My Secret Strategy

For point-of-view, that is. I know you all wanted to know my secret for making the perfect mint julep. Sorry, that will have to be another blog.

When approaching a new project, I do some research and planning ahead of time. I draw maps and sketch out the cultures. However, beyond the initial 2 to 3 plot events, I go by the seat of my pants. The way I make that work is my secret strategy. Are you ready?

I will never have just one POV character. This is something I learned from my first novel, The Magister’s Mask. When you only have one POV, that person has to be present for everything that happens. Each conversation, battle, espionage, journey… That same character has to be there.

It would be exhausting for one person. It also would be limiting in some ways. For instance, that one POV cannot be killed, or there is no way to go on telling the story. Many authors cultivate multiple POV characters so that they can really threaten some of them, while still keeping a cast at hand.

Personally, I like to go more deeply into characters, but I always have at least two points of view. Often, the two are on opposite sides of some central question, but they both are basically good people who readers can sympathize with. Each POV knows some things that are happening, but not all. Because they are in tension, they don’t bring their knowledge together until quite late in the story.

I developed this technique with my second novel, Too Many Princes. Brastigan is the bad-boy prince, and his brother Lottress is more bookish. They both get sent on a quest, but then there’s a coup back at home. I ended up bringing in their sister, Therula, as the witness to all of that. So when the princes returned home, the reader knew there was an ugly surprise waiting. It really cranked up the suspense.

How it works is, as I’m writing, I take turns between the POVs. When I get to a good point of tension with one, I switch to the other. Sometimes I get stuck on which POV to use in a certain scene. Sometimes they overlap and you get the same line of dialogue from both POVs. Ironically, the reader knows more than either character, yet I can use this technique to keep them from guessing the outcome too easily. The information they think they have can change in the other POV.

That’s it. My secret strategy for POV. How do you use POV to build your stories?

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