by Unknown
From the standpoint of character development, the challenge is in making the characters around my protagonist come to life. I can’t be in their heads, so I have to rely upon my POV character to "tell" my readers about them through his observations and the interactions he has with them.
Clearly, these challenges can be overcome, and I think that what I’ve written thus far works quite well. But this is new for me, and I’m finding that I’m having to learn some of the basics of good storytelling all over again. That’s not a complaint; not at all. I think I decided to go with single character POV, in part, because after writing eleven books in multiple POV, I was looking for new challenges.
But I’d be interested in hearing from readers and writers alike. Which do you prefer: multiple character point of view or single character POV? Why? What do you get from one that you miss in the other?
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David B. Coe
I should point out that omniscient voice used to be the standard and that it was used to great effect to get into people’s thoughts and emotions. I shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss it. Omniscient voice used carelessly is what I object to—done well, it can be great.
Mark Wise
David, I think I like multiple POVs in enormous Fantasy Epics, but single POV in mystery/suspense. I think it depends on what you want to do in your story. Can you write a huge story like Winds of the Forelands from only one POV? I think you could, but who would want to read it? There is only so much character-building to carry through five books.
I have a question as a writer . . . How do you know how often to switch POVs in a multi book? Is there a rule or hint as to how often a POV switch is too often? I always fear switching it too often and con-fusing the reader. Then I worry about sticking with one too long and missing some great viewpoint.
David B. Coe
Mark, excellent point about POV fitting the type and scope of the story being told. You’re right. I couldn’t possibly have written Winds, or even the LonTobyn books, from one POV.
As to how often to switch, I really think it’s as individual as anything else, and often it depends on where you are in the story. There are parts of Winds where I remain in one character’s head for a whole chapter and other parts where I’m in two or three people’s POV in a chapter of the same length. In my final chapters of the last book in the series, I jumped around A LOT, but that matched the pacing at that point in the story.
I treat multiple POV as a conversation of a sort. When it seems that one character has "talked" for too long, or when the narrative seems to demand that someone else do the talking, I switch. It’s a pacing question. And if I have written an entire chapter in one character’s POV, I will generally switch as I begin the next chapter, even if the action stays in the same place. If I’m writing Grinsa and Tavis chapters and one’s from Grinsa’s POV, I’ll switch to Tavis with the next chapter, just to keep that story-thread fresh.
Again With the Point of View Stuff . . .
David B. Coe
My last essay focused on point of view, specifically on the choice between multiple person point of view—using several different characters to tell the story—and single person point of view, which is what I’m using in my current work in progress. Today I’d like to continue the discussion of point of view by comparing single third person point of view—telling a story through the eyes of a single character who is referred to in the third person ("he" or "she")—and first person point of view.
Once again, this is something I’ve been thinking about a great deal with respect to my current project because having made the decision to write the book in third person, I’ve been finding myself unintentionally slipping into first person as I write. There’s a part of me that feels that this story needs to be told in that "I," "Me," "My" voice. So why don’t I just write it that way? Well, let’s talk about what lies behind making such a choice.
The use of first person narrative is actually somewhat hard to find in fantasy. I’ve had fantasy readers tell me that they won’t read a book if they pick it up and find that it’s in first person. I’ve heard writers say that they hate writing first person, and I’ve had editors say that they are less likely to buy books that are written in that voice. The reasons for this are hard to state with any certainty, but I’m going to try anyway.
Worldbuilding and the description of the worlds we create are crucial elements of successful fantasy. There’s a lot of background information that fantasy authors have to convey to our readers, and doing that through a first person narrator can be difficult. When we use third person narration instead of first, we place just a bit of distance between ourselves and our readers. Instead of having the lead character telling our story, we have what’s referred to as a "hidden narrator" telling the story through the eyes of our protagonist. That little bit of distance allows us to give crucial information without it seeming forced or awkward.
Let me put it this way: As we go through our day, we don’t think discursively. When someone tells us that they’re going to Washington and will see the Lincoln Memorial, we don’t stop to think, "Ah, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States who led our nation through the Civil War, gave one of the most famous speeches in American history at Gettysburg in 1863, and was assassinated soon after his second inauguration in 1865." We know all this stuff and there’s no need to think about it. In fact, it would be odd if we were to stop and ponder it. In the same way, it reads as contrived if we have our first-person narrator stop and think about such things. But if we use third-person point of view, if we rely on that "hidden narrator" and put some distance between our voice and the reader, we can explain what needs to be explained without it feeling forced and unnatural. This is not to say that third-person narration makes huge data dumps okay—far from it. But it does allow us to convey a bit more background in a way that reads well.
