pame3070d874353

A Simple Study on Point of View

As fiction writers, there are many writing exercises to help improve your craft and your story. One of the best is changing your story’s point of view, and here’s why…

You learn a lot from seeing your story, your setting, your characters, from various angles. You may find the story works better from a different POV, but even if that doesn’t happen, you’ll see something new.

Don’t make this a large undertaking. A great exercise is to rewrite a chapter. At the very least, you’ll gain new perspectives on your characters. You may confirm your POV choice, and now you know why this is the best vantage point for your story.

Is your story told in first person? That is often exciting and fast-paced. It’s nice to be inside the protagonist’s head. But from there, you and your readers can’t be sure what any of the other characters are thinking. And there’s no way of knowing what’s going on elsewhere.

Omnipotent is not currently in fashion, but can be a great exercise and may add to your knowledge of the world your characters live in.

Third person is often used to give a broader perspective. If third person seems a bit too distant, you might try close third, allowing for access to characters’ thoughts and feelings.

Changing POV is a great way to add depth to your work.

For some fun simples POV ideas check out Eva Deverell’s page…

https://www.eadeverell.com/point-of-view-worksheet/

Pamela Evans is an author and award-winning educator, early childhood specialist, and director of educational programs

Are You and Your Book Ready for an Agent or Publisher?

When my children were young there was a wonderful climbing tree in our front yard. You had to be a certain height to reach the bottom branch and pull yourself up into the arms of the tree. Very young children often asked if I could help them up onto that branch. Not wanting anyone to get hurt, my answer was, “When you can pull yourself up, you can climb the tree.”

How does this apply to writing and getting published? Let’s discuss the often-dreaded synopsis. You must know your story well to write a decent synopsis. Many editors offer synopsis writing services for authors and there certainly can be a time to use one of those services, but I would counter that if you’re not ready to write a halfway decent one yourself, you’re probably not quite ready to submit your manuscript.

I’ll be the first to admit that writing a novel or work of nonfiction is a different skill from crafting the synopsis, but they truly complement each other. For the synopsis you need to have identified the strongest components of your work. You’ll need both the surface level – who, what, where, when – and the deeper why, blended into a compelling and clear summary.

Being an author means you spend half your time writing and half your time selling your work. An author must be able to describe and sell their book to an agent, a publisher, and to readers, even if self-publishing. In fact, if you’re self-publishing you’re the sales team. Either way, you’ll need strong synopses of different lengths to sell your masterpiece! Think of the synopsis as a way to ensure you know your work on every level and can discuss it clearly without hesitation. Until you have that piece, you’ve only done half the job.

Once you’ve got the goods, a great manuscript and a solid synopsis, you’re ready to query or publish. We’ll save the art of the query for another time!