493 – Romances With Multiple POVs

The Mythcreant Podcast

The most important skill in dating is being able to see things from your partner’s perspective. In storytelling, we can make that literal! But what happens when you give the love interest as well as the hero a viewpoint? What are the costs and benefits? That’s our topic this week, and, with our three perspectives, hopefully we’ll get to the bottom of things.

Show Notes

• The Problem With Multiple Viewpoints
• House of Earth and Blood
• Sarah J Maas
• Meta Mysteries
• Lord of the Fading Lands
• Constructing a Compelling Romance
• Mysterious vs Relatable Hero
• Digging Up Love

Transcript

Generously transcribed by Phoebe Pineda. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreant Podcast with your hosts, Oren Ashkenazi, Chris Winkle and Bunny.

[Intro music]

Bunny: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Mythcreant Podcast. I’m Bunny, and with me here today is

Oren: Oren.

Bunny: and

Chris: Chris.

Bunny: Okay, so you guys, long ago, you remember this, episode 446, we established that we encountered a dark and brooding podcast that daringly fought fanragers on our behalf, and it seemed maybe a little interested in us? Yeah? You remember that?

Chris: Oh, yeah.

Oren: So dreamy.

Bunny: And I thought that we’re too humble for such a suave podcast to notice, but you guys, I encountered a super secret soundbite of the host saying the same thing about us.

Chris: What? We are super special.

Oren: What?

Bunny: That’s true.

Chris: Naturally, another podcast would notice us.

Bunny: Yeah. I understand why they’re so attracted to the Mythcreant podcast and now we have intrigue. Will they email us? Will they like, comment and subscribe? Will they even invite us on?

Chris: Oh…

Bunny: That would be a lot. I guess we have to keep listening to those super secret soundbites to find out. So once again, trying to avoid the awkwardness of implicating the hosts in an episode about romance.

Oren: Yeah, that is tricky.

Bunny: I have pulled on Chris’s earlier joke in order to introduce this episode about multiple POVs in romance, which are pretty much a trope or expectation of the romance genre itself by now? From what I understand.

Chris: So what do you mean expectation? Because a lot of romances are not multiple POVs. It’s common, but I would not call it an expectation in terms of the average romance is expected to have them. Would you?

Bunny: Yeah. Maybe expectation is the wrong word, maybe. I guess it would be at least as expected as having a single point of view, which isn’t the case in just about any other genre. Does that make sense?

Chris: Yeah. Certainly more common. I do think that there are different types of romances that might lean towards one or the other.

Bunny: Maybe I’ve just encountered a higher volume of romances that are multiple POV.

Chris: Here’s a question for you, Bunny. What percentage of romances do you read are queer romances?

Bunny: Uh, quite a few.

Chris: Yeah. So from what I, again, casual observation, I have not looked at numbers, but I do think that hetero romances are more likely to be single POV. Not that they can’t be multiple POV or that queer romances can’t be single POV, but I think there might just be trends there. Because generally in a single POV romance, the focus tends to be more on having a single relatable point of view character, and then a really impressive mysterious love interest.

And the assumption then, in a straight romance, is that people are gonna read and identify with the same person who has their gender, right? So, you know, we have a straight female main character. The assumption is that straight women are gonna read that and identify more with her than with the male love interest.

Whereas I think that often in queer romances, that’s no longer an assumption anymore that the audience is going to relate to one person a lot more than the other person, and so I think that they might tend more to having multiple POVs in that case.

Bunny: That’s an interesting theory. I think that might hold water.

Chris: Yeah. I think a lot of the multiple POV romances I’ve read are queer romances. Again, I’ve read some hetero romances that are also multiple POV, but I’ve certainly read most heteromances–most hetero romances, hetero, heteromances, hetero romances–

Oren: Heteromances!

Chris: –heteromances I’ve read, and a lot of these are romantasy, are single POV. More often than not.

Bunny: Interesting. Yeah. The most recent romance I read was a dual POV straight romance. I think maybe my sample size is skewed as to how common that is in the genre as a whole. Just thinking about the romance genre, generally, straight or queer romance, I think it makes sense that there would be a higher proportion of books with dual POVs or multiple points of view.

Just because in romance, the romance is the central part of the plot, whereas in something like romantasy, the romance might still be pretty central or even the central part of the plot, but when you think romantasy, you also think of a larger conflict beyond the romance, like House of Earth and Blood had this whole city conflict going, but it’s also romantasy.

Chris: Yeah, well there’s often higher stakes. It’s still designed to make the romance front and center, I think a lot of the time.

Oren: Chris, quick question. You’ve read Maas’s more famous series, Thorn and Roses, is that single POV?

Chris: I’ve only looked at the first book, but yes, it’s [single] POV and Feyre’s viewpoint.

