Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Wednesday Writes: Dual POV

I'm reading through my NA retelling right now. It's only a first draft, and pretty bare at 55,000 words. One thing I decided might work really well with this story is doing dual POV- the one from my female MC Maggie which is already there, and one from the love interest Jay.

I haven't started yet. I want to read through the entire story first, and I'm taking notes of each chapter on note cards so that I can see where Jay's POV chapters might fit in, or which ones can be switched from hers to his.

But here's the thing.

I'm scared.

I've never really written dual POV before. Okay, I sorta have. My YA Mystery JAR OF HEARTS has a second POV sprinkled throughout, and it's the POV of the antagonist. Those chapters were actually easy to write, mainly because I was trying to channel the creepiest possible person. And they're short chapters, all inner thoughts.

Now that I'm about to start a real second POV, and from a man's perspective, it has me trembling in my boots just a little. Why? I don't know how a guy really thinks. (There are some ways where I do know how they think, but they're not the kind of thoughts I want to put on the page, but I'm probably gonna have to anyway.) Also, I want the two voices to sound different. I don't want Jay to sound like me, like any girl, and especially not like Maggie. I need to find HIS voice somehow, and I'm not sure how to do that. My biggest issue with most dual POV books I read is that both POVs sound exactly the same to me. I don't want to do that.

This is something I've been thinking a lot about as I read through what I've got so far. Maybe this is something I should do a little research on- see what the experts say, see if there's a method to bring out a character's voice.

Do you know a good way to do this? Any advice for a dual POV first-timer?

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