POV and Secrets.

anthorn

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Long time dead here.

So I've got a character who is going to marry the King of the country in order to strengthen ties between the two nations. The woman isn't nobility or royalty, just has a lot of money, which is what counts in the end, right.

In truth, she's been hired by a resistance group who want to overthrow the King and various other orders which still hold to archaic laws. I.E: Magic is illegal, anyone who practices lesser magic like fortune telling or stuff what would fall under what we know as illusionists and pulling bunnies from hats. They promise to protect her from her father's debtors and find her sister that was kidnapped years earlier. All she has to do is kill the King on their wedding night.

Of course this is supposed to be a secret. From the honour guard and from the potential readers. All they know is she's getting married. The only other person who knows the truth is her Myeshi bodyguard.

Trouble is. I don't want this to seem like it comes out of left field plot twist land. I also want it to be a surprise. And I don't think it's reasonable to be in her POV and not reference what she's going to do. Because she's not stupid and she's never killed before, I doubt it would be realistic for her to skirt the issue by simply wondering if she could do it.

I also fear that she might appear as a woman without agency, which she isn't.

So I have two theories.

Be overt about what she is doing and keep her as a P.O.V.

Lose her as a P.O.V and use conversations with her bodyguard and her honour guards to subtly raise doubts. Using simple questions like asking a soldier if he'd killed someone and how does he live with himself afterwards. Her not being in a hurry to get there. Add interludes to slowly reveal relationship between her and her sister, the meeting with the resistance. (without mention the whole killing thing) Then in Book 2 give her a P.O.V and explore her motives.
 
That is a tricky one. I've had similar issues, and I hate the idea of dropping a POV just for the mechanics of hiding a secret... but I do agree if she is behind this plan then there is no good way to keep it out of sight without pulling one over on the reader.

Could you change her circumstances at all? Make it so she needs to take this job, but is deeply conflicted about if she really wants to do it? This would give you the opportunity for her to fixate on the conflict itself (the "how will I live with this" bit), without necessarily mentioning what it is she is deciding. You'd have to drop hints of course, but whenever she got too close to revealing it in inner dialogue she could fixate on that inner struggle. I don't know your story, so there might be no way to do it like this.

Could it be possible that she doesn't know what they are ultimately planning to do? She is just one pawn from several in play, and she knows there is some plot but not what the endgame will be?

Tough one... good luck with it. If the story calls for dropping the POV, I think that would be preferable to constantly hiding it through vague references and the pronoun-game... that would piss me off as a reader.
 
Hmm. Well, she knows that they want her to kill the King, and she sees it as a good trade off for her own safety and some help in finding her sister. Doesn't know their endgame.

I suppose I could do inner conflict with her having to marry a man 20 years her senior, through leaving her culture, which would be contradicted by showing how she'd been shunned already by that culture. But then again, I would think murdering your first person would be more concerning than could you get married to him. And even if I did change that I could add those concerns through conversation.

I'm thinking it might be best to keep her POV back until the second book where she takes a more active part, finding herself as Queen in a country that has never had a Queen before.
 
I think sometimes writers get too hung up on the idea of a POV character keeping secrets from the reader, because they think it'll result in a clever plot twist.

Conflict is a great way to engage a reader and raise questions. Think about the beginning of Dune by Frank Herbert - by sharing Dr Yueh's thoughts with us, it set up an amazing amount of conflict and tension. Would the story really have had the same effect if Dr Yueh's later actions had been thrown on us as a "plot twist"?
 
Make her an unreliable narrator - nervous about the wedding, especially the wedding night, talking about what she has to face etc. If the King is portrayed as a sort-of bad guy, you could fool the reader into thinking it's the loss of virginity/the physical rape she knows she'll have to endure in a loveless union. Maybe even make us think she has so much more to lose - would she lose her own magic once her virginity was gone? She kills him, the reader thinks he knows why from her pov, then the guard rushes in and says "have you killed him yet? We've got to go" Big surprise that was her job all along. Misdirection can be wonderful...
 
I agree with Brian. Either have her a POV character and let the reader know that she’s going to kill the king, or tell the story from someone else’s POV. However, I would go with the first, because, as Brian says, it creates considerable drama. A friend of mine, who writes short stories, was once asked for a tip. His reply was “You don’t need a twist in a short story”. I think this is the same. If you go with the second option, and she isn’t the point of view, we can’t see what’s going on inside her head, and so most of her activity will look normal for the circumstances and undramatic. One option might be for some sympathetic character (a maid?) to notice that she is very nervous and try to calm her, not realising the cause of the nervousness.
 
If the readers know what she intends to do, and they sympathise with her (with or without sympathising with the plan itself), there's enormous scope for ramping up the tension. For example:
  • will she be found out?
  • will she be betrayed?
  • will she let something slip?
    • if so, has it been noticed?
      • will the person who has noticed give her away?
      • can they keep a secret?
      • does their silence come at a price?
  • is she worrying that she might be no more than an expendable pawn in a wider plan?
  • is the plan against her fundamental principles, so that her planned betrayal is gnawing at her?
None of the above are possible if the reader is kept in the dark.
 
If the readers know what she intends to do, and they sympathise with her (with or without sympathising with the plan itself), there's enormous scope for ramping up the tension. For example:
  • will she be found out?
  • will she be betrayed?
  • will she let something slip?
    • if so, has it been noticed?
      • will the person who has noticed give her away?
      • can they keep a secret?
      • does their silence come at a price?
  • is she worrying that she might be no more than an expendable pawn in a wider plan?
  • is the plan against her fundamental principles, so that her planned betrayal is gnawing at her?
None of the above are possible if the reader is kept in the dark.

Hmm. True. Because part of her story is falling in love with a member of the honour guard, who also has a dislike for the King and the way he's taking slow control of the order he belongs to. He was selected for the honour guard because he's a war hero, though the rumour is that he butchered a bunch of children. I think it might be worth having it more than one sided.

As well, from what I have planned for her in Book 2 and 3, in regards to her being manipulated into killing a Goddess, I think it would be worth maybe introducing the inner conflict earlier.

I think maybe, but keep it as a slow reveal. Show the doubt about the beginning, let the reader think it's about the wedding, but when it gets closer to the point, reveal the true reason...
 
The question might be does she want to kill the king out side of being hired or is being hired her only motive for the king's death.
If she has no motive of her own, here is what I would suggest.
Show her being hired to do something, but have her conflicted about accomplishing the fact. In fact she could be trying to work it our so that the conspirators will find her sister first and then she can bow out of the deal and if everything works out, she's married to a king who can protect her from them.
That way you can keep it secret yet leave very evident clues as to what she was hired for; but that she has no intent to follow through.

You could even have her fall in love with the king.
Then find something terrible that he has done and that drives her over the edge.
In fact have the conspirators tell her they know who kidnapped the sister and they can't do anything until the deed is done on her side.

This way the real twist could be that the King kidnapped her sister and that's why she kills him.
 
Does she have to know that killing the king is the deal? What if she agrees to help the rebels, without knowing / expecting it will be something as serious as murder. Maybe the guard knows all along, etc. The other thing that springs to mind when magic is involved is the ol' mind wipe...

I know they've been done before, but as a reader I find it easier to go along with the twist if I see that the character is as surprised as I am.

Whatever you go with, I like the idea - loaded with conflict!
 

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