Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Writing the Romantic Exam Vignette, The Vow

The traditional protocol for writing POV is that the Central Character is the only one who is supposed to use interior dialog. At least that is the way I learned it. The rationale was that to do otherwise was to confuse the reader. Anybody who is doing much reading these days must realize that such old school thinking has gone right out the window. Another tradition is that successful writers only write in third person. That too has gone by the boards.

It seems almost the norm these days to find a different POV emerging with each new chapter. Further there is plenty of good stuff being written that is full of I,I,I. Once a reader catches on it isn't all that confusing. At least it isn't to me.

When I finished writing my Romantica final exam here at WDC, I wanted to stress the POV's of both the Male and Female characters. There wasn't really a single central character. The course was designed to show the POV's of both the man and the woman. When you're a student you are trying to learn something new and so I went with what the class was trying to teach.

I learned more than I bargained for. I'm a heterosexual male and it comes as not surprise that I prefer writing from a POV that I know something about. However, most romance novels are written by women who have to write with their female constituents in mind. That doesn't mean that female writers avoid writing in a male POV. Most are married and have a pretty good idea how the male mind works. Some have male central characters who are pretty convincing, however, they do cater to those female customers who buy most of the novels in this genre.

So what I wound up doing was taking the allowable word count and dividing it among the two. It was like one chapter in a novel written from a guys POV and the next from a gals. The Divergent series is written in that manner, as well as in first person. In writing the final I wanted to show both POVs but wound up doing it in another way. I used the same time line and alternated short paragraphs showing what one was thinking and then how the other thought in response.

It was like writing dialog where you don't need labels for the interchanges because its obvious to the reader who is being referred to. It made sense to me and it turned out to be powerful and momentum building. The exam is called the Vow, and I'll be providing a link when I get through editing it. Be advised its rated GC.