Which POV

[NaughteeDragon]

I'm starting work on a new story. It's T/I Cuckquean. I'm trying to decide whose POV this story gets told from.

Fraternal twins Michael and Melissa bought out their uncle's catering business. Business is successful, they are happy, normal siblings that work closely together. Melissa is divorced and single. Michael is married to the company's bookkeeper, Evelyn.
Evelyn has a secret. She knows the twins are close, she suspects they may have once been intimate (yes, but many years ago and they immediately realized it was a mistake and built walls around it to protect their relationship and hide the truth). She is very interested in seeing them renew that physical relationship, she REALLY wants to watch them. She is also very ashamed of this, but not ashamed enough to not start pushing the twins back into places where renewing that relationship would be viable.

I prefer CQ stories where the spouses are aware of what's going on and pursuing the desire together. I don't intend for this to be a BDSM fetish story. I intend to write this in close 3rd person.

What POV would you use for this story?

 

[YmaOHyd]

Evelyn.

 

[SimonDoom]

Ask yourself a few questions before choosing the POV character. Whose story, primarily, will it be? What's the most TITILLATING, sexually stimulating angle?

I'd pick Melissa. Here's why. Evelyn is the one with the secret, but if you pick her, the secret will be out right away. You also have the problem, if you choose Evelyn, that she will have to witness everything that happens between the twins to narrate it.

If you choose Melissa, then you start by describing her feelings about her relationship with the husband. Then you can narrate how Evelyn is acting oddly around her, until she finally divulges her secret wish. Then it becomes a matter of Melissa being convinced and then Michael being convinced by his wife and by his sister.

Or perhaps you prefer to tell Michael's story and the kinky weirdness of how both his sister and his wife are ganging up on him to convince him to do this. He has to have some resistance, of course.

Which character do you find most INTERESTING?

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Why limit yourself to one? There isn't any reason the narrative can't shift amongst the characters? Why write in 3rd close? Just move amongst whichever character makes the most sense for that scene.

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

Evelyn if you’re playing up the cuckquean kink

 

[NaughteeDragon]

Why limit yourself to one? There isn't any reason the narrative can't shift amongst the characters? Why write in 3rd close? Just move amongst whichever character makes the most sense for that scene.

I'm trying to keep this story fairly short (15k-20k words) so I'd like to keep it to a single perspective. I have 2 novel-lengths I'm writing in rotating POV and I like it, but I need to focus occasionally.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Evelyn.

Gunna expand on this a bit because I think it's the obvious choice.

I'm assuming the secret Evelyn has that's referred to is that she has this cuckqueen kink and really wants to push her husband into an incestuous tryst with his twin. With the information you've given, Evelyn is the only character with a revealed goal and motivation. She's also going to have to be manipulative -- she's digging for other people's secrets, pushing them to break down barriers and walls -- and there's a chance she could come off quite nasty and villainous if the POV character is on the receiving end of the manipulation. By putting the audience in her head you can humanize that a bit. Leaven it with a touch of regret or shame or whatever. That makes the triumph a little better when it occurs.

I'm assuming, contra Simon's post, that nothing is happening between the twins without her making it happen. I'd think that what's most likely to happen is an Evelyn/Michael encounter where she goads him into doing Melissa-roleplay or something. And if that's the case, Melissa's right out.

If you tell the story as I've laid it out from Michael's POV, you kinda end up with this weird coincidence of his wife manipulating him into something he really wants to do anyway, and then it's Melissa who's getting ganged up on in ways that might not seem great from outside her head. This story to me feels like it has one Melissa/Michael encounter, and it's the culmination of Evelyn's efforts to make it occur.

I could be completely 100% totally wrong, because it's not my story. But that's what jumps out at me from the description in the OP.

 

[NaughteeDragon]

Ask yourself a few questions before choosing the POV character. Whose story, primarily, will it be? What's the most TITILLATING, sexually stimulating angle?

Which character do you find most INTERESTING?

This is the problem. All three have distinct advantages and disadvantages that I'm struggling with.

Michael- While he will notice the interactions between Melissa and Evelyn, he won't understand them until he gets hit in the head with it. That means all the tension of the early story is lost. When he does found out what's really going on, he is in favor of it, because he would like to go back to the simpler, more open relationship he Melissa had before "the incident." Once he finds out, he's the facilitator. It's a shorter, less complex story.

Evelyn- I get to play around with all of the guilt she's suffering for wanting it, encouraging it, and getting caught. However, as you said, it takes away all of the suspense because we know right away what she wants. It also means that I don't get to write the moment that the twins let the barriers fall. That's going to be a touching and tender moment. I want to write that scene.

