ICRS–A Few Thoughts
Another good night’s sleep, and I might be recovered from my whirlwind trip to Atlanta for the 2007 CBA International Christian Retailers’ Show. But here is a description of the trip along with a few off-the-cuff thoughts on the experience.
Three of my coworkers (the new copy editor, the associate editor, and our permissions editor) converged at my house at 8:00 Tuesday morning. Just as they all arrived, the driver from Enterprise arrived to pick us up in the rental car. After twenty minutes at the Enterprise office, and filling up the monster gas tank in the brand-new (temporary tag still in the rear window, only 1,200 miles on it) white Dodge Charger, we hit the road and headed south. It was a very fun road trip and an opportunity to get to know my coworkers much better.
We arrived at the Westin hotel in downtown Atlanta around 2:00 p.m. (Eastern time–Nashville is on Central time), though had to make a loop around a couple of blocks to find the entrance. We couldn’t check in, but they valet-parked the car and held our luggage for us. We only had to wait a couple of minutes for the charter bus serving as a shuttle to take us the mile or so through downtown, past Olympic Centennial Park to the Georgia World Congress Center–right in the heart of where the Olympic events took place. This is a HUGE convention center–and while we were there, at least two or three other conferences were taking place in other buildings.
Our company’s booth was at the extreme far end of the floor from the entrance (got lots of exercise). We met our publisher and she walked us around to some of our competitors’ booths and showed us some of the things they’re doing editorially and artistically with their books. I did run into a friend from ACFW, Kim Sawyer, while we were walking around, but didn’t get to really see anyone else I knew, as they were all there Monday and Tuesday morning.
After wandering around and seeing the sights for a little while, we went and stood out in the extreme heat and humidity waiting for a bus to take us back to the hotel. When we got checked in, the associate editor and I had been put in a room on the 54th floor! I knew it was a tall building, but I didn’t realize just how tall—a whopping 70 floors. Melinda read in the folder of materials in our room that it’s the tallest hotel building in “the Americas.” We had a nice view from our room (but discovered the next morning we could still hear the traffic from the streets below).
That evening, none of us knowing Atlanta at all, we stopped at the concierge desk and asked for recommendations for a place within walking distance where we could eat for under about $25-30. He called around a few places, all of which were packed with an hour or more wait time. He finally found one that could seat us “immediately.” So we rushed up the block to Azio. There were ten or fifteen people sitting there waiting to be seated, but because of our wonderful concierge, we were immediately taken back to a table. It was really loud, but the food (and cocktail) was great. My bill, including the 18% gratuity (for splitting into separate checks) was only $26.
After dinner, we sat in the hotel’s bar area and chatted with the publisher, VP, marketing folks, and a few folks from our corporate office for a while. I was so exhausted (because I never sleep well the night before traveling) that when they all dispersed to either go to bed or to go meet up with some other friends in another hotel, I decided to go to bed.
After a fitful night’s sleep (I don’t sleep well away from home, either) and Starbucks and a muffin for breakfast, we loaded up on the bus and headed over to the show. Not much was going on Wednesday morning. Most of the book signings were lesser-known nonfiction or children’s book authors. I wasn’t interested in wandering through all of the “Jesus junk” aisles (more than half the floor), so I found a bench and just sat and people-watched for about thirty to forty-five minutes.
At twelve-thirty, we departed for the hotel to pick up our luggage and car and got back on the road. The heavens immediately opened up and let forth buckets of the rain that has been much-needed in both Tennessee and Georgia . . . but made the bad Atlanta traffic just that much worse, so coming home took almost an hour longer than it should have. But we rolled in to town around 5:15–early enough that I was able to return the rental car last night instead of having to get up extra early this morning to have it back to them by 7:30 a.m. to not get charged for an extra day.
And then, I crashed. Even after a wonderful night’s sleep last night, I’m still exhausted. Legs are a little stiff from all of the extra walking I did (and I did do an up and down all the aisles brisk walk through the conference floor—probably about a mile and a half—yesterday morning before the show opened. My feet, which were encased in dressy flats that have good cushioning, still haven’t forgiven me, even though I’m wearing my favorite pair of broken-in Keds slip-ons today.)
Thoughts on the show itself . . .
I was rather disappointed. Mostly because I missed most of the people I really wanted to see—those authors I know who were signing books on Monday and Tuesday. That would have made it fun for me. In my role as a copy editor, there really wasn’t anything that I could see at a tradeshow that I don’t already know about the Christian publishing market through ACFW. It was amazing to see how much marketing Zondervan did (even our KEYCARDS at the hotel were Zondervan logoed!). They had a huge banner running along one of the balconies in the outer mezzanine area of the conference center with their authors’ names—and I was happy at how many of those names are people I know. Same as with the books on display at the publishers’ booths. I just smiled to myself each time I saw a book cover or poster with a name I recognized.
