My Take on Multiple POV

By Chester Campbell

My first published mystery series featured retired Air Force OSI Agent Greg McKenzie. I began writing Greg's story in first person from his point of view. I've stuck with that technique for five books now, and it seems to be working. Greg and his wife Jill are well loved by their fans. But when I decided to start a new series about another Nashville PI with a different sort of background, I chose to write in third person for a little variety.

Third person gives more freedom to explore the inner workings of characters other than the main protagonist. Actually, the first two McKenzie books had third person prologues, but those served to introduce the background for the plots. In the Sid Chance novels, a majority of the story is told from Sid's POV, but several chapters or parts of chapters come from the POV of Jaz LeMieux, his part-time associate, a wealthy ex-cop and successful businesswoman. There are also a few scenes from the viewpoint of the bad guys.

I've recently been working on revisions of the first three manuscripts I wrote back in the early nineties. They comprise a trilogy of post Cold War espionage tales. The main protagonist is Burke Hill, a disgraced former FBI agent who is summoned out of a monastic life as a nature photographer in the Great Smoky Mountains by a CIA agent friend from years before. At the time I was an avid Cold War spy story reader just winding up a career that involved non-fiction writing for newspapers, magazines, and other venues.

Those early books involved multiple points of view on a grand scale. I wasn't aware of any taboos regarding point of view, so I gave each character free reign to tell his part of the story. That's one of the primary changes I've encountered in revising the manuscripts. I try to stick to one POV per scene. On a few occasions I found it necessary to break a scene to allow a character her necessary moment in the sun.

Using multiple points of view gives a greater opportunity to mine tbe depths of character where many people are involved. In Beware the Jabberwock, the first book in the trilogy, a diverse group of characters is involved in carrying out a plot against a pair of world leaders. Looking at the situation from different viewpoints provides a greater understanding of the motivations involved. As long as it's clear whose head we are in, and the shifts aren't ping-pong style, I find it makes for a more interesting story.

On a few occasions, I find it helpful to cheat a bit. Such as a brief mention of something someone sees who isn't the POV character. If such things are done subtly, it won't be noticed and it can avoid the need for additional explanation. To me, rigid rules regarding point of view or any other facet of fiction writing are merely invitations to find ways of getting around them. A good story can be told with many different techniques. It's up to us to find the best way of doing it.

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In Search of a Murder

By Chester Campbell

I'm in the market for a plot. Not a plot of ground, but a plot for murder. I'm gearing up for my second Sid Chance mystery, and I need an exciting case to challenge his talents. It would be nice if I could look out my office window and find an inspiration for a good plot. But let's face it, I live in a boring neighborhood.

How nice it would be to live like my colleague Ben Small, out there in rattlesnake country, where deadly critters lie in wait for somebody to invite them in. Or maybe have a neighbor like the guy Beth Terrell wrote about who kept for pets such things as Komodo Dragons (or was it Kimono Dragons, no, that wold be Japanese).

I guess the worst I've seen out my writer's perch is young guys going down among the trees toward a creek that flows out of sight. I learned they had a nice setup with folding lawn chairs where they smoked pot. Some of the neighbors took offense and invited the cops to join the festivities. Unfortunately, I wasn't here to enjoy the proceedings. Needless to say, the party room was shut down.


Of course, Nashville has its share of homicides. It seems there's some sort of altercation on the news most every evening. I suppose I should be happy they don't take place  in my neighborhood, but it would be so convenient to stand by my window, or venture outside if necessary, and watch the cops do their thing. They'd have to import a body from elsewhere, since I wouldn't want any neighbor to be the guy decorated with a garland of yellow crime scene tape.

In today's paper we have a couple of interesting court cases to consider. One involves a woman charged with strangling her husband. He had filed for divorce and gotten an order of protection to keep her away from his house, where he lived with their three kids. That's a bit of a switch from the usual wife getting an order to keep an abusive husband at bay. She admitted going to the house and taking the kids away but claimed she didn't see her husband. A housekeeper saw him, dead in the bedroom closet.

I could go with the serial killer angle. We have one of those back in the news. He's a long-haul truck driver who's accused of murdering several women at truck stops around the country. While awaiting trial on one that occurred at a truck stop near downtown Nashville, the prosecutors say he arranged with a fellow jail mate to kill a few witnesses. He recently got thirty years for that, but his lawyers are asking for a new trial on the basis of court errors. They didn't mention the errors he made in setting up the proposed killings.

