Friday, June 09, 2006

Need More Tension

So...

Donald Maass has this exercise about adding tension to every page of your WIP. Half of me thought "Yeah, baby. Great idea." and the other half thought, "EVERY page?!? That's not humanly possible! ACK!"

Okay maybe the part that went "ACK!" was a little bigger than the other part...

Still, I was using his idea (though I wasn't using random pages as he suggests -- I was using my first chapter that I am NEVER going to finish polishing) and realized that I have this one scene at the beginning where my heroine is cleaning up after a fall into the pond... and there's NO tension for something like three pages.

Unacceptable.

I pounded my head on the breakfast bar a few times hoping that some tension ideas would tumble out my ears but had no luck. Until I realized that I could change the POV. To the hero's. Who is outside with her family. Who breaks in while she's in the shower.

There's some tension.

And this leads me to a question for you... but first, and explanation of why I'm asking. I'm finding that I'm writing more and more of this story from the male POV. For some reason it's just working better that way. The scenes are fresher and more humorous... and apparently, more tense ala Maass.

So, is it kosher (in your opinion) to write half or more of a romance from the male POV? Do you think that will fly with an editor? A reader?

C'mon, give me your $0.02. You know you want to!

And, yes, it's still raining here, never mind what the Weather Pixie says. She and I are going to have words at some point (half of the past few days she's shown sunshine... maybe it's the liquid kind).

3 comments:

Judy said...

Personally, I like stories that are at least partly in the male POV (you should know that from my WIPs :-)). I'm sure there are some out there, but none jump to mind right away... at least not romance. I'll try to find some titles (when I have time).

Ceri Hebert said...

I don't think I've ever written anything strickly in the heroine's pov. I like them in both and I'll continue to write them in both unless I write something in 1st person.

I seem to remember the old Harlequins only had heroine's pov.

MJFredrick said...

I don't know how you couldn't write a romance without the male POV....I love being in a guy's head!