How do you stop overthinking your writing?

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Everyone does it. Your thoughts circle in an endless loop – anxiety and doubt overtake your ability to move forward. Unfortunately, it's common. I don’t know how to eliminate it, but I can share ways I’ve found helpful to move past it.

1. Find your process. Whether you’re just starting or have written dozens of books, find a process that works for you and use it. This may look a little different for each writer, but I’m talking about how you go from idea to done. I rely on the process I’ve built to help get out of the overthinking cycle. Overthinking hits hardest for me in the first draft and self-edits–before anyone else sees the story. I remind myself to trust the process. That my critique partners and editors will help me flesh out the areas that don’t quite make sense yet. We have dev editors, alpha and beta readers, and writing critique partners for a reason. We’ve selected them because we trust them to give us honest feedback. Especially if you’re struggling with overthinking an early draft, trust that you’ll work through the details, but you must get the story out first.

 

If you’re just starting and you don’t have people like this, whether they are fellow writers you can critique swap with or paid partners like dev editors or beta readers, I highly recommend finding them. Not everyone uses every type of partner. Find the ones that work for you.

 

2. Have a plan. This is not a stand between plotters and pantsers. How you get your words on paper is your own business. I find overthinking to be circuitous, a cycle of worry that isn’t really productive. One way I move forward is by revisiting my plan for publication. If you’re familiar with sales, this is like internal objection handling. Your brain might create reasons to get stuck in a cycle, and you get to sell it on why you want to move forward. It could look like this: 

 

Brain: this addition to the world-building would be great, but it needs to be in the beginning. 

Plan: Okay, Brain, I will write it down and address it in self-edits. Let's pretend that it has been there from the beginning for now. 

 

I’ll admit this is less helpful when your brain loops on self-doubt, but that is also an area of overthinking that writers must confront. Not every story is for every reader, and I have to be okay with that to create something and put it out in the world. In those cases, I anchor myself around why I’m doing this. I love writing, and I love sharing my stories. I want to find readers who enjoy my brand of storytelling.

 

3. Trust yourself. Cliche? Sure. But still fundamentally a way to unstick yourself from the overthinking cycle. I can’t prescribe what will work for you, but you’ll find the things that do. For me, pushing through a draft helps. I make changes as I go and clean up for consistency in self-edits. Each writer has to find their own ways to deal with overthinking because it is a common struggle, and I don’t think it goes away the more you write.

I hope it helps to know you’re not the only one overthinking your writing. Find the people and the process that works for you. Many think of writing as solitary, but storytelling inherently needs others. Find the people who will support you but give you constructive feedback.

Jillian Witt reads more romantic fantasy than is strictly necessary and writes books she would love to read. Her stories unleash powerful women into fantasy worlds, usually turn enemies into lovers, and always offer an escape from reality.

When not reading or writing, she’s enjoying all four seasons in Michigan with her partner and their dog, Loki.

TT and instagram @mythandmagicbookclub 

https://www.jillianwitt.com/

Finding Your Voice: How Your Writing Can Change

 

Photo by Jelena Kostic on Unsplash

When I sat down to write this post, I realized I had a lot to say. So hold on to your bootstraps! I am blessed to watch young writers develop their craft because I teach a senior creative writing seminar at my university. This experience has led me to think extensively about what young writers need to learn.

Some of the students have been writing for years: they've shared their work since high school, published poems and stories, and won awards. Others are brand new to sharing their writing with others and honing their craft. It's a lively environment, bubbling with talent and new ideas. And I am grateful to be a part of their journey. As we all evolve as writers, I have learned a few things about the process.

Hone Your Craft

If you haven't seen Pablo Picasso's early work, you need to do this right now: https://mymodernmet.com/picasso-early-work/. You can't skip working on your craft and understanding the fundamentals and technical aspects. 

In my seminar, there are common technical elements the newer writers are still learning: paragraphing, punctuation for quotations, deleting filter words, and moving from telling to showing, for example. Info-dumping, effective first chapters, and deeper pov are elements all of them are still developing. There are any number of craft books to help you work on these skills. Sharing your work with your peers is also a great way to learn from others.