It was interesting to see how many really small publishing houses they are and what types of books they do—most of them are denominational houses putting out books that are more doctrine/Sunday school/Bible study based. I was familiar with the names of all of the houses that publish fiction—something I’ve learned through being an active member of ACFW and attending the national conference every year.
As someone who isn’t really involved in the decision making of what books to publish, how to market them, and studying the competition, the ICRS experience really didn’t do anything for me. As an author and as someone who is interested in becoming a fiction editor, I know that continuing to attend the ACFW conference every year will keep me much better informed on what’s going on in CBA fiction than just attending this tradeshow. ICRS really is more focused on the buyers for bookstores who are looking to see what they want to carry in their stores. Yes, I did really want to go to the Avon Inspire launch (at lunchtime Tuesday before we arrived) and a couple of other events like that (all took place before we arrived), but I don’t think that I would have missed a crucial career-growth opportunity by not attending. I’m glad I went. I’m really happy I’ve had the experience so that whenever I hear people talking about it, I have a point of reference. But it’s not something that at this point in my career I feel I need to go back to.
I’m so happy to be home . . . and excited to go see the new Harry Potter movie tonight at 6:30!
The Most Dog-Eared Books on My Shelves
I was a reader long before I was a writer . . . and it was through my love of reading that I started writing. I may have mentioned before that the first fiction I ever put on paper was to continue the story of one of my favorite YA romance novels.
So I thought I’d pay a little homage to those books on my shelves which were/are my favorites, which are the most dog-eared, which are bound together with clear contact paper and/or shipping tape, some of which I continue to read even as an adult.
Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, By the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, and These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My mother read these to us when I was very young, and since learning to read, I’ve read these books at least once a year since. I now have them all on audiobook, which makes the annual read-through much easier—and more fun, because Cherry Jones, the actress who voices them, sings most of the songs to the accompaniment of a fiddle!
The Sunfire series of YA romance novels, especially Kathleen and Victoria. I still have this entire set of books—as a matter of fact, it’s only been in the last few years, since the proliferation of online used booksellers, that I have rounded out the complete collection with the addition of two or three titles I was missing. Kathleen is influential because it was the first one of these books I read. Victoria was my favorite out of all thirty-eight books, and is the one that led me to my first foray into fiction writing (and fan fiction). I loved it so much I decided I had to know what happened next, so I started writing the sequel. Which does still exist somewhere in my vast collection of notebooks and old Trapper-Keeper folders.
Walks the Fire by Stephanie Grace Whitson. This is the novel that got me into reading Christian/inspirational fiction again ten or so years ago.
Persuasion and Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen. No surprise to anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while. While I find the other four novels enjoyable (though Emma is my least favorite), these are the two that I come back to time and time again—probably because the two heroes are my favorites of all the Austen heroes. Captain Frederick Wentworth and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy as written by Jane, not necessarily as presented in any of the film adaptations, resonate with me at a deeper level than any hero of any other romance novel I’ve ever read.
White Jade by Willo Davis Roberts, who wrote Victoria and several other titles in the Sunfire series. In fact, because WDR wrote my favorite Sunfire, I looked her name up in the card catalog at the Thomas Brannigan Memorial Library in Las Cruces, NM, and discovered this little gem of a YA gothic romance. It’s set in California in the mid- to late-19th Century and is written from a first-person POV, and it features two of my favorite romance novel plots: a brooding, slightly mysterious hero and a marriage of convenience. I was finally able to purchase this one a few years ago (again, thank goodness for online used booksellers!) and read it at least once a year.
The Tobey Heyden series by Rosamund du Jardin. The summer I was fifteen, in raiding the shelves at my grandparents’ home for something to read, I came across a little book entitled Practically Seventeen. Being practically sixteen (well, in about eleven months), I decided to give it a shot. It was one my aunt, who’s twenty years older than I, had owned it when she was a teen in the 1960s. The book was originally written in the 1940s, and the nostalgic feel of it—from sock-hops to wearing a boy’s class ring to summers spent at their lake house—as well as the pre-chick lit fun of the first-person viewpoint made it a much loved book. Again, in the last five or six years, I have gotten hold of all of the other Tobey Heyden books and enjoy reading them occasionally. But Practically Seventeen will always be my favorite.
A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind at the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and Many Waters by Madeleine L’Engle. Mom read the first one to us when we were in elementary school, and then I read the rest of them as an early teen (Many Waters sends twins Sandy and Dennys off on their own time-travel adventure).
