Mind-reading – why I write dual point-of-view

I love asking people what their superpower of choice would be!  You can learn SO much about someone from their answer, especially if they explain why.

My superpower (like Celeste’s) would be mind-reading, because you could literally take over the world with it!  Er, if you were that way inclined.  You’d be able to pre-empt attacks, outmanoeuvre every enemy, know how to best charm people, understand their intentions (good and bad) towards you, etc. etc.

Another reason I’ve always wanted to mind read in order to know what people think of me.  I’m fascinated by behavioural science, and having ADHD means I can pick up subtle body language.  But I’m also very aware that any action can have many different reasons for it.  For example, if you like someone and they don’t talk to you as much as they do other friends in a group, does that mean that they don’t like you, or does it mean that they do really like you and are therefore shyer around you?  How are you supposed to know the underlying motivation?!

Cue the dual point of view in the Enturi Saga books.  From the beginning, I wanted to know what was going on in Celeste’s AND Will’s heads – I love them both and was keen to understand them through their own words.  But I also wanted to show how wrong we can be when we read certain reasons into someone’s actions. 

For example, when Celeste first arrives at Feast Day in GMTS, she sees Will, their eyes lock, she thinks he’s going to come over and they’ll have a wonderful day together, but then he just looks away.  Her heart breaks.  She’s convinced that she’s been an idiot thinking he was remotely interested in her.  But in the next chapter, from Will’s POV, we discover that he actually thought she looked incredible and had to forcibly stop himself going over to her instantly (although we don’t know the reason for his restraint at this point).  A very different internal reaction to the attributed one.

The trilogy has quite a few people who don’t quite understanding each other at times.  I think that reflects real life.  It’s good to be reminded that we can’t always read people properly – what’s going on in their hearts and their heads might be very different to what we imagine.

I was also keen to include Will’s voice and side of the story to make the books more appealing to male readers.  Allegedly teen boys don’t like reading books with female protagonists!  Teen boys often jump young adult literature and go straight to adult, especially with science fiction too.  I’ve already had fantastic feedback from that demographic though about how much they’ve enjoyed the books!

Dual POV has its challenges.  At any given point, one character’s story could be much more intense, and you want to keep going with it and write two chapters from their POV back to back.  Being able to switch to the other character and still keep readers engaged is hard!  What helps in my stories is that when it cuts to from Will to Celeste or vice versa, they are usually in the same situation, continuing the plot line, but just through different eyes.

If you’re trying to be fair and give both characters equal length chapters, then there’s going to be unnecessary padding at times. Instead, I opted for unequal lengths, making each chapter the length it needs to be.  Mostly that balanced out nice but, for necessary storytelling reasons, it didn’t always work in “Sing Out The Light”.  Hopefully readers are invested enough by then that they’ll let me off though…