Creative Writing Corner

Mailbag: Switching Point of View, Writing a Story in a Day

It's that time of week again: the time when I respond to a few of your thoughtful comments on the site and add my own opinions to your ideas about writing. Let's begin today with some comments written on a post I wrote about How to Switch Your Point of View. In that post, I wrote about switching up your perspective, and how to do it gracefully in the space of a story.

In response, readers had a few comments. Eva said:

You know, I don't know that I 100% agree with you. When I encounter that mid sentence POV switch, it throws me out of the story. Now, if you want to move to Henry's point of view after Marge has had her say, well then, that's clearer. For example, she throws him out and closes the door on him--what are his thoughts on the other side of the door.

It's true, Eva, that that is a more traditional way that we've seen point of view treated, in most of the things we read. It can work well because we are familiar with that: a scene ends, and then the next scene is up for grabs. It could be from the same person's perspective, but it would be fine and not confusing for it to be from someone else's perspective.

I'm just warning against that kind of choice because it is so expected that it begins to seem very consciously done. The best writing doesn't show the seams of its construction; that very convenient switch of p.o.v. can seem like the writer was doing it inorganically. Let the story flow naturally, says I!

After the jump: comments about writing a story in a day.

Mailbag: Atlas reading, the two most important things in writing

In this week's mailbag, I'm keeping it brief, and highlighting just a couple of comments that I thought were particularly interesting. The first is about my post suggesting a look at an atlas to imagine another culture and get inspired by it. I was delighted by this story Mary Lou Wynegar told about her experience in a different country:

Another, is a memory I have which I will never forget. Of when I bought a baby doll for my granddaughter in one of the German toy stores. The owner was an older woman, as the store was family owned and operated. The daughter sent me to this older woman (her Mother), to ring up my sale. She picked up the doll to begin wrapping him for his journey home to the United States, and she held him like a real baby for a moment. She cooed to him, and talked to him as if re-assuring him that things would be okay - giving him a kiss farewell on the forehead before wrapping him gently in beautiful paper.

Thanks for sharing this charming moment, Mary Lou! I agree -- actually experiencing a different milieu is the absolute best way to see these small details of another world that is like, but not like, ours. Remember these small things for your stories -- they make great material.

And others appreciated my post about what my professor called The Two Most Important Things in Writing. Those two things, she said, were how to tell a story, and what voice to tell it in. Here is Crash's response:

what you essentially need for inspiration, is to think. open your mind, see the street you've always walked differently. Imagine a world where something western has been melded with something third world. Once you have that first idea, its like a seed you can grow into a fantastically beautiful venus fly trap.

Lovely way of putting it, Crash. The most compelling fiction really does have that difference to it -- the feeling that we are seeing something new, or at least, seeing something old in a new light. It becomes invigorating and absolutely captivating to experience this newness, while still being reminded that this other world is familiar in some ways. That is another thing -- you need the newness, but also the familiarity, to make a piece feel classic and human.

Mailbag: Beautiful monsters, eavesdropping

This week, I'm tackling responses to my posts about pairing unexpected words and eavesdropping. To begin, I wrote a post about the very helpful technique I learned about making your writing more vivid and stylish. Read about Beautiful monsters here. Many readers had a lot to say, and a lot wrote about how they liked this technique. I'm glad to hear it! To start off, let's hear from Crash, who wrote:

i may well use this in the future. on the other hand you can't use these just anywhere. over filling a story with things such as this is not something you want to be doing. a reader will not want to hear these things seemingly at random.

That's a good point, Crash, and one that's important to keep in mind about using the two different words in a beautiful monster pair. Pairs like these definitely should not be used randomly; that would create a feeling of incoherence, and you'd feel impatient with a writer who was doing that. You'd think the writer was purposefully trying to mess with you or seem stylish in a very artificial way.

