Realms of the Raven

I want to thank my friend, Kaye, for being my guest today and giving us her take on writing in First Person.

Hello! I’m Kaye Chambers. I’d like to thank Maura Anderson for inviting me to talk about my favorite topic: writing.

I am a first person author. This week, in light of Tiger by the Tail, I’ve been asked a lot of first person questions and urged to blog about it. Before I get started, I’d like to point out that I’m not Jim Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton, Katie MacAlister, Keri Arthur…well, you get the point. There are masters of First Person out there and they’re not me. *grins* This is simply my take on writing the hardest point of view there is.

I get asked a lot, “Why First Person? I mean, that’s breaking the cardinal rule.” The answer is easy, “Because that’s the way the story needed to be told.”

Not every story can be told in first person. First person isn’t simply taking your third person limited narrative and changing it to a single POV and substituting “I”. In fact, the best advice I can give on whether or not you should write your next project in FP is to ask if you’ve tried it in third, yet. If a story can be told in third, it should be. It’s not even up for debate. If you, as the author, can write it in third person or even picture it that way, then the character isn’t strong enough to be the single point of focus for the story.

Some stories can not be told in third person. The voice of the character is just too strong. The first manuscript I wrote in first person was started twelve times in third person before I turned to one of my writing circle friends, Colleen, in a wail, “It always ends up with ‘I’.” By the end of the first chapter, the heroine was telling the story so strongly that there wasn’t any other room for anybody else to talk. Her advice was to try it. It was the first project I ever finished. It won an award and I’ve never looked back.

Recently, Samhain Publishing published my third completed manuscript, the second in first person, Tiger by the Tail. I was somewhat shocked by the reception it has received. I love Sasha, but she’s a voice inside my head. If I hated her, we’d have a problem. I wasn’t expecting the world to slip into her skin like I do.
And that’s what makes first person special. It’s like curling up with your best friend over a cup of coffee and talking. She’s telling you a story, or ‘he’ if you’re a Harry Dresden fan, which I happen to be. When I read a good first person, I feel like I’ve made a friend when I’m done. One I’d like to visit again and again and again.

So, you’re thinking of giving it a whirl? Good! The hard part is figuring out how to pull it off. We all have our own voices as authors. In third person, how we turn a phrase is what makes us shine and what we carry with us from manuscript to manuscript. Even third person limited is told from our perspective as authors. Unlike third person omniscient, we can’t be God, but we do control the characters senses. We control what they notice at any given moment no matter how they notice it.

In first person, how your character turns the phrase is what makes them real. How do you separate your voice from theirs? You don’t. You have to trust yourself to be true to the character. It’s like role playing on a grander scale. In order to make first person truly successful, you have to put yourself aside and acquaint yourself with your character on a very personal basis. At a recent workshop I attended given by Bob Mayer, he described it as the most intimate POV as well as the hardest and most limited.

Why is it limited? Because no one else gets to see, hear, think, or define anything. Every tiny detail of your story has to be woven in through subtle details. It’s like painting a portrait. Every detail and brush stroke means something to the grander design. Some details are more obvious than others. For example, your heroine has POV rights – it’s her story – but your hero is thinking he’s going to do something rash. In third person, we’d simply give him some internal thought or dialogue or a POV shift. In first, we don’t have that luxury. We have to build all our secondary characters bold enough so she (and the reader) knows them well enough to pick up on their expressions and body language to address it to the reader. Even if she doesn’t point blank say, “I know he’s up to something,” she can note the details – he won’t meet her gaze, shifting from feet to feet, making a lame excuse to bolt out the door. Without being overt, your heroine tips the reader off to mischief.

Now, I’m also going to make a rather obvious point here about voice. As a first person author, I can’t write the same heroine under a different name with a different premise. My voice has to change according to every POV character. Even though my characters all tell their story as “I”, they aren’t the same person, so the flavor has to change with them. How do you change it? It goes back to the role playing mentioned above. Knowing your character well enough to slip your skin as a person and an author and write from their eyes is how you change your voice every time out of the box. I guess you can say it’s like being a schizophrenic who has permission to embrace the crazy side of themself. Yes, I talk to the voices in my head and let them have a turn at the helm.

