I Used to Hate Inventing Titles, but Now I Hate Viewpoints by Susan Van Kirk

 Ten years ago, I began writing the first novel in my first mystery series. The book was Three May Keep a Secret, and the series was the Endurance Mysteries. At the time, I’d never written a mystery, but I had an amazing editor, Lourdes Venard, who gave me great advice. When I asked her about breaking the rules of writing cozy mysteries, she suggested I not do it in a big way, but a small way might be all right. So, I did. Mind you, this was my first mystery-writing experience, and I’m not sure I knew what I was doing.

Three May Keep a Secret introduced my amateur sleuth, Grace Kimball, who had just retired from teaching at Endurance High School. What would she do in retirement? That was her central plot question as she contemplated her future life outside the classroom. In no time at all, she found herself in the middle of a murder, and she took over a job that put her in a precarious position. Along the way, the story picked up a detective, TJ Sweeney, who had been Grace’s former student and now good friend. Then I added a mysterious character, Jeff Maitlin, who moved to town to be the editor of the local newspaper. So now I had a trio of main characters who would continue throughout the series.

How, you might ask, did I break the rules—in a small way?

Most cozy mysteries have a protagonist who is the point-of-view (POV) character. The story is seen through her eyes. My book had a prologue, epilogue, and thirty chapters. While Grace is the POV character in most of the chapters, I added four chapters told through the eyes of TJ Sweeney, my detective. I had to. In those four chapters, Grace wasn’t present, and TJ had to respond to a murder, deliberate about it, and manage a situation where she had to try to save her friend, Grace. I also added two chapters told by a character named Ronda, who was an integral part of a subplot that twisted around the main plot. It all worked out in the end, but not exactly by following the one-POV rule. It was early days, and I was feeling my way around being a mystery writer.

The second book in the series, Marry in Haste, kept Grace as the POV character. And she was the

only POV character. By now, I’d figured out how to untangle a plot around multiple characters and still use only Grace’s viewpoint. However, this book had a second plot told through the diary of a woman who lived a hundred years earlier. Grace read her words, as did the reader, and Grace—and the reader—reacted. TJ and Jeff were still part of this story, but Grace was the POV character without any help from other viewpoints.

The third and fourth books in the series, Death Takes No Bribes and The Witch’s Child, were told only through Grace’s eyes. They concerned the murder of a high school principal, and the return of a woman for burial who caused a horrible stir in the town years earlier when she was convicted of a double murder. Witchcraft was involved. Grace was privy to everything that happened in these stories, so the reader lived both stories through her eyes. Ah, so nice to know I have everything tied together following the rules for a cozy POV.

Not quite so fast.

Spoiler Alert: At the end of The Witch’s Child, Jeff Maitlin proposes to Grace, and she says, “yes.” Now I have a conundrum. If they marry—and they plan to—should I now split the POV between two characters since they’ll be married, living together, and sharing all the murder plots?

And this is where I must take some time to sit back and think about the pros and cons of the decisions I must make about my POV characters. Can I have Grace and Jeff running a business together as a married couple but only tell a story from Grace’s point of view? I think not. On the other hand, if I break the next book into two viewpoints—Grace and Jeff—I’m going to have to decide how I’ll do that. New experience.

So, I think I will take the coward’s way out. The next book, which I’ll write this coming winter, will be mainly Grace’s point of view, and it will involve all the planning for the wedding and the decisions about running a bed-and-breakfast together. However, to slowly move my readers into a double-viewpoint story, I’ll have a few chapters told by Jeff Maitlin. If they both survive this plot and manage to marry, ha ha, then the following book will have two viewpoints. Of course, a wedding will allow for all kinds of possibilities when it comes to the bride and groom both showing up there in one piece. After all, it is a murder mystery.

As readers, do you prefer a mystery with one viewpoint, or can it have more?