Since the readers are in the mind of the heroine (only rarely is the hero a first-person narrator), they can't know what the hero is thinking or feeling. Your heroine/narrator may believe she's got him figured out, but she â and the readers â can't know for certain whether she's correct. The readers can hear what the hero says, see what he looks like, and draw conclusions from things like tone of voice, word choice, and slant of eyebrow. The readers' conclusions may not always agree with the heroine's, and there's no way to know who is right â unless the hero says so. And even then, the readers can't be sure that what the hero says is the whole truth. Because of all these unknowns, first person creates mystery and suspense for the readers.
The success of first-person stories depends on the personality of the narrator. If the main character is funny, breezy, and sympathetic, a friendly soul who doesn't show off or display false modesty, then she's likely to win the readers' hearts. If she yaks about how wonderful she is (or how smart, ugly, overweight, beautiful, depressed, well organized, or forgiving), if she dwells on unkind thoughts, or if she acts like a victim, then she's apt to place high in the contest for which heroine readers would most like to slap silly.
The difference between these two types of characters is very small. One reader will detest a character that other readers adore. (Bridget Jones, from Helen Fielding's
Bridget Jones's Diary
, is a good example of a character readers either love or hate.)
The best first-person narrators are nice people despite interesting flaws. They're people you'd like to know better, people who amuse you rather than lecture you. They simply tell the story and let the readers deduce motives, explanations, and justifications on their own.
The least successful first-person narrators are constantly conscious of the readers â not only talking to them but justifying what they're doing, explaining, and assuming that their every thought will be of compelling interest.
Though chick-lit, hen-lit, and mom-lit are considered cutting-edge books, where POV is concerned, they're almost a throwback to early romances, which shared only the heroine's feelings and thoughts, leaving the hero a mystery.
In this example from Sophie Kinsella's chick-lit novel
Confessions of a Shopaholic
, notice the first-person heroine's observations of the man on the train. By dismissing his clothes as lower class, she's not only judging him but showing herself as shallow:
The tube stops in a tunnel ⦠Five minutes go by, then ten minutes. I can't believe my bad luck. â¦
[U]ntil I've got that scarf in my hands I won't be able to relax.
As the train finally gets going again I sink into my seat with a dramatic sigh and look at the pale, silent man on my left. He's wearing jeans and sneakers, and I notice his shirt is on inside out. ⦠I take another look at his jeans (really nasty fake 501s) and his sneakers (very new, very white). â¦
“They just don't think, do they?” I say. “I mean, some of us have got crucial things we need to be doing. I'm in a terrible hurry!”
“I'm in a bit of a hurry myself,” says the man.
“If that train hadn't started moving, I don't know what I would have done.” I shake my head. “You feel so ⦠impotent!”
“I know exactly what you mean,” says the man intensely. “They don't realize that some of us ⦔ He gestures toward me. “We aren't just idly traveling. It matters whether we arrive or not.”
“Absolutely!” I say. “Where are you off to?”
“My wife's in labor,” he says. “Our fourth. ⦠How about you? What's your urgent business?”
Oh God. ⦠I can't tell this man that my urgent business consists of picking up a scarf from Denny and George.
I mean, a scarf. It's not even a suit or a coat, or something worthy like that.
The heroine redeems herself â if only barely â by realizing that her own mission is hardly as important as his and by not continuing to whine about her own problems. Kinsella has carefully walked a fine line here; some readers will love the heroine's honesty, while others will find her so shallow and unsympathetic they'll be hoping for her comeuppance.
In third-person selective, it's as if the person telling the story â the narrator â is sitting on the main character's shoulder, able to see and hear what the character sees and hears, but also able to eavesdrop on and report the character's thoughts and feelings. The narrator reports the actions of the characters using the words
he
,
her, their
, etc., to tell the story. If the main character is Jane, the narrator will refer to her with
Jane
or
she.
Because of its close connection between narrator and character, third-person selective has almost as much immediacy and personal impact as first person, without being as constrained by the character's own deficiencies and prejudices. The narrator in this case is almost invisible, simply sharing the details and making no comment on the story.
Third-person selective means the readers see what the viewpoint character sees, hear what she hears, and know what she thinks (though not every single thought). Third-person selective includes only scenes in which the viewpoint character is present. If Jane walks out of the room, the readers walk out with her â so the readers can't hear what is said after Jane leaves, any more than Jane can.
The readers also know how the other characters look, see the actions they take, hear the exact words they say, and can draw conclusions about what they're thinking from Jane's observations of such things as facial expressions, tone of voice, etc. Because the readers see what's going on, they may draw different conclusions about events than Jane does. If Jane deduces from the look on another character's face that he's angry, the readers know what Jane's thinking â but they don't know for sure whether Jane is right.
In this example from Heather Graham's romantic suspense novella
Bougainvillea
, notice how the heroine's perceptions as she sits by her father's hospital bed are shared with the readers:
As Kit slowly awoke and opened her eyes, she saw a man standing in the doorway.
He was very tall, and in the shadowy, dim light he at first appeared to be dark â and sinister. She had the uneasy feeling that he had been standing there, staring into the room in silence for a long time. Staring as she slept, making her feel oddly vulnerable.
His shoulders were broad beneath a heavy winter coat, and he seemed to stand very straight, with a great deal of confidence and assurance. She sensed that he wasn't watching her. He was watching her father.
Waiting for him to die.
Kit blinked, and awkwardly tried to rise, wanting to demand to know who he was and what the hell he was doing. But when she blinked, he was gone. There was no man in the doorway.
