Mirrors of Ice: Sterling’s POV

I can’t tell you how excited I am for today’s post! So, we’re continuing the series of posts to celebrate Mirrors of Ice releasing. I’ve teased it in the previous posts, and for Stalks of Gold I did two posts talking about writing dual POVs, so I wanted to do another POV post, which worked out because the reason Mirrors of Ice exists is because of Sterling’s POV. So, spoilers ahead for Mirrors of Ice if you haven’t read it yet!

I have always been fascinated by the mirror shard in Kai’s eye in The Snow Queen. Mirrors of Ice really just grew out of the idea of what is it like inside of Kai’s head while he has the mirror shard in his eye?

In The Snow Queen, the mirror shard changes Kai so that he becomes cruel and aggressive. When he looks at anything, all he can see are the ugly aspects rather than any good, with the exception of snowflakes being the only beautiful thing he can see. I really like that and made sure to use that in the curse on Sterling. But there was something else that really intrigued me, the idea since it’s a mirror shard, what if it meant the person was like a mirror as well?

I definitely wanted to use the concept of Sterling being unable to see any good in the world, but I really wanted to dive into the mirror aspect of the curse. I have wanted to explore what it would be like to have a character who, unwillingly, reflects the people around him. I fell in love with the idea of a curse that not only meant Sterling could only see the bad things in the world, but also reflected those things as well. A character who takes on the characteristics of the people around him, but with a focus on the negative traits.

A character whose personality is buried beneath this magic that forces him to see things a certain way, to act a certain way. A character who can’t be certain anything he thinks or does is coming from him or from his curse. While under the curse, it’s nearly impossible for him to know who he is. As Besart described it, “I don’t know where the curse ends and where Sterling begins.”

Of course, as a concept, I loved this idea. Even further, I loved the idea that this character is not aware of what he is doing, and for the most part, neither are the people around him. Which meant it had to subtle at least at first. He couldn’t just parrot everything anyone said, but I also needed to make sure the reader understood what was going on.

I knew writing Sterling’s POV was going to be difficult, and I was right. But, I still maintain it was worth it. Of course, I can say that now. When I was in the middle of drafting and revising, I was ready to tear my hair out trying to nail Sterling’s character and POV down.

Do you know how hard it is to write description when the character is not allowed to say a single nice thing about anything he’s looking at? And I hate writing description in the first place, so that just made it harder!

I knew I needed to set up some guidelines for myself for when I wrote Sterling’s scenes. First of all, while he’s under the curse, he was not allowed to view anything as beautiful or good with the exception of Eirwen’s magic. He was allowed to have some neutral thoughts, like saying he didn’t hate something was pretty much him declaring his love.

The next guideline was Sterling wasn’t allowed to feel pain, exhaustion, or hunger normally. If he did feel something it had to be distant and numbed. Since the curse wasn’t just the mirror shard, but also involved snow and ice magic, that aspect played in there as well as with Sterling’s physical appearance of blue eyes, ashy-brown hair, practically colorless skin tone, and being cold to the touch.

Another guideline was Sterling had to say things other people were thinking, whether he says them as the other person was thinking them was flexible, but Sterling did have to repeat thoughts. Generally, what he had to say made the situation worse, thanks to the curse. I couldn’t just let him repeat nice things people thought, they had to be negative or create negativity. That’s what the italics were, if you noticed, those phrases were the thoughts Sterling picked up on. There are a couple of occasions where he doesn’t repeat the words or a similar phrase, but that’s because in those situations his negative emotions or his willpower were able overpower that aspect. If he isn’t paying attention, the words fall out of his mouth.

The final guideline for myself was that Sterling had to mirror gestures, but again it couldn’t be every gesture or else everyone around him would have noticed years ago. This was mostly because I wanted that fact the thing powering the curse is a mirror shard. I wanted that to do more than just affect the way he saw the world, but to affect every facet of who he was and things he said and did.

Also, one of the most important parts of Sterling’s POV was how all of this affected him. Since he was cursed as a child, I also wanted to explore how the curse, especially one like this, would affect Sterling’s personality since he’s been under it for his most formative years. I wanted to make sure I captured the internal conflict of what it meant for Sterling to not have control over who he was.

As difficult as it was to manage, I really did love the challenge of writing Sterling’s POV. Mirrors of Ice started with me wanting to explore a mirror shard curse and writing from the perspective of someone with specific mirror-like characteristics. Of course, if I ever want to do something like this again—Who am I, kidding? I will probably be doing something like this again because I can’t help myself. I just love coming up with ways to make my life more difficult!

I’ll always have a special place in my heart for Sterling, his curse, and writing his stone-cold POV. I hope you enjoyed hearing how I went about handling his POV, and I hope you enjoyed reading his POV in Mirrors of Ice. I’ll see you all next time!