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.

1st, 2nd, 3rd POV: Which Is Preferred By Me

When reading, which Point of View do I prefer? It depends on what I'm reading. Jeffe defines POV in her Sunday post, so I won't repeat it.

95% of novels I prefer told from a 3rd person deep POV because I like character-driven stories. 3rd omniscient steps up for epic adventures, but too often I feel that deliberate wall between me and the narrator. Choose Your Own Adventure novels totally need to be written in 2nd. I haven't tried RPG Lit yet, but I suspect those also lend themselves to 2nd.

1st Person--if done well--can be delightful, particularly in horror and thrillers, but it takes me longer to sink into the story. The two genres I can't--just can't--abide in 1st are Romance and Erotica. Makes me feel like I'm reading a phone sex script or having a TMI conversation with a creepy couple. That's not to knock the authors who write Romance & Erotica in 1st; there are a lot of readers who like R&E in 1st. I'm just not one of them.

If you're writing in 1st, I penned a cautionary post a few years ago about When the Kaiyaiing Beast Takes Over Your Writing.

Now, if you thought I was going to chat about multiple POVs (multiple characters) telling the story, well, I've got a post for that too: So Close To Perfection...If I Was A Hydra.  TL;DR:  I will wall bang a book at page 2 if there's head-hopping (changing which character is telling what part of the story without clear transition such as a scene or chapter break).

perspective...perspective....

Jeffe has made my life easier If you look at yesterday's post you will see all the definitions you could possibly need for first, second and third person. That's important because (I'm supposed to discuss which perspective I like best.

the answer is simple too: It depends on the piece I'm writing.  I'll go 50/50 split on first and third person for short stories. MOSTLY I prefer third person for novels. Here's why: Short stories need to be intimate and they need to get there fast. I feel, rightly or wrongly, that first person is a great way to pull a reader into a story and keep them there. I think of it as a sort of literary shorthand. When you're reading a first person  account there's a sort of forced intimacy.  It doesn't work for all stories, but it works for a lot of them.

For novels I always feel it's more fun if the readers learn at the same speed as the characters. Sometimes that's a challenge. In my novel DEEPER I decided for the first time to go First Person on a novel length work. It was my shortest novel ever at that time, at 85,000 words and change. It was also an incredible challenge because I had to make the character learn everything organically. There were no assumptions made. He didn't learn anything offscreen as it were. he learned it in front of the reader's eyes and I had to do it without cheating, which meant that if something happened when the main character wasn't there, he learned it from someone else. he learned it second hand. That can put a big dent on proper suspense, frankly.

One one occasion, the novel SMILE NO MORE, I did three separate parts of each chapter. first were the scenes from Cecil Phelp's perspective. Cecil was a sixteen year old boy who ran away from home, joined the circus, learned a few life lessons and then was murdered. Second was the perspective of Rufo the Clown, who was actually Cecil Phelp's stage name before he crawled back from Hell and went out on a quest for revenge  and to find his family members. Then, finally, the rest of each chapter was third person, limited omniscience (meaning one lead perspective at a time, but still told in third person). The reason for that was simple: I needed to garner sympathy for the devil as it were. Rufo the Clown is both the hero and villain of the piece, depending on perspective. From his point of view, he is/was perfectly reasonable in committing the absolute atrocities he commits. From the perspective of, oh, basically anyone who is sane, he is a monster.

I must have done something right because several reviewers made comments about how much they liked Rufo and Cecil both, right up until the times when Rufo got a little, well, psychotically violent. After that, they felt bad and even a little dirty for still liking the character. That was the main idea.

Like every part of the rules of grammar, perspective is a tool. It should be used as needed to get the point across, just as brushes and paints, quills and inks should be used to make a picture. Words are merely another medium for driving the point home.

That's my two cents on the subject.

Keep smiling,

Jim

What's Your Favorite - First, Second, or Third Person?

Minerva Spencer's kitchen in Taos - isn't it gorgeous? I'm up here visiting for the weekend and she wants me to tell you it's normally much tidier than this but we've been having an eating, drinking, talking writer's bacchanalia. 

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven, to continue the contentious cycle of last week's one vs. two spaces throw-down, is: First Person POV vs. Third – or Second – Which Do You Like to Read?

I've blogged about this topic a fair amount and discussed it on my podcast. And I've been asked there to explain the difference between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, so I think I'll kick this topic off in part by defining some terms.

POV = Point of View

Point of view, commonly referred to as POV (Pee-Oh-Vee), is how the story is told, from what perspective. You can think of it like a camera recording the scene - it can be close up on faces or panning over the landscape. We refer to close up as "deep POV" and the most distant focus as omniscient, where the story is told by someone who knows everything that's happening and that everyone is thinking. Who is telling the story gives you the POV.

