Choosing the Writer's Viewpoint

I was asked recently by an author whether she thought it would be better for her to write in first person or third person.  She reasoned that she wrote better in third person, but wanted to challenge herself.  So it occurred to me that other people may be contemplating the same things.

There are advantages to writing either way, as well as disadvantages. It depends mainly on the range of mobility that you are looking for as a writer, and how personal you want your writing to be to the reader.

For first person, you pretty much get nailed down to one person's point of view for the entire story. That isn't to say that you can't still talk about other characters or hint to things that the character doesn't know about, but you're limited to how much information you can give your audience. On the opposite side of the spectrum, some authors like the fact that their character can't reveal everything to the audience. It can make for a much more exciting or personal experience, especially if you get really good at capturing a character's personality. Their thoughts--humor, sarcasm, irritation--all become your greatest assets in the first person view.

Here's how I used one of my own characters in first person. This first person is from a male point of view:

[ Whatever reaction she was expecting from me, it was obviously much different than the one that she received. She stared at me in a way that I don't think I've ever been looked at by anyone in my entire life. I couldn't begin to explain it, but it was almost as if she seemed to suddenly discard everything that she wanted to say. She leaned towards me slightly, and my eyes narrowed in confusion.


"We're here," Erin called, stopping the jeep and jumping out of the seat. He caught sight of Ezra before she turned to get out of the jeep, and for an instant held the most curious expression on his own face. ]

In third person, you can give your audience clues about your characters that the characters themselves may not know. You also have a wider range to explore the emotions of other characters, as well as give a better understanding of the environment in some cases.

Here's a clip from a third person fic that I discarded some time back:

[ A pair of gentle blue eyes looked through a room full of slain men.  The twelve-year old girl looked up at her fratello, bracing herself for a scolding.  When Jose looked down at his charge, her face suddenly pointed toward the floor again.  For an instant, he could see a slight chestnut highlighted in her beautiful brown hair, illuminated by a ray of sunlight.  He wanted to reach out and stroke her soft locks, but he knew better than to let his emotions get the better of him.

“Henrietta,” he said, with a sigh of frustration.

She looked up at him.  She was already trembling.  Her sad, scared eyes pierced his heart in an instant.  He shifted his gaze to a man lying in a pool of blood nearby.

“What happened?” he asked, regaining his train of thought.  It was like déjà vu.  Two years ago an almost identical incident had happened.  She had done so well too after that incident had happened.

“Jose,” Henrietta started uncertainly.

He looked back over at her.  She was giving him nervous glances, exchanged with deep sadness.  Jose, confused, with individual thoughts and questions chasing themselves across his brain, remained silent.

“Please,” she breathed almost painfully.  His attention was totally hers now.

“Please, can we go? You’re arm, Jose.  It’s bleeding.  Please!  Can we go and get it treated now?”

Startled by her words, Jose’s eyes shifted over her face, examining every inch of it, then slowly drifted down to his arm.  How he had managed to forget, he wasn’t quite sure, but just as she said, there was blood dripping from his fingers tips.  He could vaguely recall being hit in the arm, but somehow he could not make himself concerned about it.  His gaze drifted back up and settled, looking into her eyes. ]

As you can see, you can get about the same range of emotion, but with more than one character. It's all about how mobile you want to be and where you want that emotion and action to come from.

The Detail Whore

So many writers starting out, have been in a place where you wanted your work to be so amazing, so real, that you stuffed it full with as many details and metaphorical abstract words as humanly possible.  So much so, in fact, that you feel like you should be a philosopher in order to read the damn thing.  That method of writing has so far worked for one person and one person only... JRR Tolkien.

You see, we try so hard for our writing to be perfect that we start inserting crazy long words in the place of other words that are better suited for the sentence, just so that the context has more volume.  But what we fail to see is that, that volume is sometimes 90% nonsense.

The idea that "more detail is better" is a myth.  Detail can be one of the most useful and powerful assets to a writer if used correctly.  If used incorrectly, it makes him/her out to be a naive, pompous ass who has an enormous ego to stroke.