Oren: Okay. I wonder, ’cause Crescent City, the first one, has at least two, it’s possible it goes off into some other POVs. Honestly, I lost track, but at least Bryce and Hunt each have their own POVs. So I wonder what the thought process was there.

Chris: I do think that YA is more likely to be in a single viewpoint. So Thorn and Roses is YA and Crescent City is not.

Oren: That makes sense.

Chris: So that might be one reason.

Oren: It’s so baffling in Crescent City, why we gave Hunt his own POV, because he has his own little secret plot that he’s on is just a completely different story that we don’t hear about until about three-quarters of the way through. And then we find out he’s been doing this other thing that is completely unrelated to the actual story, except that it gets him in trouble to create some drama. It’s like the most convoluted backstory I’ve ever seen for the love interest getting sent to jail.

Bunny: You see, that is the opposite of the reasons that love interests usually have their point of view, which is to reveal things about them not from the start, not to suddenly reveal that they have a reason to go to jail.

Oren: Yeah, that’s so weird. It was really weird. Normally you would do this specifically because you want the reader to know more about the love interest, but not this time.

Bunny: That is very confusing and yeah, I would say that’s, if not the reason, definitely one of the major reasons is just by definition, the lovebirds are all mostly equally as essential to the story as each other because them getting together is the driver of the plot in a pure romance.

And so you get to know both of them. I think that’s the main reason. And so if one of them is hiding something that would be pretty important for you to get to know about them, that’s a little odd choice there.

Oren: Yeah. Although, to be fair, Mythcreants is one of the few places that I have seen that even talks about what a meta mystery is. I see a lot of authors do this, so it’s very likely that Maas just did not consider that a problem. Just, yeah, whatever. It’s not gonna make a difference that Hunt has this entire secret plot that he’s on. It’s like the character equivalent of finding out about a secret family. It’s fine, don’t worry about it.

Bunny: Now that would be a romance twist.

Chris: Yeah. It’s funny from our perspective. ’cause why did you give him a viewpoint just to introduce a meta mystery. Makes no sense.

Oren: Yeah, but then you remember everyone does that. It’s also interesting sometimes, at least from the very limited sample size of stories that I’ve read that do this, another motivation for giving the love interest a second POV, is that you have the theoretical main character, which is usually the woman in a heteromance as we call them now. And then you have the love interest, who is the guy. But the guy is the only one doing the plot because he’s the one with all the power and agency. And so if we didn’t cut to his POV sometimes–

Chris: Oh no.

Oren: –we would never know what was happening. That’s what happens in The Fading Lands, which is some old-school romantasy, and by old-school, I mean 2014. The ancient year of 2014, where our protagonist is theoretically the main character, but she doesn’t do anything for basically the entire story. She just hangs out at her house and feels bad. Whereas the love interest is this super hot, powerful Fey guy and he’s theoretically going around doing stuff. His point of view is also boring, but he’s at least, in theory, fighting the bad guys. So we gotta cut to his POV as often as possible. Otherwise, it would just be the protagonist lady sitting in her house for chapter on chapter.

Bunny: It’s the thought that counts.

Chris: Mm-hmm. I will say in Thorn and Roses, the idea is that the love interest is keeping a lot of things from the protagonist that frankly, the book would probably be better if she knew. Like, ’cause the plot and the stakes and all those things–a lot of the book are just, people just refuse to tell her anything. And that’s, I guess, better that we’re not showing his viewpoint, but it’s still a bit frustrating. So yeah, it, I think it would’ve made more sense if she’d been more involved earlier.

Oren: Once you tell the protagonist something, you can’t use it for a reveal anymore. So just never tell them anything.

Chris: Basically, just leave a blank page and it’s the most basic form of suspense. But personally, I think that the main reason to use multiple POV in romance is so that you can focus more on internal obstacles to the relationship and misunderstandings, and tell it from both characters’ perspectives.

So you can clarify that they’re still into each other when their actions suggest otherwise. Or you can explain misunderstandings they have with each other. If one person might look like they’re being super unreasonable or doing something bad, you can explain why they’re doing that. And I think that when you do have a lot of obstacles that are psychological or emotional, that is really helpful to be able to dig into what’s going on [with] both sides and see exactly why they’re doing what they’re doing and better empathize with both of them.

Bunny: And if one of them starts acting, from one character’s perspective, rude or unpleasant, we can go into the other character’s head and understand them for that perspective. And I also feel like if a character has a point of view, we’re just primed to like them more because we’re literally with them. At least that’s the hope. And it can explain why the lovebirds don’t just get together as well. We can see their emotional reasons for that, like Chris said, rather than just one being like, “No, I can’t!”

Oren: Although it could still end up happening if you don’t have a reason.