One way to look at the type of POV is like you may have learned in grammar or if you learned a foreign language. You learn to conjugate verbs according to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, singular and plural. For example:

	Singular	Plural
1st	I am	We are
2nd	You are	You are
3rd	He/She* is	They are

*"They" is also appropriate for a gender-neutral 3rd person singular, though the verb conjugates as the plural.

Most writing is going to have instances of both singular and plural POVs, but whether the author chooses 1st, 2nd or 3rd person to tell the story - or a combination of those - affects a great deal about it.

First Person

First person POV, the "I" perspective has the camera very close, essentially inside the character's head, viewing the world through their eyes, knowing only what that person knows. It's the deepest POV.

Example: I was at the store the other day and saw the strangest thing.

Second Person

Second person POV is kind of funky but also hip, especially in more literary efforts. It speaks to "you," drawing into into the story as the character and telling you how you're behaving and feeling. This is also a deep POV, though I find it also has a distancing quality, like a game or a dream. It's almost always done in present tense (that I've seen). 

Example: You're at the store and you see the strangest thing.

Third Person

Third person is the most traditional storytelling style. It can range from deep - though never quite as deep as first person - to omniscient. This is telling a story that happens to someone else. 

Example: She went to the store last week and saw the strangest thing. 

With all that established, what do I prefer, as a reader? I actually don't really care what POV a story is written in. I read for character and story and don't pay much attention to POV. That said, I don't love second person and it often reads as pretentious to me. And it's a flag that the story is meant to be more literary and I rarely enjoy something deliberately designed to feel erudite. Just me. 

Two Spaces or One Plus NEWS!

Depositphoto

(Squints at this week’s topic.) Really? One space or two after a period??? Well, ok, I started typing at the age of 7 or 8, banging away on an old Royal typewriter, never took a typing class (which is apparently where this two spaces thing was taught) so no, I don’t leave two spaces after a period. Or only by accident LOL.

(Dusts hands.) Done with THAT.

I had an exciting week – Pets In Space 3 made the USA Today Best Seller’s list, which is the second year in a row we’ve hit the list with this anthology. My fellow scifi romance authors and I are very grateful to our readers! We’re about to take the ebook off the wide distribution, as of October 25^th, and go into Kindle Unlimited on November 1st, which is a new experiment for us regarding the collection. When the KU period ends after ninety days, the book goes off sale completely because we only have the rights to the stories for so long. So if you wanted to buy the ebook so you can read and re-read any time, here are the links!

Blurb: Pets in Space™ is back! Join us as we unveil eleven original, never-before-published action-filled romances that will heat your blood and warm your heart! New York Times, USA Today and Award-winning authors S.E. Smith, Anna Hackett, Ruby Lionsdrake, Veronica Scott, Pauline Baird Jones, Carol Van Natta, Tiffany Roberts, Alexis Glynn Latner, E D Walker, JC Hay, and Kyndra Hatch combine their love for Science Fiction Romance and pets to bring readers sexy, action-packed romances while helping our favorite charity. Proud supporters of Hero-Dogs.org, Pets in Space™ authors have donated over $4,400 in the past two years to help place specially trained dogs with veterans. Open your hearts and grab your limited release copy of Embrace the Romance: Pets in Space™ 3 today!

Amazon     iBooks     B&N    Kobo     Google

And then, I released the next book in my own scifi romance series, the Badari Warriors, Timtur: The Teacher’s Alien Healer, under the In the Stars Romance banner.

The blurb: Genetically engineered soldiers of the far future, the Badari were created by alien enemies to fight humans. But then the scientists kidnapped an entire human colony to use as subjects in twisted experiments…the Badari and the humans made common cause, rebelled and escaped the labs. Now they live side by side in a sanctuary valley protected by a powerful Artificial Intelligence, and wage unceasing war on the aliens. The luckiest Badari find their mates among the humans.

Far from her home in the human Sectors after the mass kidnapping, teacher Lily Garrison is making a niche for herself in the valley by running a school for the Badari young. Although she yearns for Timtur, the pack’s healer, another Badari male has his eye on her and won’t take no for an answer.

Timtur feels the weight and responsibility of being the pack’s only healer, constantly on call as the soldiers fight ferocious battles against the alien scientists and their troops. With scarcely a moment to himself, he’s drawn to the gentle Lily but worries he won’t be able to juggle his duties, his loyalty to the pack and a relationship with a human woman.

When Lily’s stalker takes direct action to kidnap her and steal her from the safety of the valley, she’s forced to reach deep inside to find the strength to battle for her life. Timtur realizes too late how foolish he’s been to resist the bond with his fated mate and leads the rescue effort.