After that essential piece of advice (which includes the important reminder to read, read, read), the biggest piece of wisdom I share with my students is to find your voice.

Easier said than done.

We are all influenced by the many books and stories we're read - and reading a lot is crucial to becoming a great writer. But it's more than imitating or synthesizing the stories we've imbibed. We have to embrace our individual perspective of the world. And we have to let go of the negative voices in our heads and listen to ourselves. 

Embrace your Unique Perspective

Embracing our quirky individuality is a courageous act. Social media and consumer capitalism work on us every day feeding us messages to conform to society's values: watch this tv show, buy this product, do this thing everyone else is doing on TikTok, you are never enough. How do we resist these forces if we can't hide in a hole by ourselves with on wifi?

Turn off your phone and tv. Think about your unique experiences and interests. Consider your learning style and how you interact with the world. Lean into that.

• Are you a cinematic writer who sees landscapes and colours first?
• Are you more of a director who can visualize dialogue and character movements?
• Do you feel everything intensely and write emotion-driven scenes?
• Do you value the pov of the underdog, or the villain, or the racialized characters?
• Do you see some injustices in the world that you'd like to change?
• What are the common themes in your writing?

One of my students was worried that her stories were too violent. But an underlying theme of her writing was telling stories about gender-based oppression from the survivor's point of view (and sometimes the survivors got justice or revenge). We know (cue the MeToo hashtag) that these stories are too often covered up or ignored. By bringing the subject to light, this writer showed us violence for a reason: to affirm the fictional experiences of her heroines. Social media or naysayers might say it's too violent. But tell that to the many, many survivors of gender-based violence and oppression who've been told they're wrong or they need to keep silent. 

This writer's courage to delve into difficult topics helps to challenge social norms and strives to make the world a better place. We need that.

Let Go and Listen

Your inner voice--your connection to the universe--is somewhere inside you. Maybe it's hiding or getting drowned out by all those social media and consumer capitalist messages, things your teachers and family told you, peer criticisms and bullies' words and actions, and all the other stuff that can hold us back and tell us our voice--our craft, our gift, our unique pov, the stuff that makes you an original--isn't good enough. My writer friend calls these the brain gremlins and they can be fierce! They are noisy. They can overpower the little voice inside you and make you doubt it's even there.

So how do we find it and listen to it? We need sensitive artist types to tell their stories and share their values. Empathy and humanity are key beliefs we share and transmit in our work. But we can often feel like they are being targeted and we're living in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (oof, I just looked it up and the novel is set in 2024! Please, for the love of the goddess, will someone make it into a tv show! It's the Handmaid's Tale of the moment!)

There are not shortcuts to finding your voice. For me, it's a combination of lots of writing practice, a heap of therapy, and a good helping of my writers' group's support and encouragement. It boils down, in my mind, to believing in yourself and tuning into the experiences, values, and unique perspective you have, then channeling that into your writing. 

The medieval Christian mystics had a practice of self-annihilation, where they tried to rid themselves of all the external noise and devote themselves solely to the will of God. I see writing as a secular or agnostic form of this practice: you need to have faith in yourself and in the creative process, and to do this, you need to let go of all the noise and doubts and gremlins that try and separate you from this faith. Write from your heart, from your soul, and you will never go wrong.

Some of you might be wondering where the writing to market argument fits into this philosophy. I think you still can write to market while being true to yourself. But that is another story from the riverbank...

Leveling Up Your Craft as a Writer

This week at the SFF Seven, we're asking each other if our writing changed - and, if so, how?

It might seem disingenuous to say this, but yes my writing has changed: I've gotten better. 

I mean, one would hope so! 