Like the sentence: "A blackened sky did null but gully attention to a homicidal half-circle."

Yes, someone actually used that exact wording in a sentence. What the hell does that even mean?  It's code for this: "The night sky didn't draw attention to a half-circle of killers."

The point is, do readers really want to work so hard to decipher each sentence?  I know I wouldn't.

But another tactic that many of the same authors use is hiding of essential details.  These are things to clue us in at what we're actually looking at.  Saying an eye cries, and then refusing to tell us which of the ten people you're talking about is confusing as hell.  "She" is another word that can be equally misused.  When you're talking about a group of people and don't explain which one is actually a boy, a girl, or a kid, and then say "she cried," your reader is going to stare at the page and scratch his head, asking himself if he missed something.

In the end, it all comes down to asking yourself a few simple questions:

1. If I you left this alone for a while and came back to it six months later when you've forgotten the bulk of the story, would you still be able to understand what was going on?  If the answer is no, your story writing style isn't working.

2. Do you talk like you write?
Almost everyone can admit that they don't write the same way they talk, which means that the writer's job to create a believable environment is that much harder.  Writing something tangible isn't the same as writing something that pukes details.

3. Can I visualize it in my head?
A good general guideline to follow is that stories are good when you can visualize them, but they aren't getting hooked up on the details.  In other words, A) the context makes sense, and B) it's written well enough so that you can immediately see yourself in the environment with the people.

Here's a wonderful example of good writing (p. 8 from Memoirs of a Geisha):

"In our little fishing village of Yoroido, I lived in what I called a 'tipsy house.'  It stood near a cliff where the wind off the ocean was always blowing.  As a child it seemed to me as if the ocean had caught a terrible cold, because it was always wheezing and there would be spells when it let out a huge sneeze--which is to say there was a burst of wind with a tremendous spray."

little fishing village = we already know approximately what type of location we are in.  We know what kind of village it is: small and reliant on fishing, which already gives us a distinct feel.

It stood near a cliff where the wind off the ocean was always blowing = We now know the location of the house, what kind of landscape is around it, and the normal weather patterns of the area.

Don't forget to have fun.  If you enjoy the story that you're writing, it will reflect later when it's read.  So, to sum it up, when using details, use them wisely and proudly, but sparingly.

Writing a Script - From The classroom

For anyone who's ever written a script for an education or professional environment, you know that changes are doomed to happen.  You are always going to be doomed to edit your piece.  And after everyone's opinions and all your frustrations, where you end up going may not be even close to the initial direction, theme, or characters you started with.

Where do you draw the line between a good solid edit that's complete and much better than the initial attempt, and a failed attempt that's lost all your personality and is simply a product of everyone else's ideas?

At what point do you just throw your hands up in the air and scream "I give up already!" ?

I'm still trying to find the balance myself, but after spending semester after semester tearing apart stories and scripts, I've learned that everything has a limit.  At some point, even if your script isn't perfect, you will be happy with the result.  It will make sense to you.  That's when I call mine done.  Because any edits after that are simply tiny details.  When you reach that point, nail it down and call it done.  There will be nothing more you can do to it without destroying the good things that you've already done to it.  And above all else, make sure you are always okay with the direction that you are going.  Make sure it makes sense in your own head, not just in someone else's.  And never use someone else's idea without thinking through how it would work with and what it would do to your story.

The only other piece of advice I have for script writing and writing in general is to make the dialogue real.  Many times, what we say in writing is not the same as what we say when we talk.  This is especially true when you're actually speaking to someone else.  And it's because the other person gives you input.  They take you in directions that you aren't expecting to go.  Do yourself a favor and get an good audio recorder.  Stick it in your pocket and go have a conversation with someone.  Then go stick it in a friend's pocket and have them do the same.  If you're a girl, stick it in a guy friend or boyfriend's pocket (if they're okay with it), and have them talk to their friends.  You will be amazed at all the different ways that people actually talk.  Speech patterns will change from person to person, depending on who is talking and who is included in the conversation.

