Last Friday night, I listened to the New York Times Best-selling author Steve Martini talk about writing in general and his Paul Madriani series in particular at Village Books. He was discussing his latest book, “Guardian of Lies.”
While listening to him recount his path to publishing and to his current book in the Madriani series, he spoke about how he eventually grew tired of writing in first person present point of view. He wanted to write cut-away scenes such as leaving someone dangling on a cliff just to return to them two chapters later. When your story is in first person pov, this is impossible. He managed to gain some freedom from that pov by writing two books outside of the series, “The List” and “Critical Mass.” When he returned the the Madriani series he chose not to use first person pov.
This concept of whose point of view you as the author want to live in for the life of your book or series of books made me think about my overall goal of writing like Janet Evanovich. Janet, in her book “How I Write“, discussed point of view for her books. She as an author didn’t know much about being a bounty hunter (her main character’s new found profession), so she could use first person point of view to let the reader join in the foibles of the journey to becoming a great bounty hunter.
As an author, I had to choose point of view before writing a single chapter. I choose third person point of view because I have several characters that are equally interesting. If I told the story from a single point of view, I would have to find ways of letting the other characters more fully into the scene through dialog and action but I thought these characters’ internal thoughts deserved to be heard. Each chapter is told from a single character’s pov and this will be easy to write until two main characters are in the same scene. At that point, the true star of the show will get the point of view stage.