Before this situation can be resolved both will have to put their lives on the line and decide what really matters in a dangerous world ruled by the enemy.

Although this is the fifth book released in the Badari Warriors scifi romance series, the story of Timtur and Lily is a standalone and actually comes immediately after book two’s events.

A tiny teaser excerpt:

He’s late. I hope he’s not planning to stand me up entirely.

Despite her concern and annoyance over her date Timtur’s failure to arrive on time, Lily sat on the flat rock jutting over the serene lake trying to remain calm. She raised her face to the sky, enjoying the warmth on her skin. Of course, all too soon she’d get a sun burn and be sorry for her rash behavior if she remained in the same spot. Red-headed, pale humans had that problem on every world, not just this one she’d been brought to by alien pirates as a kidnap victim.

Now she scanned the azure sky with less pleasure, fearing the sight of enemy flyers, even if this valley was labelled as a sanctuary by the Badari pack, including Timtur, who’d rescued the humans. Rising, she retreated to the shady forest glade surrounding the rock formation. The climb was an easy one, only a few feet, and she made it quickly. Heights were one of her phobias so she wouldn’t go much higher than this.

Except for the brief moment of savoring the sun’s warmth, on the whole, she felt safer hidden under the canopy of branches.

The picnic lunch remained in its container, probably still perfectly fine to eat, but not as delicious as it had been when she packed the foods in the valley’s communal kitchen a while ago. Winking and nudging her in the ribs playfully, the head cook made a joke about what big eaters the Badari warriors were. “Definitely, the way to his heart,” she’d said wisely.

Lily plunked down on the edge of the blue-and-green striped blanket she’d brought for this special date and knotted the fringe nervously. I can’t use the food to appeal to his heart if he doesn’t show up. This picnic had been his idea so surely Timtur wasn’t planning to avoid meeting her. She’d cancelled her afternoon classes to be free, gotten her hopes up maybe today was the day he’d want to talk about how he saw them as a couple…I probably placed too much emphasis on his wanting us to have time alone today, away from his packmates and my sisters. After all, dating is a totally new concept for the Badari.

She imagined him placing his strong, healer’s hands on her body, not just gliding above her skin exercising his special power. When she’d first arrived, she’d had a relapse of stasis syndrome that defeated the best efforts of the human doctor in the valley, and Timtur had spent hours attempting to heal her, monitoring her condition. In the course of the treatments, the two of them had talked endlessly about every topic under the sun and grown close. Of course, she’d fallen hard for her handsome healer. She wasn’t sure if he felt the same way.

Opening her eyes, she sighed. The healer was something special all right but, despite her best efforts to let him know how interested she was in taking their relationship further than friendship, he always held back. He didn’t show any interest in any of the other human women now living in the valley. She had no rivals for his affections. But still there was something keeping them from going to the next level, and today was the day she wanted to discover what the impediment was.

Which was going to be impossible if Timtur didn’t even bother to show up.

Should I give up on ever being more than friends? The idea of never seeing where their relationship could go, never exploring the deep emotional bond she felt with him brought a wave of cold sadness, and she shivered despite the warmth of the sun. Cutting herself off from contact with Timtur would break her heart, not cure her of desire for him.

 “Dreaming again?” His voice, deep and full of good humor, came from behind and to the left.

 Amazon     Apple Books     Nook     Kobo     Google

Apparently, I'm Alll Kinds of Modern.

Who knew?

This week's topic is whether we type one space or two after sentences. I just checked. I type one.

I know that sounds odd, but it's not something I think about. i just do it. I think always did it and, when I had to, I fixed it on edits.
These days y computer does most of it before me. My manuscript is typed double-spaced. My em-dashes fix themselves automatically. The space at e beginning of a paragraph is trained into the format first thing after I start. Yay, modern technology!

Without modern technology I have absolutely no idea how many spaces I type. I think it's just one. I know that I used to have to consciously think about it, and that nine times out of ten I still got it wrong. So, yay for computer software. I have a powerful suspicion I would still be on my first noel manuscript and fixing typos if not for the advances in technology.

I am the King of Typos. I am a hot, wet mess when it comes to run on sentences and extra apostrophes. My hands do not keep up with my brain. I type very, very fast, which is how I've often managed five to six thousand words a day. And then I clean up the mess, which, even with autocorrect, takes time.

There are no rights or wrongs on this front, not for me. The end result is what matters.

We're closing in fast on Halloween, and so I'll throw a reminder that scary stuff need not be gory by reminding you that Shirley Jackson wrote one of the very finest haunted house stories ever done with remarkably little by way of violence. What you got was atmosphere.