What do you want your characters to be like?  What is their personality?  Speech patterns should reflect a character's personality.  Remember, the way that your character talks says something about them.  Do they talk trash? Are they a potty mouth? Do they cuss when they get mad?  Do they never cuss at all?  And what effects their moods.

These are all things you need to think about.  Trust me, they definitely help me.

Fanfiction Editor Hell

So I'm sure not many people know this about me, but I'm a Beta Reader (Editor) for Fanfiction.net.  It's not really a big deal as pretty much anyone qualifies to be an editor.  Most of the people I edit for seem to be pretty satisfied though, and my client list keeps growing larger with every week.  That being the case, I feel slightly qualified to tell you that you should believe me when I say that not everyone is meant to be a writer.  I've had the privilege of beta reading for at least two or three truly excellent authors.  They purely use my help to get feedback and smooth out some basic grammatical errors.  I've got no problem with that.  That's what I'm here for.

What truly irritates me is when I'm correcting every other word or every second sentence.  Worse still is when the author asks me about how they should make a character, or to describe what kind of skills someone has.  I am not the author.  Don't hand me a basic idea and then ask me to make it for you, that's not what I do.  Another great policy to keep is that if you reread your fic and it doesn't make any sense, it won't make any sense to me either.  If you just want to write something and hand it off to someone else to make it magically beautiful, when you get it back it's going to look something like this:

Pretty scary right?  All of the red is stuff that I wrote or edited.  The black is what made it from the original.  Unfortunately, this writer is only one of many that has had editing issues.

Another massive beef that I have is when fanfiction writers try to incorporate youtube videos or music.

I know from experience that everyone at some point wants everyone to know what they're listening to when they write. Don't burden your audience.  If you like the music, describe how it makes you feel in your fanfiction.  Make your characters act to it.  To make us listen to stuff or watch stuff is the easy way out.  Not to mention, very few people actually like the same kinds of music.  No one is inspired by the same stuff.  Get over it.

Trust me, you'll thank me when it's all over...

Unfinished Stories

This little story beginning is part of a large series of openings that haven't really gotten past the initial inspiration.  This one is a little bigger than a one-liner.  Be aware, it's not finished.  But here it is.  Enjoy:

Sand

Sand was seeping endlessly into the room just after I felt a sharp knock to the back of my head.  In an instant the scene vanished.  My worries of needing to get out…  All of it was gone.

In my dreams it was a scene that I once recalled.  When I was around five, I fell in a well.  I had broken my legs so I could only sit there and stare miserably as the water poured down on me.  It soaked me to the skin.  I screamed for hours, feeling the cold penetrate every bone and muscle in my body.  And when they found me, I was half dead already.

I opened my eyes to a brightly lit room.  I studied the gold banisters, remembering a time when I was once a princess.  I had a kingdom at my command once.  Its people were beautiful and loyal, and I was loved.  Now, I was just a hired soldier to fight the private wars of businessmen who were too self-important to understand the meaning of peace, to understand the meaning of anything other than greed.  But then I was bound to their greed, all at once pure and perfectly tainted.  There is no way out of the devil’s bargain now.  I am one of them. 

There was a time once, when my husband would have told me to have faith in the people.  Everything would be all right just as long as we believed in the good of humanity.  What a load of crap.  He, who was also once the Prince of Staign, was the type of man who breathed peace, spoke amnesty, and practiced humble dignity, treading lightly on matters that licked his feet with flames and people who cast down his name with swords in their hands.

“So, they sent down a mercenary, huh?”

The voice that spoke to me was heavy and bold, trained with years of questioning and torturing countless others before me.  I wasn’t the first to reach him, not by far, and probably wouldn’t be the last either.

Tips For the Writer

Over the years I have found myself writing tons of fictional stories, fan fiction, non-fiction, and memoirs.  And while I still have a long way to go before publishing any of my works in print, there are some things that I've learned along the way.  I have a number of writers that I edit for currently, and I see them making the same mistakes that I used to make back when I first started.  So this is for everyone who is still trying to become the writer they want to be:

1. "I must protect my baby!"

