Since everyone has a different POV on POVs, we thought we’d give you the four POVs of our #RWChat hosts.
“I write dual POV in very close third person,” says KIMBERLY BELL. “I choose dual because I like having the perspective of both of the romantic leads in my story. It allows me to play with misunderstandings and have a bit more flexibility in a character’s behavior because the reader understands the why. I write close third because…writing in first person feels weird to me? I need that little bit of distance to feel like an observer rather than like it’s MY story—but I write third very close, because I enjoy playing with the internal thoughts of my characters and using them to really get you into their personalities.”
“I’m flexible,” says C.L. Polk. “I’ve written in first person and third at varying narrative distances, but my most comfortable perspective is third person past, written as close to the skin as possible. I tend to limit the number of POV characters to no more than two, which works well for romance novels. Third person close is vivid and personal, and since I want people to connect to the story and characters, I don’t want to hold them at arm’s length.”
“A close third person POV was how I started writing,” says Robin Lovett. “I wrote three novels that way until I decided to try first person present tense to see if I could. As of now, my two first person POV books are the only ones that have sold. For whatever reason, I’ve had no luck yet with my third person books. I enjoy present tense verbs in the first person because it makes everything feel more immediate and in-the-moment exciting. We each go with our strengths. It takes trial and error to find our voices.”
“Before I admitted to myself that I wanted to write romance,” says Alexis Daria. “I used to write a lot more in first person (past tense). Now, I write exclusively in third person, but that might change in the future. Sometimes I’ll read scenes out loud to myself, converting them to first person present as I read, in order to get a deeper POV.”
Join us Sunday evening at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST and tell us what your POV is on POV.
We all want to “hook” our readers and the fastest way to do that is by evoking an emotional response. But how do we do that? How do we write an “emotional hook” and once we do that, keep evoking an emotional response strong enough to keep the reader engaged for an entire novel?
You know the feeling. You’re reading a book, and for 
It needs to be capitalized, I think. Our FAVORITE BOOKS are like living breathing things to us. But how do we make OUR books like THOSE book?
One of the hardest things for us as writers is to take our hands off the keyboard and let someone else view our work. However, before it’s ready for public consumption, we need to make use of critique partners (CPs), alpha and beta readers, writing groups, and of course, editors. With online writing forums, contests, and the ability to connect with other writers on Twitter and other platforms, finding CPs, beta readers, and editors for hire has never been easier.
“Telling the story only you can tell” ~Kimberly Bell
Romance readers love powerful protagonists, heroes and heroines who can solve their own problems and overcome any obstacle. Yet, we want our characters human too, which means they have flaws.
Romance Writers Chat 