The importance of POV character in romance

Evelyn_Alexie

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It's a novel idea (no pun intended) for a romance.
Trouble is, I'm going to imprint on whoever's POV I'm in. I'm going to be rooting for them, wanting them to win. Sounds like they're not going to win, in this scenario.

Simon Brett and other mystery authors have written murder mysteries from the POV of the murderer. They result in conflicted readers, who both want the murderer to be caught and at the same time want him to get away. Sometimes that's the effect you want to achieve.
 

Jan74

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I think if I was expecting a romance I wouldn't want the entire pov from the antagonist, but I wouldn't mind if it was both the protagonist and the antagonist pov. I'm not sure if it would be a put off to others though. I do like having multiple pov in novels.
 

Marian Perera

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Do you feel like you would be missing something? There are some supernatural circumstances that allow the villain to share all the details of the story, so things like cuddly moments between the hero and heroine are still present.

Does the villain report on all their thoughts and emotions as well? Because I don't just want cuddly moments in a romance, I want to experience the emotional buildup to these and to feel how much they matter to the people involved.

This is an interesting thought! My goal was to make the villain so awful (he crosses a checklist of moral event horizons) that readers turn the pages to see if he gets what's coming to him.

That's a great goal. However, I can't say it's the primary reason romance readers would pick up a romance, to see if a really evil villain will be punished in the end. So I'd go with your gut feeling - this is a fantasy.
 

Fallen

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It can depend on which publisher you target too. There's niche markets inside romance. I'm a dark romance (psych thriller) author; I'm also an editor with Dreamspinner Press with both their DSP lines (romance) and DSPP (no core romance needed). What I write wouldn't be published with DSP or DSPP because of the dark content.

However, I've not read a romance from an antagonist's pov, but I have read a romance element in a psych thriller etc from the antagonist's pov, one beautiful one where the antagonist (a psychopath) falls in love and drives his lover (a sociopath) insane and into prison. It all comes down to the tags you use. The last story, although it has a core romance theme, is still a psych thriller, and tagged as such on Amazon. The MC in that was cruel, devious, an... *expletive deleted*, where I wanted to get inside the novel and gleefully throttle him a number of times, but the counter-play from the sociopath made it a train wreck I couldn't stop reading, and I needed to see how on earth they'd get an HEA.

Other novels from the antagonist's pov is Lord Foul's Bane, where the antagonist is a rapist. That one is a firm no for me: there's no way you can make a rapist sympathetic, I'm sorry. My thoughts are with the victim.

Again, it comes down to the tags you give the novel.

There are multiple dark romance readers out there who would read an antagonist's pov when it comes to a romance element for dark romance, but I think they'd be expecting the antagonist to be the one conflicted or challenged by a lover, not so much as a watcher of another couple (unless it's a dark love triangle!). But again... tags. It will all depend on the tags. Don't run with the romance if the (dark) fantasy is the main draw. E.g., the psych/sociopath romance was tagged as a pure (gay) psychological thriller. No mention of romance.
 
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LJD

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It's hard for me to imagine that being satisfying as a romance. When I read a romance, I expect the inner thoughts and feelings of at least one of the characters who is falling in love. I want to see how they interact when no one else is around. So to me, it sounds more like fantasy, or fantasy with romantic elements.