It's a common practice among new writers to want to protect, polish, and edit their story until they're blue in the face.  While I think all new writers should take a good amount of time to edit your story, don't protect it so much that you are too afraid to show it to anyone.  Often others have useful advice that will make your story that much better.  More importantly, if you hide your story from everyone, what are you really accomplishing?  Writers are part of the most influential parts of the world today, right next to filmmakers and graphic designers.  I exist in the category of the first two.  Don't be afraid to take a stand... whether it's just to say, "I love fantasy stories," "love isn't all bad," "or the world sucks, let's change it."

2. "I don't wanna edit!"

Editing is one of the hardest processes for any author.  Though spelling and grammar are important factors, editing is also about deciding what stays, what goes, and what needs more work.  The best thing anyone can do is write a chapter, let it sit, write something else, and then come back to it.  Often you will start to see problems in your chapters that you never noticed before.  Chances are, you won't remember nearly as much as you think you did, so you'll be looking at it with a more critical eye.  Ask yourself: "Does it bore me to read this?"  If the answer is 'yes,' then what makes it boring?  What makes you want to keep reading?  What are you really trying to say?  Is your writing actually propelling you towards the end goal of the story, or are we just walking around with nothing to do for twenty pages?

Most importantly, let the shit go.  It's your baby, believe me, I understand.  Now take an axe to it and make it better.  We don't need to know about every step that your character takes in real time.  Treat it like a movie.  If you watched this on a screen, would you really care about knowing every tiny detail about the wall in front of you?  Probably not.  Cut the crap that you don't need, and then continue on your merry way.

3. "I have to plan everything first!"

Another common thing I've seen even good writers do it try to plan out every little detail of their writing.  While this guarantees that you have a path for your story, you'll want to rush the less interesting parts because you know something more interesting is coming up.  This is not always a bad thing, as readers get easily bored too, but it can easily kill the suspense in your story if you aren't careful.  Romance writers are especially guilty of this.  They want so bad for the characters to get together that they don't leave time for a relationship to fully develop before they throw them together.  The result makes the situation awkward and cheesy.  The reader knows that no normal human being falls in love that fast, and as a result, they don't connect your desire for characters to be happy with the chemistry between the two.  Simply said, there wasn't enough building up to the moment.

Another problem with planning everything is that, the most important thing should always be that writing is fun for you.  When you plan everything out, it become a chore, and it's not about the journey, but simply about the goals that get reached.

4. "I have to finish this!"

A mistake I've seen from others in the past, is that they think, no matter what, every story has to be finished, and they simply have to stick with it until they get the motivation to see it through.

Anyone who writes regularly have an average of ten to twenty random one-page writings for every finished piece.  The amount also doubles or triples if the story is a longer format like a novel.  Why?  Because, no one is always in the same mood all the time.  Sometimes you may want to write a sappy love story, sometimes an action flick, or even maybe something about your own life.  Don't attempt to control yourself.  While finishing a story should be the end goal, write as many half-finished pieces of junk as you feel you need to before you're back in the mood to write the one that's really important to you.  Who knows, you might even get back to the junkie stories later.

5. "Can't get this out right!"

Frustrating as it may be, all writers have their off days.  Sometimes an idea or situation is so complicated in a story that you aren't quite sure how to approach it.  You keep editing and editing, but you still hate it.

My advice it to just scrap it.  Sometimes, it's just a paragraph, and other times it's an entire chapter, maybe even two chapters.  Don't be afraid to write the crap over a different way.  If you're just starting a story that you're really interested in, you can try a number of different things:

• Change what view you're telling from.  If you're telling from your perspective about the character, try telling the story as the character, or vice versa.
• Change the sequence of events.  If your story has a long intro before you get to the action, try using flashbacks.  If you still hate it, try starting at the end and then going back to the beginning to explain why things ended up the way they did.
• Experiment.  

