Writing a novel is a very interesting process.  In some ways, it is much harder to do than a short story.  In other ways it shows you more about your writing style than anything else you do.  Character arcs become obvious.  Some have it.  Some don’t.  As I reached 80,000 words Mike had a distinct character arc.  It was easy to see him grow through the novel.  Helen was not as obvious.  The supporting characters were not as important in my mind.

After fighting my way back from a tangent, I realized that I needed to work on Helen a bit more.  I noticed that she had not changed much throughout the book.  I felt the tension to see if Mike was going to be successful in getting things back on track.  However, Helen was not putting up the fight I needed her to.  I was too focused on Mike.

That had to change, and it had to change quickly.  I went back to earlier chapters. That’s where I started to add more conflict between the two.  Things felt better.  The more I wrote about Helen from Mike’s point of view, the more I realized the huge limitations to first person narration.  It was hard to add depth to Helen.  I could not show what she was thinking.  I could not show her own inner conflict.

I considered changing the entire story and making it third person narrative.  I played with a couple of chapters and realized telling it from Mike’s point of view was better.  In doing a little research I noticed that most of the erotic romance stories are told from the female protagonist point of view.  That gave me pause.

Had I made a tactical mistake in with this novel.  As a first-time novelist, it would not surprise me.  I took my time.  I picked two critical chapters and decided to re-write them.  The first pass was to do it in third person – omniscient – narrative.  It left me a bit detached.  I gave it a try from Helen’s perspective.  That was harder to do.  The chapters were created with Mike in the driver’s seat and switching to Helen was not as easy as I thought.  Lesson learned.  Spend more time when planning a story.  I tried telling it from two perspectives.  Some chapters from Helen’s point of view and others from Mikes.

I have to do a lot more research in bouncing back and forth between two points of view.  An author friend used to write her books that way.  She had established that every other chapter would be from the female protagonist’s point of view.

I loved her books.  Her erotic science fiction was very creative.  Her world building was slow, but by the end of the third book you had a complete picture of her universe.  I did not like the ritualized switching of point of view.  I tend to think – which means I’ll have to do much more research – that a more free-flowing method is better.  I think of the detective novels that switch from first person for the detective and third person for the other action.  It is not forced.  It only comes in when it is needed to move the plot along, or to create tension.

I finished my equivocating and moved forward.  I have some ten thousand words to finish this first draft, and I had to decide.  The decision was simple, but one of need. My current space was all filled with first person point of view from Mike.  To finish the story, it has to be Mike who finishes telling the story.