And I realize that "better" is a nebulous descriptor, so I'll attempt to define it. One thing about writing skill that it seems I end up telling newbies over and over is that I absolutely have gotten faster at every stage of the process. It's like when you learn to drive a car. (And I learned on a stick shift, so there was an extra layer of learning curve there.) At first you consciously think about a hundred different aspects of the task: the brake, the accelerator, (maybe the balance between the clutch, the brake, and the accelerator, which was a real treat), steering, watching the front, the side, the rear view, reading street signs and traffic signals, and thinking several cars ahead, and remembering where you're going... It's a LOT to think about and overwhelming at first. But later, after you've been driving for years, you don't think about all of that anymore, right? Mostly I think about where I'm going and how to best get there - and sometimes I zone out and forget even that, defaulting to familiar routes - but otherwise the rest is subconscious.

Writing is the same way! (I include revising in this.) After time and practice, you don't have to think about the zillion details of craft, liberating your mind to focus on storytelling. 

I think this is something that more experienced writers forget - how much we've internalized the mechanics of the process, allowing us to allocate more resources to our creative selves. This freedom allows us to try new things, write more difficult and complex stories, to test our writing chops. Maybe it's like, to extend the analogy, learning to drive a race car or fly a plane. Going for the fancier skills is predated by learning the basics.

The thing is, I think a lot of us who grow up reading the works that inspire us (which should be all of us, really) have this idea that we can leap directly to doing THAT. Everybody loves the concept of the wunderkind, the prodigy, the creative who makes a list like "30 under 30," as if that's meaningful in any way. Spoiler: it's not meaningful; it's just unusual, which is why we're fascinated.

So, do what I advise the writers in my mentoring Discord: take your time, learn the basics. It *will* get easier. And THEN you can deliberately choose to make it harder!

 

A Craft Tale

Once upon a time, back when there were numerous, in-person cons every year, there were panels on character arcs, story structure, and pacing. The information was bountiful and the speakers mostly accountable. But then, a dark cloud descended across the land and all of those cons were no longer at hand. 

What was a novice author to do, without all the fixes and tricks? No more handshakes and tips? 

Well, I really thought I was in trouble. It even felt like I was in a bubble. But then, what did I find on the shelf? There was an elf. 

No, not any normal elf, because it was the elf and everything else populating the shelf. Characters. They appeared on pages. On covers. On spines and maps. They showed up when unexpected, never again to be neglected. 

Books. There were towers of books from the well-written, to ones you’d overlook. And on top of it all, sat a notebook. So with paper and pen, I began again. And for help I never had to look farther, than to the pages resting over yonder. 

***

Our topic this week is what are we learning and from whom? And for me it’s true that I haven’t sought any writerly education for years, expect that I realized every time I pick up a book I’m learning. As you read you absorb story structure and pinch points. You experience character’s motives and pressures. So my arrow is going to point you right back to that stack of books on your nightstand or on your kindle or on your desk. Keep reading and it will improve your writing craft. 

Becoming a Better Writer - How to Do It?

      

 

ROGUE FAMILIAR has a cover!! I've been loving the enthusiasm for it, too. It's a great inspiration to me as I write Selly's hunt for Jadren. 

This week at the SFF Seven we're talking tools for writers who aren’t beginners. I seem to be hearing a lot of interest in this topic lately. I've been contemplating setting up some online classes and not long ago I asked for input on what kinds of classes people would like to see from me. (Feel free to comment or message me if you have ideas or requests!) One of the suggestions that came up often was a desire for classes for more advanced writers, targeting those who’ve written several books but want to learn how to keep getting better at it.

So, I've been working up some lists of more advanced topics I could teach - and thinking back to where I learned the intermediate and higher stuff. Some of it is always going to be self-study. Reading other authors. Listening to other writers talk about their process. Re-reading favorites to study how those writers accomplished what they did. I think those are the best tools.

But I'd also like to see more craft-focused workshops, classes, and discussions out there. For quite a few years, it seems, the bulk of information offered to writers seems to focus on business. There are countless opportunities to learn Facebook ads, newsletter marketing, keywords, BookBub ads, Amazon ads, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Why? Because those are easy to teach. Teaching craft is a much more daunting prospect. In fact, I've heard debates among creative-writing professors about whether the craft of writing can be taught at all.

