Hi! You recently mentioned how “some” of the POVs are Ty’s (and Ash’s) which made me wonder about the “access” we’ll have to his mind, and the reason you’ve said Ty and Ash. Meaning - you kept saying the main three are Kit, Ty and Dru, but I wonder if Ty is not as central in the sense that we get to see less of his POVs than the other two.
I do want to say - I remember you’ve discussing your reluctance with writing his POVs in TDA, because he’s a neurodivergent character, and you wanted to do him justice and not presume to write him as you do the other characters (sorry if it’s not accurate, it’s been a few years 😅). Anyway, it’s understandable and very respectful either way.. and when you said that about his POVs I wondered if that’s the reason.
Either way, I’m EAGER to get to dive into his mind, and I hope it’ll be more than a quick dip 🤓
Thanks Cassie. I can’t tell you how excited I am this is finally happening. Life right not isn’t amazing, to say the least… so it means a lot to have something good waiting around the corner. 🤍 U.
I'm so glad the book is something to look forward to. Lord knows we can all use that. :)
I've been thinking about all the discussion about this, specifically about POVs, and the questions I continue to get about who are the main characters, and I wondered: Is part of the anxiety about this because these three books have no clear protagonist?
All the other trilogies/series have a specific protagonist: Clary, Tessa, Emma, Cordelia. (TEC splits between Magnus and Alec.) The Wicked Powers has essentially four main characters, but I have never called them "four protagonists" and maybe I should.
Essentially, a protagonist is the one whose goals and choices drive the story. By this measure, all four of these characters are protagonists. Each has an equally important arc, plot-wise and emotionally. Each has a very specific destiny. [spoiler] As the prophecy we learned about in Better in Black is translated, they are the only people mentioned in it, and all of them are required for the prophecy to work. [/spoiler]
So there are actually four protagonists or main characters, and those are Kit, Ty, Dru and Ash. Yes, we see mostly Dru and Kit's POV in book 1. That doesn't mean that's the way the POVs will play out going forward; we have a lot more ground to cover! It's just how it turned out I needed to write this book.
I think essentially writers and readers come at the concept of POV from different directions. It sometimes makes me feel like I'm having difficulty translating what it's like from this side of things, but I'll try.
When you're anticipating a book but it isn't going to be out for a while, I think often there's a tendency to try to predict how it will go based on the limited information you have. Will my favorite character have enough presence in the story to make me happy? So you look to things like -- who are the POV characters? Who's on the cover or depicted in the promotional art? What can you infer from the snippets or from the jacket copy?
And unfortunately, this is not a very good way to predict what a book is going to be like or how you are going to feel about it! All the snippets and images and little bits of info like POVs or chapter titles, all added up, are a very tiny piece of a 180,000+ word book. And it's okay, of course, to anticipate and try to guess and get excited and get worried! That anticipating is a lot of the fun of waiting for a thing! But -- things like POV just in the end don't tell you very much about what a book is like, or how it's going to feel.
For writers, choice of POV is a storytelling tool. You use the tool in the way that seems best for the story. It's not about how much you like a character or whether they are central. I stayed away from a lot of Will's POV in Clockwork Angel because he had a secret I didn't want to share; regardless, I think of Will as one of the most important characters in the entire Shadowhunter series, not just TID. I ended up staying out of Ty's head a lot in LKOF because 1) he has a secret, too! and 2) there are things I want the reader to know about him that he can't know or be aware of and there is no way to convey that from his POV. We have to see it from outside because we know what he doesn't know. And 3) It's about the romance, too. I wanted there to be things Kit didn't know about Ty's feelings, and I wanted the reader not to know them either — not yet.
In TLKoF the bulk of the POVs are Dru and Kit's. But — and I know we may disagree — I don't believe POV factors that much into how important or central a character is. I do not think Ty is less of a main character in book 1 because we do not get his POV as often. I would have said that after James and Cordelia, Matthew was the most important character in The Last Hours and we never saw his POV at all.
And yes, as a neurotypical person, it is of concern to me how I write and portray Ty. I used multiple sensitivity readers to read for Ty in this book, a mix of people I know and people who do this professionally. I think people imagine that sensitivity readers are only necessary for scenes from Ty's point of view, but most of the readers' notes were on the sections not from his POV, because we learn about Ty, how he thinks and why he does things, from his behavior and his dialogue. We hear much more from him about his thoughts, feelings, emotions, habits, and the way he does things than we ever learned about him in TDA, and we learn the majority of them in scenes not from his POV.
Some people have asked if being worried about writing Ty correctly made writing his POV less positive or fun, but no, it didn't! I really love writing Ty because he has a lot of qualities I love; I'm just also worried about it. So far in LPOH his POV shows up the same amount as everyone else's and I'm enjoying it a lot.
If at the end of TLKOF you feel like you didn't get enough Ty POV and you want more, that's good — because you will get more, and at that point, there will actually be specific mysteries that you want addressed and they will be. Structurally, it didn't make sense to spend a lot of time in Ty (or Ash's) heads in LKOF, so when we do see their thoughts in LPOH, I think it's more enjoyable because we are getting the answer to what they were feeling during events we actually observed, and getting them earlier would be like reading the last page of a mystery first. (I know you're out there, people who do that! For shame! :) It's certainly more enjoyable for me as a writer to be able to hold some mystery back for maximum fun, and in the end we all do write the kind of stories we ourselves like to read and to create: we can't really do otherwise.
I'm off to Bookcon this week so not too around but I'll be back next week with some fun snippets from the Bookcon sampler! In the meantime, you have this giant novel of an answer to read.
I'm sorry if things haven't been great lately; I think it's been a pretty hard time for a lot of people and I often wonder what we'd all do without imaginary worlds to get lost in.
