Writing in THE OTHER's voice?

HALLIE EPHRON: I just finished reading a book that I absolutely loved. My daughter recommended NOTHING TO SEE HERE, and I was hooked from word one. 

It’s written from the point of view of a woman who agrees to take care of two little kids (children of a senator) who inconveniently literally catch fire when they’re upset. 

Sounds preposterous, and it’s only one of many preposterous things in an altogether lovely book. Page after page, it’s funny, bizarre, moving, and weirdly believable in equal parts. And sui generis in an intriguing way.

The biggest surprise came after I’d finished the book and wanted to remember the author’s name so I could check out her other books. Only turns out the author, Kevin Wilson, is NOT A HER.

I was flabbergasted. Because the voice of the main character is so compelling and the relationships (women friends, mother/daughter, children/nanny…) among the characters is so believable. I would not have believed that a guy could pull it off. (Shame on me!) 

So my question today for the REDS: What’s the POV character you’ve written who’s the most NOT YOU. How was it easy or difficult, and how could you tell if you’d gotten it right?

JENN McKINLAY: Oh, I LOVED that book. I listened to it on audio and the narrator Marin Ireland was superb. 

I write romcoms and occasionally do it in the male perspective. WAIT FOR IT is from the perspective of a man who’s had a stroke, making it particularly challenging. He’s probably been my biggest challenge to date. 

I think living with three men for over two decades helped me hone the masculine voice but it definitely required me to think and communicate differently.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: The most not-me…hmm. Maybe Henry Calloway, main character Tessa’s stay-at-home husband in ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS. 

He’s infinitely optimistic, totally flexible, looks at the world through rose-colored glasses–maybe a bit too much. He loves their kids, completely, but he’s definitely Fun Dad to Tessa’s stricter (but still loving) parenting. And there's that pesky can’t-keep-a-job thing. But that’s fine, Tessa’s income will keep them going, it’s ALL FINE.

I had to put myself in his head to see the world as optimistically as he does–no one is out to harm anyone. And everything will be fine. (It was fun to be there for a bit.) 

I talked to my audiobook reader today, in fact, and she described him perfectly. So now I’m–HA HA–optimistic that I got it right. 

RHYS BOWEN: I have written several POV characters who were male: the whole Constable Evans series, Hugo in The Tuscan Child and Ben from In Farleigh Field. I didn’t find any of these particularly hard to do.

I’ve never tried writing from the antagonist POV, but I do it for myself as an exercise when I want to get into his head and feel his motivation. 

I suppose my biggest challenge is the one I’ve just completed in which I write a whole book in another writer’s style, in the POV of a Scottish policeman. Yes, that was not easy!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hmm, that's a hard one. I've written primary male characters from the beginning. I've written characters with different sexual orientations. I've written little bits from murderers' viewpoints, ugh, so they were certainly nothing like me. I don't honestly think about this too much because if I did I suspect it would be paralyzing.

But it occurs to me that I wrote a short story called The Case of the Speckled Trout for a Sherlock Holmes anthology (you and Hank are also in that one, Hallie!) in which the first person narrator is a mouthy teenaged girl called Sherry Watson. It is the only thing I've ever written in first person, and my characters are not normally sarcastic, so she didn't feel like me at all. It was also a blast to write and I absolutely loved it. 

LUCY BURDETTE: I’ve been thinking hard about this because most of my books are first person with female narrators. Except for the villain snippets in UNSAFE HAVEN–despicable character!

But Debs reminded me of my favorite short story, “The Itinerary”, which was published in the MWA anthology curated by Nelson DeMille. The narrator was Detective Jack Meigs, who appeared in the advice column mysteries. His wife had died of a long illness and he’d been sent to Key West on an unwanted vacation. 

I adored writing from his third person POV! Crabby, middle-aged, grieving detective who absolutely hated Key West–so much fun! 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Half my books are always in Russ Van Alstyne's voice, and I used to joke it was easy writing believable men: just imagine what a woman would say and put about 1/4 of that in.

I have more difficulty writing out of age - especially young people from today. Knowing my 24-year-old daughter, it just seems as if those years, which I well remember in my own life, are genuinely different now. So the most "other" character I've ever voiced was a young-twenties former Marine (I know, once a Marine, always...) who was also a double amputee. That was a stretch.

My current WIP has a main character who's a 22 year old recent college grad, and I'm bouncing a LOT off Virginia to make sure I'm getting it right. If I tackle young people again, I'm going to set it in the eighties. I know what that's like!

HALLIE: My entire first series was written from the viewpoint of a male neuropsychologist (Dr. Peter Zak). 

I had the great good fortune of working with a lovely co-author who IS a male neuropsychologist, but that didn't keep me from getting it wrong through many many revisions until someone in my writing group pointed out that every time Dr. Zak was in conflict in another character, he'd APOLOGIZE his way out of it. (Which is what *I* do when I'm threatened.)

Once I saw it I could fix it. But we do have those pesky blind spots.

This got me thinking of all the others whose authors who seem (on the surface to be) performing some kind of magic act, narrating from the viewpoint of a character who is clearly NOT THEM. 

Think: Alan Rradley in THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE (narrating as Flavia de Luce, an 11-year-old amateur sleuth). Or Leonie Swann in THREE BAGS FULL (narrating as anthropomorphic sheep). It's magic.

What have you read and enjoyed that was written by an author who (on the surface, at least) seems very much UNLIKE their narrator?