At any rate, this isn't a very informative post, I know. I'm not offering any good tools here (other than the above), but rather food for thought. Improving craft is something we all (well, most of us) want to do. I'm thinking up some ways to get at it. Suggestions welcome!

War of the Character Clones

Characters on stage need motivation - as much as I hate that old 'what's my motivation' chestnut. It's more nuanced than that, and also, if you're the actor, it's literally your job to work out motivation based on the script. I'd say 'that's a rant for another time' but it isn't. It plays directly into our topic this week: Carbon Copy Characters. 

How many Hamlet movies do we have? I can think of three off the top of my head. There are scads more. While the words for Hamlet never change, and the action of the story never changes, the character changes between movie versions because of the person playing the character. Each individual brings their own experience, their own emotional weight, their own interpretation to the lines that haven't changed in hundreds of years. I think my favorite illustration is the Unsolicited Advice skit. 8 actors and 1 crown prince read a single line of Hamlet's soliloquy - for comedy, of course, but you still get a sense in that bit of how different each of their Hamlets would be. 

Authors working with characters need to take a cue from the great variety of Hamlets across the history of the play. Go to YouTube and search 'To Be or Not to Be'. Look at how many videos come up. What makes us willing to watch so many Hamlets? 

Because when we watch Hamlet, caught between life and death in one short soliloquy, we aren't watching a single character grapple with suicidal ideation and the fear of mortality. We're watching individual human beings each bringing their own fears, their own disappointments, their own unique sorrows to bear. We're watching THEM as Hamlet, not Hamlet played by them. Fine distinction, but it matters.

For authors, that translates to bringing unique wounds to each character we write. I suspect this is much easier for character driven writers than for plot driven writers. Because a character driven process begins with characters and finding character voices, it's never a conscious thought for me to make characters across books different from one another. It follows naturally from my need to understand how each character starts a story broken. It's from that place of brokenness that plot flows. Even if two characters share a basic wound - it isn't safe to trust others, for example - that wound will have come from different experiences. The responses to that common wound will be utterly different based on who these people are. 

Creating unique characters isn't about what they do. Sally in this book is a hairdresser, and Sarah in that book is a truck driver. That's window dressing. What makes these characters distinct from each other is emotion. Their responses to conflict and obstacles. They likely have different goals and different tactics they use to achieve their goals.  Those are the tools in the writer's toolbox that build characters that will stand apart no matter how many books - or Hamlets - you subject yourself to.

Antagonist Defined

 

The dictionary defines Antagonist as a person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something, an adversary. Which strongly suggests a need to comprehend the protagonist to spin up the antagonist.

Plenty of people espouse the idea of the antagonist being a mirror to your protagonist. If the protagonist is sitting on the sunny side of the mirror, the antagonist lives and moves in the shadows.

It sets up the story and the conflict so that everything the protagonist must thwart and overcome to accomplish their goal is not just their antagonist, it’s also a part of themselves. This is the old Western movie where what separated the good guys from the bad guys is the thinnest of lines. At the start of the movie, you get the sense that good stiff breeze could blow the good guy over to join the black hat gang.

But let’s return to that definition of antagonist for a moment. Remember how it specifies a person? If you’re of a certain age, you may recall that your high school English classes listed five different types of conflict:

Man vs Man

Man vs Nature

Man vs Society

Man vs Supernatural

Man vs Self

Only one of those five allows for a human antagonist. So more broadly defined, antagonists are obstacles. They can be anything and anyone standing in our way. But, you know, a wall is an obstacle, but I might not call it an antagonist. Sometimes obstacles are only obstacles and they don’t rise to the level of antagonist. I feel like there’s one crucial piece of the puzzle left – change.

Unless you’re writing literary fiction, protagonists need character arcs. They must change and grow in order to finally achieve their goals. Yet who among us likes to have their flaws pointed out to them, much less likes to have to root out and excise those flaws? Most humans only change under duress – when the pain of the flaw is greater than the pain of change.

