5 Ways to Use Narrative Viewpoint in Fiction Writing

Please welcome today’s guest writer, N. Strauss, editor of the website Creative Writing Now.

Narrative point of view is the perspective you use to tell a story. It’s like the location of the camera in a movie scene.

You can write a story from the point of view of just one character so that the reader watches the story’s events through that character’s eyes. Or, instead, you can alternate between multiple points of view. You can even choose an omniscient point of view, which moves around freely.

Point of view is a powerful tool in fiction writing. Here are a few of the ways you can use it in your stories.

1) Draw readers into a scene.

Limiting the point of view in a scene to one character at a time can help your readers feel as if they’re actually there. When readers imagine the scene, they know where to place themselves.

For example, let’s say you’re writing a scene from the point of view of a character named Bertha. Someone has just broken into Bertha’s house, and she is hiding from him under her bed. When readers imagine this scene, they imagine it as if they were lying under the bed too.

To pull this off, you have to be very careful about the details you include. You can describe the dust bunnies under the bed and the thud of footsteps in the next room. Since you’re writing from Bertha’s perspective, you can’t describe the intruder’s appearance — not while he’s in a different room and she can’t see him. Nor can you describe the look of terror on Bertha’s face — she can’t see her own facial expression.

When the intruder enters Bertha’s bedroom, you can describe his shoes and trouser cuffs, which might be the only part of him she can see from her hiding place.

2) Establish empathy with a character.

When you limit a story’s point of view to just one character, this creates intimacy between readers and that character. Readers identify with the viewpoint character; they feel as if they are that character in the world of your story.

If you choose instead to use multiple points of view, you complicate this relationship between reader and character, dividing the reader’s loyalties. The reader knows information your character doesn’t, and this distances the reader from the character.

3) Show a character’s thoughts.

Not only do readers see through the viewpoint character’s eyes, you can choose to give readers direct access to the character’s thoughts. For example, as Bertha lies under the bed, you can show her remembering a recent argument with her boyfriend. He wanted her to have an alarm system installed, and she accused him of being paranoid. Boy, is she sorry now.

There are also more subtle ways to show what a character’s thinking.

Remember that when you’re writing from the point of view of a particular character, you include only the details in a scene that your viewpoint character observes. This not only shows the character’s physical location (e.g., under the bed). It also shows what the character is paying attention to. And that says a lot about the kind of person this character is and what’s on his or her mind.

There are an infinite number of details in every scene; the human brain is not capable of processing all of them. We pay attention to the ones that matter to us and filter out the rest.

For example, imagine two different people observing the same man in a bar. A character named Jim is wondering if the man is dangerous. Jim is likely to notice the bulge in the man’s jacket pocket. Is that a weapon?

A character named Diana finds the man attractive and is thinking of going over and flirting with him. So she notices that the man is wearing a wedding ring. Jim might not see this detail at all — it is irrelevant to him.

4) Withhold information.

If you’re writing a story that contains surprising twists, you may want to hold information back from the reader so that you can reveal it later. One way to accomplish this is to write from the viewpoint of a character who doesn’t have all the information yet.

Mystery novels are generally written from the point of view of characters who are still looking for the answers. If you wrote a mystery from the viewpoint of the criminal, you’d have to do a lot of dodging around to hide the solution from the reader. And the reader would likely feel manipulated.

For this reason, crime novels that include the criminal’s point of view are likely to fall into the suspense or thriller genres, rather than being true mysteries. From the very beginning, readers know the identity of the criminal. They’re reading not to find out information about past crimes, but to find out what will happen next — will the criminal get caught or strike again?

5) Create suspense.

Many thrillers use multiple points of view as a tool to create suspense.

For example, maybe Bertha hasn’t realized that there’s an intruder in her house.

The story starts from the point of view of the man who has just murdered Bertha’s boyfriend and is now climbing in her attic window. Standing in the dark attic, he takes his knife out of his jacket pocket. Then he heads down the attic stairs.

Now the story switches to Bertha’s point of view. Bertha sits in bed with her laptop, writing an email to her boyfriend. “I’ve been trying to call you all day, but your phone’s turned off,” she writes. “I hope everything’s fine. I’ve been thinking — we should spend a weekend in Paris together.”

She sends the email, then goes onto Google to search for medical advice about her itchy elbow. Will the itching go away on its own, or should she see a doctor? She tries unsuccessfully to get a good look at her own elbow, then goes to the mirror on her closet door to check it there.