The O’Malley Series (and Danger in the Shadows) by Dee Henderson. I devoured these romantic suspense novels involving the seven O’Malley siblings, each one in a high-danger/high-octane career, each one having to solve some crime or mystery, and each one falling in love with someone else involved in the circumstance. If I had to choose a favorite, I’d have to go with The Protector, because I think I’m still a little in love with Marcus O’Malley, no matter how many romantic heroes I’ve fallen in love with since the first time I read that book.
Along Came Jones by Linda Windsor. This is the best romantic comedy ever written. Want to know how the lid of a toilet tank can be used as a weapon? Just read this book!
Jude Deveraux’s Velvet series (Velvet Promise, Highland Velvet, Velvet Song, and Velvet Angel). Velvet Song was the first romance novel I ever read, even though I was probably too young to have been reading mainstream romance novels at twelve. But it was because of these books that I fell in love with reading. It’s also because of these that I fell in love with historicals, and gained my adoration of marriage of convenience/arranged marriage stories. (And, believe it or not, I was reading these books at the same time as I was devouring the Sunfire YA romances . . . how’s that for diversity of reading materials?)
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. About two years ago when the sixth book came out and all of the furor over these books started up once more, I decided that before I could weigh in on the debate as to whether or not I felt they were “bad” (i.e., glorified evil), I needed to be more familiar with them. So I Netflixed all three of the movies that were out at the time and watched all of them the same weekend (according to Netflix, they were shipped to me on 7/11/05—ironic, huh?). Well, I was hooked. So I bought a set that contained the first five books in paperback and over the next month or so, read all five of them (this while in graduate school supposed to be working on my thesis). I bought the sixth book in hard cover, because that was the only version available at the time—finished it in one weekend. Tomorrow, Thursday, I will be meeting up with Ruth and another gal to go see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (which opens tonight). Then next Friday, I’ll be at Barnes and Noble in Cool Springs for the release party for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows so that I can get my (reserved) copy at midnight and stay up all night reading the final installment. I have never been able to put my finger on exactly what it is that makes these books so addictive, but I’ve narrowed it down to her characters and her storytelling ability (because it sure isn’t her writing craft!).
What about you? What are some books that have been influential in your life—whether it’s those that you just enjoy reading again and again, those that have led you to a deeper understanding of yourself or God, or those that have made you a better writer?
How Writing Is Like FOOTBALL
I make no bones about it—football is my favorite sport, especially LSU football. (Geaux Tigers!). A little more than a year ago, I wrote a post comparing writing to baseball. Maybe it’s a bit of a stretch, but I thought I’d revisit this idea, this time using my favorite sport. (And please—recall this is coming from a fan, not an expert in the sport.)
Like any other sport, football players must spend years preparing: learning the nuances and rules of the game, conditioning themselves, practicing, playing, learning the “market” (how other teams play, what to expect), going out every game with a winning attitude, learning how to be a good loser without losing the thirst, the hunger, the desire to win. In the original post, my uncle posted a comment that stated that even good losers are still losers. Yes and no. Statistically, one team scored lower than the other. Certain players didn’t do as well as others. But it is the attitude the players walk away from the field with that makes them winners or losers in their life off the field. We cannot hang our entire life’s expectation, build our entire identity upon the numbers on the scoreboard (whether we publish at all, one book, or twenty-five); we must build our expectation, our identity on whether or not we’ve “played” to our fullest potential, fulfilled our calling.
As a writer, I have spent years preparing: from the basic fundamental of learning how to spell and write, learning grammar, learning to type, to learning the rules of good writing; conditioning myself and practicing by writing, writing, writing, as well as by working with critique partners and learning how to edit and revise; studying the market—determining which publishers/agents to target and what they’re looking for; approaching each writing session, editor/agent pitch, or contest entry with a positive, “winning” attitude; and learning how to graciously accept rejection from said editors/agents/contests.
Football, obviously, is a TEAM sport. Each player has his individual position to play, but each must also support the team as a whole. This, to me, mirrors the importance of fellowship with other writers which, for me, is represented by my local writing group, Middle Tennessee Christian Writers and my critique partners. When a running back runs an 80-yard touchdown to put his team ahead with only a few seconds remaining on the clock, the team is there to meet him on the sidelines with cheers and congratulations. However, if in the next game he gets tackled on the one-yard line after a run like that, while the team is disappointed, there should be no condemnation, only encouragement and offers to help him improve his tackle-breaking ability—and a look at what the rest of the team can do to help him get into the end zone the next time.
In a writing group, when one of our members makes a sale or wins a contest, my role as a teammate is to be there on the sidelines waiting to give her a high-five, to congratulate her, and to publicly applaud her. When the next one comes back with a rejection, my role as a teammate is to offer support, encouragement, and offer any assistance such as critiquing, editing, etc., that is within my expertise to provide.
