The Point Of View (POV) Is Important In Your Book Writing Business

While I was researching the romance writing industry and the book writing industry in general, I happened to chance on a 10 year old article about POVs or Point of View in romance stories. Having decided to write using multiple POVs, this old article got me interested.

By the time I’m writing this article, 2021 would end in just a few more months. The old article is dated April 27, 2010. There is an undeniable fact that a lot of time has passed in the book writing industry, but I think this article still holds a lot of water.

For one fact, this old article still ranks near the top of Google search results when you type the search keywords “is the male POV popular.” This is one indication that this article is well read by many people or is deemed by Google to be very relevant.

This online article is also safely nested in between articles which have list of “Male POV” books. It’s clear that that there are many women at least, who have a definite bias for a certain kind of POV.

In case of the articles which accompanied this old article on the top of Google’s search results, the male POV or the hero’s POV seems to be well liked also by readers. Given that women are the dominant book readers, I would assume that women also want the male POV.

The title of the online article is:

And the link to the online article is:

I was meaning only to read the short article and then read on to other online articles about the male POV. Lucky for me, the article was actually short that I was easily persuaded to read also the comments section which turned out to be quite long.

This was because there were a lot of people who gave out their comments regarding the article. In this case, I was lucky to find that the comment section was more enlightening than the article itself.

The commenters where all women who read and even write books who I believe are of the romance genre. From here on, when I say the word “women commenters,” I would mean the women who commented on our reference article.

There are approximately 68 women who commented on the article which is a good number. I strongly suggest that you read all the comments to get the feel of what is the developing theme of the comments section.

But in case you’re not interested in reading through all the comments because you’re unwilling to read a lot of comments from women you’re not familiar with or are just short in time to read, here’s what I can derive from the comments.

All except one of the 68 women commenters want to read about the male or heroes’ POV in the books that they read. Interestingly enough, they also wanted to know the POV of the other characters in the book.

According to most of the women commenters, they want mostly to know what the male hero is thinking about the heroine. This an interesting revelation for me since I know that most of the book readers today are women.

I am an author who writes using multiple POVs. I also read books written by women and men and have read books which are written with only one POV as well as multiple POVs. Lately, I have been increasingly reading books written from a one and two person POV.

This got me thinking, would I sell more books if I write using multiple POVs? If I were to base my strategies using the comments of the women commenters, then I should indeed be writing using a multiple POV style.

Based on the comments that I have read, most of these women commenters besides wanting to know what the hero is thinking, want also to see how the hero interacts with the heroine. In short, they want to see the banter between the characters in the book.

This is another plus for me, I think I am writing in the right direction when I learned that the women commenters are interested in multiple POVs. But now, I am further encouraged by the fact that women also wanted a good amount of dialogue in their books.

And based from the books I have been reading who are bestsellers, it seems that book readers who again are mostly composed of women, do indeed like books with a good amount of dialogue.

This is actually very good news for many authors who feel compelled to write only in one single POV. I have written a couple of short novels and novellas already. When I was just first starting out writing books, I heavily considered writing only using one POV.

This was because the first books I happen to have read where written using only one POV. Luckily for me, I found out that book readers also favored books written using multiple POVs. In a way, I dodged the bullet.

I know for a fact that many romance and suspense genre books are written using one POV only. If you were new in writing and wanted to write in the romance and suspense genre, you could be forgiven for thinking that you should strictly write using only one POV.

This is especially good news for male authors who felt compelled to write using only a strong women perspective because as I repeat again, women make up the vast majority of book readers.

This means that male authors can relax a bit and can even take a breather by being able to express other POVs besides the heroines. And this could be so much fun if you are an author whether or not you are male or female.

It’s like playing multiple roles in the same movie, where you get to say the best parts. You get to portray your supporting characters as more realistic characters complete with their thoughts.

I have strongly suggested that you read the comments in the article I am discussing about to get a good grasp on where the women commenters stand regarding the issue of POVs. But here’s another takeaway, there are many of them who are turned off by one POV books.

