiple heads in one scene, and even when I switched scenes, all my viewpoint characters sounded the same. One time I tried writing from a male POV, but used my own natural voice. The result? He was so effeminate it was no wonder his wife left him. But my unsuccessful attempts were good practice.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned—the hard way, I might add—is that I have to know my characters deeply in order to avoid the pitfalls associated with whichever POV I choose. The easiest trap to fall into is making the character sound just like me, the author, instead of sounding like Lucy or Molly or Bella or the killer.

The first two full-length novels I wrote were chick lit. I wanted intimate, conversational stories where the reader could feel like a part of my heroines’ lives. With each story, I wanted to be privy to my heroine’s thoughts as they happened, and to interpret the world through her eyes alone. It seemed natural to choose first person, present tense.

So how could I keep the main characters from sounding just like me, or like each other? I had to know them inside and out, and believe me, that didn’t always come with the first draft. By knowing the characters’ backgrounds, interests, immediate and long-term goals, I was able to make each one have a distinctive voice, even though both books were written in first person, present tense.

But first person has its pitfalls too, like creating a character the reader likes well enough to stick with through an entire novel. If the reader doesn’t like the main character, they’re either stuck for the duration, or they’re going to chuck the book—both options are bad for the writer! The other big challenge for me is to weave a well-rounded story based solely on one person’s immediate observations. It takes a lot of practice.

Now I’m working on a suspense, and in order to up the tension I’ve found it necessary to show not only the heroine’s point of view, but also the villain’s. So this time I’m using limited third. It gives me a bit more freedom to explore the story from different angles. Look at the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each wrote about the life of Jesus, but from their own unique point of view. Each writer brought something different to the table, and added his own flavor to the story. That’s what I’m trying to do, but on a much smaller scale, of course.

Switching back into third person after writing my last two novels in first has been a bumpy ride. But I love the new challenge! To avoid the problem I had in my previous attempt to write a male POV, I’ve started taking a few minutes to crawl into his skin, lest I sissify my bad guy. How does he view what’s happening in the story? How does a hired gun talk? What kinds of things does he see that others might not? His scenes tend to have more fragmented sentences, snippy comments, and edge toward sarcasm. And they are my favorite to write!

When I switch back to my heroine’s POV, I do the same thing. She’s a reclusive artist in the Alaskan wilderness. What is she going to notice? What kinds of words does she use? How is the world filtered through her eyes? Her scenes tend to have more flowery language, utilizing a larger vocabulary, and more detail—at least until she finds out she’s being hunted.

Needless to say, I’m still learning, and hopefully making progress. And from my POV, every day spent at the keyboard is another chance to get it right.

“If all but one of the instruments on a surgeon’s tray had been sterilized, that exception would be a danger to the patient. It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.”
~Sol Stein
(Stein on Writing, 129)

What is point of view, anyway?
Point of view is the vehicle through which a reader experiences the story. When you tell someone about the idiot who cut you off in traffic, you are telling the story through a First Person Limited point of view—you’re using “I” and “me” to refer to the character (yourself), and though you may conjecture at the thoughts of anyone else involved, you cannot actually know what was going on inside his or her head. (And this paragraph is an example of second-person POV.)

“So what I told you was true . . . from a certain point of view. . . . 
You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
~Obi Wan Kenobi
Return of the Jedi

Point of view, as Master Kenobi so cryptically and frustratingly pointed out, is the perspective we bring to what we experience. If I go through the exact same experience with someone else, and then each of us is questioned separately about it, whoever is hearing the stories is going to hear different details. I am a sight-oriented person, so I may give a lot of information about the visual details. If the person with me is a sound-oriented person, they’re going to give more description of the sounds . . . each of us tells the story from our own point of view. This is what makes us unique individuals. This is what we want to give to our readers—a unique, individual perspective on the story that’s going on.

“Nothing’s beautiful from every point of view.”
~Horace

Have you ever noticed when you’re writing “as” one character, your words come out differently than when you’re writing “as” another character? Part of this is the personalizing process you went through in your character development. But you’ll find as you get deeper into your characters’ heads, as you let them start talking, the story really does start to be told from the character’s point of view and not from yours.

“He’s a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land, 
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody. 
Doesn’t have a point of view,
Knows not where he’s going to . . .”
~John Lennon

Establish POV Immediately
Point of view needs to be established in the very first chapter of your book. If you are going to write in first person, obviously, you start out with a first sentence/paragraph told using “I” and “me” pronouns. Yes, some first person narrative can be written without using those pronouns, but you don’t want to use a more omniscient tone (i.e., telling about someone else right off the bat without personalizing it to the character who’s seeing/thinking it) and then suddenly throw the reader into first person. If you are going to write in third person/omniscient (aka, “head-hopping”), make sure you establish a pattern in the very first few paragraphs—or as soon as you have more than one character. Using an unseen narrator helps in establishing this POV. If you are going to write in third person/limited, give the character at least five or six pages (about 2,000 words) before switching to another POV . . . then make the POV change very clear—with a double-carriage-return blank space or with some kind of physical divider such as *  *  * or ### centered in the blank space between the scenes.

Whatever you chose, DO NOT SWITCH BETWEEN STYLES, as it will come across as inexperience and a lack of knowledge of writing craft. Although some new writers have done it and been published, most experts, editors, agents, etc., strongly recommend against mixing first- and third-person or having more than one first-person narrator in a story, unless it is absolutely vital and the story can be told no other way. Of course, if you’re Steven King, Lori Wick, J.K. Rowling, or Danielle Steel, you can pretty much do whatever you want to (as people are buying the books for the name on the cover, not the craft of the story between the pages).

“I think you have to have a real point of view that’s your own.
You have to tell it your way.”
~Mary Ellen Mark

Give Third Person/Limited a Try
Give your characters a chance to tell it their way. I used to write third person/omniscient. I loved being able to hop from head to head to head within a scene, to see how each and every character reacted to a situation, to know what they were thinking at any given time—sometimes even within a sentence. Non-writing folks aren’t usually bothered by head-hopping as much as writers are. They’re used to it. We all grew up reading head-hopping novels. But the industry standard has swung, for third-person, anyway, to LIMITED POV. That means seeing/experiencing the action through only one character’s eyes/thoughts. That means camping out for a full scene in the head of just one character. That means getting to know your characters MUCH better than you may with omniscient/head-hopping POV.

After my first writers’ conference in 2001 where I really learned what POV was and that limited is what publishers were looking for, I started forcing myself to write in limited POV. And I discovered I love it. I now prefer writing in limited POV. Not knowing what every character is thinking raises the conflict and tension of every scene. It’s easier to keep secrets from the reader until the right time to reveal them. It’s easier to generate misunderstandings and conflict in relationships between characters that are believable, because the reader isn’t given the chance to see things from both perspectives—they’re only seeing the truth . . . “from a certain point of view.” Even if you don’t stick with it as your POV of choice, you will learn a lot about how to write descriptively—because you will only be able to describe other characters’ thoughts by their facial expression, tone of voice, body language, etc., that the POV character can experience. It’s a great craft-strengthening exercise.

What POV do you typically write in? Have you ever tried writing more than one style of POV (i.e., first- and third-person) within the same story? How did that work out for you? What are some examples of stuff you’ve read where you really liked or disliked the POV the author chose? How would you have done it differently?

Next time, we’ll start getting into some of the nitty-gritty of the different POV styles . . . pros/cons, strengths/weaknesses.