When an individual player takes the field, he knows why he’s there. When I sit down at my computer to write, I know why I’m there.
In the huddle, when the call is played, each player knows what is expected of him to make the play work. The running back takes his place on the line of scrimmage knowing that the ball might be coming to him—if he can clear the opposing team’s blockers and run the appointed pattern. He runs down the field, hits the right spot and turns, not knowing whether the ball is actually coming to him. But he knows he has to be in position for it to happen. I wait for inspiration to strike, not knowing from where it will come. But I know I have to be in position—that is, ready to write—in order to take advantage of inspiration when it comes.
The ball is passed. One of four things happens to the running back: (1) He doesn’t catch the ball—it may be over- or underthrown, it may go right through his fingers, or someone from the opposing team may intercept it. (2) He catches it—and then fumbles. (3) He catches it and may even get to run—but is then tackled. (4) Or he catches it and runs it into the end zone for a touchdown. When ideas/inspiration come my way, similar things can happen. (1) I can let it go right by me because it’s not something that really works—or it may fall short or be too ambitious . . . or I could discover someone else has already come up with that idea and sold it. (2) I can let it go—drop it—and realize I’ve missed something important that I might not ever be able to get back. (3) I can start writing the idea only to discover it’s not going anywhere, or that it’s going somewhere off track. (4) Or I can start writing and get the first down or even score a touchdown. How far I run and whether or not I score depends on how well I’ve prepared myself. And, even if it’s a fabulous piece of work, it may still lead to an tackle on the one-yard line—a rejection.
Once a quarterback throws a touchdown or a running back gets it into the end zone for a score, he’s not told to go sit on the bench and relax and enjoy the rest of the game. The next time his team has possession, he must still play his position. His next play may result in a first down, a score, a fumble, a punt, an interception, a tackle. But he doesn’t quit just because he can’t follow up a touchdown with another touchdown. He keeps working, redoubles his efforts to get that attempted/completed average up, increase his rushing yardage total—and the score too. Just because I final in a contest or receive recognition for my work doesn’t mean I can sit back and rest on my last success. I have to keep writing, keep improving, keep studying, keep practicing to remain in the game.
Point of View–Showing vs. Telling
For those of you who’ve been with me a while, much of this post may seem familiar . . . because I’ve lifted most of it from the Showing vs. Telling series I did several months back.
Creating a deep, intimate point of view—getting the readers entrenched in each viewpoint character’s head—is inseparable from using a style of writing that shows rather than tells, in both limited and omniscient POV.
In omniscient POV, your readers are always going to feel a little more at-arms’-length from your characters, simply because of the fact that they’re never in one character’s head long enough to really feel comfortable becoming intimate with the characters. In limited POV, however, because the story is being told from only one viewpoint character’s POV at a time, the reader will settle in, will let their mental defenses drop, will become comfortable being intimate with the characters—but only if you use a showing, active style that allows them to be so.
Character Descriptions
See also Showing vs. Telling—Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, and Showing vs. Telling—In the Eye of the Beholder
Describing what a character looks like from his or her own viewpoint in a limited POV story can be difficult. Gone are the days when we could have our heroine stand in front of a mirror and think about her own appearance. We don’t want our characters to come off as egotistical or shallow because they’re thinking about what they look like (unless that is part of their characterization). Therefore, we must find a way somehow to show what they look like without telling—but in a way that feels natural.
It’s okay to have your character sweep her dark hair over her shoulder. It’s not perfect, but readers accept it. The easiest way to do it in 3rd Person/Limited is to describe each character in the other characters’ viewpoints. But most readers, especially romance readers, are going to want some kind of clues to begin building a mental picture of the character from the beginning. For examples from Susan May Warren’s and Linda Windsor’s novels, see Showing vs. Telling—Mirror, Mirror on the Wall and Showing vs. Telling—In the Eye of the Beholder.
Character Emotions
See also Showing vs. Telling—Feeeeeeeeeelings . . .
One of the points I hit repeatedly through the Showing vs. Telling series is the signpost words of telling: was (Character was adjective) and felt (Character felt emotion). Remember what I said about using felt to describe your characters’ emotions?
Starting today, however, train your brain to associate the word FELT with that heavy, scratchy, stiff fabric used for arts and crafts and not character emotions. Felt does not make comfortable clothing, so why “dress” your characters with it?
Make the emotions do something to the character (Fear ran down Molly’s spine like a hundred tiny mice with cold feet.)