This is also not to say that first person narration is not without certain advantages. First person narrators are quite common in mainstream literature and also in mystery. Just as in fantasy you sometimes want that distance between reader and point of view character, sometimes in other literary circumstances you don’t. Removing that distance can heighten the emotional impact of your plot points. Again to use an example: Having someone tell you about a friend who lost a loved one is sad. Having a friend tell you that he or she lost a loved one is devastating.
In mystery writing, being inside the lead character’s mind as he or she pieces together the clues allows your readers to feel that they’re solving the puzzle right along with your hero. By removing that narrative distance, you allow your reader to relate more thoroughly to the main character and his or her story.
As authors, we have to choose if we want that distance or the immediacy that comes when we remove it. I think that one of the reasons I’ve been drawn to both approaches as I work on my new project is that the story revolves around a murder mystery, but is set in a different historical era. Sometimes I need that distance; sometimes I want that immediacy. If I could write the book in both voices, I would, but that won’t work, and ultimately I’ve decided that I need that hidden narrator to convey certain story elements.
What about you? Which voice works best for your current project? Is it possible that a change in narrative approach might help you get past a problem you’re having?
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L. Jagi Lamplighter
"The use of first person narrative is actually somewhat hard to find in fantasy."
Except for noir fantasy, of course. (Nine Princes of Amber, the Dresden Files, etc.) The fantasies that copy noir mysteries in their mood are in first person (which is why I did my Prospero books that way.)
But you are right about the fact that other fantasies usually are not, and I think your ideas as to why are pretty good ones. Third person allows the author to include a good deal of stuff the main character might generally know, but not think about . . . which is quite necessary for a fantasy story!
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br /> David B. Coe
That’s a great point, Jagi: There is indeed that strain of fantasy that crosses over into noir or mystery. This project I’m working on straddles the line a bit. Hence my confusion about which to use. And I should also add that the first-person voice in Prospero Lost (Jagi’s book from Tor, for those who don’t know) worked very well.
Deadlines
David B. Coe
"Butt in Chair."
Over the past couple of years BIC has become something of a mantra here at Magical Words, and it remains some of the best advice we as a group have given. If you want to be a writer, you have to write. Simple as that. Except . . .
Writing professionally is not only about writing, but often about writing to a deadline, writing on demand, churning out content on a regular basis. Every Sunday, I write my Monday post for Magical Words, and quite often it takes me a while to come up with a topic for my post. It’s hard, after literally hundreds of posts about writing, to come up with something original and relevant and, we hope, entertaining.
But as writers, this is something we have to do. Like creating characters and developing narrative flow and building tension, writing on demand and to deadline is a skill to be honed. And there are great ways to teach oneself to do it.
I first learned to write creatively to a deadline when I was in seventh grade. Really. We had a class assignment for the second half of the school year to write just about every night (maybe five nights a week) in a journal. We could write anything we wanted—diary-type entries, poems, stories; whatever. This was a school assignment, but there is no reason why you can’t give yourself the same assignment now. It’s a great way to make writing a habit.
There are other things we can do, of course, to make ourselves write on demand—join a writing group, start a blog, or merely resolve to turn out a story every other week, or some such thing. The point is to force yourself not only to write, but to finish pieces by a certain time and date. Deadlines are a fact of life for writers, and while many publishers will forgive the occasional late book, no writer—and in particular no new writer—wants to develop a reputation for turning in work late. One of the other things we say often here at Magical Words is that writers need to comport themselves professionally. This means, in part, making certain that manuscripts look clean and neat, that they are free of typos and grammatical problems, and, yes, that they are turned in on time.
But wait, you might say. Writing a short story in two weeks is one thing; turning in a manuscript of 100,000 words on time is quite another. To which I’d reply, yes and no. Writing a book is a larger, more complex undertaking. But when I’m working on a book, I break down that larger project into a series of discreet tasks—chapters are very handy in this regard. If I were to start a book in the beginning of October and give myself a January 31 deadline for finishing it, I’d approach it this way: the book is going to be about 100,000 words, and I have four months to finish it. I’ll want to give myself a couple of weeks at the end to polish and revise. So the actual writing is actually going to have to take about fifteen weeks. The way I work, that means that I’ll have (allowing for Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s) about 70 writing days. That’s a shade under 1,500 words a day; definitely doable. In fact, what it comes out to is a chapter every three to four days—a brisk pace, but not a terrible one.
Now, your chapters might be longer than mine, or shorter. Your book length might be longer or shorter (although in today’s market, as a new writer, you don’t want to try to sell books that are too far off of that number in either direction). And you might have more time than I gave myself, or you might work weekends, or you might think that 1,500 words per day is way too slow or way too fast a pace. These are decisions you have to make for yourself. And then you have to adjust your math accordingly.
