Could it be your Point of View?

By: Donnell Ann Bell

People love to give advice.They love to share their point of view. Oftentimes, I listen. Oftentimes, I think this person doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. However, I recently received some advice that I think is invaluable—particularly when it comes to writing.

If you’re writing in first person, you can probably stop reading right now. This stellar advice doesn’t apply to you because let’s face it—you only have one point of view. But if you have multiple points of view in your novel, and it’s not working for some reason, consider rewriting (no screaming allowed) in another character’s POV.

Ask yourself this: Am I writing the scene in the POV character who has the most to lose?

Example:

If the antagonist has thrown the protagonist off a cliff, and left the hero for dead, and no one’s around, you’re going to have a pretty compelling scene because clearly you’re in your hero’s head, and you’re going to show his desperation as he tries to save himself.

But . . . let’s say your antagonist throws the protagonist off the cliff, then sticks around to taunt him. 

Whose POV would be most effective? 

Some might say the anger seething through the hero. He’s trying to hang on for dear life, and the villain shows him a rope. “Gee, I’d like to save you,” your bad guy says, “but the rope it appears to be . . . slipping.” Then he throws it as far as he can.

Imagine your protagonist believing the antagonist plans to save him, and all hope is lost . . . . (until, if you’re any kind of writer and not a sadist, the hero finds a root, and with super human strength heroes tend to have in our stories, pulls himself upward and saves himself.)

Or let’s see the same scene through the antagonist’s eyes. The hero has thwarted his every move, stolen his girl, and repossessed his car! Villain’s hatred runs deep. Watching hero fall onto the rocks would cause a gleeful moment for bad guy. It would also show what a menacing creature he is. Imagine his shock when the hero pulls himself up, despite the villain’s best efforts, and the two engage in an amazing fight scene.

Ideally, you get the idea. Point of View is important to your story. Ask yourself who has the most to risk. And if you’re not sure, a great exercise is to write in various POVs. The only problem is then you’ll have a decision to make.


About the Author: Donnell Ann Bell is the editor of Pikes Peak Writers Writing from the Peak blog and a mystery and romantic suspense author. Check out her books at www.donnellannbell.com

         

Backwards Outlining - A Game of Thrones Part 2

by Deb McLeod

I don’t know about you, but for me there’s nothing worse than when I know I've missed the mark but haven’t clue one how to fix it. Some people turn to critique groups for that. Some turn to coaches like me. I turn to model books and the multitude of tricks I've learned about analysis and revision so I can discover not only what isn't working but how to fix it.

Last month, I did an analysis of the prologue of A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin to see how he achieves the affect he does. I have to say, I’m enthralled with these books. There’s nothing more exciting to me than to find an excellent writer so I not only enjoy the books, but analyze how that writer did what he did.

This month I wanted to try some techniques to see what they could tell me about his scenes. In this article, I’m working with the prologue from A Game of Thrones. If you haven’t read the prologue, you can get the gist of it in the previous blog post. But read the books, even if you don’t like the genre. His structure challenges the rules and he pulls it off. We can learn a lot from him, I think.

Again ****SPOILER ALERT – prologue and first chapter!****

I found a technique from a post on Facebook, by writer Charlie Jane Anders:  One Weird Trick for Cutting Down Your Novel. She suggests you take a scene and outline it backwards to check cause and effect by connecting each event in the scene with the word ‘because’.

I turned to A Game of Thrones to see how this technique fared. I love using model books to educate myself on my own work.

