On Writing Romance (27 page)

Frequently, when relaying more than one character's POV, it's tempting to tell the readers too much, too soon. If the main characters have no secrets from the readers, it's harder to keep up the suspense level, particularly if the conflict isn't an exceptionally strong one. If the hero thinks the heroine is the girl of his dreams, and the heroine thinks the hero is Mr. Right, and the readers know that up front, what's going to keep them reading?

Another danger of using multiple points of view is the tendency to use the characters' thoughts as a substitute for actual verbal confrontation between the characters. It's tempting to show the heroine's angry thoughts about the hero, then switch to show the hero's angry thoughts about the heroine. But it's much more effective to make the two of them actually fight their battles face-to-face.

Relating a scene from the POV of a secondary character should be done with great caution. Long books with strong subplots can benefit from an occasional scene told from a secondary character's POV, but shorter books don't allow much room for such a luxury.

The rule of thumb, with rare exceptions, is that if a main character is present, then the POV should be that of the main character. So if the heroine is talking to her masseuse, readers get the heroine's thoughts, not the masseuse's. Use the secondary character's POV only if that person is the most important character in the scene.

In Roxanne Rustand's long contemporary
A Montana Family
, Lily is an important secondary character — the hero's daughter, who's fourteen and facing a health crisis that has her scared out of her mind:

The first choice when you need to share a secondary character's thoughts is to have the character speak them aloud, to have the character talk to the hero or heroine. Here, Rustand could have stayed in the heroine's POV by having Lily talk to the heroine, telling her about her fears. But in this case, Lily's scared out of her mind — unlikely to confide in anyone because voicing her fears would make them even more frightening — so a dialogue would be illogical. The most effective way to share what's going on inside her is to let the readers overhear her thoughts directly.

If you choose to use the viewpoint of a secondary character, make those scenes short and to the point. (Lily's entire scene — not all of it is quoted here — is less than three hundred words, just under a page long.) If the secondary character is important enough to have a POV at all, then she should appear with some regularity — perhaps in a half-dozen short scenes during the story.

But keep in mind that going into the head of a secondary character can pull the readers' attention from the main story. It can be a danger sign, indicating that your main story is dragging and you're trying to fill pages while waiting for the action to heat up again. Or your main characters may have bogged down, and the secondary ones have become more interesting. If the heroine's friend's thoughts are more interesting than the heroine's, perhaps the story is really hers — and she should be the main character instead.

Choose a viewpoint character at the start of each scene. In the first paragraph or two of the scene, in addition to establishing where and when the action is taking place, be sure to tell the readers who the main character is in this part of the story — whose thoughts they will be getting.

That can be done in a variety of different ways:

• Through a thought.
  “Until that morning, Hannah had started to think it didn't matter what hour of the day or night she walked Mrs. Patterson's dog.”
  

• Through a sensation.
  “Within two hours of arriving at work, Hannah was beginning to feel as if she'd been buried alive in the law library.”
  

• Through an emotion.
  “Hannah was steaming, too agitated to sit still.”
  

• Through an action.
  “Cooper tugged at his bow tie and impatiently straightened the pristine white cuffs of his formal shirt.”
  

• Through a comment about another character.
  “Wherever Cooper had gone that morning, it wasn't far enough for Hannah's taste.”
  

Whether you intend to use just one POV or several, it's easy to let more than one character's thoughts creep into your scene. You have to know as you write what each character is thinking at that moment (even when you're not using her POV), because what the characters are thinking will affect what they say and do. Because you know what they're thinking, it's very natural to slip up and include those thoughts. Sometimes you aren't even aware that you've wandered from the head of the viewpoint character into that of another.

Drifting from one POV to another can happen so subtly that the lapse sneaks by even the most alert of authors. You don't need to write “Jane thought” in order to include Jane's thoughts. If you write “Jane met Gina as she strolled down the sidewalk. It was good to see Gina taking better care of herself these days,” then you've included Jane's thoughts on the subject of Gina's grooming.

This classic example includes three points of view in a single sentence: “Greg looked genuinely horrified as his mind jumped to the same conclusion Cara was reaching.” (Can you find all three? The first is indicated by “Greg looked horrified”; since we can see his facial expression, we're observing him from another character's POV. The second POV is Greg's, because we're eavesdropping on his thoughts: “his mind jumped.” The third POV is Cara's, whose thoughts we hear next: “the same conclusion Cara was reaching.” Triple play.)

The confusion that comes from a wandering POV is the reason behind the standard admonition to limit each scene to one viewpoint character. In order to change points of view, all you have to do is leave a blank line — a simple white space, or a few asterisks or crosshatches to make your intentions clear, as in the example on page 149 of third-person selective/multiple — and start a new scene. Then stick to the new POV character's thoughts and feelings for the duration of that scene.

By choosing one POV character at the beginning of each scene, you can reap the benefits of dual POV — access to all the actions, thoughts, and feelings of two characters — without confusing the readers or sacrificing the deep involvement with one character that keeps them reading.

While some literary fiction is written in the present tense (“She shouts at him”; “He drives the car off the bridge”), the majority of fiction is written in the past tense (“She shouted at him”; “He drove the car off the bridge”). Once you have selected present or past tense for the narrative, stick to it for the duration of the story; you don't want to switch back and forth.

Most romance novels are written in past tense and in third person, though present tense is occasionally used in first-person stories like chick-lit. Writing stories in past tense has become the convention because it makes sense. By the time something can be reported on by a narrator, it has happened, and so it
is
in the past — even if only by moments.

But not every line of a story should be framed in past tense. The current story (the narrative or the action) should be written in past tense, but the dialogue — the exact words spoken by the characters — should be phrased just the way a character would speak it — in most cases, in present tense, unless the character is discussing past or future actions.

And if a character is reflecting on something that happened to her yesterday or last week — before the current story — those events should be referred to in past perfect tense. Past perfect tense is great for making the action clear while showing that it's not going on right now. The readers don't have to struggle to figure out what's happening now vs. what happened in the past. So if the heroine is washing dishes and thinking about an event she witnessed last week, the passage might go something like this:

The events going on right now — the dishwashing, the remembering — are in past tense. The memory she's picturing — the car going off the bridge as she watched — are in past perfect tense. The sentence she actually says is in present tense — the exact words, as she would speak them.

If you opt to use present tense for the main narrative of the story, then events occurring before the time of the current story should be related in past tense:

In this example from her single-title chick-lit novel
The Nine Month Plan
, Wendy Markham uses present tense for the main narrative, switching to past tense when talking about events that occurred earlier:

This is a rare example of third-person present tense — a combination seldom used in romance novels. If the story had been structured in past tense, it would have started out: “Nina Chickalini was no stranger. … It had been here that she had made her first … confession. …”

Failing to identify the viewpoint character, wandering from head to head, being unclear about whose thoughts the readers are getting — all of these things jolt your readers. Though they may not be able to define the shortcoming in your writing, they will automatically feel it, and this may destroy the magic of the story.

1. Look at the romance novels you've been reading. Which characters' points of view (thoughts, feelings) are included? How frequently does the POV change?
   

2. How many characters' points of view are included in each scene?
   

3. Are the thoughts and feelings of secondary characters shared with the readers?
   

4. Does the author ever let you know what a non-POV character is thinking or feeling? How do you get this information?