Bunny: Yeah, you do need a reason.

Chris: Yeah. When it comes from one person’s perspective, I think it leans a lot more on not knowing if the other person is interested, and that often doesn’t last for the entire romance arc, but at least for a portion of it.

Oren: It lasts a lot less time if you cut over to the other person’s perspective and find out that they are in fact interested and there goes the conflict, there goes the obstacle to your romance.

Chris: Yeah, but a lot of it’s just what kind of romance you want. I think people get into trouble when they want a romance that is really heavy on the wish fulfillment of having somebody really hot and powerful be into you. And so to provide that wish fulfillment, we have lots of scenes and it could be in this person’s POV or not, fawning over the protagonist and then we have a lot of burden to figure out, okay, why aren’t they together? Whereas if you like the type of romance where your protagonist is, oh my gosh, that super awesome hot person would never love me, then you can keep that going for longer and use one POV to do that very well.

Bunny: Yeah, having multiple perspectives also kills the mystery element of some romances where the love interest is mysterious and you want to seek to understand them better through the protagonist, but if the mysterious love interest just has their own point of view, then unless you’re doing a meta mystery, I guess, which don’t. It’s not that mystique so much.

Oren: Yeah. You definitely don’t wanna give a POV to a character who’s supposed to be mysterious, and that includes your protagonist.

Chris: Your protagonist can’t be mysterious. I’m sorry. Your main character should not be mysterious.

Oren: Yeah, we need to know about them, but the POV is useful for a love interest who is more relatable. And you can set up the fun little dramatic irony where you’ve been inside the other person’s head, so you know that they have a hangup around or they’re really touchy about phone calls, so then the protagonist is like, “Okay, I’ll just call them instead of going over to their house,” and you’re like, “No, don’t do it!”

Bunny: [mock horror] “Their parents were killed by a phone call!”

Oren: Yeah, phone calls haunted their dreams!

Chris: I think it’s worth mentioning that I think comedies, right, often work really well with multiple POVs in this case because a lot of it is about misunderstandings often and just humorous exchanges, and those often work a lot better if we understand. Again, we can have a dramatic irony where we know more than either character knows alone, so that works great.

Oren: So whenever we’re talking about multiple POVs, we should of course think about the normal costs that are associated with them. The good news is for romance, it is more likely that your characters are involved in the same story since presumably you want them together so that you can do romance if that’s what you’re writing. You’re less likely to have a problem of the, “one POV character is on continent A and the other POV character is on continent B, and maybe they’ll catch a glimpse of each other at the end of the story.” But I’m not gonna say you’re immune to it. I have seen stories that start off with this point of view of some random guy and you can’t figure out why he’s got a POV and then 10 chapters later it’s like, oh, it’s ’cause he’s the romance interest. That’s why. It’s like, the solution there is to introduce him earlier, not to give us a split POV until he finally shows up.

Chris: Yeah. So book one is the lovebirds on different continents, just being lonely. And then I’ll make the readers wait for them to meet for the entire book. And then at the end they’ll just see each other and then it’s done. As soon as they glimpse each other. Why book two?

Bunny: Yeah. I feel like the way I’ve seen it done that works pretty well is that especially in a story where you have more or less equivalent viewpoints between the love interest, but maybe one is slightly more central than the other one, and that’s usually the character whose POV opens the story, that we see that character and then the character meets the love interest, and then we get the love interest’s point of view. I think that serves as a natural transition between the two, rather than having continents as the divisor.

Chris: Yeah, that’s definitely a good way to do it. And I think another thing to note about multiple POV is that one thing that often pops up in romance is usually the writer puts a lot more thought into why the protagonist likes the love interest than vice versa. And it’s not that every reader will notice, but it’s just better if we have an understanding for what is so special about the protagonist for the love interest, and I do think that putting the love interest’s viewpoint in there does encourage more of that thinking. Doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s well thought out or that it’s in there, but it’s more likely to be in there.

Bunny: Yeah. It’s not just that they have heterochromia and purple hair.

Oren: Yeah. Although you could just be in for more chapters of, “Wow. So hot.”

Bunny: Look, I basically–so the last book I read was this book called Digging Up Love, which was a fine book, but the characters were so horny over each other to the point that it just got absurd. And then the chapters did really just feel like they were about to drop their pants at any moment. And then we didn’t even get a sex scene.

Oren: I have noticed that at least some authors have a tendency of making their characters really, really horny, and at that point you do have to start asking, why are they not just having sex? And there can be a reason, but often the author doesn’t include one, because then it would be awkward when we do want them to have sex.

Bunny: No, [they] didn’t even mention it. We learned that they’re Catholic, but they’ve just been so horny throughout the entire book. That feels like an afterthought. It almost feels like they dialed the horniness back after they started dating, which they do halfway through the book. It’s not really a “will they, won’t they,” because then the author would have to justify why these two people living in the modern world, who are sweating all over themselves at the sight of the other person, are not banging.

