I’ve been working on my novel with renewed vigor. After a couple inspiring conversations (and a big phone bill) with a friend and kindred spirit, I’ve passed a few vexing speed bumps. Some were in the plot, some in character, but the stickiest was in point of view.
Originally I envisioned the story in first-person, told as kind of a memoir. But the more I wrote, the more interesting other characters besides my protagonist became. I found myself wanting to tell their stories, too, not just because they were interesting but because it would probably make for a richer story.
One of the best and most recently fleshed-out characters is my protagonist’s “love interest.” As I’ve developed the plot, he’s become quite pivotal to it. It soon became clear that scenes from his point of view would be useful and fun.
To my surprise, however, I found myself balking. At first I thought it was because I didn’t have confidence in my ability to write in a man’s voice. As a reader, I feel most men who try to write in a woman’s voice fail miserably and vice versa. It’s just hard to do. (Though I hear Wally Lamb does it eerily well.)
Then I realized that when I imagined telling parts of the story from our hero’s perspective, it sounded too much like I was writing a romance.
Genre romances are generally (but not always) told by the hero and heroine. They spend the entire book trying to get together. My hero and heroine do as well, though they are unaware of it. So then, I thought, maybe I am writing a romance? This bugged me, not because I have anything against romances but because the heart of this story (so to speak) is about her, not them. I didn’t want to inadvertently give it the wrong form.
And yet, their relationship is important. In fact, love itself is crucial to my story, not to mention to me as a writer and reader. The novels I enjoy most have some kind of love story in them.
Finally I realized that the love in the story is like love in real life. Its simultaneously a subplot and the greatest plot ever told. It’s both the rock foundation and the shining thread of gold that weaves through it.
Finding this out took a great load off my mind. I’m not writing a romance, but do I want my story to be romantic? No… I want it to be devastatingly romantic. And now I am free to make it so.
What does all this have to do with pajamas, you ask? I’ve just discovered that my hero is a former Air Force pararescueman. In military parlance, these Airmen are known as “PJs”; the J stands for “jumper” because they jump out of planes and helicopters midway through missions.
We hear a lot about the Marines, the Rangers, and other military special ops troops, but pararescumen are unsung heros. They are highly-trained medics who, when they’re not rapelling into combat zones to rescue downed pilots, also save earthquake victims and crashed astronauts. They have some of the toughest physical training offered by the military. Their motto is “That Others May Live.” Can’t get much more heroic than that.
I haven’t failed to notice the similarities between a certain someone and my fictional hero, a handsome Airman with medical training, beautiful blue eyes and a heart of gold. 1
Maybe I’ll give him brown eyes.
- Don’t worry, he has a dark side. [↩]