Writers in the Storm

by Sharla Rae

The first thing writers learn about Point of View, or POV, is that it refers to whose head we’re in.

In other words: through whose perspective will the reader experience the sounds, smells, actions and emotions of a story/scene?

Seems simple, but as writers it isn’t always easy to decide which character should be showing the story at a given point.

First, decide the type of POV you want to use.

Author omniscient or Omniscient narrator is when the all-knowing author narrates the story. Currently it’s out of fashion.

First person POVs are viewed from one person’s perspective, the character who is telling the story.  It's not always to easy to write, but when it comes to choosing POV, it’s simple; there’s only one choice.

Third person is especially popular in romance, and it’s not unusual to see three or more character POVs. We learn what’s happening through the outside voice of one of the characters in a scene.

Note: It’s the third person stories with multiple viewpoints that we’re discussing here.

How does a writer choose the point-of-view character in any given scene?

In some scenes, there’s only one character on stage so no problem. In most cases there’s at least two.

The reader may not understand a character’s actions/reactions unless they are in his head or have been at some point. The motivation and action/reaction elements tie into the whose-head decision.

In critique, we decided the most important POV element determining whose POV should be used is emotion – the character’s and the reader’s. A scene has more “pow” if we’re in the head of the person who is emotionally involved and/or has the most at stake.

Again, seems simple. But maybe not.

Sometimes two characters are experiencing major emotions in the same scene and both have a lot at stake.

Simplified examples:

• Two people are on stage arguing. Both have reasons and motivations behind their opinions. Both have something at stake.
• A woman streaks naked through a shopping mall. What in the heck is going through her head? Why would she do such a thing? But wait! What if her husband is coming out of the pet shop? He can’t believe his eyes! His sophisticated, genteel wife would never do such a thing!

See what I mean? Whose head should we be in?

Ask these questions:

• Whose story/scene is this? Or, who has the most at stake? (Instigating circumstances)
• What kind of emotional impact is needed?
• Whose POV will engage readers and drag them along for the ride?

It’s not always an easy choice. Sometimes we need to write the same scene from two different prospectives, before we know what’s right. No harm in that. The important thing is this: Always involve the reader’s emotions.  

All this POV talk begs the question:
Can we skip from one person’s head to another’s, that is, head hop?

Yes, but — and this is a big but – you gotta have skills, and that’s another blog.

Okay, let’s talk. How do YOU choose whose head to be in?

~ Sharla

* Photo credit: Revista Quo via Wikimedia Commons

 

About Sharla

Sharla has published three historical romance novels: SONG OF THE WILLOW, LOVE AND FORTUNE, and SILVER CARESS. SONG OF THE WILLOW, her first solo effort, was nominated by "Romantic Times Magazine" for best first historical. Her current work, HOW TO FELL A TIMBERMAN is in the submission process.

When she's not writing and researching ways to bedevil her book characters, Sharla enjoys collecting authentically costumed dolls from all over the world, traveling (to seek more dolls!), and reading tons of books. You can find Sharla here at Writers In The Storm or on Twitter at @SharlaWrites.

by Marcy Kennedy

Most of us think of a logline, tagline, and pitch as marketing tools we write after we’ve written our story so that we can use them to land an agent or as our book’s cover copy.

We’re doing it backwards.

If we wait until we’re done with our book, any problems our logline, tagline, and pitch reveal could mean major re-writes. By creating them first, we’ll save ourselves a lot of unnecessary work.

Pantsers – this is especially true for you! Even though I’m a hard core plotter, I’ve co-written a novel with an equally hard core pantser, so I know how much you hate planning. Using these tools before you start to write can make sure you have a strong idea and still give you the freedom to discover your story as you go.

And I’m about to show you how.

A logline is a one-sentence description of your book that captures your main character, the conflict they’re going to face, and the stakes if they lose.

It contains the three most important ingredients in a strong story. Leave one out and it’s like leaving the chocolate chips out of chocolate chip cookies.

In a logline, you don’t use your main character’s name, so you’re forced to figure out what makes them interesting and unique. Plotters, this forces you to distill down what’s most important about your main character from the pages of description you’ve no doubt created. Pansters, this allows you to have a clear picture of your main character without writing out the character sketches you likely find tedious. For both, your logline helps you figure out who the story belongs to.

