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that it's necessary for the readers to see them directly. So when Quinn lets go, we're still in his POV (he's feeling disgust), but in the next paragraph we're in Kelly's POV (she's unprepared for him to drop her). Notice that since these two don't yet know each other's names, the narrator doesn't use them in thoughts—when we're in Quinn's POV he refers to "the woman" and when we're in Kelly's POV she refers to "a wet and disgusted looking man."

Another example of switching from one POV to another within a scene is the selection we read from Penny McCusker's Noah and the Stork, on page 115. Mc-Cusker starts off the scene in the heroine's head, but at the crucial moment when the hero comes face-to-face with his daughter, realizing for the first time that he has a child, she switches smoothly to his thoughts instead.

Using More Than One Character's Point of View

The use of more than one POV in a book—whether the POV switches between scenes or within a single scene—should not be an afterthought. If a character's thoughts are to be included anywhere in the story, you shouldn't wait until late in the book to begin; you should be fairly consistent from the start. It isn't necessary to assign an equal number of pages to each POV or to alternate POV with each scene, but the second POV shouldn't disappear for so long that the readers forget about it.

When using more than one POV in a book, always make the POV of the most important character more prominent. In a story shared between two points of view, the division should not be fifty-fifty. One (most often the heroine's) should dominate.

Dangers of Using More Than One Point of View

Frequently, when relaying more than one character's POV' it's tempting to tell the readers too much, too soon. If the main characters have no secrets from

the readers, it's harder to keep up the suspense level, particularly if the conflict isn't an exceptionally strong one. If the hero thinks the heroine is the girl of his dreams, and the heroine thinks the hero is Mr. Right, and the readers know that up front, what's going to keep them reading?

Another danger of using multiple points of view is the tendency to use the characters' thoughts as a substitute for actual verbal confrontation between the characters. It's tempting to show the heroine's angry thoughts about the hero, then switch to show the hero's angry thoughts about the heroine. But it's much more effective to make the two of them actually fight their battles face-to-face.

Secondary Characters' Points of View

Relating a scene from the POV of a secondary character should be done with great caution. Long books with strong subplots can benefit from an occasional scene told from a secondary character's POV, but shorter books don't allow much room for such a luxury.

The rule of thumb, with rare exceptions, is that if a main character is present, then the POV should be that of the main character. So if the heroine is talking to her masseuse, readers get the heroine's thoughts, not the masseuse's. Use the secondary character's POV only if that person is the most important character in the scene.

In Roxanne Rustand's long contemporary A Montana Family, Lily is an important secondary character—the hero's daughter, who's fourteen and facing a health crisis that has her scared out of her mind:

Ninety-six pounds. Fear washed through Lily as she stepped off the scale on Monday morning before school. A month ago she'd been a hundred-five. Two weeks ago, on the day she'd started school here, she'd been a hundred.

Her knees shaking, she braced her hands on the bathroom sink and stared at the hollows of her cheeks and the violet shadows under her eyes. Most of the other kids in middle school grew a lot at her age. She'd seen those changes in neighborhood friends back home.

Mom got thin before she died.

Lily sank onto the edge of the bathtub and wrapped her arms around her waist. The scared feeling was in her stomach all the time now, making her want to scream and run, or hide under the blankets and not even get out of bed each morning.

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