A Wicked Perspective

My wife and I spent an incredible evening in Appleton WI that included going to see the musical production of Wicked.

I, like Dorothy, was completely blown away.

Without giving up too much of the story, in case you haven’t seen the play or read the book, it’s the Wizard of Oz story told from the Wicked Witch’s point of view.

It also made me think about perspective. So much of what we ‘see’ in a book is filtered through the eyes of the character whose perspective we are in at the time. While the same events happen, the way they are viewed and experienced, along with the internal dialogue of the character, can completely change the scene and the story.

I sometimes find in my own writing that, even though I know what’s going to happen, just changing the perspective character can bring out nuances and surprising insights.

In my romances I usually stay in the hero’s or heroine’s viewpoint, so there are really only two options. I just finished writing a high fantasy, with quite a large and diverse ensemble cast. Chapter to chapter I used the character I felt told the story best at that time. Some of my beta readers suggested I might have used too many different points of view. I’m not sure I agree, but I do plan on going back in and looking at each scene through different character’s eyes.

The book is titled Amulet of the Fallen God, and is hopefully coming yet this year. It’s a bit of a divergence from what I’ve published before, and there’s still lots of work to do on it, so we will see.