This brings me to another point about why first person is so intimate. How deep is deep enough into your character? In third person, we’re allowed a little bit of a narrative filter. In first person, it’s a deal breaker. Falling into narrative telling instead of actively showing (from the POV character) will kill the tone and mood of a first person story. It’s the most common mistake. You just can’t treat a first person story like a third.

It’s another reason why first person is so limited. Until you actively try to write first person, you don’t realize just how much you, as the author, narrate a story. In my opinion, the only way you can successfully write first person is to be deep into character and trust yourself to write the scene true to the spirit of it.

A lot of authors write alternating point-of-views, switching from third to first and back again. That’s not a bad idea if you need to have the reader step back and see things differently or you need to interject plot elements that your point of view character can’t possibly know. By inserting that bit of narration, you also allow the reader to become better acquainted with other characters and other elements in the story.

I’m going to break off here and bring up another type of first person novel – alternating first person views. This opens up the field a bit. It’s adding a different narrator for elements just like using an alternating third person. I am not a fan of it. Why? Because unlike using alternating first and third, you’re not creating distance with your reader in the alternating view. In general, you open the story from the focus point of view and create that initial connection with the reader, create that bond, and then you break it and expect the reader to shift their emotional connection to the alternating persona. It doesn’t work, in general, at least not for me.

First person is like falling in love, one little bit at a time. With each scene, the reader takes that little baby step into emotional involvement. It’s why publishers print, “An Anita Blake Novel,” “A Harry Dresden Novel,” “An Aisling Grey Novel,” or a “Riley Jenson Novel” on the cover of a book. Even if you hated the author’s last book, you’re going to buy it…even if you hated the last one in the series.

Why? Because they’re our friends and we want to know what they’ve been up to.

Yet another of the myths I believed before I began to write was that authors just KNEW when their writing was good or bad. They would delete the drek and save all the great parts (if they were even having so off a day that they produced drek) and would merrily get on with their fantastic story.

Yah - not so much.

When I wrote my first story, I reached a point where I was sure that I could not be a writer, this whole story sucked from start to finish and I should do the world a favor and burn it. I’m stubborn, though, and several friends I trusted read it and reassured me that it was actually pretty damned good. With some hand-holding, some kicks in the ass and some stubborn determination, I finished that story.

And, you know, when I read it over - it was pretty good!

My poor naive self thought this was it. Now that I knew I could write, I would just write merrily along and my confidence would let me know when something was good or not.

I was wrong, it happened with the next story too.

I learned, after talking to numerous other authors, that I was not alone. Most other authors go through a time that they think the current project may just be the worst thing they’ve ever written. They’ve fought the urge to delete the file, start over, even not write for a while. But, like me, they kept going anyway.

Now I call these “Intermittent Bouts of Suckitis” - a phrase I was told by the marvelous Morgan Hawke (cue fan girl moment). I can be certain that, in the process of writing every single story, I will experience at least one bout of suck-itis. It happens when I’m about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through the story, like clockwork, and I still fall into doubt. Every single story.

At least now I’ve learned to stop and send it to my trusted friends and test readers and ask them what they think. So far I have never had to give up on a story though I have made revisions and changes to allow me to continue in a better vein.

These “Bouts of Suckitis” seem to be almost universal. I wish I’d known that when I started writing.

Introduction
When writers learn how to format manuscripts, they typically learn the standards for traditional print publishing and those are not always the accepted or preferred standards for e-publishing. This is due, in part, to the fact that the actual production processes are different for traditional print publishing and e-publishing.

Traditional print publishing often involved editors writing on the paper manuscript page, a typesetting stage where the manuscript was typeset into book format, etc. Some of this is now more computerized but e-publishing is a very streamlined and automated process. Anything that throws off that process can tend to be problematic so it’s best to start out with as consistent a manuscript as possible and know some of the pitfalls, as well as how to avoid them.

The formatting guidelines I’m giving you are generic and relatively standard but, before you submit to any particular publisher, be sure to read that publisher’s own submissions guidelines. Any specific instructions they give should trump these generic rules and should be followed instead.

