Point of View

To me, the most fascinating part of writing or reading, for that matter, is a character’s point of view. I love getting in the head of a character and finding out what makes them tick. And realizing how the same scene and the same circumstance can seem vastly different to each of the characters in any particular scene. As people, we bring all the baggage of our upbringing and life’s experiences into any given situation. Characters are just the same, to my way of thinking. Just because a character is secondary or not the POV character during any particular scene doesn’t mean that those characters don’t have a POV that isn’t shown. But as authors we should know what it is to make our stories richer and more well rounded.

This summer I took my son to see Megamind. And adored the movie for showing us the villain’s point of view. He’d been belittled and mocked while growing up and eventually decided that if he couldn’t be good, he’d be bad. But he’s not bad and he never really was. It all depends on the lens in which the story is told. Remember that old quote from Jessica Rabbitt? “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.”

So this idea I had, about who is telling the story and how others have their own un-shown POV, was the catalyst for a pair of books I recently published. In both A Scandalous Wife and A Scandalous Charade, some of the same events transpire, but the reader’s takeaway is vastly different depending on the character whose eyes the story is seen through. A Scandalous Charade. The two books happen concurrently, and though the main plots of each have nothing to do with the other, at one point the two stories collide and readers have the chance to see a couple of scenes told through a different character’s point of view. As an author, this was amazingly satisfying to write as I got to explore both sides of the same story.

Is there a story you’d love to read or see through a different character’s eyes?

*Originally posted at LadyScribes February 4, 2011