June/July 2001 - Issue 4

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If you're currently writing in either single or dual, non-interactive viewpoint, making the transition to dual, interactive viewpoint takes patience and practice. Your first attempts my seem clumsy. You also have to put yourself in the "mind" of more than one character which provides a further challenge.

As a female writer, writing female viewpoint is easy. Getting the male viewpoint to be realistic is a little more difficult. The Hero's viewpoint needs to be absolutely credible. Some women find this aspect of the technique hard to master. After all, women don't think like men do. Conversely, a man writing a woman's viewpoint can't be and easy situation.

When I made the switch to this technique, I used my first romance novel as a basis. It took 400 hours of painstaking re-writing to convert the first three chapters of my book to the new viewpoint structure.

That sounds like very hard work ... well it was. My first attempts produced some "jerky transitions". As I went over and over the work, I eventually reached a stage that "felt right" and I was no longer thinking "who's thinking this?", or "is this how a man would think?.

• Write a completely new novel, developing the interactive viewpoint from the first moment the Heroine and Hero start speaking with each other;
  
• Convert an existing novel by inserting the Hero's viewpoint into the conversations he has with the Heroine and other secondary characters.

Once you have written the first chapter, read your work aloud as if you are "play acting" the parts of the Heroine and Hero. Assess whether the dialogue and introspection sound "natural". Do the viewpoint transitions flow smoothly? Does the interaction seem like a real life situation? Most importantly, are the characters' thoughts exactly how people like them would think?

There's no easy way to master this technique. It takes time and patience. Once conquered, your writing will take on new life ... new zest. It will seem more vibrant and you'll be able to control your characters more easily. It may transpire that you'll never want to write any other way.

© 2001 Robyn Lidstone
This article is the intellectual property of Robyn Lidstone and Livewire Publishing and may not be reproduced in any format without the written consent of the author.