Remember that these are only formatting instructions, NOT writing or grammar instructions.
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Today, in lieu of an actual topic from me, I’d like to point you all at Ciar Cullen’s blog and today’s post.

Come on - join in the fun, here or on Ciar’s blog. Tell us what your editor does for you and spread the love!

Editors need love too!

I was speaking to someone at Epicon and, in the course of conversation, we touched on the difference between writing a series and writing a serial. Note that these are the definitions that I tend to use and may vary slightly from the definitions of others.

A series is a set of two or more full stories that share one or more commonalities. That commonality may be a world, one or more characters, a key concept, specific plot devices, etc.

Del Fantasma books (from Aspen Mountain Press) are a series - they share the following:

• a basic world, a continuity character (Cody)
• a location (the Del Fantasma Bar)
• a plot device (they all have drinks that relate somehow to the story)
• a genre (they are all paranormals)

A serial, on the other hand, is a story that is told in discrete sections over a period of time, often without a pre-determined ending. Think “soap opera” - those are serials. Some authors publish serials on their websites or mailing lists as well as in magazines or other venues.

Most authors are familiar with the idea of a critique partner or critique groups. Some authors have one (or more) but some are quite happy writing alone.

Another source of valuable input and feedback is a test reader. While critique partners or groups tend to give you feedback as you go and often help plot the book along the way, a test or beta reader takes your finished or mostly finished material and reads it as a savvy reader without advanced knowledge. The test reader, in essence, is your first check of what your regular readers will think.

The job of the test reader is to read the story and make notes of anything that pulls them out of the story, any time they are bored and want to just skip ahead, and times where things don’t make sense. In general, they don’t worry about spelling or grammar unless it’s so bad it really impacts their ability to read and enjoy the story.

Not all test readers are created the same, however. An effective and thorough test reader is one that gives you value back for the chance to read the story ahead of time. You may have to try multiple people before you find just one really GOOD test reader.

A test reading gives you some assurance that you story, when picked up off a shelf, makes sense, reads well and will most likely please your readers (and editor).

A great source of confusion among many writers is the difference between a character-driven story and a plot-driven story. At first glance it may seem that stories where the characters are the central focus would be the character-driven story but that’s not necessarily the case.

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Shared World series are quite popular and can be really fun to read. But they can be really tricky (and frustrating) to write in.

A shared world usually starts with a concept or core idea that is built to be the background for the stories in the series. This can be a place, a person, or an event, depending on the idea and vision for the series.

Some shared world series may be limited to a certain number of stories or open ended as well.

Some shared worlds start with the story of the core idea or concept as the first story in the series. These have the benefit of having the story really laid out so authors that follow on with other stories can follow pretty closely and avoid potential collisions or breaks in the world. But for that, it sacrifices the anticipation that can be created by withholding the final resolution or revelation until interest in the series drops off.

Some publishers or authors decide to save the story that is the basis of the shared world until the very end. That actually can make it more difficult for the authors because you have a world that is more in flux. You may want to use or address an aspect that the person in charge of the series has not considered. Can you do it? Is it the right thing to do? Is your addition going to blow things for authors already partially written?

Difficult questions indeed.

Most shared worlds or series have a bible to offer to authors who might want to write in that world. Be sure you get a copy of that bible and be sure you ask for updates if you take a while between original receipt and finishing your story.

How detailed that bible is can vary greatly. I’ve seen some that are a single page of vague information. I’ve seen some that are 20 page tomes. In general, the more detailed, the more you are able to get answers for. But the more detailed, the less freedom the individual authors have to improvise.

Try to read other stories in that world and see how other authors have treated the shared elements. It will also show you how closely in line they are.

Personally, I like to have the rules laid out and not have unfortunate surprises emerge. Those can be a change in the basic workings of the world or characters, imposition of a mythos not previously present or someone being allowed to write as a shared character when the other authors were told not to. All of these can cause huge chaos in the other world stories and can even cause readers to be upset if the different authors are using different versions of that shared world.