It is the antagonist’s job to apply that pain. It is the antagonist’s job to force the protagonist to take a long, hard look at themselves and choose. It’s the antagonist’s job to leave the protagonist with no choice but to change.

How do I pick the right antagonist for my stories? It will come as a surprise to no one – I start with character. Usually protagonists. When a story idea rears up from the deep, an antagonist usually lurks in the idea, already. But as I begin sketching out the proof of concept and doing all the pre-writing character work, the protagonists’ arcs, replete with wounds, faulty beliefs, and flaws takes shape. I get a sense of each protagonists’ greatest fears. The antagonist must then embody those fears and force the protags to face and to overcome them.

In that sense, the antagonist is partially a hero of the story. They are the catalyst that forces reaction from the protagonist who would go on taking the path of least resistance forever and accomplishing nothing.

It’s a big relief to read or see a story where the protagonist is bounced off all the other molecules inside a story flask. Especially when the biggest obstacle most of us face is whether to fold the laundry the minute the dryer buzzes or let it sit in there over night moldering.

Alexia's Go-To Writing Resource

 

Grammar Girl website

As a writer I’ve got pages and pages of bookmarked websites and a few writer groups I can go to with questions. I’ve also got a couple of books that get pulled off the shelf depending on what stage of creating I’m in. 

But the one reference I consult the most? I wish it were something cooler, like Vivien’s popular science works she uses, or KAK’s Deviant Art obsession (which is totally valid). But for me, it’s a basic:

Grammar Girl’s ‘Lay’ Versus ‘Lie’ post.

Go ahead. Laugh. I know I sure do.

It never fails, I'll be cruising through my WIP and someone or something has to put someone or something down. And then my brain goes into second-guessing mode. I try to rely on my gut and keep going, but inevitably I’ll end up clicking on my bookmarks folder to re-read through Grammar Girl’s tips. 

Which, I believe, brings about a good point. As all of us SFF Seven-ers have pointed out—there are GOBS of writing resources out there! You can find a book or post on every topic I can think of and then some! You can throw yourself into research and never surface. 

if you don’t have the basics—

your writing will never accomplish what you want it to

But if you don’t have the basics, like knowing when to use lay and lie, your writing will never accomplish what you want it to and all of the time, effort, and sometimes money, you sink into the other resources is worthless. It’s like, if you want to be able to do a handstand you can’t just jump right to Adho Mukha Vrksasana. First you need balance, strength, endurance, flexibility, concentration and then you’ll be able to nail a handstand during your yoga practice. 

Back to the writing angle though, there’s a lot of aspects I want to get better at, and thankfully I’ve got Grammar Girl to help. So tell me, what basics do you struggle with? Comma use? Past and present tense switches? Go ahead, lay it on me! 

Spotlight on Author Mike Chen!

 

Alexia: I love this week’s topic because it gave me an excuse to reach out to one of my auto-buy authors and fangirl! And the timing couldn’t have been more perfect because my guest’s newest release kept me from going insane while I was stuck in bed with vertigo—which was definitely not fun, but the audiobook WE COULD BE HEROES was beyond exciting! Welcome, Mike Chen! 

Mike: Thanks so much for having me! And shoutout to Emily Woo Zeller, who narrated the audiobook. She did my previous one (A BEGINNING AT THE END) and when I found out she’d signed to do this, I messaged her and asked her to bring some of the chaotic disaster energy from her lead role in STAR WARS: DOCTOR APHRA. Game fans will recognize her from the recent Cyberpunk 2077 -- like my wife, who loaded up the audiobook and said, “Hey, it’s Panam!”

Alexia: Yes—Aphra! Emily was the perfect voice for this superhero tale. I like to think books have saved me from a lot of things over the years, but never have I been so sure of that statement than the past couple of years. I don’t get a choice about having a chronic disease and when it flares up or its tagalongs wreck havoc on my head, books—more specifically audiobooks—save the day! Mike, have you ever had a book be your lifeline? 