The prologue is divided into three scenes. Here is the backward outline of the last scene of the prologue after Ser Waymar Royce has sent Will up a tree to look for fires and the missing bodies of the dead Wildings. The Others come and murder Ser Waymar and Will does nothing. When he finally comes down from the tree and tries to take Ser Waymar’s sword for proof, Ser Waymar rises from the dead and attacks him. This is a great action scene to use this technique on. Here’s the backwards outline:

Will closed his eyes to pray because the icy cold fingers, gloved in finest moleskin and sticky with blood, closed around his throat. Because the dead Ser Waymar Royce now stood over him after Will found Royce’s body and took his shattered sword for evidence. Because Royce, who was really just a boy, lay face down in the snow with even his thick sable cloak slashed in a dozen places. Because Will had finally dared to climb out of the tree where he’d been hiding after seeing the cold butchery of the pale blades that sliced through Royce’s ringmail as if it were silk. Because Royce had attacked The Others though his longsword shivered into a hundred brittle pieces when it touched The Other’s sword after The Other said something to him in his own language and Ser Royce’s first parry was a beat too late and he’d been wounded. Because he was worn from the fight while the other, faceless watchers stood silent. They’d overtaken Royce when they emerged silently from the shadows and it was Will’s duty to call out, but his death if he did, so he stayed silent. Because the first one to come forward held a blade that was alive with moonlight and sharper than any razor and Ser Royce stood ready for battle. Because a shadow with flesh pale as milk emerged from the wood and its armor seemed to change color as it moved. Because Will hadn’t answered Ser Royce’s call asking why it was suddenly so cold. Because Will had seen movement and shadows, though he heard no sound, after the lordling had called out “Who goes there?” after Will had climbed the tree to see if he could find a fire at Ser Royce’s order. Because Royce had to find the bodies that had disappeared….

Of course the scene hangs together beautifully.

My turn

When I’m writing I find that some scenes flow easily and some take crafting. I have a process I use to craft a scene (which will be a future blog post) and if I’m lucky and the scene “catches”, all is well in Debland. But more times than not, I craft the thing and it lies there; dead as Ser Waymar Royce and equally as spooky.

So I took one of those cold dead things that lives in my manuscript and tried this technique. Lo and behold, I found that the backwards outline revealed holes in the cause and effect and showed me where great gobs of extraneous information sucked all the energy right off the page.

No forward movement = glazed eyes and the dreaded reader response... The Skim.  Or even dreader... The Close.

Now, my clients are checking their problem scenes backwards for cause and effect. It’s proving to be a really great technique. Check it out.

About the Author: Deb McLeod, is a writer, creative writing coach and founder of The Writing Ranch. She has both an MFA and a BA in creative writing. She has been teaching and coaching for over ten years. Deb has published short fiction in anthologies and journals. She has written articles and creative nonfiction. Deb has been a professional blogger, tech writer, graphic artist and Internet marketing specialist.  

The Serialized Novel - Part 3 - Vertical Story Arc

By Deb McLeod

(To read the second part of this series, click here.)

One of the greatest things I learned in my time as a corporate internet marketer is that with the advent of the internet, the audience now drives the boat. Marketing has shifted from message driven to audience driven. Who your audience is and what they want to hear or how they want to hear it should dictate the form of the content you create for them.

This is true in marketing. Could it have a place in entertainment, too?

Let me be clear, I’m not saying you write your book to the widest audience and lowest common denominator. I am saying you might look at the changing times and realize that it is the audience that’s driving the change. The rise in eReading, the rise in book bundles, the rise in more content out faster. It’s all happening because that’s what readers want. The novel series or serial has a growing place in the industry.

TV drama series are changing the way people want their stories. Television series offer a lot to novel writers these days. If you’re looking at creating a hybrid novel series that borrows from television, as I am, here are some things to consider.

I first heard the term Vertical Plotting when I read Pamela Douglas’ book Writing the TV Drama Series, a book I highly recommend.

In her book, Douglas talks about the vertical arc (you can substitute novel writing and series novel writing for her analogy of film and TV):

In feature writing [think novels] you were probably told to create an arc for your protagonist that takes him from one state to its opposite; the character struggles toward a goal, and once that is attained, your story ends.

So, how do you progress a narrative without an arc? Well, you create a different kind of arc… You’re interested in the process, not just the outcome.

But watch out -- this does not mean characters are flat. Your continuity cast should never be mere witnesses to the challenge of the week. On the contrary, characters who are not transformed by the plot need something instead: dimension. Think of it like this: instead of developing horizontally toward a goal, the character develops vertically, exploring internal conflicts that create tension. The character may be revealed incrementally within each episode and throughout the series.