Was there a man in the doorway? Was he sinister, threatening, confident, assured? Is he really waiting for Kit's father to die? Though Kit believes so, the readers â who have seen the evidence for themselves through the third-person POV â may or may not agree.
If you were using a third-person selective/multiple POV, you might follow up a scene like this one with a scene from the POV of the man who was standing in the doorway, relaying his thoughts, feelings, actions, and reactions to Kit.
Many authors want to include the thoughts of both main characters within a single scene â using a third-person dual POV. It seems logical that the readers need to know what both hero and heroine are thinking, so the author tells them what Jane says and what she's thinking, then shifts to John and what he's thinking, then back to Jane.
In the following example from her short contemporary novella
An Officer and a Gentleman
, Rachel Lee uses typographical tricks to make clear which POV we're in at any given instant, and because both characters are thinking similarly, the passage quickly and effectively shows us both characters' feelings.
Giving up on the newspaper, Dare carried his coffee into the living room and stared out the window at the bleak North Dakota winter morning. What had he done? What was he going to do about it? He'd acted like a damn â
â cowboy, Andrea thought as she walked into Dare MacLendon's office Monday morning. A damn cowboy. Her shoulders ached miserably, perfectly in tune with her mood. She still felt as if most of her energy had slipped down a black hole some where. Anger sustained her and drove her in to work, determined to show that damn cowboy just what he deserved for toying with her like that. She was going to â
â freeze him, Dare realized when his gaze met hers across the conference table that morning. The little minx gave him a look glacial enough to cause frostbite. While the other officers wandered into the room and poured themselves coffee, he met her stare for stare and allowed himself to imagine her lying naked and trembling on his bed, reaching out for him â
â touching his chest, Andrea thought, stroking her hands downward to grasp his buttocks and pull him â
â into her, Dare imagined, ⦠and reality returned with a crash. Major Francis was pulling out his chair at the far end of the table, the last one to arrive. Dare glanced around, taking attendance mentally. No one missing. “Good morning, people.”
In this case, Lee is very successful at relating the two points of view while keeping them distinct and clear. By using this device, she also moves her story along rapidly, far more quickly than she could have using separate scenes from each main character's POV.
However, this example is an exception; the dual POV is seldom the best way to tell a story. When you rapidly switch back and forth from one character's POV to another's, the readers may feel like they're watching a tennis match, looking quickly from one player to the other and unable to concentrate on either. When readers are deluged with thoughts and feelings from both sides, it's harder for them to empathize with either character. Unless you are very skillful and careful, the readers may even be confused as to whose thoughts they're getting at any particular moment.
If you feel you cannot limit yourself to one POV character per scene, then you should switch from one to the other only when it's absolutely necessary to provide immediate access to the second character's thoughts. Such changes should not be frequent and should be made deliberately, not out of laziness or carelessness.
In this example from her romantic suspense novella
Capsized
, author Sharon Sala starts with the hero's POV, then switches â clearly and strongly â to the heroine's, at the point where the heroine regains consciousness:
The woman was still shivering, despite the pile of covers Quinn had put over her. He knew he needed to get her warm, and the quickest way he knew how to do that was a hot bath. He ran the tub full of water, keeping it as hot as he dared. Hesitating only briefly, he slipped the T-shirt over her head, then carried her into the bathroom. Gently, he began lowering her into the tub, unprepared for any kind of protest. But when the water reached her knees, it obviously triggered a memory she would rather forget. She bucked in his arms, then began to thrash and moan. Before he knew it, she'd swung a fist in his direction. He ducked as she cursed and then swung again. â¦
“Lady ⦠lady ⦠it's okay. I'm trying to help you, remember? You're freezing cold. You need to get warm.”
She swung at him again and slung a long, shapely leg over the side of the tub, still trying to get out.
“Christ almighty!” Quinn said and, in disgust, just let her go.
Unprepared for the sudden freedom, Kelly slipped and then sank beneath the water before coming up sputtering, still ready to fight. Only there was no one trying to push her head beneath the water or stick a knife to her throat â just a wet and rather disgusted looking man watching her from the doorway. â¦
And then Kelly remembered â everything from the knife sinking into Ortega's chest to the stranger on the shore. He'd probably saved her life.
Sala couldn't start with the heroine's POV because she was unconscious; yet Kelly's thoughts and fears when she does rouse are so important that it's necessary for the readers to see them directly. So when Quinn lets go, we're still in his POV (he's feeling disgust), but in the next paragraph we're in Kelly's POV (she's unprepared for him to drop her). Notice that since these two don't yet know each other's names, the narrator doesn't use them in thoughts â when we're in Quinn's POV he refers to “the woman” and when we're in Kelly's POV she refers to “a wet and disgusted looking man.”
Another example of switching from one POV to another within a scene is the selection we read from Penny McCusker's
Noah and the Stork
, on page 115. Mc Cusker starts off the scene in the heroine's head, but at the crucial moment when the hero comes face-to-face with his daughter, realizing for the first time that he has a child, she switches smoothly to his thoughts instead.
The use of more than one POV in a book â whether the POV switches between scenes or within a single scene â should not be an afterthought. If a character's thoughts are to be included anywhere in the story, you shouldn't wait until late in the book to begin; you should be fairly consistent from the start. It isn't necessary to assign an equal number of pages to each POV, or to alternate POV with each scene, but the second POV shouldn't disappear for so long that the readers forget about it.
When using more than one POV in a book, always make the POV of the most important character more prominent. In a story shared between two points of view, the division should not be fifty-fifty. One (most often the heroine's) should dominate.