Mike: Not directly, but various creative arts felt like that to me as a teen. I can count on various songs and musicians that I would lean on as lifelongs. But I would use books as a means to feel accepted and seen, specifically Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and Timothy Zahn's Star Wars books -- Zahn's came at a time when being a nerd wasn't socially acceptable and it made it feel okay to love those things while Anne Rice fed my inner teen goth angst.

The Good, the Bad, the Easy, and the Difficult

 

Two fer one Void Bois, speaking of who has it easy in this household.

The good, the bad, the easy, and the difficult.

We're questioning which scenes are better, the easy or the difficult. I assume we're talking about easy or hard to write as opposed to read. I've read scenes authors claimed were a breeze to write, but they were really tough to read. Then I've read scenes authors struggled over that went down like syrup, lovely and sweet.

Now that I think about it, it doesn't matter whether we're talking about writing or reading. Easy scenes have their place. Difficult scenes have their place. 

If you're writing, you may run across a treatise by someone who likes to claim that ALL scenes should be easy. That you should always be itching to get to write those scenes because they excite you so much. Maybe it works that way for some people. Maybe there's a medication I could take that would make it that way for me. But writing isn't that way for me and I'll argue it's not for most writers. We all have different strengths. As a result, we're all going to be drawn to finding different scenes more attractive than others. For me, the easy scenes are the volunteers - the images, dialogue, and action that come to me from out of nowhere. There's a duel scene in Enemy Within that happened like that. Popped up out of nothing as I was trying to go to sleep one night. Little sleep was had that night while I got that scene down. It wrote itself, I just showed up to the go between for scene and keyboard. And it's a good scene. At least, I adore it.

But then there's the tough stuff. These are the scenes we agonize over. Well, okay. *I* do. I didn't get to do emo teen angst, okay? I make up for it when I write. 

The tough scene came at the end of Enemy Within when I sat staring at the last (unwritten) quarter of the book wondering what on earth to do. It took a critique partner snapping at me to go away and make everything much, much worse for the final climax scene. It was just the kick in the brain necessary to really start digging into problem-solving those final pages. It was torturous and it took long, hard hours of writing and rewriting to make things as grim as they needed to be. But you know, a funny thing happened on the way to bloody and grim - I began enjoying myself. It was mighty damned satisfying to hack my way through the weeds and uncover something worthwhile. Hard as the scene was to write, I suspect it's an even better scene than the one that volunteered so readily.

And regardless. Both scenes were crucial to the arc of the story. So easy? Hard? Who cares so long as the end result is a finished novel.

Don't Write What You Know

"Write What You Know" is the tritest advice ever exhorted in conventional creative writing classes. How boring. How restrictive. How cruel. How utterly ridiculous. It's a surefire way to reinforce the cultural status quo. It traps us in an ouroboros of classic and popular fiction built to exclude Other. It limits scope and imagination. It sets up failure at conception.

Gah.

Don't write what you know. Write what interests you. Write that which provokes your curiosity and pushes your boundaries of comfort and knowledge. Get into the minds of people you're not, understand their desires and their conflicts. Expand your empathy by creating circumstances in which you would never find yourself. Explore environments that are the antithesis of yours. Challenge the concepts of normal and acceptable. Grow as a writer and you grow as an individual.

Feed your weird.  

The perils of point of view

When I was chiefly a reader and not interested in selling my scribbles, I’d buy a book because it looked fun or was recommended to me, and other than broad categories like romance or fantasy or whatever a book store considered “general fiction,” I didn’t pay attention to its market. I also didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to whether a book was written in first-person, second-person, or third-person point of view. (Aside: If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I reference “point of view” in terms of writing craft, Jeffe Kennedy did a fab run-down earlier this week.) Now that I am trying to sell my stories to other folks, I pay a lot more attention to point of view, and I’ve discovered a few patterns. Here are some quick answers to "which point of view do I use for my story?" quandaries.

Lots of characters with thoughts? You want to use third person.

In books where readers get the interior thoughts of more than two characters, writers tend to use the third-person point of view. Think of, for instance George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series: so, so many characters, and a large number of them are point-of-view characters (i.e., we experience the story through their “eyes” and thoughts). If that epic were in first person, I would be perpetually confused.