What is your character’s internal vocabulary? If Molly isn’t afraid of mice, the above example wouldn’t be a good way to describe her fear. Your character’s age, cultural background, ethnicity, historical era, education, spirituality, etc., will all make a difference in the words you choose to use for the character’s internal emotional conflict. And each character’s should be different. This is one of the ways in which you give each character a unique voice in his or her viewpoint scenes.
For example, in Ransome’s Honor, my hero William is a sea captain—has been at sea since he was twelve years old:
William waited behind a middle-aged couple, careful to stay far enough behind to avoid the plumage swaying wildly from the back of the woman’s head.
Beyond the enormous white feathers, the crowd of well-dressed guests surged and ebbed like the tide rolling into Spithead harbor during a summer thunderstorm. His nerves tensed just as they did every time one of the lookouts cried, “Sail, oh!” But this wasn’t the sea, and these weren’t French and Spanish ships lying in wait to blow him out of the water. He must secure the guns, loose the headsail, and make forward progress into these unknown social waters.
This is his internal vocabulary; it’s how his experiences, his life impacts his thought processes.
The Five Senses
See also Showing vs. Telling—Do You See What I See? and Showing vs. Telling—Do You Smell What I Taste?
For the use of the five senses, I’m not going to try to summarize here what I wrote in the Showing vs. Telling posts. The most important reminder I can give here is that in limited point of view, you can only show what the viewpoint character experiences or knows for him- or herself. If the character doesn’t see it, you can’t show it (no statements like: Unbeknownst to Callie, John slipped out the front door while she set the dessert aflame).
The Sixth Sense
See also Showing vs. Telling—The Sixth Sense
Try to eliminate words such as knew, thought, and wondered from your writing. If you are deep into limited POV, you do not need to call attention to the fact that it is the viewpoint character who is knowing, thinking, or wondering. It’s just stream of consciousness—let it flow without the puppeteer’s hand showing through these telling signpost words. If you use italicized direct internal thoughts (which in limited POV should be used sparingly, if at all—click here for another discussion of that), you do not need to include the tag, “she thought.” The act of putting the thoughts in italics shows the reader that it is direct internal thought.
I’ll be at the ICRS tradeshow in Atlanta on Tuesday and Wednesday. Hopefully I’ll be able to at least get a few “encore” posts up, but if not, I’ll be back Thursday! If you have ideas for other writing-related topics you’d like to see discussed here, please post a comment.
Fun Friday–Books, Reading, and Writing
Here are some of my favorite quotes about books, reading, and writing collected over the years:
“The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.”
~Blaise Pascal
“I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.”
~Jane Austen
“A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.”
~Salman Rushdie
“I like a thin book because it will steady a table, a leather volume because it will strop a razor, and a heavy book because it can be thrown at a cat.”
~Mark Twain
“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
~E. L. Doctorow
“People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.”
~Ernest Hemingway
“Books: the children of the brain.”
~Jonathan Swift
“I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved, which a cow enjoys on giving milk.”
~H. L. Mencken
“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
~Thomas Mann
“Writing is play in the same way that playing the piano is ‘play,’ or putting on a theatrical ‘play’ is play. Just because something’s fun doesn’t mean it isn’t serious.”
~Margaret Atwood
“Writers aren’t exactly people . . . they’re a whole lot of people trying to be one person.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Don’t ask a writer what he’s working on. It’s like asking someone with cancer about the progress of his disease.”
~Jay McInerey
“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.”
~Ursula K. Le Guin
“The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it . . . If one of the characters wants to say, ‘Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?’ you let her.”
~ Anne Lamott
Happy Friday!
Guest Blogger Georgiana Daniels–Getting POV Right
Today, I’m pleased to have my other critique partner Georgiana Daniels as a guest columnist . . .
Kaye has done an excellent job in giving us the information we need to maintain a consistent POV. Believe me, had I read up on POV prior to venturing out, I could have avoided many a train wreck. Early on, I had a tendency to drag my readers through multiple heads in one scene, and even when I switched scenes, all my viewpoint characters sounded the same. One time I tried writing from a male POV, but used my own natural voice. The result? He was so effeminate it was no wonder his wife left him. But my unsuccessful attempts were good practice.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned—the hard way, I might add—is that I have to know my characters deeply in order to avoid the pitfalls associated with whichever POV I choose. The easiest trap to fall into is making the character sound just like me, the author, instead of sounding like Lucy or Molly or Bella or the killer.
The first two full-length novels I wrote were chick lit. I wanted intimate, conversational stories where the reader could feel like a part of my heroines’ lives. With each story, I wanted to be privy to my heroine’s thoughts as they happened, and to interpret the world through her eyes alone. It seemed natural to choose first person, present tense.