So, depth revealed vertically, but horizontally as well, over the course of the series in a long narrative arc.

Let’s look at the TV show Breaking Bad (BB). BB chronicles Walter White’s transformation from protagonist to antagonist throughout the life of the series. He changes over time on the horizontal as the plot plays out in each episode. His vertical is the depth of revelation within each episode and season.

Most TV series are written open-ended. If they can, they will air forever. The characters don’t change much and if they do, it’s over the course of a long narrative. BB is more like a series novel in TV form. That’s the format I’m going for in my novel series: The Julia Set.

My method

To try to incorporate both the horizontal and vertical narrative, as a starting point, I used Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheets to map the emotional change and journey of each of my main characters. Each major character gets their own beat sheet for each book and for the series. I have a giant spreadsheet where I track their change and assemble the plot.

I use the beat sheets for each character because each one is the star of their own story. Every character wants something and grows and changes, much like we all do in real life. We’re all chasing our own goals and facing our own particular growth periods as we are forever in one act or another of becoming. Unless we’re zombies moving through life, and I guess every good story needs some of those. Minor characters who don’t change but serve the plot and die squishy deaths.

Some of my characters’ stories play out their fifteen beats within the time span of one book in the series. Some play out their transformation over the course of the whole series, like Walter White does in BB. But each book reveals another piece in the depth of their story.

The vertical depth creates the relationship between the reader and the characters that will bring them back to the next book to see how the character changes and the plot unfolds.

That’s the hope anyway.

So how do you sustain this over a number of books? Create multiple characters and subplots. Aside from that you need Excel, beat sheets, index cards, white boards and an understanding spouse who you can wake up, interrupt, or drag to Starbucks to talk about the plot.

But beware the complex threshold. You have to be able to not overwhelm your reader with story lines, subplots and points of view.

That’s my major question with my beta readers these days. Where were you confused? So far, I think I’m doing okay, despite the editor at Pikes Peak Writer’s Conference who said readers won’t manage more than about three storylines or points of view. I disagree. And cross my fingers.

But just in case, I already know the two characters I will combine into other characters to simplify the story. But is that really what readers want? What do you say, Game of Thrones fans? Would you prefer a simpler storyline?

Now the question becomes: Can I pull this off? Time will tell. But I’ll tell you this—I am having a blast.

To read Part 4, click here.

About the Author: Deb McLeod, is a writer, creative writing coach and founder of The Writing Ranch. She has both an MFA and a BA in creative writing. She has been teaching and coaching for over ten years. Deb has published short fiction in anthologies and journals. She has written articles and creative nonfiction. Deb has been a professional blogger, tech writer, graphic artist and Internet marketing specialist.  

The Serialized Novel – Part 2 – Manipulation is a Virtue

By Deb McLeod

(To read the first part of this series, click here.)

When I think of writing a serial novel the first craft challenge that presents itself is the cliffhanger. Cliffhangers are a story device designed to make readers come back. “Who Shot JR?” the “Dallas” TV show’s most well-known cliffhanger was a summertime question of my youth. In my favorite soap, “All My Children,” each Friday brought some sort of cliffhanger for one of the plot lines.

Some authors use mini-cliffhangers at the end of each chapter of their standalone books. During an analysis of Stephanie Meyer’s “The Host,” for an unrelated craft investigation, I noticed how often she would split a scene across a chapter right at the climax point in order to create a cliffhanger from chapter to chapter.

Emily Naussbaum reports in the New Yorker: “Cliffhangers are sensational... (they are) primal and unashamedly manipulative.” Here, here, I say, bring ‘em on. Manipulate me.

There is nothing more juicy than a cliffhanger. If I can get a reader on the edge of their seat just dying to turn the page or wait for the next installment – well that would be alright with me!