Note that I’m careful here to recommend third-person specifically for stories that feature the interior thoughts of more than two characters. I did not say fantasy as a whole. Some fantasy writers manage to tell stories using first-person and make it not at all confusing. However, the successful fantasies that do this typically focus narrowly on one character, sometimes two. Amanda Bouchet’s recent Kingmaker series, for instance, is written in first person, but since we are only given and are only interested in the main character Cat’s point of view, the first-person POV works well.

Main character in the young-adult(ish) range? First person.

YA novels, regardless of their genre, tend to be written in first person. If you read a few, you can see why this POV choice aids the purpose of a YA book. Because a good YA book is about one character’s attempt to grapple with relevance in a world that keeps telling them “you don’t matter yet,” the narrative must of course be all in that character’s head. It must of course be suffused with all the agony and frustration and hope and striving that is typical of not-quite-adult-ness. First-person point of view allows angst-wallowing in a way that no other POV choice can.

Hint: the POV recommendation is applicable to character age and also reader age. If your target audience --  your market – is young adult, first-person POV is a good choice.

Similarly, if your characters are recent teens and now just barely adults – a niche that was until recently called “new adult” – I’d stick with first-person POV. First-person books featuring 22-year-olds in their first post-college job yet still making iffy decisions tend to sell a lot better than third-person omniscient books covering similar topics. Somehow, if the character does a boneheaded thing blithely , optimistically, and with no thought of possible consequences, it feels like a grand adventure rather than a poor life choice. Plus, if such an episode were written in third person, there’s always a danger it might sound judgy.

Are sensory details super important to the story? First person.

I’m going to disagree with my awesome co-SFFSevener, K.A. Krantz, and say that if you’re writing erotica or erotic romance, first-person POV is the way to go. Most erotic stories are written in the first person, so it’s a reader expectation. Also, in erotica, if you’re doing it right, the sensory details are front and center. In a story that is about the character completing his or her arc by having sexual adventures, nothing matters more than how that character feels. I mean both internal thought feeling and also satin-sheets, chocolate-sauce, feather-tipped leather feeling. Do I need to go on?

Often paranormal and urban fantasy stories are written in first person, and again, I think that sensory (or in this case, extrasensory) details are central to those sorts of stories.

Trying to sound literary or experimenting with an unreliable narrator? Either first or second might be fun.

Most of the time, second-person POV is only useful for experimental literary fiction or choose-your-own-adventure stories. Note that the latter are not exclusively for kids. A site called Silkwords used to publish choose-your-own-adventure erotica and erotic romance stories, and they were definitely not for kids.

Do I have to pick just one?

Er… technically no? One of my favorite young adult books, The Farm by Emily McKay, uses first person for the main character and her sister and third person for Carter, whose loyalty and good intentions we are supposed to doubt at the beginning. Although using both point-of-view choices works brilliantly for this story, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for a writer with less experience and storytelling command to try. So, although no, technically you don’t have to pick just one POV, please do realize that picking two complicates your work. A lot.

What about you, Viv?

Oh right. My opinion. Seriously, this is necessary? The truth is, I’m an easy read and have favorites using all kinds of narrative choices. However, though I won’t throw a book against a wall just because it’s, say, in first-person present, most of my DNFs (books I did not finish reading) tend to be told in first-person from the point of view of a character I can’t root for. Sometimes that character is too whiny, too certain he’s funny when he’s not really, too oblivious, or too self-absorbed. Sometimes I just can’t bear to be in the head of that person for 300 pages.

Bottom line, though, think about this before you start writing, make a deliberate choice taking all market and reader and genre expectation variables into consideration, and then tell me your story. If you tell it well enough, I won’t even stop to worry about your POV choice.

Writing a book is not a single-player RPG

When folks talk about “leveling up” writing craft, they’re slapping possibly the best metaphor in the universe on this process. Because writing a book is almost exactly like game-mastering a role-playing game. In which you are also playing all player characters. Alone. Deep into the night. And recording the whole thing in case someone, anyone, ever wants to hear about your fun made-up adventure that you had with yourself.

