​Point of View (POV) characters determine the focus of a story, which is why the decision shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s not just about who is telling the story but how they are the best character to convey information in an interesting and believable way.

Whether you decide to use first-person, third-person limited or omniscient POV, you will still have to decide which character is going to communicate the story to readers.

​But how?

There are various options when it comes to choosing the right Point of View (POV) for your romance story and they each have benefits and drawbacks.

• The Omniscient narrator was popular 100 years ago.
• First Person is favoured for a deep connection between the reader and main character.
• Limited Third Person is the most common in romance novels.

But why?

Regardless of the length or genre of a story, creating tension is essential to holding readers' attention.
But what is the best way to add more tension to a story?

Often I see aspiring authors withholding information in an effort to be vague and cryptic, which only serves to frustrate readers instead of engage them. Perhaps surprisingly, it is the act of proving information to the reader — be it in the right place and quantity — that makes them curious enough to continue reading.
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The whole point of storytelling is to share tales and you need people to read the whole thing in order to get your point and fully enjoy what you’ve created, but not even having a best-selling book provides this guarantee. Data collected by Kobo from more than 21m users, showed that readers were keener to finish Casey Kelleher’s self-published thriller Rotten to the Core than many award-winning and best-selling novels.

The purpose of these exercises is to explore how it feels to write using Third Person Limited Point of View (POV).
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This POV option restricts you to one character’s heart and mind at a time, which gives readers time to engage deeply with that character’s desires and struggles. 

We are all familiar with being so engrossed in a story that we can’t put it down: the “I’ll just read one more page before bed time” scenario.

Tension is the critical element that keeps readers expectant regardless of the genre, place in the story, or whether a scene is action-packed or reflective. Read on to find out how to increase uncertainty and eek it out for as long as possible, to keep readers on the edge of their seats in your stories.