So how could I keep the main characters from sounding just like me, or like each other? I had to know them inside and out, and believe me, that didn’t always come with the first draft. By knowing the characters’ backgrounds, interests, immediate and long-term goals, I was able to make each one have a distinctive voice, even though both books were written in first person, present tense.
But first person has its pitfalls too, like creating a character the reader likes well enough to stick with through an entire novel. If the reader doesn’t like the main character, they’re either stuck for the duration, or they’re going to chuck the book—both options are bad for the writer! The other big challenge for me is to weave a well-rounded story based solely on one person’s immediate observations. It takes a lot of practice.
Now I’m working on a suspense, and in order to up the tension I’ve found it necessary to show not only the heroine’s point of view, but also the villain’s. So this time I’m using limited third. It gives me a bit more freedom to explore the story from different angles. Look at the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each wrote about the life of Jesus, but from their own unique point of view. Each writer brought something different to the table, and added his own flavor to the story. That’s what I’m trying to do, but on a much smaller scale, of course.
Switching back into third person after writing my last two novels in first has been a bumpy ride. But I love the new challenge! To avoid the problem I had in my previous attempt to write a male POV, I’ve started taking a few minutes to crawl into his skin, lest I sissify my bad guy. How does he view what’s happening in the story? How does a hired gun talk? What kinds of things does he see that others might not? His scenes tend to have more fragmented sentences, snippy comments, and edge toward sarcasm. And they are my favorite to write!
When I switch back to my heroine’s POV, I do the same thing. She’s a reclusive artist in the Alaskan wilderness. What is she going to notice? What kinds of words does she use? How is the world filtered through her eyes? Her scenes tend to have more flowery language, utilizing a larger vocabulary, and more detail—at least until she finds out she’s being hunted.
Needless to say, I’m still learning, and hopefully making progress. And from my POV, every day spent at the keyboard is another chance to get it right.
Happy Independence Day!
Just dropping by quickly to wish everyone a happy and blessed (and safe) Independence Day.
America Befriend
Henry Van Dyke
To Thee O Lord, our God: Thy mighty hand
Hath made our country free;
From all her broad and happy land
May worship rise to Thee.
Fulfill the promise of her youth,
Her liberty defend;
By law and order, love and truth,
America befriend!
The strength of every state increase
In Union’s golden chain;
Her thousand cities fill with peace,
Her million fields with grain:
The virtues of her mingled blood
In one new people blend;
By unity and brotherhood,
America befriend!
O suffer not her feet to stray;
But guide her untaught might,
That she may walk in peaceful day,
And lead the world in light.
Bring down the proud, lift up the poor,
Unequal ways amend;
By justice, nation-wide and sure,
America befriend!
Through all the waiting land proclaim
The gospel of goodwill;
And may the joy of Jesus’ name
In every bosom thrill.
O’er hill and vale, from sea to sea,
Thy holy reign extend;
By faith and hope and charity,
America befriend.
Guest Blogger Erica Vetsch–Making your Point (of View)
Today’s post is by a very special guest, my critique partner Erica Vetsch.
Thank you to Kaye for inviting me as a guest blogger to share my experience with learning the ins and outs of Point of View.
BEFORE I KNEW:
When I joined the ACFW 1 January, 2004, I was completely clueless as to what all this POV talk was about. My ignorance was made abundantly clear when I received my first ever contest judged entry back from the Noble Theme (now Genesis) Contest.
My judges—may blessings rain down up on their heads—gently, but firmly, guided my first tottering steps in understanding POV. Their comments included: “Whose head are we in here?” and “You’ve jumped about with your point of view quite a bit. Most editors want to see a single point of view per scene.” Those poor judges. In one scene in that—my first novel—I had no less than six POV characters.
I was writing as if I was watching the story unfold on a TV screen. First, I was looking over the hero’s shoulder at the heroine…quickly describe heroine as seen through hero’s eyes…then the camera shot changed to look over the heroine’s shoulder…quickly describe hero as seen through heroine’s eyes. Every character in the scene got to have a say, got internal monologue, got their thoughts on the page. No secrets anywhere…that is, until I went all omniscient and dropped in a ‘Little did they know.’
Chaos reigned.
HOW I LEARNED:
At the advice of those contest judges, I began reading books on craft, focusing on the chapters about Point of View. I’m going to recommend a few here. I know Kaye’s mentioned them, but another endorsement won’t hurt. J
- Character, Emotion & Viewpoint, by Nancy Kress (in fact, if you can, try to get your hands on the entire Write Great Fiction Series from Writer’s Digest. It will be money well spent.)
Stein on Writing, by Sol Stein (It’s true, it really is a terrific book that will help ANY novelist become better.)