So many murders to consider, so little time before I have to get to work on the book. Ah, the perils of a mystery writer. I may just have to flip a coin. Heads he goes after a serial killer, tails he tracks down a husband choker. I'm not too thrilled by either of those, however. The excitement in the neighborhood will just have to pick up and lead to a totally new concept. Now that would be intriguing.

The Many Faces of Sid Chance

By Chester Campbell

Well, maybe not all that many faces, but you get the idea. Characters are created from a smorgasbord of features that emanate from many sources. In the case of Sid Chance, the protagonist in The Surest Poison, I pulled him together from lots of different places.

The first thing you notice about a person is outward appearance, mainly size. For Sid, think of my Murderous Musings colleague, Ben Small. If you’ve ever met him, Ben is a large presence. I modeled Sid’s size after him. Sid is six-foot-six and wears a number 16 shoe (it’s featured in the story). But unlike Ben, I gave him a black beard. He had been living like a hermit in the backwoods the past three years, and hermits don’t fool with shaving.

Sid’s love of the outdoors, along with his homemade cabin on the hillside, came from my younger son, Mark. Like Sid, Mark served in Army Special Forces, though his service was post-Vietnam. That’s where his early-rising habit originated. Though nearly twenty years out of the Army, Mark (like Sid) still gets up in the wee hours. The cabin idea and its location came from Mark. Several years ago he bought 85 acres of hillside in Smith County, east of Nashville. He hauled the materials, including plywood sheets and 40-pound sacks of Quikrete, up the hill on his back, with some help from his two sons. Mark’s cabin is not as commodious as Sid’s, but he only stays there a few days at a time.

Sid’s background as a National Park ranger came courtesy of Tom Howell, a former ranger at the Gulf Islands National Seashore at Perdido Key, FL. I interviewed Howell while working on the second Greg McKenzie mystery, Designed to Kill. He gave me a basic understanding of what the job entails.

I didn’t do anything with it in this book, but the fact that Sid’s mother insisted he learn to play the piano may be followed up later. That part of his character came from my own experience. My mother’s sister was a piano teacher and organist at our church. My older brother and I got mandatory piano lessons as youngsters. Playing in recitals was my worst nightmare. Aunt Rosie wanted to teach me organ, but I was getting into my teens and didn’t want to bother with that. Of course, now I dearly wish I had. I haven’t played in ages, though I have an electronic keyboard (I gave my piano to my younger daughter).

The final character trait I had to consider was the way Sid thinks. He isn’t totally me, but a lot of his philosophy on life mirrors my own. I suspect most writers imbue their protagonists with much of their own views. Of course, a lot of his thoughts and actions reflect the way I would like to be. I am not so bold or confrontational. I would not likely have made a good cop.

My characters are pulled together from lots of people I know or know about. They’re not close enough for anybody to sue me (I hope), but they come across as real people because they’re a hodgepodge of actual people.

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

By Chester Campbell

I’ve always heard that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I’ve decided to flatter that upstart browser known as Mozilla Firefox. Have you read about the marketing campaign they’re doing for the launch of Firefox 3.5 today? It’s billed as “the fastest Firefox ever” and they’re out to knock our socks off worldwide with a buzz event called “Shiretoko Shock.”


My answer is a campaign for the re-launch of The Surest Poison 1.0 (that’s number one in the Sid Chance series). There’s no doubt that it’s the fastest-paced Chance mystery yet. My buzz event is called “Awe Shocks” (pronounced “aw shucks”).

Borrowing again from Firefox, here’s what you and all my other millions of fans need to do. Tomorrow, on July 1, set your alarm for 1:00 p.m., which corresponds to The Surest Poison 1.0. If you use the 24-hour clock, that’s 1300. At precisely 1:00 p.m. CDT, the Awe Shocks will start in Nashville and move westward around the world. When it’s 1:00 p.m. in your local time zone, you’ll tweet away on Twitter, fiddle around on Facebook, space out on MySpace, blog, flog, whatever, making sure all mankind knows about that great new Nashville mystery.

When the round robin makes its way across the globe and back to Nashville 24 hours later, we’ll touch off the Super Awesome Shock. At precisely 1:00 p.m. CDT on Thursday, July 2, everybody around the world will inundate the web with blogs and tweets and posts and whatever else you can think of to cap off this massive rally. Don’t forget, it all happens at:

Thursday, July 2—
• 2:00 PM Eastern (New York)
• 12:00 PM Mountain (Denver)
• 11:00 AM Pacific (San Francisco)
• 8:00 AM Hawaii (Honolulu)
• 7:00 PM London
• 10:00 PM Moscow

Friday, July 3—
• 3:00 AM Tokyo

Get ready to howl!

Incidentally, if you haven’t seen the Firefox plan, click here.