Because readers have information that Bertha doesn’t — there’s a killer in her house — they’re likely to be feeling nervous as she goes about these activities. If the whole story were written from Bertha’s point of view, her actions would just seem mundane.

You can use the same technique in your fiction to create irony. The idea is that the reader knows more than the character, and this changes the reader’s attitude to what the character says and does.

Exercise:

Here’s a writing prompt you can use to practice some of these point-of-view techniques.

A real estate agent takes a couple to visit a house that’s for sale. The wife thinks the house is wonderful. The husband thinks it’s a real dump. Write the scene first from the wife’s point of view, then write it again from the husband’s.

Think about how two people can see the same thing and reach totally different conclusions. What details does each of them notice? What aspects of the house does each of them consider important?

About the Author: N. Strauss is the editor of the website Creative Writing Now, which offers ideas, training, and support for fiction writers and poets. Their new e-book, Fiction Boot Camp, will show you how to improve over 100 aspects of your fiction writing and increase your chances of getting published. 

A World of Creative Writing Ideas: Outside

Please welcome freelance writer Matthew Erickson with his guest post about getting up, getting out, and getting inspired.

It’s easy for writers to lock themselves away from the rest of the world in order to get creative. However, getting out and exploring the world is great fodder for the creative mind. If you are having trouble tapping into your creative flow in the comfort and safety of your own home, try changing it up a bit by getting up and getting out in order to let new places, people, and things inspire you.

Being a writer myself, I have a tendency to be a bit of a homebody. There is nothing wrong with that since one of the perks of the job is making a living without getting out of my robe and slippers. However, spending every waking hour inside wearing my skivvies and staring at a computer screen day after day, week after week, is bad for both my physical and creative health. It is also a total waste of my investment in a laptop.

Sure, writers need their lairs, secret hidey holes in which to hatch their master plots onto the unsuspecting world. However, in order to find new creative ideas or to simply get the creative juices flowing, it is important that writers make an effort to get out there at least once in a while and see what the whole wide world has to offer.

Top 4 Reasons Why You Should Get Out:

1. Change of Scenery Stimulates the Mind

Staring at the same wall or out the same window all day long will do nothing to cultivate new ideas after about a week of doing it. A change of environment will have profound effects on your creativity, allowing you to see creative problems from different angles or to rouse new ideas. Changing the scenery is a great way to access new creative stimuli for your mind and help you feel a whole lot less like a goldfish swimming in the same old bowl.

2. It Gets Your Creative Juices Flowing

Getting out of the house and going somewhere gets your creative juices flowing. You might not realize it, but creativity is intricately linked to your brain’s ability to fire creative nerve synapses. Sometimes, it is not the destination but the journey that will bring you to your muse. For example, in order to write this little article, I decided to take off my robe, put on some shorts and shoes and take a bike ride to a café across town. It turned out the bike ride was exactly the thing I needed in order to get my blood pumping to the creative side of my brain, allowing me to come up with a way in which to approach this article. Plus, I probably burned off at least half of that panini sandwich that I ate for lunch.

3. Different Places Equal Different Faces

Sometimes it is not what you see on your creative outings, but whom you meet. You might run into an old friend and find yourself digging up past experiences to use in a story idea. You might meet someone new who’s full of fresh and inspiring thoughts. You might even accidently eavesdrop on two college girls at the table next to you, talking about how great the Justin Bieber movie is and wind up coming up with a great idea for a comedic skit. Hey, if it can happen to me, it can happen to you.

4. Getting Into Situations

Creative people have always gone out into the world, getting into situations, and then writing about them. Whether it is going on a little adventure, getting into and out of trouble, or helping a stranger push their stalled car out of traffic, it is these experiences in life, these situations that we all experience, which make life worth living and writing about. So, venture boldly into the world and welcome a little trouble into your life (but not too much). Get yourself into a few situations and find something to write about.

These are just four of an endless number of excuses to grab your laptop, your notebook, or simply your open mind and head outside. Embrace your human nature, go exploring, and discover new creative writing ideas in the world around you.

About the Author: Matthew Erickson is a freelance writer who is constantly looking for a new and better muse trap. He has already uncovered over 170 ways to capture creativity, which can be found at Musesland.com.

How to Start a Successful Writers’ Workshop

Today’s guest post is by Alana Saltz, freelance writer, editor, and creative writing instructor.

When you get down to the heart of it, writing is a solitary pursuit. However, many of us writers don’t enjoy being holed up alone all day in our bedrooms, typing away on our computers.

