Could you tell us how to do a guy's POV or a girl's POV? -- crystalcandel
The first thing I want to say is, you never want to have stereotypical characters.
With that being said, guys and girls do think differently.
I've read that men want to know HOW to fix a problem, while girls want to know WHY there is a problem.
Girls respond more on an emotional level, while guys respond more to physical touch. But don't forget that guys have emotions and feelings. Just because they don't always show it, doesn't mean they aren't feeling them on the inside.
I read this great article about writing a guy's POV on WritersDigest. Here's the link:
http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/writing-the-male-point-of-view
I encourage you to check it out.
Not many readers want to read a POV that is either girl crazy or boy crazy, where that's all the character seems to think about. We don't want to be in a player's head, thank you very much. These characters seem shallow, and you start to dread them. They're also the characters I've seen readers call awful names.
And we care about our characters, right? (If you don't, you need to get a new main character AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.) We want readers to love our characters as much as we do.
Please, please, please, think about your target audience. We need role models in books. So if your target audience is 13-18, don't have a main character who's sixteen and promoting drinking, drugs, and smoking and acting as if it's the best thing in the world. Now if the story is about them recovering from an addiction then that is different.
We like to see ourselves in the heroes and heroines. Just think how many people started taking archery after the success of the Hunger Games.
When writing POV, whether it's from male or female, you have to know your characters like you're more than their best friend. (There will be a post about this soon.) You have to know how they see the world to describe how they see it. Are they an optimist or a pessimist? Are they serious or sarcastic? And really those are where your characters' voices come from.
Thanks for the question! I hope this helped!
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A Need to Write
Non-FictionA collection of writing tips, some of which I have discovered myself, or others that I have learned from Agents, Published Authors, Writers, Editors, and Publishers. Feel free to comment your writing questions! I'd love to do my best to answer them...
