Grace's Mosaic Moments


Saturday, August 4, 2018

Multiple POVs & REBEL PRINCESS

New Cover

Rebel Princess has just moved from Kindle Scout to Kindle Direct Publishing, making all four books of the Blue Moon Rising available from KDP for the first time. In honor of the occasion, I did  a line by line re-edit and ordered a new cover. I LOVE it & hope you do too. Hopefully, this move will make it possible to bring out all four books in a boxed set in the not-too-distant future.



The people of the pacifist planet Psyclid have spent a millennium cultivating skills of the mind, while the people of the planet Regula Prime spent an equal amount of time developing their military might. Kass Kiolani, a Psyclid princess in disguise, is the first of her kind to attend the Regulon Space Academy. But when her new “friends” invade her homeworld, she is rescued from rape and possible medical experimentation only by the swift action of Tal Rigel, an honorable (and admiring) captain in the Regulon fleet. She spends the next four years in solitary confinement, where she dreams of her rescuer but has no idea she has inadvertently sparked a rebellion against the Regulon Empire.

When Kass is freed at last, she finds herself in the midst of a fight against the Empire, and thoroughly disoriented by the contrast between her fantasies and the actual Tal Rigel. She also must contend with Regulon rebels who fear her psychic powers, her fey younger brother who speaks only through illusions, her parents who believe in non-violence, and a fiancé who happens to be sorcerer. The hope of toppling the Empire is a dim light at the end of a very long tunnel.
 


For a link to Rebel Princessclick here.

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A Short Rant on Overuse of Multiple Points of View

Once again, I'm basing a rant on my current reading. I'm very fussy about what Regency authors I read, but that doesn't keep me from trying new ones, always hoping for a gem. And I thought I'd found it. An author who could not only put together elegant sentences but had done her homework, not messing up the era with solecisms and anachronisms on every other page. Yay! But . . .

As I progressed through the book, I felt my attention wandering. But why? The characters were well drawn, the plot clever . . . 

And then I caught myself wincing as the story jumped from country to city for the umpteenth time . . . and finally it hit me: most books of fiction present the story from the Point of View of the Hero and Heroine. If there's a villain, he often gets a Point of View as well. In the genre I was reading (Regency) and in many so-called Mainstream novels, the author also frequently offers relatively short POVs from Secondary Characters. These range from the person about to be murdered in a Mystery to the POV of the butler in a Regency, a best friend in a Contemporary, etc.

But when I began to analyze the book I was reading, I realized it was offering - on equal footing - the Points of View of three separate romances (six different POVs), plus POVs for three of four characters in two Secondary romances. There were also, as I recall POVs for the butler and a valet. And maybe one for a maid. (That's more than ten Points of View.) Wow! No wonder I couldn't settle into enjoying the intricacies and challenges of the romance. There were just too darn many of them!

As I was grinding my teeth over this problem, my inner voice asked, But didn't you do this in Royal Rebellion (Book 4 of the Blue Moon Rising series)? So I tried to make a comparison. By Chapter One of Royal Rebellion (RR) the romances of the four royal children are a fait accompli, as are several minor romances among secondary characters—a device that made room for the characters from all four books to concentrate on the final push against the Empire. (The "new" romances among the next generation in RR are, hopefully, just enough to give us a peek at an optimistic future.)

Enough self-justification. I can only hope my readers don't find the multiple POVs in RR as teeth-gnashing as I found the bouncing POVs in the Regency story mentioned above. 

SUMMARY.  When writing multiple Points of View, ask yourself: 

1.     "Am I adding or detracting from my story when I stray beyond 3 or 4 POVs?"

2.      "Am I enhancing my characterizations by giving everybody and his dog a POV, or am I muddying the waters, making it difficult for readers to identify with the central characters?"

3.     "Is it really necessary to have five romances in one book, all of them new (as opposed to couples already joined in previous books in the series)?"

4.      "If I must have more than 3 or 4 POVs, is it wise to also offer POVs from minor characters (such as butler, footman, maid) to add even further to the feeling the story is more like a ball in the midst of a hotly contested basketball game than a smooth and well-laid-out tale of romance, suspense, mystery, or whatever?"

5.      "Is there a way I can present the information offered by the butler and valet (for example) through the POV of one of the main characters, avoiding the feeling of constantly being jerked away from the people we care about most?"

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 In short, if you must have multiple Points of View, try not to get carried away. Don't jump "all over Creation and Robin Hood's barn," as my mother used to say. Readers don't want to hear from the Cook, the Upstairs Maid, the Stableboy, the Dressmaker. Yes, they can be great Secondary characters, but they don't need their own POV. Readers want to wallow in the agonies of the Hero and Heroine, hiss the villain . . . and maybe, just maybe, laugh at the Point of View of a friend or relative. That's it. I've judged contests where the entire first scene of a book is in the POV of a family friend, providing an information dump about the Hero and Heroine . . . Aargh! Believe me, that absolutely, positively does not work. As I have written on countless contest entries over the years: Readers want to get right inside the heads of the Hero and Heroine, see what they see, hear what they hear, feel what they feel. When you scatter this sense of intimacy into, say, ten different Points of View, you've lost the impetus. Lost your readers. Unless you are very, very careful, you simply will not have room enough to make readers care about the most important characters in your story.

So stop, think. Ask yourself the questions listed above. And . . . Do you really need that POV from Aunt Fannie's pet poodle?

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For a link to Blair Bancroft's web site (updated 7/28/18), click here.

For a link to Blair's New Facebook Author post, click here.

Thanks for stopping by,
Grace  

 
 
 

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