6. "Ah!  My favorite word!  Insert here!"

Every writer has a favorite word or punctuation.  These are usually words, phrases, or lavish punctuations that you find several times in your writing over a short period of time.  In my experience, these have included, but were not limited to: semicolons(There is virtually no need for them.  For lack of a better description... Semicolons are a retarded cousin of the comma.  You'll hardly ever need it.), and words like "suddenly," "immediately," "then," "though," "however," "throughout," "as"(used at the beginning of a sentence), "because," and "love."

While all these words are perfectly acceptable in moderation, be aware of when you start reading the same word or sentence phrase over and over.  Nothing kills an interesting story quite like lack of originality.

7. "I'm a girl, so I must write from a girl's view..."

When writing first person characters, I thought for the longest time that I shouldn't write a male character from the same view.  After all, I'm a girl.  What do I know about the way a guy thinks?  But recently, I decided to give it a try.  After sending the result to my boyfriend, he said I had a knack for writing male characters.  Who knew?

The moral or my story here is that you should never discount yourself, just because you're not a certain gender or of a certain background.  Proceed with care and observe and research the kind of character you will be portraying because you are different for the person they will be.  Even then, it may not always be a success, but never totally write anything off as impossible.

8. "Damn you English and you're grammar rules!"

Rules of English can be difficult, and the way the U.S. school system teaches it is far from perfect.  To be a writer, it's in your best interest to know the rules of English grammar as well as you can.  Do keep in mind, however, that once you know the rules, you're free to break them.  Lots of professional writers break the rules of sentence structure all the time, and as a result, their writing can become better.  Being a good writer is learning when to break the rules to add emphasis and effect, and when to follow them.

At the same time, there are rules that should not be broken.  Quotations, punctuations, possessives, adjective, verbs, nouns, and pronouns should never be messed with.  They are the difference between someone saying, "You are my best friend" and someone thinking: Your mine bestest friend?

9. The Perfect Title

I don't think there is such a thing as the perfect title, but if you can make someone believe in it, no one will think otherwise.  Think about the content.  What is your story really about?  Alice in Wonderland probably wouldn't have been perceived the same way if it was called A Girl From Britain.

In the end, you just have to decide what the first thing people see should be.  In the end, the title itself tells a story.  Be creative.  And lastly, try not to title your story until the end.  You'll be left with a lot more freedom.

10. "I want to switch perspectives..."

From time to time if you write something in first person, you will find yourself limited to express the feelings of the other characters.  But being a good writer is about utilizing that handicapped to your advantage.  And though you may sometimes feel compelled to, do not suddenly switch from first person to third person, or even second person.  You will without a doubt confuse the living hell out of your readers.  And I'm not just talking from one chapter to the next.  I've also encountered people who wanted to switch point of views halfway through.  Resist this urge.  If you feel you absolutely must tell something from another point of view, or tell some extra back story, then make a new chapter and dedicate it only to that purpose.  Or better yet, write a second version of your story from a completely different perspective.  Just don't be an idiot and change halfway through because you're lazy.  Or the writing fairy will come after you and beat you.

11. MUST KEEP WRITING!!! RAAAAH!

Contrary to popular belief that longer is better, the only people who can really pull off a 30 - 40 page chapter are J.K. Rowling and maybe Ilona Andrews.  So trust me when I tell you, it's unfortunate when normal writers or fan fiction writers decide to write as much or longer.  People get a sense of accomplishment from finishing a chapter, even if it's just a small one.  If you drag out a chapter to enormous lengths, not only do your readers get a little impatient (because they want to take a break from it), but unless they're an extremely fast reader, you're cheating them from the success of finishing a chapter.  In extreme cases, some people have looked at chapters that were too long and just gave up on the story because they decided that it would take too long.  A good chapter length is between about 10 - 20 pages.  That way you aren't given a new chapter every second time you turn the page, but you don't have to wait an hour for the next one either.

That's about all.  I hope this was a little helpful to someone.