But the process works. Some might ask if I really think of my book writing in these terms, and the answer is yes, I really do. As I said, writing a book is a big thing. It can be intimidating, especially early on. I’ve been doing this for a long time; I’ve written more than a dozen novels, and I still find it a bit daunting to start that first page of something that will eventually be 400 or 500 pages long. But if I look at it as starting the first page of a chapter that might be fifteen pages long, it doesn’t seem so huge. And if I can break down the process and see ahead of time exactly how I’m going to meet my deadline, it forestalls any panic I might feel.
To be honest with you, when I was working on that hypothetical example above, and I typed in that January 31 deadline, I paused for a moment, wondering if I was being realistic. As soon as I did the math, though, I realized that I was. That’s happened to me with actual book projects, too. I’ve looked at a deadline, and thought, "There is no way I can meet this deadline. No way at all." But then, after breaking down the project into its component parts, and plotting them out on a calendar, I’ve realized that in fact I can.
A deadline doesn’t have to be a burden. Instead, it can be a tool, a way of carving up a project into manageable pieces. Learning to use your time constraints that way can make you a more efficient writer. It can also preserve your sanity.
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Chris Branch
David, I think the most impressive part of your post is the throwaway line where you say you’ll need "a couple of weeks" to polish and revise your 100K-word ms. So that’s all it takes when you’re a pro, huh? :-)
One question, is it really accurate that 100K words translates roughly to 400 or 500 pages? I was thinking it would be more like 300, but never having had a manuscript transformed into an actual book (yet), I never think in terms of pages.
David B. Coe
Chris, don’t be impressed. Really. Because that two-week polishing period that you find impressive is linked directly to the very un-impressive writing pace of 1,500 words per day. Now, these days I’m a bit faster than that—maybe 2,000 words a day—but this is a new pace for me and I don’t like to plan for it yet. But my point is this: I write slowly because I tend to polish and revise as I go along. That’s just the way I work. My first drafts tend to be very clean and, thus, they tend to need relatively little work. Plus, I factor in that the book is going off to my editor, who is going to help me revise and polish as part of the publication process.
Other authors, whose books are every bit as good as mine, might work very differently. They might write 3,000 words a day and thus finish their books in only thirty-five or forty days, but they might do all of their polishing in the revision stage, in which case they’ll need those extra weeks at the end. Does that make sense? It’s not that I’m a professional, or that I don’t need as much revising as others. It’s just a matter of where in my creative process I do that polishing work. I do it along the way, so that I only need a bit of time at the end to do some last minute work. I hope I’m being clear.
As for your page count/word count question: Yes, 100K words is about 400 pages give or take a few. Industry standard for manuscript pages is as follows: double spaced, 1 inch margins all around, and somewhere around a 10 or 12 pitch font. The end result is about 250 words per page. Now this number tends to fluctuate a bit: more words per page when you’re doing lots of exposition; fewer when you’re writing lots of dialogue. But that’s the standard. Me? I use Courier New font at 11 pitch because it just looks right to me. And I get about 240-260 words per page, which is right where I should be.
The Great Plot Synopsis Project
C.E. Murphy
A couple of weeks ago I got email from Joshua Palmatier inviting me to participate in the Great Plot Synopsis Project, wherein he asked a bunch of published writers to post a book synopsis in order to help show aspiring writers how they’re done. (Joshua keeps having good ideas like this and then following through on them. I think he’s an alien.) So today is the Great Plot Synopsis Project Day. :-)
I have blatantly stolen the Synopsis Q&A Joshua posted. Please note that there are *SPOILERS* for Urban Shaman beyond this point
. The book synopsis is replicated in its entirety. As it happens, because of how this particular synopsis is written, it’s not very spoilery, but it is spoilery! So be warned, and now you can, if you wish, read:
How did you sell your first book: agent, slush pile, alien intervention?
Slush pile. Luna was the third house I’d sent Urban Shaman to. I dashed out and got myself an agent (the incomparable Jennifer Jackson) that weekend. Luna, at the time, was looking for traditional fantasy with a strong female protagonist and a strong romantic subplot. I sent them a contemporary fantasy with a strong female protagonist and almost no romantic subplot. They bought it. This is my way of saying "Let them tell you no." I mean, don’t send a romance novel to Baen Books, let’s be reasonable, but also don’t assume that because your book doesn’t exactly fit what a publisher says they’re looking for that they’re going to reject you.
Was a synopsis involved, and if so what did it look like? (seriously: page length, spacing, font, straight-up story or broken down by character/setting/plot, etc.)
There was a synopsis: it was a two page, 25pt spaced, .3″ tabbed, 12pt Courier New font, extremely basic synopsis that incorporated the entire story at once, without breaking things down into character/setting/plot. I can’t even imagine how you’d do that, in fact. Here’s the Urban Shaman synopsis: