Writing: The romance novel POV trick · 3:25am Aug 29th, 2013
[Summary: More rapid POV switches indicate the characters are closer together.]
I'm listening to a romance novel by Nora Roberts on CD, to learn what romance novels are like and how they're told. I can't say I'm a fan yet. She does some things that look like novice mistakes, like opening with an entire chapter of interior-monologue-infodump about the main character's life history, and always telling us what everyone is thinking as soon as they think it, never letting us wonder for a minute what a comment or gesture meant.
(Listening on CD is great, because it has a lot of descriptive passages that sound better read out loud, but that I wouldn't have the patience for on the page. I'd be skipping ahead to see what happened instead of lingering over the brickwork in an arch.)
One of the things that drove me crazy was the point-of-view (POV) switches. I'm not a big fan of telling the reader what everyone is thinking. You can't really get inside a person's head unless you share their suspense, and their suspense in romance novels is mostly about what the other character is thinking about them. I don't like rapid POV switches, but I especially dislike inconsistently timed POV switches. Sometimes the story goes on for chapters in a single POV, then has multiple POV switches in a single chapter.
I eventually got to the scene where the hero and heroine get it on. I had to admire how she wrote it. It's probably softcore by pony standards, but it told you how they were both feeling (and what they were feeling, and how they were positioned) without any words or phrases like "shaft" or "tunnel of love".
Also, it was full of POV switches. And it was right. And I suddenly (sorry, Elmore Leonard!) understood what all those POV switches were for.
In non-romance stories, POV switches usually happen when switching to a different scene, especially one that the first POV character isn't present for. POV switches in the few romances I've read may happen within a single scene, with both characters still present. The POV switch is a meta-textual interaction between the characters.
The novel is like a dialogue between the two main characters, and the length of time each one holds the POV before relinquishing it to the other is like the length of time that one person speaks before letting someone else talk. People who are closer have more give and take in their conversations, butting in on each other, telling stories jointly, even finishing each other's sentences. So more rapid POV switches indicate the characters are closer together. (They may be fighting, but they're more involved with each other.) And when they make love, we see through the eyes of one and then the other in rapid succession, their perceptions almost merging into each other, as they approach as near as humans can to being two minds sharing a single consciousness.
While this is true, there's also a practical reason for POV switches during a sex scene- you want to be with the POV of the one who's experiencing the most pleasure (at any given moment). I get absolutely picky about my POV only switching when scenes change, but I had to give in and let AJ and Dash switch for the "good part" of Maidens Day, because it's just sexier that way. And when sexy is the goal, good writing is whatever makes that happen.
Just a quick question regarding something you mentioned offhand, is it possible to write third-person without having inner-monologue at all, and rarely even mentioning what anyone is thinking?
1315027 Sure. Hemingway doesn't do internal monologue. My "Friends, with Occasional Magic" has no internal monologue. None of my comedies have internal monologue. "Big Mac Reads Something Purple" has a little Twilight inner mono at the end, but the story relies on not having any internal monologue from Big Mac. There are also stories like "Twilight Sparkle Makes a Cup of Tea", which is full of internal monologue, but none of it is what the character is really thinking about. And there are stories like my own "Long Distance", which has lots of Mayor Mare's interior monologue, but the story is about what Twilight is thinking, even though she never says what she's thinking. A Sherlock Holmes story is like that; the story is about what Holmes is thinking, but you only hear what Watson is thinking.
1315067
Ah, good to hear. That's generally how I write, and had a moment where I started to fear I had been doing it wrong the whole time. Thanks for clarifying.
1315073
If you spell the words correctly and use proper grammar and formatting, and your reader understands what you're trying to convey, then you're doing it right.
At least, that's my opinion.
Wildly off-topic, does the number "62" in conjunction with the year 2008 mean anything to you?
(even more off-topic) 1315078
I agree with you in general, but it's that third part ("understands what you're trying to convey") that throws most people. It can be really, really hard. Even more so writing fiction for general audiences, where mots of your readers probably want to put the least possible amount of effort into working out what you're trying to convey.
That struck me a little close to the heart. My original first chapter for "Traveling Tutor and the Librarian" started with an infodump on the OC right from the first line. (fixed since then)
When writing it, I found a lot of places where I had to fight the urge to head-hop, but even kept to the minimum, there's a lot more changes of POV in it than normal stories because in romance, the characters interactions tend to be subdued and a lot harder to show instead of telling, unless you switch POV.
1315161
The 62nd general assembly of the United Nations was in 2008 .
IRS notice 2008-62 was "Interim Guidance on the Application of ยง 457(f) to Certain Recurring Part-Year Compensation".
The European Union's EC issued directive 2008/62, providing for "certain derogations for acceptance of agricultural landraces and varieties which are naturally adapted to the local and regional conditions and threatened by genetic erosion and for marketing of seed and seed potatoes of those landraces and varieties."
You know too much, "toafan".
1315237 there's a lot more changes of POV in it than normal stories because in romance, the characters interactions tend to be subdued and a lot harder to show instead of telling, unless you switch POV.
Or it could be just that, yeah.
1315730 Let me take another shot at this.
Murder Mysteries are mostly single POV because the story follows a theme that can be described as a single thread slowly being spooled out onto a weaving machine, where bit by bit you see a whole picture emerge until at the end of a good one, you re-read it to find out just what links in the chain of events you missed.
In "Experience" books, the POV stays locked to the author as he climbs a mountain/swims/parachutes/get elected.
Romance *can* be done from single POV, and Harliquin books has a million of them filled with angsty young ladies who yearn for that tall, handsome cowboy/knight/pirate/highlander and wish that he would only notice her, although she has not actually said anything to him, because she is worse than Fluttershy (sigh). The best ones, IMOHO, are done with *both* POVs to show the misinterpetation and miscomunication that is rife in any budding relationship, as well as the interaction between two individuals who each have their own baggage and goals in a relationship. Note that a previous fic of mine, Genealogy, was highly third-person with a very tight focus on the male character and almost no internalized thoughts of the female in the beginning until the bar/dream scene, which is where I started to loosen the reins. I'm thinking the tight focus at the beginning was a mistake, and I'm learning from my mistakes.