Conflict boils down to what your main character wants and what’s standing in her way. No conflict, no story. I don’t care whether you’re writing a romance, a thriller, a fantasy, a memoir, or a work of literary fiction. If you can’t clearly state what your conflict is, you don’t have a story.

Plotters, because you write detailed outlines, you can sometimes lose sight of your main story among the subplots. Pantsers, knowing the main plot keeps you from getting so distracted by bunny trails that your first draft is a tangled knot you don’t even know how to begin untying. (Or worse, you end up without a main storyline at all.)

Usually when you hit the conflict portion of your logline, you’ll include your antagonist/villain. You do have one, don’t you? If you don’t, you don’t have a story.

Stakes are what your main character stands to lose if she fails. Why should they care what happens? If they don’t care, then the reader won’t care.

Seeing your stakes on paper this way forces you to ask if they’re big enough. Will they change your character’s life forever? James Scott Bell is fond of saying the stakes should always be death. I agree with him. Physical death. Emotional death. Spiritual death. Your character needs a reason to fight to the very end.

So a logline tells you what your book will be about. Your tag line is a catch phrase. (Don’t confuse them.)

The tagline captures the tone or emotional essence of your book. It also hints at the genre. It’s what you see on the front cover or on a movie poster.

Life is like a box of chocolates – Forrest Gump

You know you’re going to get a story that has moments of humor and yet manages to be profound. You could guess this is going to be a drama.

Don’t go into the water - Jaws

It sets the tone for a story that’s going to scare you. You know it’s going to be either horror or a thriller.

One ring to rule them all – Lord of the Rings

This is going to be an epic fantasy. Whole countries will be at stake. Maybe even the whole world.

Behind every great love is a great story - The Notebook

Romance. Probably going to be tears involved.

By writing your tagline, you know tone you’re going to use when writing your book. Will your story be dark? Funny? A real tear jerker? A consistent tone is essential. Knowing it will save you from a million rewrites because you switched your tone three times during your first draft.

Which leaves our pitch, the six- to ten-sentence summary of our book.

Your pitch should only cover the first third of your book, with emphasis on what Larry Brooks calls the First Plot Point in his book Story Engineering.

The First Plot Point should happen 25% of the way in. It’s the point from which your main character can no longer turn back. The main conflict of the story is introduced, and your MC commits to their goal. This is the important part of it—you identify what’s going to make your main character commit.

Your First Plot Point isn’t your main character being wrongly convicted of his wife’s murder. It’s his decision to escape when his bus crashes and to go on the run to catch the real killer. (From The Fugitive, one of my favorite movies.)

Knowing the First Plot Point makes you answer a key question--how are you going to convince your main character to take on a task that looks like it can only end in failure and death? If your main character could escape from their quest at this point, they would. They would take an easier road. So you need to know what’s going to make them go forward anyway.

ANNOUNCEMENT:
On Saturday, March 23, I’ll be teaching a 90-minute webinar where I give even more tips on crafting awesome loglines, taglines, and pitches. You can sign up by clicking here. If you can’t make it at the time it’s scheduled but still want to attend, sign up anyway. The webinar will be recorded and sent to registrants.

As a special thanks to for having me here at Writers In The Storm, the first two people to sign up today for the webinar (and let us know in the comments) receive a bonus: After the class, I’ll work with you via email to help you write your logline.

HUGE THANKS TO MARCY from Writers In The Storm! This post was pure awesome. Having taken Marcy's Twitter class, I can tell you she has the teaching thing nailed. :-)

Have you tried writing your logline, tagline, and pitch before writing the book? Do you think you’ll try it now? Do you have any other questions for Marcy?

*************

About Marcy Kennedy

Marcy is a fantasy writer who believes there’s always hope—sometimes you just have to dig a little harder to find it. In a world that can be dark and brutal and unfair, hope is one of our most powerful weapons. She writes novels that encourage people to keep fighting, to let them know that no one is beyond redemption, and that, in the end, good always wins.

Alongside her own writing, Marcy works as a freelance editor. (Check out Marcy’s editing services here.) You can find her blogging about writing on Wednesdays/Thursdays and about the place where real life meets science fiction, fantasy, and myth on Mondays and Fridays Because Fantasy Is More Real Than You Think…

by Jenny Hansen

Earlier this year, we started talking about Microsoft Excel and all the ways writers could use it without hyperventilating.