Episode endings in a serial or serialized novel should have more impact than chapter endings. Each episode should drive toward its ending in the same way a standalone book drives toward its climactic ending. So how do you write the end of an episode well? What constitutes a good cliffhanger ending?

When I need to learn something I turn to a book, or a model, as I prefer to call it when I'm in research mode. I've been reading serials and decided to dig into the cliffhangers of Stephen King’s “The Green Mile” and Margaret Atwood’s “Positron” to see if I could see what the big authors do with their end of episode cliffhangers.

I’m going to rate the cliffhangers on a 1-5 scale, with 5 being that you absolutely have to turn the page to find out what happens next.

SPOILER ALERT – STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW THE PLOT OF “THE GREEN MILE” OR “POSITRON”

First let me say that “The Green Mile” was written in 1996 and was an experiment to see how Stephen King’s fans would react to serial fiction. This was before ebooks and before the resurrection of the serial. I found his book to be more of a traditional book than a serialized one.

The Green Mile
I had seen the movie, “The Green Mile,” so I already knew the plot but I wanted to read the book to see how King wrote it in episodic fashion. Here is a summary of the cliffhangers by episode:

Episode 1: 54 pages long. Toward the end of Episode One, Paul, the protagonist, and Brutal, one of the prison guards, have found a hole where a mouse, Mr. Jingles, had hidden some peppermint candies and some colored splinters of wood from a spool. Mr. Jingles was the pet of the now-executed prisoner Delacroix, who gave the mouse the candies and had him fetch the spool. Apparently, Delacroix was badly executed by the villain and both Brutal and Paul decide they can’t be guards of the Green Mile any longer. They can't watch any more prisoners be executed. The last line of the episode is: “John Coffey will be the last.” We've already gotten a bit of Coffey’s story and a bit of Delacroix’s story. Episode One serves to set up a frame for us to find out in detail what happened to both of those prisoners. In a straight novel, this is a great setup. As far as cliffhangers go, I’d rate this with a one. (See below for what might have worked better.)

Episode 2: 60 pages long. The end of this episode shows a violent prisoner who has one of the guards in a stranglehold and is dying in front of Paul’s eyes. The prisoner sees that Paul has a gun and turns the guard toward it, “so that I’d almost certainly have to hit one to hit the other. From over Dean’s shoulder, one blazing blue eye dared me to shoot.” This one gets a four and a half rating from me. Does he shoot? Does the guard die? I want to know.

Episode 3: 62 pages long. The prisoner Delacroix is to be executed the next day and is worried about what will happen to his mouse, Mr. Jingles. The guards lie and tell him they’ll take Mr. Jingles to a fictional place called Mouseville in Florida, where he’ll spend his time entertaining people with his tricks. Delacroix throws the spool for Mr. Jingles to fetch and it takes a bad bounce and ends up on The Green Mile, the corridor running between the cells. The villain, another guard, who has been trying to kill the mouse, finally gets his chance and he stomps on it. The last line: “He turned and walked back up the Green Mile, not hurrying, leaving Mr. Jingles lying on the linoleum in a spreading pool of his own blood.” That’s a solid five. We love Mr. Jingles. He can’t be dead. You have to fix this!

Episode 4: 57 pages long. Paul has come up with an idea to smuggle John Coffey out of prison to help the warden’s wife. The guards are debating whether it’s a good idea or not. They are afraid Coffey might make a run for it. He's a giant of a man and in jail because of a violent crime. But Paul assures the other guards Coffey's not going to try to escape. They want to know how Paul can be so sure. We know that Paul has discovered something about Coffey. Paul begins to tell the guards how he knows with the promise of the rest of the information to come in the next episode. Meh. This gets a two from me.

Episode 5: 63 pages. The guards are bringing Coffey back from the warden’s house where he has helped the warden’s wife. Coffey is weak and almost falls off the truck. He’s coughing and the guards are afraid they are going to get caught sneaking the prisoner back into jail. The last line is: “As it turned out, our evening was far from over.” A promise for what’s to come. Manufactured to tantalize me into wanting to know. Another mediocre cliffhanger – a three from me. I care about Coffey and I know he gets executed so I would read the last episode but the episode ending didn't leave me dying to read it. 