Self-Editing for the Fiction Writer, by Browne and King (Some parts are nappers, and some I didn’t totally get, but they’re instructive on POV issues.)
Worlds of understanding opened before me as I studied. Then I sat down to do the hard work. I wrote. I experimented. I edited. Theory is one thing. Practice is another. There is no substitute, no class, no instruction book that will teach you as much as sitting your tookis down and writing.
WHAT I’VE DISCOVERED:
Regardless of the number of POVs you choose to use, the one hard and fast rule is (say it with me now) ONE POV PER SCENE.
“But why?” you may ask.
When I first became aware of ‘head-hopping,’ as shifting mid-scene (or mid-paragraph…or as I found in some places in my first novel, mid-sentence! Ouch!) is called, I was frustrated. I had read books by best-selling authors, both CBA and ABA, who head-hopped more than a flea at a dog show. If it was good enough for them, well, it was good enough for me. And besides, I felt my story needed all those POV shifts for my readers to ‘get’ what was happening and to feel all the Emotion (with a capital E!) I was pouring into this work.
Boy howdy, was I wrong. It had the opposite effect. In replying to Kaye’s post of Thursday last, I mentioned a poem by John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) based upon a Hindu fable. I feel it illustrates the use of POV in creating emotion and tension. You can find the poem by clicking here.
Limited POV leads to conflict! Without conflict, you have no story! Each blind man in the poem knew only part of the whole, and each man was passionate about voicing his unique perspective. Your own characters have a unique perspective on the world you’ve created. When you limit the POV in a scene to one, it feels more like real life. The same way you only know life as you perceive it, not the thoughts and perceptions of others around you, so too the reader will be drawn in, and in a sense, become the POV character as you limit the scene to that one character’s thoughts and perceptions.
So, how do you choose whose POV to write the scene in? I try to choose either the one who has the most at stake in the scene, or the one who has the most to learn. Who can succeed brilliantly in this scene, or who can fail spectacularly? Who is the most frustrated, the most scared, the most angry, the most victimized? It ratchets up the tension in a hurry.
My last novel, Drums of the North Star, is historical fiction based upon the Minnesota/Dakota War of 1862. I used four POV characters, two men, two women. Each POV was necessary if I was going to cover all the events I wanted to over the six week period of the conflict. It was the number of POV’s that helped categorize the novel. While there is romance in it, the romance is not the crux of the story. Each POV carries its own weight and is needful for the unfolding of the plot.
But in the romance I’m working on now, the only two POV’s that matter are the hero’s and the heroine’s. This is a short, category romance aimed at the Heartsong line. Adding other POV’s would dilute the drama between the H/H and add too much to the word count.
My advice is: Don’t kick against this ‘rule’ regarding limiting your POV. Embrace it. Don’t dilute the emotion and conflict of the story by hopping into everyone’s heads in each scene. If everything is known by the reader, why would they keep on reading? Instead, use the powerful POV tool to stir up conflict, to focus attention and emotion on the people who matter most in each scene, and to allow your reader a deeper look into the motivations, the frustrations, the needs and wants of the characters you love. And the fact that it goes over well with editors is a nice bonus too.
Thanks again to Kaye for inviting me to guest blog on this topic. Be sure to check the archives of this blog for a wealth of information and instruction on fiction writing. I daresay you won’t find better anywhere in cyberspace.
Point of View–Giving POV the Third Degree
As hinted at and promised, here is the “nuts and bolts” explanation of what “Point of View” means. (Remember, for the purposes of the discussion here, POV is the narrative style for the story, while Viewpoint refers to which character’s head we’re inside of.)
There are three main aspects to consider when choosing a Point of View narrative style: Person, Omniscience, and Tense.
Person
Good things come in threes. There are three “Persons” (did “Holy, Holy, Holy” just start running through your head?):
- FIRST: I went to the store. We had a conversation. (Viewpoint pronouns are I, me, mine, we, our, ours.)
- SECOND: You went to the store, and you had a conversation with the butcher. (Viewpoint pronouns are you, your, yours.) Run, do not walk, away from this Person. Several authors have experimented with this in the past, and it hasn’t done well.
- THIRD: Connie went to the store. She picked up bread and milk, then stopped in the meat department and had a conversation with the butcher. (Viewpoint pronouns are he, she, him, her, his, hers, they, their, theirs.)
Omniscience
Here, we have three choices, as well.
- OMNISCIENT: Also known as “head-hopping.” The narrator is all-knowing and exists outside of the characters’ heads, dipping into any character’s thoughts at any given time throughout the story. This is the style of POV where the narrator is truly a narrator—almost an additional character who is telling this story. The voice/tone of the story is that of the narrator’s, not of the individual characters. Key signpost phrases are along the lines of: “little did he know . . .” or “he didn’t see the maniacal smile that overtook Gordon’s face at his words.” The narrator is allowed to tell the reader things that the characters might not know or haven’t experienced for themselves.