Instead, the two words should both be different, but equally true observations about something. We often have more than one impression of something. For example, a sponge has both that unique squishy feel, and also it has that stale-water old sponge smell. But when we write, for some reason we only give the one impression of the sponge, when it would seem so much more real if you acknowledged the many experiences of a sponge. So give us both. It's like giving us a three-dimensional portrait of something instead of a two-dimensional one.

James Bent brings a psychological perspective to this phenomenon:

Some of the reason for this working is that it creates a "state change". As well as writing offbeat fiction, I do professional business training and facilitation, and I am led to believe that attention spans of learners generally comes in waves of approx. 10 to 15 minutes, after which they peak and then fade. Which means that every 10-15 minutes a learner will drift off and naturally lose their ability to focus. Therefore, a technique used by trainers is to make a "state change", which is essentially throwing in something different, unexpected or unusual. It doesn't have to be much, but just enough such that it makes learners "wake-up" or pay attention again.

Thanks for that insight, James. I agree that there seems to be something going on here that wakes up again as readers. A sentence "pops" for us when it stands out, making us notice the writing again. Writers have myriad ways of getting us to sit up and take notice in this way, and the beautiful monster pair is definitely one of those tools they pull out to get our attention.

Eddie has a bone to pick with my word choice:

Like most of the people (writers, speakers, TV talking heads) in this country, you can't tell us that things are the same. Apparently, "same" isnt good enough any more. Things that are the "same" have to be the "exact same."

Thanks, Eddie! I agree this is a term that is frequently overused, often incorrectly, and in most cases, it's redundant. But in this case, I'm standing up for my use. When talking about writing techniques, we have to be very precise, and sometimes that means using expressions in unconventional ways. The point I was making was not just that we have the same feeling from the two words. With the beautiful monster pair, we also have the same feeling -- the clean-scrubbed, but dull, blank feeling of a kitchen. Here, though, the pair is dull because the words are "the exact same" -- they both fill exactly the same niche. So I'm sticking to my guns, Eddie.

After the jump: I respond to comments about eavesdropping.

Mailbag: Finding Your Voice, Radical Changes

It's about time for my weekly attempt to respond to some of the always-interesting reader comments and emails. To bring you back in time a little bit, a few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of Finding Your Voice. Readers agreed that voice was one of those crucial elements of good writing, and added their own thoughts. James Bent wrote:

I've found that since November 8th I've been keeping a 1000+ word a day short fiction blog...and that's really, really helped for me to find a voice. I wrote a novel earlier in the year and when I went to send to agents most said that they wanted "a strong narrative voice" - and I hadn't really thought about what this was when I wrote my novel...But since writing these shorts, and having "strong narrative voice" as one of the main points to work on, it's really coming through.

Thanks, James. I think it's very telling that the agents wanted that voice as well -- it's what creates memorable (and sell-able) fiction. I also totally agree that writing shorts can often help you get a hang of the voice before embarking on a larger project. My professor said that with writing a novel, getting the voice right was 70% of the battle. You might write 100 pages, just spinning your wheels and trying to find that voice. If you find it on the 101st page, then you've got to start over again, but you're actually much farther along than you were before.

Another regular reader mentioned her struggle with finding a voice. DeidraK wrote:

I have had serious trouble with my voice on a recent story. I restarted twice and I still don't like it. I think it's time to put this one to bed. But for me it's very important for me to determine the character's voice early on. At the same time this can bog me down as I tend to over think.

I wanted to highlight this because I think it speaks to what a lot of writers are going through (myself included, on many occasions!). There's a reason why my professor said finding one's voice is 70% of the battle -- it's probably the hardest part of writing a new story or novel. You've got to find the voice that matches your character and his/her story. But as you say, Deidra, I think that doesn't mean trying to analyze your every word choice. Instead, it means getting to know your character on a deeper level. If you find yourself struggling to create a voice, it's often a symptom that you don't understand your character as well as you might like. Try stepping away from the story and doing some homework by asking yourself questions about your character and his/her worldview. That can often lead to a greater understanding of your character, which leads to an understanding of the voice he or she would choose to tell his or her story in.

After the jump: I respond to comments about making radical changes in your story.