Most of us seek the friendship, as well as the feedback and critique, that being part of a group of writers can offer. That’s where local writers’ workshops come in.

A question that I am often asked is how I started my writing group, “The Pasadena Writers’ Collective.” People want to know how I got the group off the ground and was able to find members to join it. There are a few ways to go about starting your own writing group, but here are my suggestions:

1. Decide what kind of group you want. Do you want an intimate weekly workshop with a small group of regulars, or do you want a larger group that meets once or twice a month on a more casual basis?

2. Choose what kind of writing you want the group to focus on. There are many successful writing groups that focus on a single genre. If all you write is fiction, you might want to start a workshop specifically for fiction writers. If you’re interested in all kinds of writing, you can leave it open to all genres.

3. Once you’ve decided on the type of group you want to start, you have to know how to find members. I highly recommend the site http://meetup.com. That’s where I started “The Pasadena Writers’ Collective.” The great thing about meetup.com is that there’s already a huge built-in community of people looking for a group like yours. When you create a group, the announcement is automatically mailed out to thousands of people who have expressed an interest in finding writing groups in your area.

While it’s free to be a member of meetup.com and join groups, group organizers are actually the ones who have to pay fees. It costs about $15/month to host your group on the site. I have seen people temporarily create a group using the free trial who then moved it off the site once they got some members. I hosted my workshop on the site for an entire year before deciding to move it over to a free host, but that was only once I had a solid group of regulars. The site I use now, Qlubb.com, is great for posting events and keeping members up to date once you have an established group.

If you aren’t interested in meetup.com, there are always other ways to find members. Craigslist can be a good place to start. I also recommend the old fashioned method of posting fliers around local cafés and colleges.

4. Find a meeting place. Many libraries offer a meeting room for free to groups that don’t require any sort of membership fee. Local cafés and restaurants can also be good places to have meetings as long as they aren’t too noisy or crowded. My group meets at a Panera Bread Co., which is perfect for us because there’s always seating available and people can buy food if they get hungry. Scope out some potential locations and make some phone calls to find your perfect space. You always have the option to host the group at your house, but I personally wouldn’t suggest doing that unless you already know all of your group members and feel comfortable having them in your home.

5. Finally, figure out how you want your meetings to run. I recommend making a handout for your members with workshop and critique guidelines. Decide whether you want people to bring in work to the meetings or have a schedule for members to give out their work ahead of time to be critiqued at the next meeting. Make sure you specify any page limits or formatting rules you’d like to have them follow.

Be prepared to be the mediator and leader of your group. You’ll be the one responsible for setting the tone and atmosphere of the workshop, and it’s up to you to find a structure and rhythm for your group that works for you.

It might seem overwhelming at first, but starting a writers’ workshop really isn’t difficult. Just make sure you have the time to devote to doing it right. It may take a couple of months to get a steady group of members in attendance, but don’t get discouraged. Once you get your writing group going, it really is an incredibly meaningful and enjoyable experience. I’ve made some wonderful friends and have received so much invaluable critique on my work. Best of all, it gets me out of the house and away from my computer for a few hours every week.

Editor’s Note: Don’t miss Alana’s follow-up piece, How to Run a Successful Writers’ Workshop.

About the Author: Alana Saltz is a freelance writer, editor, and creative writing instructor living in sunny Los Angeles, CA. She has had work published in several literary magazines and is currently an MFA in Writing candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. You can visit her website at http://alanasaltz.com.

Three Writing Tips for Building an Outline

Today’s guest post is by Alexis Bonari, a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at onlinedegrees.org, researching areas of accredited online degrees. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

One of my literature professors once told me that there’s no wrong way to create an outline so long as it accomplishes the intended purpose. By the time they are asked to complete a lengthy project like a thesis paper or novel, most writers have already developed their own unique approach to outlining their work. While it’s a good idea to stick to what works for you, taking a quick look at other outline approaches can be helpful. The following are some of the most common outlining strategies.

The Classic

This outline is bullet-pointed. Roman numerals and letters are used to break down each idea. Word processing programs generally have an outline function that makes the process even easier. You set the progression of bullet-point symbols. Here is an example:

I. Main Idea

A. Supporting information

II. Main idea

A. Supporting information

i. Details

People prefer this style of outline for its readability and the simple process for summarizing complex ideas.

The Scatter Method

My personal favorite since middle school, the scatter method, is essentially just what it sounds like. You make a rough outline of where you want to go with the project. Then, you write sections of the paper without transitions. Although it’s good to have a working thesis before starting, there’s nothing that says it must be written down and refined at the outset of the project. All the pieces and parts are then assembled into a rough whole. Some are edited or taken out entirely. Only then are transitions are added.