Oren: That’s the sort of thing where if you’re hitting exactly the wish fulfillment goal you want for a very specific audience, that can work. But for anyone else, the same feeling repeated over and over again is gonna get repetitive, even if it makes sense in character. It’s like having a character who’s angry all the time. It’s just constantly angry and that’s the only emotion they have. That’s just boring. Gets repetitive.

Bunny: Right, yeah. And they should have feelings about each other that aren’t just animal lust. That’s my hot take. I mean, you can have that, but then you might not be writing a romance.

Oren: I’ve also noticed–this is more in client stories than in published ones–is you often will have the protagonists who start off together and get their different POVs as their romance starts, but then the story splits them up and, okay, great. Now we’re on the continent A and B situation.

Bunny: Yeah, that’s also not good.

Oren: And that can happen with any two characters. That’s not just a romance thing. But the point of doing this was to give the two lovebirds their own POVs so that we could understand their romance better, and that is ruined if you then split them up in addition to the normal problem of having completely separate POVs for most of the story.

Bunny: I will say another issue I had with Digging Up Love is the characters feeling inconsistent when we jumped heads, and I think this was a function of the author maybe not knowing how to write a point of view where the character doesn’t feel perpetually inadequate, I suppose. The moment that we moved into the other character’s point of view, that character became ridiculously bumbling and clumsy. And the character whose viewpoint we were previously in becomes so smooth and suave and sexy. And it’s not just that they feel like they’re being bumbling, but they’re actually being suave. It’s that they literally become bumbling, they start falling over each other. Are they clumsy or not? And so it just felt like two of the same character who were one person when you were looking at them from the outside, and a different person when you were in their point of view.

Chris: That’s a neat idea. Right? I could definitely get behind a romance where the point of view character is insecure and looks at themself one way and then looks at the person that they’re crushing on and be like, that person is so cool. I’m so inadequate. And they’re both secretly thinking that, and their viewpoints reflect that perspective. But I think when you do things like, they literally fall over, it has to stay in the subjective arena.

Bunny: Right, and it’s very much physical descriptions of them being bumbling and doing meet-cute behavior. And it just started feeling repetitive because both characters were acting the same way, but also inconsistent.

Chris: Maybe the writer had a certain habit of writing in a specific way with specific types of jokes, and just continued to do it. But something that was like that but was clearly about subjectivity when it comes to viewing people and viewing yourself could be cool. Could be a neat thing.

Bunny: Yeah, that’s true. That’s definitely one of the things that multiple points of view in romance is good for, right? The outside versus inside. You can’t really do that when you just have one inside point of view.

Oren: Yeah, I mean it was interesting that Crescent City did not have that problem, but [the] reasons why are fascinating is ’cause, so Hunt, the dude, he is exactly one personality trait, which is that he’s mad. He’s very mad and, okay, well, that’s not fair. He’s also possessive.

Chris: Typical powerful love interest asshole.

Oren: Yeah. And he is like that whether you’re in his POV or not. When you’re in his POV, he’s constantly thinking, Bryce, I must have her. I’m so mad that I can’t have her and she can’t be allowed to do things I don’t want–

Bunny: Ugh.

Oren: –because of how much I want her. And then when you’re outside his POV, he’s like, Bryce, don’t do things I don’t want, ’cause I want you.

Chris: That sounds like a very uninteresting POV. It’s like, why go in his head at that?

Oren: I’m just calling it like I see it. Meanwhile, Bryce’s character just changes depending on what chapter we’re in. Sometimes she’s very relatable: “I’m just like you, I’m just a normal lady.” And then in other chapters she’s like, “I’m basically James Bond.” And when you’re outside her POV and watching her, sometimes she acts all like, “I’m just a normal lady and I can’t do anything.” And then other times she’d be like, “I’m basically James Bond and I know Kung Fu.” And it’s the same character no matter what. You gotta give Maas that much. They are consistent about being bad characters.

Bunny: Consistently bad. Don’t write bad. That’s my advice.

Oren: Only write good characters.

Bunny: Yeah, avoid bad. Write good. Thank you for coming to Mythcreants.

Oren: Well, with that, in my point of view, I think it is time to call this episode to a close.

Chris: And if you want to help us hook up with that other dark, broody podcast, just go to patreon.com/mythcreants to support us.

Oren: And before we go, I wanna thank a couple of our existing patrons. First, there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. Then there’s Kathy Ferguson. She’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. We will talk to you next week.

[Outro music]

Chris: This has been the Mythcreant Podcast. Opening/closing theme, The Princess Who Saved Herself by Jonathan Colton.