I loved the new adaptation on Netflix. I especially l've that it took several root ideas from the novel and then went in a completely different direction. Previous adaptions have been done and stuck close to the source material. The original version of  THE HAUNTING was, in my opinion, very nearly a perfect movie adaptation. Sometimes moving away from the source is the very best thing you can do.

Just a moment of admiration for a truly phenomenal author.

Have  great week, folks!

James A. Moore.

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone." -- Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House

And on another unrelated note: fans of the Griffin and Price books by yours truly and Charles R. Rutledge should know there's a new novella coming out soon. 

Cohesion Press is releasing SNAFU: Resurrection in December You can pre-order it right here. 

Portrait of the Writer as an Odd Kid

So, let's talk a bit about Marshall Was A Weird Kid. 

(I know, you're probably shocked.)

Now, despite the fact that I spent a good chunk of time watching and rewatching a bunch of bad movies, I did, in fact, have other activities, including going to summer camps.  One of the day camps I went to regularly was structured thusly: it had two-week sessions, in which you would register for a single course, be it theatre or computers or filmmaking or auto mechanics or what have you.  Whatever you signed up for? That was your morning for the two weeks.  The afternoon, though, was a little more loosely structured, in that there were a handful of varied activities, and you chose, daily, which ones you were signing up for.  One of the most popular afternoon ones was the limited-capacity trip to the local state park for swimming, which my sister made a point of signing up for Every. Single. Day.

That?  Was not me.

In fact, my first year there, I was seven, which was itself a bit odd because the camp was for 8-14 year-olds, and I think my mother got an exception made for me because my sister was there as well.  So there I was, the only seven-year-old among older kids, looking at choices for afternoon activities, most of which were outdoorsy and/or athletic, to which I was nope.  But then one caught my eye.

Typing.

Seven-year-old me signed up for a goddamn typing class that was mostly populated by teenagers who were there for summer school (the camp was held on the campus of a private school), and I'm pretty sure I was the only one from the camp who signed up for it.  But I signed up for it EVERY SINGLE DAY of my first session there.

Every day. Typing. At the age of seven.  And this was 1980, so it was on a typewriter.  That's how and when I learned, and obviously it was a valuable skill that stuck with me.

BUT, since that's how and when I learned, you're just going to have to accept that a double-space after a period is simply embedded in my muscle memory.  It's there, and there's no dislodging it.  So there we are.

Manifesto of a former grammarista

Folk who know me best also know I used to be a copy editor at a book publisher. I mean, for like a decade. And then I managed copy editors. And then I wrote style guides. That sort of work history will scar a girl, and even to this day, despite my best efforts at self-improvement, parts of my brain remain a bit proscriptive. If you could make Strunk & White's Elements of Style into a verb, that would be my brain ("Oh, don't mind me, I'm just over here StrunkNWhiting").

So, even though I'd never harp on these abominations to your face (we don't do this! we never do this!), here is what those brain-parts are screaming as I read your manuscript:

1. Dangling or misplaced modifiers help no one, ever. Unfortunately, I see a bunch of these, even in published books. Educate yourself on these things and avoid them. Please, please, please.

2. Yes, character names ending in S are fun (I love me a Rhys, an Alexis, a Lucius, maybe a...Salacious?). However! Be aware that there are two legit ways of making possessives of a singular noun ending in S: one way has you add an apostrophe+S, and with the other you add just the apostrophe. It's important that you know going in that whichever method you choose, half of your readers will be completely and totally convinced you're doing it wrong. So, just stick with boring non-ending-in-S names, yeah? Also, don't harangue people who are choosing the other method. They're okay, too.

3. There can be only one...space after a period. If you are putting two spaces, congratulations for passing typing in high school all those years ago. Also, welcome to variable-width fonts and the twenty-first century. (Aside: This is the topic at SFF Seven this week. We are seriously discussing whether there should be one space or two. I love this blog so much!)

4. I know you really want to use a semicolon, but restrain yourself. Don't do it. Even if you think you know how to use a semicolon, sadly, you're probably doing it wrong.

Oh, now that you've got me rolling, I can think of SO MANY peeves, things that just make me crazy: sentence fragments with no subjects and a whole buncha -ing phrases, homonym misuses, pronouns that refer to the wrong thing or nothing at all, word repeats, run-on sentences... yikes!PANIC!JUDGMENT!

*in through your nose, then out through pursed lips*

You know what, though? Don't mind me and my ridiculous, proscriptive (adj, StrunkNWhiteous?) brain. Tell your story. Tell the hell out of it. If you tell me a good enough story, I won't even pick nits.