Their negative perception of one POV books can be so severe that they refuse to read these kinds of books. To them the main character of these one POV books are so unrealistic when only their views are portrayed.

And I can relate to this. As I have said, I have read many one POV books and they can be irritating at times. I mean, how many times can you read the word “I” before you start gagging? I know that the word “I” must be written, but still, it can be very repetitive.

Another thing I found funny regarding one POV books is that the scene in the book may require action than dialogue. I refuse to believe that the hero or heroine in the book for example would talk to himself while shooting at an enemy with his gun.

A line of the book might say: “I squeezed at the trigger and fired at them.” Do people do this in real life? What I mean is: “Does a person speak to himself regarding squeezing the trigger of his gun while they’re doing it?”

This is not only funny, but is also totally unrealistic. No one speaks to themselves like the characters of one POV books do. This must be the reason why there are even bestselling authors who have started to write using multiple POV even though they first started writing one POV books.

Another problem with one POV stories is that it is very constricting in terms of narrative. This is because events only happen during the POV of one character. A lot of things might be happening behind the scenes of the main protagonist of the book, but it is very hard to describe it in the book.

Many suspense and romance books are notorious for writing using only one POV. But let us say that the story is being written from the POV of a detective who’s chasing a serial killer. Readers might be interested in the interaction between the serial killer and their victims.

With the book only focused on the POV of the detective, the book fails to show the interaction between the serial killer and their victims. In a way, the make believe world of multiple POV books are more expansive than one POV books.

I have been discussing POVs without thinking if you, the reader of this article, is actually aware of the different POVs. Here are the four of them:

This is as I have mentioned, the “I” story. The main protagonist is telling the story from their perspective. The protagonist is a character in the story and is telling their experiences directly to the readers as the story progresses.

One example is Janet Evanovich’s character Stephanie Plum, where everything about the books revolve strictly around Stephanie Plum’s perspective. It’s undeniable that the Stephanie Plum books are bestsellers.

I however, feel that the readers of these books are missing out on the supporting characters of the books who are equally and may even be more interesting than Stephanie Plum herself. But based on the sales of these books, the one POV style works well with her writing.

This is the “You” story. This is not common in fiction writing, but is very common in the world of nonfiction writing. And the reason is very obvious, since most nonfiction writing is more instructional than narrative.

Self help nonfiction books for example would have sentences like: “You … this way because you’re …” As you can see, the second person point of view is like exploring the life and mind of the readers of these kinds of books.

The story this time is not about “I” or “You,” rather, it’s about “he” or “she.” This is the most common POV in commercial fiction. The narrator of the story is outside of the story and is relating the experiences of a character.

The story is still about the “he” or “she,” in the story, but the story narrator has full access to the thoughts and experiences of all the characters in the story. This kind of POV works especially well if many of the characters in the story play an equal if not more part in the story.

For example, James Patterson is known to write his Alex Cross novels this way. He not only writes about Alex Cross’ activities and thoughts in the books, but he also writes the activities and thoughts of the other characters in the books, even the villains.

Believe it or not, as shown by the comments of the women commenters, you can win or lose readers based solely on the way you write your POV. There is no one winning formula when it comes to POVs, although it seems that multiple POVs are the most preferred ones.

One that would surely lose you readership if you’re not careful, is when you constantly change your POV writing style. This is because as has been proven before, book readers have a definite preference for POV writing styles.

You can alienate your loyal book reader followers if you don’t give them a consistent POV style in your books. One example is bestselling author Lee Child who changed his POV writing style in writing his successive Jack Reacher book series.

There were readers of his books who are so observant in the way he writes his books that they actually voiced their positive and negative opinions when he changed his POV writing style.

One of the biggest thing you have to consider when writing your book is your POV writing style. This is especially true if you are writing a book series. Changing POV style mid book series can have a negative or positive effect on your book sales.

Though there are a number of authors who have found success using a single POV writing style, the most common and preferred POV writing style is the multiple POV writing style. This is evidenced by the comments of the women commenters in our reference article.

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