This week’s video discusses the pros and cons of 1st-person POV vs. 3rd-person POV in order to help you make the right decision for your book. Video Transcript: Few decisions are more crucial to your story than that of point of view (or POV). This is a multi-faceted decision, involving the questions: Who’s going to […]
Search Results for: multiple povs
January 29, 2014 by 41 Comments CharactersHas Your Protagonist Gone MIA?
Pop quiz! Who’s the most important character in your book? I’ll give you a couple seconds to think about that. … Okay, so if you didn’t say your protagonist, then we probably need to talk. But since you’re all smarties, we can just assume you got it right. So with the premise of the protagonist’s […]
September 26, 2012 by 28 Comments Point of ViewYet Another Pitfall of Multi-POV Stories
I want to start this week’s post with a disclaimer. As you can tell from the title, this is going to be yet another harangue on the dangers of multi-POV fiction. However, none of this is to say multi-POV fiction is inherently bad or wrong. I love multi-POV fiction. Every single one of my books […]
June 15, 2009 by 4 Comments Point of ViewChoosing the Right POV
Narrative point of view (or POV, as it is popularly known in writer parlance) is one of those things that writers often tend to take for granted. We come up with a story idea, sit down to write, and spend maybe all of thirty seconds debating between a first- and third-person POV. But this snap, […]
April 26, 2009 by 32 Comments Writing LifeThe Value of Stories That Fail
Good writers aren’t born. Okay, well, actually, they are born, since it would be physically impossible to write without being born… but they’re aren’t born good. At least, I’ve yet to meet a four-year-old wunderkind who’s running around writing Pulitzer Prize-winning epics. I know I sure wasn’t. Instead, good writers are made. Skill isn’t a […]
August 22, 2022 by 54 Comments Plotting Your NovelIs Your Story Too Complicated? Here Are 9 Signs
Calling a story “complex” is a high compliment. But what is complexity? How can we learn how to write stories that are complex—without skidding across that narrow dividing line into complicated? What’s the difference between a complex story and a complicated story? And is your story too complicated? This a topic I’ve spent quite some […]
August 9, 2021 by 76 Comments Novel Endings3 Things to Know About the Ending of a Story
There are three parts of a story that are difficult to write: the beginning, the middle, and the ending. (I was going to start the article by referencing the ending of a story as one of the hardest parts, but then I realized… it’s all hard. Ahem.) Each has its own special set of challenges, […]
June 15, 2020 by 37 Comments Point of ViewDoes Your Story Really Need That Extra POV Character?
[I’m taking a quick break this week to deal with some personal stuff (no worries—everything’s good!), so decided to share a short post some of you may remember from the e-letter years ago.] Sooner or later, most authors find the constraints of POV frustrating. It can be difficult to observe the strictures of a tight […]
September 30, 2019 by 61 Comments Characters5 Questions for Choosing a Protagonist Who Represents Your Story’s Theme
Choosing a protagonist is often more of an event than a process. Writers sometimes feel more like the protagonist chooses them than the other way around. While most of us heed our first instinct to simply chase after this character to see where he goes, it’s important that at some point we analyze the soundness […]
October 29, 2018 by 103 Comments Plotting Your Novel5 Lessons From a Lost Novel
Mistakes are unavoidable. To fear them is to fear life itself. To try to eliminate them is to waste life in a futile struggle against reality. I daresay no one has more opportunities to learn these truths than does a writer. As writers, our lives are a never-ending litany of mistakes. Certainly mine has been […]
