Danger: Women Writing

Just a note: Severo blogs at eHarlequin today. Find it here.

I’ve set aside my WIP for a week to revise a proposal I’d sent in to my editor. She liked it but her suggestions were spot-on. Yes, I know the hero and heroine don’t even meet until page 85! Something must be done about that.

This story is modern and historical. I think I’m going to call it a modern historical. And as with historicals, there is much information to be given to the reader at the beginning. I recall the good old days of historicals when the writer was offered much more leisure for getting those two characters together. Now, it seems they must meet in chapter one or the readers won’t have the patience to continue. Hmm…

Well, it’s impossible with this current story. Yesterday I got them down to page 60. The readers meet the hero and heroine in chapter one, but they are going their separate ways, doing what they must to get this story started. You could say, well, start where they meet, where their lives changes. Makes sense. But their lives change before they meet, and I don’t want to gloss over it. But I will try to at least get them to meet by chapter three. Sigh…

Also, I’m having some fun with time periods. In this story the main romance takes place in 1785. But there’s also a modern-day story line that weaves in an out of it, a la Lauren Willig (I love her stuff, and she makes the two timelines seem so easy; it’s not!).

And then there’s the research. It is great fun to be back in historical Paris and I get to dig out all my France and Paris books. Dresses and shoes and carriages and the rag&bone man. Fun stuff!

If you’re a writer, do you have a particular time period you love to write about? And if a reader, what’s your fav time period to read about?

As you may have noticed yesterday, one of the prizes was a digital download of “After The Kiss” my latest release, which is sort of a companion short story to Moon Kissed. It revisits the hero and heroine six months after they fell happily ever after. [Click on links to read first chapters from both books.]

I did something a little different with this short story. Actually, I didn’t purposefully set out to do it, it just sort of happened. I wrote it in first person, from both the hero and heroine’s POV. I’ve written one other story (Getaway Girl) where the heroine was in first and the villain/hero was in third. In this new story, both characters wanted to be heard from, in their own particular manner.

On another loop we’ve been discussing the readers’ likes and dislikes for first person. The majority, it seems, don’t really care for first. They like the immediacy, the being inside the person’s head, but they want to see more than just that one person’s POV. I can understand that. Especially in romance, it is important we get inside both the hero and heroine’s head. We may identify with the heroine (if we are girls; boyz, you can identify with the hero) but we can handle being inside a man’s head, and want to know what he’s thinking as he’s falling in love.

So let’s chat Point Of View today. Do you absolutely abhor first for romances? What if both characters were given a POV in first, would that be cool? What about mixing POVs? One person in first, another in third. Or how about the all-seeing omniscient?

What are some examples of great first POV you’ve read lately?
Michele