Maximize the Structure
So what’s the difference between these episode endings? The end of episode two and episode three contain the possibility of irreversible change, whereas the other episode endings, while interesting, don’t have the same zip. They don’t end on an action scene and they’re promises that more information will be revealed in the next segment. They appeal to my curiosity, not my need to know.

I also see there's a “care about the character factor” at work in episode endings. By the end of the first episode, the care factor isn't that high. In a classic King move, during the episode, he writes a violent prisoner introduced to the death row jail. Sets up the reader for what the guards face bringing a prisoner into the Green Mile. A bit later King brings in John Coffey, who, while he is a giant of a man who could easily overpower the guards, is gentle. His eyes are different. And the only question he has for Paul is: do they leave the lights on at night? Because he doesn't like the dark.

We care about Coffey right away (King is so good at that). So it would have been an excellent build toward the last line of “John Coffey would be the last.” End of episode. Boom. The gentle giant will be put to death and our protagonist is going to have to do it. And then he'll never do another execution again. You'd have to turn the page, right? Why does Coffey have to die? Why can't you save him? You have to save him.

However, that's not how episode one is written. There's a whole segment between Coffey's question about the dark and the last line. That segment, while good, interesting and necessary, dissipates the build toward the last line. It does set up the suspense about Mr. Jingles, about Delacroix's bad execution and that the story to come will show why Paul and Brutal have to get out of this game. Great standalone writing to be sure. But maybe serial episodes require a bit of a different structure.

Positron
Next we’ll look at the first three episodes of “Positron,” Margaret Atwood’s serial. (Episode 4 has been released but I haven’t had time to buy it yet. I guess that says something, right?)

Episode 1: 31% of the 3-episode ebook. Stan has become obsessed by a note he found in a home which he and his wife, Charmaine, inhabit every other month with another couple they've never met. In a dystopian future, many people live in jail for a month and then live out in the world for a month to save on resources. Great concept. It’s a good book. The note Stan finds has a lipstick print on it and is signed Jasmine. Clearly a love note. Clearly, Jasmine is everything Charmaine is not. So Stan decides he is going to get a glimpse of Jasmine the next time they change places with the other couple. At the end of the episode he finds out Jasmine is really Charmaine who is having an affair with Phil, the man who takes Stan’s place every other month. She left the note for him. Stan has been caught snooping by Phil’s wife, Jocelyn. Jocelyn is security for the new order, a muckety-muck who can easily eliminate Stan if she wants. But she wants revenge. So she takes Stan as her new mate. There’s no way out for him. Irreversible change; I’ll give it a four.

Episode 2: 32% of the book. By the end of episode two, Jocelyn has tired of Stan, who has been keeping up a good front. Jocelyn says it’s time for him to go. She has arranged for Stan's wife, Charmaine, who’s been in jail these few months, to get her old job back. Charmaine puts unwanted or misbehaving people to sleep. For good. The next procedure she will perform, Jocelyn tells Stan, will be on him. Stan is convinced Charmaine will never do it. But Jocelyn tells Stan that it will really be fake; they want him on the outside of the system so he can do a job for them. He’s stuck again. Jocelyn sticks Stan with a needle and he passes out. Pretty good cliffhanger. I’ll give it a four. But wouldn’t it have been better if it ended with Stan on the table and Charmaine standing above him with the reader asking the question of whether she would actually do it or not? I'm just saying.

Episode 3: 33% of the book. Charmaine does kill her husband, as far as she knows. Remember they fake all this. Afterwards, Stan gets smuggled out and Charmaine is "asked" to go to the the medical facility. She can't say no. She gets into a car they send for her, and Phil (Jocelyn's husband) is driving, but he pretends not to remember her. Now she believes they are trying to erase her. Now she will have to keep her wits about her if she wants to lead any kind of life in this system. The last line here is: “She’s on her own.” Not a great cliffhanger, as cliffhanger’s go. It’s a mirror of Stan’s ending in episode one. It gets a three from me.

