Hi dear friends,

This is nearly the last post for our challenge!

Today’s topic is “writes a great male POV”.

Well aside male writers I have one author that I admire and pushed on you countless times who writes fantastic male POV: Suanne Laqueur!

Be it Erik in “The Man I love” or Jav and Alex in “An Exaltation of Larks” or even Geno and Finch in “A Charm of Finches “her main characters are male! And she writes them like a champ!

Here is what Suanne wrote in her interview about this:

You often write from a male POV. Is it more difficult or easier than writing from a female POV? Do you ask your husband if it feels right? You also wrote sex scenes between men how did you prepare? Read lots of books? Interview some gay friends? Watch some hot MM movie? And how do you know if what you wrote is what happens between two men? You know sometimes we read sex scenes and we are like ”Really?” “Three times in a row?” or “Are they contortionists” or “Is it technically feasible?”. So yes: what’s the trick?

I have no idea why writing from the male POV comes so much easier to me. When I decided to make TMIL from Erik’s perspective, I wasn’t sure I could do it. But within weeks, I’d found his voice and it felt extremely instinctive and natural and right to me. Same with Alex and Jav and Stef and Geno, while writing from Daisy’s or Val’s or Deane’s POV took a lot more conscious effort. I like my female characters, but they are always more challenging for me. I have no idea why.

In the same way, I started writing Jav and Stef together with the same trepidation—“I’m not going to get this right, I have no idea what I’m doing or what they’re doing, this is going to be awful.” I read MM books and noticed a lot of them tend to fetishize the sex, which I wanted to avoid. I didn’t want to stuff them into behavior because “that’s what a gay man would do.” First of all, these were two bisexual men and second, I knew them better than anyone else. I just needed to let them be themselves.

So I guess that’s the trick: know your characters well enough that no matter the situation or scenario you come up with, you know how they’re going to act and react.

If you want to read the whole interview you can find it here: https://bewareofthereader.com/lavish-interview-suanne-laqueur/

Now do tell me who are your authors writing great male POV?

Thanks for reading and happy Friday!

Sophie