Melissa- This is the most interesting. She is the one that is the primary target of Evelyn's "encouragement." She is the most resistant to the idea, because she built the highest walls after "the incident." This means she has the farthest to fall when they come down. She is also the one turns it on Evelyn. My concern is that her perspective makes Evelyn look like a conniving, manipulative bitch. It also limits what I can do with the "couple moments" between Michael and Evelyn.

The easy answer it so to write it in a rotating POV:
Act 1: Melissa- the rising tension and trying to understand what Evelyn is doing.
Act 2: Evelyn- she feels successful about pushing the twins together and gets to reflect on her "victory" until her husband discovers what she's doing and she has to justify herself just in time for him to pack a suitcase and go to Vegas with his sister.
Act 3: Michael- He finally understands what's been happening. He and his sister have to decide what to do and if they are going to tear down the wall.
Epilogue: Evelyn- what happens when her dreams(?) come true. Is she ready for the change that is about to crash land on her?

 

[YmaOHyd]

Evelyn- I get to play around with all of the guilt she's suffering for wanting it, encouraging it, and getting caught. However, as you said, it takes away all of the suspense because we know right away what she wants. It also means that I don't get to write the moment that the twins let the barriers fall. That's going to be a touching and tender moment. I want to write that scene.

I have two thoughts about this and again, it's not my story so they're not worth a bent penny.

First, I think the source of the suspense is going to be the howdunnit rather than the what was done. The fact that it's in I/T (and presumably the tags if anyone looks) tips the gaffe. So you might as well reveal that information up front and get the audience invested in the how.

Second, I think you can still write that scene, you're just doing it from the perspective of an observer. That might actually make the scene stronger, since it places both twins on the same plane. If the reader is in Michael's head they're distanced from Melissa; if they're in Melissa's they're distanced from Michael. You'd just need to find a way to put Evelyn in the room when it happens.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Evelyn- I get to play around with all of the guilt she's suffering for wanting it, encouraging it, and getting caught. However, as you said, it takes away all of the suspense because we know right away what she wants.

If you didn't write it from Evelyn's perspective, how long do you think it would take for readers to figure it out?

I'll give my standard caution around plot twists: a lot of authors fall into the trap of trying to demonstrate their cleverness via a plot twist, without asking whether the story actually needs or benefits from that cleverness. Keeping the audience from figuring out the twist early often requires withholding information in a way that constrains the storytelling to the detriment of the story.

For example, I read one story where the last-minute twist was that this sexually adventurous character is leading a kind of double life. It would have been really interesting to explore throughout the story how they reconciled those two worlds, how the one affects the other etc., but the author couldn't do that without giving the secret away, and IMHO the characterisation suffered for that.

 

[NoJo]

If you didn't write it from Evelyn's perspective, how long do you think it would take for readers to figure it out?

I'll give my standard caution around plot twists: a lot of authors fall into the trap of trying to demonstrate their cleverness via a plot twist, without asking whether the story actually needs or benefits from that cleverness. Keeping the audience from figuring out the twist early often requires withholding information in a way that constrains the storytelling to the detriment of the story.

That's a really good point -- there's an intellectual engagement in a "mystery" story which works against the more visceral and emotional side of writing erotica (or porn). My one attempt at this was therefore posted in the Non-erotic category.

 

[Britva415]

There seem to be multiple secrets in this scenario. Some of them don't have to be kept from the reader from the start.

I just finished re-reading Dune and found that I somehow had not remembered that Dr. Yueh's betrayal was never kept from the reader. It was revealed practically on page 1 and revisited in many separate scenes across more than a hundred pages before finally being perpetrated.

You just have to decide whether the story is about the keeping and the discovery of Evelyn's secret, or if that's just a side detail to the story about one of the other secrets.

The story can't be about everything. Well, I suppose it could, but that would be harder to write and harder to enjoy reading. Pick the main theme and let everything else unobtrusively serve that. Sometimes one just has to decide.

If this story were going to be about one thing, what would it be? If it were going to be one character's story, whose? If there were to be one conflict, which?

 

[NaughteeDragon]

If you didn't write it from Evelyn's perspective, how long do you think it would take for readers to figure it out?

I’m not looking to do it as a plot twist, but the idea of Melissa puzzling out what Evelyn is u to is appealing. I think, though, I figured it out this morning.

I am going to do this from Evelyn’s perspective because I do want this to be seen as consensual and I do like CQ stories where the couple is exploring it together with the husband being initially reluctant. This won’t quite be that story, but it will explore some space that I think will be interesting.

I want to thank everyone for their very thoughtful comments and helping me to think through the issues.