In case you missed the other two posts, I've linked them below:

Part 1 - Excel Shortcuts and Helpful Tricks
Part 2 - Doing Formulas without Freaking Out

Laura Drake also did a post last November about Keeping Your Novel Organized In Excel. (It was excellent!)

We did all that baseline work to ensure that everyone was on the same page, with at least a moderate level of skill and comfort. I'm hoping you've been at least opening your Excel and giving it a periodic keystroke.

Today’s Part 3 is going to cover some more time-saving tricks like Quick Formulas, Data tools like Filters and Subtotals, and Saving a Workspace.

Get ready to rock some Excel!

Quick Formulas

Since I’m starting to explore some freelance writing options, my sample file details a list of all my (fake) freelance work for 2011. This is a file that I definitely need to have so I threw a quick one together (see below).

When you have a list like this, sometimes you want to have numerical information on the fly. Perhaps you need to know how much you made from your February assignments, but you don't have time to create a formula or function.

By highlighting the amounts to the right of the February dates in the example above, you can get this information from the Status Bar (located at the bottom of your screen) .

In the later versions of Excel, a right click brings up the Customize Status Bar shortcut menu, allowing you to turn on extra Functions or see your data at a glance. Select some cells with numbers in your own practice spreadsheet...now point to the Sum down in your status bar and right click. Fun, huh?

Earlier versions of Excel were not quite as detailed as what you see below:

Mac Note: The way to get the Windows “right-click” features in Excel on the Mac is to hold down the Option button on your keyboard while you click your single mouse button.

Data Tools

Take another look at the spreadsheet list above. There are a few important things to note about this file:

1. This list has column headers like Customer #, Service performed, Due Date, etc.
2. This list is filtered, which means I can see only a certain State or Service performed by clicking the drop down arrow and applying the Filter for a column.

Here is the Data Ribbon, which has all the Filter, Sort and Subtotal types of buttons so you can try this magnificence out.

Subtotaling is another cool data feature in Excel.

Note: You must Sort a list by the column that you wish to Subtotal. For example, if I want to see a total dollar amount for Blogging or Editing, I would sort by Column B before I applied the Subtotal Feature.  See below for a list that has had Subtotals applied. (When you want to remove the Subtotals, click the icon on the Data Ribbon again and hit the “Remove All” button.)

For you, this would be magic with your e-book sales. If you sorted by book title, you could see how much each book made. :-)

Excel Workspaces

Most of us work with more than one Excel file at the same time. For example we might need to see two sheets in the same workbook, or we might need to open a file that contains our royalty statements from Amazon, another from our traditional publisher, and a third file where we keep a conglomeration of ALL our book sales.

If you’re like me and you only get little pockets of time to work in, one file might take you four or five computer sessions to finish. I love Excel’s Workspace feature because it lets me open all my workbooks exactly where I left off the last time I closed Excel.

Yes, really. I can have three files open on my screen and not only save the files, but I can save the View of these files. This viewing arrangement is called a Workspace.

The Workspace button is located on the right side of the View Ribbon and looks like this:

To save a Workspace file:

1. Arrange your files as you like (use the View buttons – also located on the View Ribbon, shown below).
   
   

   

2. Before quitting your Excel session, select Files>Save Workspace (this is located in the File àSave As… dialog box in earlier versions of the program and on the View ribbon in later versions of Excel).
3. Specify a file name and choose OK (it'll have an .xlw extension)
4. To pick up where you left off in the last session, reopen the workspace file: Use File>Open and choose the workspace file.

Note: A workspace file contains only configuration information, not the actual workbooks and worksheets. Therefore, you can't simply copy the workspace file -- you'll need the workbook files, too.

So, there you have it…some quick and easy tools to keep lists in Excel and to work with multiple files.

Are you on Excel Information Overload or should I plan some more Excel posts for the future? Y’all will have to let me know!

What are your "Writerly Uses" for Excel? Do have any questions for me?

About Jenny Hansen

Jenny fills her nights with humor: writing memoir, women’s fiction, chick lit, short stories (and chasing after her toddler Baby Girl). By day, she provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. After 20 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s digging this sit down and write thing.

When she’s not at her blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA and here at Writers In The Storm. Jenny also writes the Risky Baby Business posts at More Cowbell, a series that focuses on babies, new parents and high-risk pregnancy.