First you read the module (get the story idea and some rough sketch of the conflict and setting). Then you roll up heroes (main and secondary characters, with motivations and emotional problems and gear). Then you sit down at your little table for many hours and eat bad food and melt into this strange, magical, wonderful world you’ve devised.

And after you’ve defeated the big boss (written the first draft), it’s time to assign experience points and loot, and … level up.

Yes, leveling up is revision.

When I’m leveling up (revising) a book, the most helpful source books (tools) are going to be

• Critique partners—Get you some! At least one. I have three. These are professional writers who are at or above my skill level (not necessarily writing in my genre; the skill-level match is the key here) and do not hesitate to point out crap that isn’t working. They aren’t “oh I love everything you write” people. They are “eeew”-in-the-margin and “nope, he’d never say this” people. 
• A developmental editor—My publisher hooks me up with editors who read my icky drafts and offer suggestions for making the books better, but if you’re self-publishing, you need to go out and find a good dev editor on your own. Don’t skip this part. I don’t know a writer who turns out perfectly balanced and paced first drafts about adequately motivated characters. And I know some damn impressive writers.
• A read-along performance—I don’t mean you need to get up in front of an audience and read your book aloud. I do mean that you need to read your book aloud, though. Yes, the entire thing. Even those scenes that make you blush. (Have a glass of wine, if you need it.) Read the characters in their own voices and make sure the POVs are sufficiently distinct, the dialogue makes sense, and the chapter-ending hooks make you want to keep reading. If you stumble over a word or sentence when you’re reading it aloud, very likely there’s a problem in that spot. Flag it and move on, and later, you can come back and think, Ha! I spelled teh wrong and spellcheck totally let me down! Because this is not the kind of thing your eyes notice when you’re reading silently. But your mouth realizes that teh is completely unpronounceable and helps you fix all these embarrassing things.
• Beta readers—Contrary to some weird stuff I’ve heard lately, you do not need to pay for beta reading. Find another writer in your genre who you trust, and trade manuscripts. Or find a reader in your genre who is willing to read in exchange for a shout out in the Acknowledgements or chocolate or advance copies of all your books in perpetuity or just to elevate the genre. Note that a beta reader is not a line editor and is not responsible for your commas. You should have already sorted your commas by this point. Also, don’t use your book-buying readers as betas. Readers who buy the book should not also have a duty to tell you that your pacing is off or you’re showing rather than telling all through chapter six (why is it always chapter six?). Readers bought the book. Your job is to make sure that thing they bought is already a quality purchase.
• A line editor—To sort the dangling participles (you have some, I promise) and word repeats and 42-word sentences and language that might trigger or offend a reader in ways you would have never anticipated. A good line edit helps you polish the low-level, sentence-type stuff. It also points out bad habits you didn’t even know you had—oh, hello, overused "just" and made-up verbs! If you publish traditionally, this step might be rolled in with a white-glove treatment on your final revision, or it might be called something else. Regardless of what you call it, though, it’s the pre-copyedit and post-developmental edit. It’s the stage where your sentences learn to shine.
• A copy editor—Even if you are pretty sure you write clean, you still need a copy editor. Everyone needs a copy editor. Copy editors need copy editors. Because none of us are that good all on our own. Also, a good copy editor is not someone who did real well diagramming sentences in sixth-grade language arts. A good copy editor has memorized The Chicago Manual of Style and has training specifically in how to recognize inconsistencies and errors in a book-length manuscript. Get editing samples and references. Important note: you cannot hire a good copy editor for $50 for your 100k-word opus. (Read that sentence again. Cannot.)

So, okay, I lied. 

You aren’t running this adventure alone after all. 

Sure you can bang out the crappy first draft all by yourself at your little table in the dark of night and with Cheeto-stained fingers. But if you want those characters ever to get the Chain Lightning spell or the insta-kill +1 vorpal sword, you’re gonna need to get some other folks in on your game.