I hate to have these mistakes, myself. Inconsistency makes me nuts and though I’ve written in shared worlds, I find myself less likely to do so after some of these have hit me. I’m very Type A.

But, you know, these things DO happen if you are writing in a shared world that YOU do not control. A lot of the time they are not conscious, they are spur of the moment decisions or ones made without thought to the consequences because they seemed fun at first glance. But they disrupt everyone.

There is also the issue that shared worlds and their characters generally belong to the publishing house that publishes them. If you leave that house or they stop the series, you may not be able to resell that work to another house. It’s something to keep in mind.

Shared worlds do come with some great benefits - a shared fan base, other authors to work with, combined promo opportunities, interesting characters and concepts to play with, etc. And they are FUN to write.

Only individual authors can decide if the potential benefits and drawbacks of wrting in a shared world are worth it. Don’t shrug them off without a second thought, but always approach with caution and a bit of “forewarned is forearmed.”

I keep hearing a statement from mostly aspiring authors that absolutely makes me shudder. There seems to be a belief that spelling and grammar issues are solely the job of editors and don’t need to be worried about by the authors.

It’s true that, when the rubber hits the road, we editors are responsible for correcting spelling and grammar issues. But failure to make your work the cleanest and best it can be possible before you submit it may mean you never reach that point. The editor (or agent) may never even request a full because their appreciation of your story may not be enough to balance the costs and resources neede to get it through the publication process.

The first thing aspiring authors have to understand is that your submission – be it synopsis, partial or full – is your interview for a contract. It’s what you will be judged on. Why would you choose to make less than the best impression you possibly could? Would you show up to interview for a modeling shot with grimy hair and say that’s the hairdresser’s job? Shooting yourself in the foot is not a great start to any venture.

Now, keep in mind that almost every submission contains some errors, that’s normal and expected. But a plethora of easy to find and fix ones tells me (accurately or not) that the author doesn’t care enough to do the very best job possible. That it’s not important to the author. Are they lazy? Are they going to be difficult to work with?

Another thing it tells me is that if I contract this work, it will cost my house more money to get it in shape for publishing than it would an equivalent story that is cleaned up and corrected. The longer I have to spend on it, the longer my line editors or proofers have to spend on it, the more it costs. Publishing is still a business and it’s part of my job to make the best use of my house’s resources as I can.

It also directly affects my ability to appreciate and enjoy the story. Like it or not, each time I see an error, it drags me out of the story and breaks my immersion. Too many times and I can’t follow the story very well and end up not liking it as much as I possibly could have. You don’t want to let mechanical errors get in the way of the story.

I want to strongly encourage anyone who submits a work for publication to utilize the marvels of spellcheck and the eagle eyes of a test reader or critique partner. Make your submission as clean and correct as you possibly can before you submit it and you will increase your chances of acceptance.

The last several manuscripts I’ve edited have suffered from what I call the “Laundry List Syndrome” so I thought I’d take a moment to mention it here.

A laundry list is when an author tries to mention a whole lot of things at once instead of dribbling them in a little at a time. In some cases it appears as part of an info-dump but sometimes it just appears out of the blue.

As an example, here’s a laundry list:

The stranger turned around and she couldn’t believe her eyes: black hair, blue eyes, a strong chin, a nose with a slight crook to the side and tanned cheeks dusted with a dark five o’clock shadow.

The author in this laundry list is merely dumping out facts. It’s dry and the reader tends to just skim over it.

It would be much more effective to give each of these facts individual emphasis. It makes it more enjoyable to read and more memorable as well.

Try this in contrast:

The dark haired stranger turned around and she couldn’t believe her eyes. His glossy black hair curled around his tanned face in waves that made her fingers itch to smooth it back. Piercing cobalt eyes were framed by lush black lashes, the darkness echoed in the hint of razor stubble dusting his strong chin. Only the slight bump and crooked slant of a long-ago broken nose saved his face from being too pretty.

I’d usually space it out more than that and I realize it’s not the best paragraph ever, but look how much more memorable it is than the laundry list?

One magic clue to an imminent laundry list is using a colon… If you find yourself using a colon, ask yourself why and if there is a better way to present the information you are about to list.