- LIMITED: Camping out in only one character’s viewpoint per scene. There is no obvious narrator. The story is told completely from the characters’ own thoughts and experiences. The author cannot include anything in the narrative that the viewpoint character does not experience/know for him- or herself. When in one characters’ viewpoint, another character’s thoughts can be surmised from her body language, tone of voice, or facial expression, but it cannot be known.
- OBJECTIVE: This really is not used in fiction as much, but more so in Journalism. This is the “just the facts, ma’am” narrative style.
Tense
Ready for another set of three? This is the tense of verbs you choose to use in your narrative style. (And this is by no means exhaustive, just the three that usually show up in prose.)
- PRESENT: I go to the window and open it. Outside, birds sing, and the wind blows gently. (Action is happening in the here-and-now.)
- PAST/ACTIVE: I went to the window and opened it. Outside, birds sang, and the wind blew gently. (Verbs are past tense, but because this is the most common form of storytelling, it still seems to be immediate action.)
- PAST/PASSIVE: I had gone to the window and had opened it. Outside, birds were singing, and the wind was blowing gently. (Usually a form of the “be” verb plus a gerund—word ending in -ing—or a form of the “have” verb + past-tense verb.)
Maybe it’s a stretch to separate the two Past Tenses (I did need three, after all), however, some authors choose to use one or the other. Passive past tense is usually much weaker and slower than Past/Active. One thing that most critiquers, contest judges, and editors will tell you is to choose a strong active verb instead of a was + -ing combo. Sometimes, though, a was + -ing is okay, maybe even necessary in a Past/Active story. The “have” + past-tense verb, when used in a Past/Active story can indicate that something happened before the immediate action: Rory slipped into the back row of the lecture hall. Last time she’d done this, the professor had called her out and made a spectacle of her for being late.
So what are the combinations?
FIRST PERSON/OMNISCIENT: Yes, you can have an omniscient first person narrator. This is a narrator who does know what’s going on in other people’s heads because he or she is telling this story not as it’s happening, but after the fact. (“Little did I know, at the same time, Julianne was stealing my boyfriend from me.”) This is, for obvious reasons, going to be best told in past tense.
FIRST PERSON/LIMITED: This is the most familiar form of first person and can be told in present or past tense. It is told from the “I” viewpoint, the story unfolding as events unfold. The “I” character is experiencing everything as it happens. The limitations of this is that the “I” character is the only one whose thoughts/experiences you can reveal to the reader. You can never get into someone else’s head. The other liability of this POV is the issue of mortal danger. If the character is telling the story from an “I” viewpoint, the reader is going to know that the character will most likely survive whatever happens.
SECOND PERSON/ANYTHING: Run, do not walk, away from this POV.
THIRD PERSON/OMNISCIENT: In third person, again, this is “head hopping.” It can be told in past or present tense, but past tense tends to work better. Some readers/writers prefer the “god-like” feel of this POV, the ability to know what any and every character (even sometimes nearby animals) think about what’s going on in the scene. The difficulty with it is that it has a tendency to keep the reader at arms’ length from the characters, because there is no true intimacy built by staying inside a single character’s thoughts for any length of time.
THIRD PERSON/LIMITED: This is the industry standard for third-person narrative. To reiterate what I wrote in a previous post: this means seeing/experiencing the action through only one character’s eyes/thoughts. It’s camping out for a full scene in the head of just one character. This POV gives your reader the opportunity to get to know your characters MUCH better than you may with omniscient/head-hopping POV. This POV is very similar to the first person/limited POV in that it’s taking place inside the character’s head as the events around them unfold. There is no obvious narrator-character in this style; the reader is experiencing everything from the viewpoint of the character whose head we’re in for that particular scene. Again, as I mentioned before, in this POV, it is much easier to build tension, to heighten the conflict, when the reader only knows as much as the viewpoint-characters do. Past/Active tense is preferred, but many authors are starting to use Present tense in this POV.
Tomorrow, my crit partner Erica Vetsch will be sharing with us her experience with learning POV and incorporating it into her wonderful historical novel, Drums of the North Star, a finalist in the 2007 ACFW Genesis Contest!
Fun Friday–Best On-Screen Kisses Revisited
A few weeks ago, I posted my list of favorite on-screen kisses.
Last night, trying to find the name of a particular piece of music used in the BBC film North & South (best kiss #3), I ran across this clip on YouTube, which was just too good not to pass along.
KayeDacus.com 