When I compare these two books with some of my favorite TV shows that make good use of cliffhangers, they come up a little short. Ever watch “24?” Or “Breaking Bad?” Or “The Walking Dead?” Some episode endings are better than others, to be sure, but most fall into the “irreversible change” category rather than the “stay tuned for more info” category. Many are jaw-dropping surprise twists. Clearly manipulating me and that's why I love them.

So in your serial, should you shoot for all episode endings to have an irreversible change? End in action? Be a surprise? Would that be too much? Too predictable? Too far into the realm of Snidely Whiplash standing over Nell Fenwick, who's tied to the tracks with the train coming? But if you don't, how do you get the reader to come back?

Any advice on episode endings you'd like to share while I'm rewriting?

To read Part 3, click here.

About the Author: Deb McLeod, is a writer, creative writing coach and founder of The Writing Ranch. She has both an MFA and a BA in creative writing. She has been teaching and coaching for over ten years. Deb has published short fiction in anthologies and journals. She has written articles and creative nonfiction. Deb has been a professional blogger, tech writer, graphic artist and Internet marketing specialist.  

The Points of POV by Cindi Madsen

At this year’s Pikes Peak Writers Conference, I sat in on Debra Dixon’s Point of View workshop. One thing Debra said again and again was, “You can do anything you want to do in fiction, as long as you do it well.”

I guess the trick is doing it well, then. Easy enough, right? When you get ready to start your novel, you’ve got to decide which point of view to go with. Remember, POV delivers the POV character’s agenda, not the author agenda.

First person is presentational, intimate, and an inside job. Third person is representational and as it happens. With third person, you can choose to use omniscient or limited points of view, getting in really close to our character. Decide how your story is going to work. What will your reader need to know? What do you need to keep from your reader? How can you do that with the POV you choose? And if you have multiple POVs, when do you switch? Debra suggested choosing the character who has the most at stake. Shift when the emotional weight changes or if suspense will be increased. After we discussed these points, she listed six stages of POV.

1. Observation

How does your character see the world?

2. Join in action

Make your character do something

3. Perception (here’s where we start getting deeper into the character’s POV)

What are things that skew how they see things?

How would they say it? (This is where a strong voice comes in)

4. Thoughts

Show the inner thoughts. Show us what they think about the things they’re doing and perceiving.

5. Emotions

Add emotions to the thoughts/actions/perceptions. Put us there with the character. Make us feel what they feel.

6. Deep immersion

Blend 1-5 into one paragraph.

So whichever POV you’re using, think about adding all of these to your characters, until he or she becomes a living/breathing person. Watch for descriptions that might pull a reader out of POV.

For example, unless your character is cocky, a sentence like, “He moved gracefully from one corner of the room to the other,” even in narrative, displaces you from the character a bit. Add that voice in. How would your character describe himself or herself? A good way to tell if you’re moving out of intimate POV is to ask yourself if you’d think or say that about yourself. Would I say, “My smile tipped up at the corners of my mouth?” No, but I might say that about the guy I’m checking out. Would I say, “I ran a hand through my silky, wheat-colored hair and blinked my sapphire eyes?” Probably not.

Even in your narrative, the voice of your characters should shine through. So take a look at your descriptions and see if you can put their POV spin on it. See if you can’t add more perception, thoughts, and emotions so that your characters become the friend your reader is sad to leave at the end of the book. Good luck!

About the Writer:  Cindi Madsen sits at her computer every chance she gets, plotting, revising, and falling in love with her characters. Sometimes this makes her a crazy person. Without it, she’d be even crazier. She has way too many shoes, but can always find a reason to buy a new pretty pair, especially if they’re sparkly, colorful, or super tall. She lives in Colorado with her husband and three children. Look for her YA novels, All the Broken Pieces with Entangled Publishing, and Demons of the Sun with Crescent Moon Press to be released Fall 2012. More information can be found on her website: cindimadsen.blogspot.com