It should be noted that this method requires a great deal of time spent reading and re-reading your draft. While this works for me, it certainly isn’t for everyone.

The Visual/Kinesthetic Learner Option

Much less common than the first two styles is the visual/kinesthetic learner option. You write and then print out bullet-pointed elements of a classic outline, including phrases and points that you want to make. Then, take these cut-out pieces and arrange them in a grand outline on the floor or a spacious table. This allows you to see more of the outline than you would on a computer screen. You can look ahead further and rearrange by physically moving the pieces around. When you’re ready to go ahead with the project as outlined, simply pick up the individual pieces in order and flip through them as they write.

My father-in-law wrote several published books; he used this method for all three of them. As my professor said, there is no “right” way to create an outline. There’s only what works for you and your writing style.

How to Write a Memoir With a Partner

Today’s guest post, “How to Write a Memoir with a Partner” is by Deborah Prutzman, co-author of Addie of the Flint Hills: A Prairie Child During the Depression (1915-1935).

Few writers would argue that writing is a solitary pursuit. That said, collaborations between two or more writers do occur, and some have been highly successful. This is especially true when it comes to memoirs. Why? Because often one person has a remarkable story to tell but is not a professional writer, and the other person is needed to help write the personal story (and tell it in a most compelling way).

Sometimes that person is a relative or friend. Sometimes that person is a professional, paid ghostwriter or editor. In my case, I helped my mom write her memoir. At age 94 she had an interesting story to tell but needed my help to access her memories and then organize and write them in the form of a book. This was our first collaboration but hopefully not our last, because Mom wants to do a whole series of books!

In writing this memoir with my mother, I learned a lot and am delighted to be able to share my “lessons learned,” some of which will hopefully be helpful to you.

Steps to Writing a Memoir

1. Start with whatever your partner can do. It can be a recorded or written list or a spoken dialogue about his or her life. If your partner cannot start, you might offer a list of key events and ask for feedback, thoughts, and reactions about these or inquire about how friends and family were affected by these events.
2. Develop a list of questions on a specific topic coming from multiple angles and ask about one or two each time you meet.
3. Listen and write everything down. You may not think something your partner says is significant, but months later you will see why it matters.
4. Let your partner repeat stories, and view this as a chance to get new details and better words.
5. Tell others about the effort. Many of our friends and relatives sent photos or came to visit and told Mom stories. Some of this material made its way into the book. Some triggered memories, which was also wonderful for all of us.
6. Have your partner answer three overarching questions, appropriate to the time, and weave these into the book. These can differ based on your interests and the interests of your partner and family, friends, or business associates. I asked my mother what was her experience of the moment, what was the family dynamic in her judgment now, looking back, and how did the economy back then impact her.
7. Buy books, music, and videos of the places and times to trigger memories. Mom would look at these on her own and write down a memory or thought that these brought to mind. Many of these comments were incorporated into the text. As part of the research I also reached out to local historical societies, and went on Ebay looking for relevant items, old postcards, programs, etc. Also, reviewing the materials provided hours of fun for her while I was not there.
8. Read, reread, and discuss the draft text. Again, this provided many enjoyable hours for Mom when she was otherwise alone. Often I asked her to focus on a theme or a person and spend the next few days writing down whatever came to mind.
9. Always work with whatever your partner’s natural tendency is. Nail it down and then push for the opposite. My mother was very factual; almost matter of fact and devoid of emotion. I captured that, and then pushed to find the little details that hinted at the emotions, which began slowly but surely to release the flood of feelings!
10. Have a professional editor go over the manuscript for typos, grammar, and punctuation and also to edit out any redundancies.

More Thoughts on How to Write a Memoir

One more thing I can add from my experience that really worked: Just asking someone to write his or her memoirs can be overwhelming for that person. In our case, for a year or so previous to actually writing, we laid down the groundwork by making a video.

It was a simple production. We gathered all the family photos we could find and put them in a more or less chronological order. Mom thought about her life and we agreed upon a loose script. Then, I asked questions and she responded. We edited it down to an hour or two and were very satisfied with our results. When I finally suggested that Mom write down her memories, she had a framework.

The bones of the story are the partner’s life, the person who lived the events (unless you both did). What really matters is capturing that person’s thoughts and experiences, so be nonjudgmental in order to freely allow your partner to lead you down the path of his or her past life. With my mother, I tried to be curious about why she thought and felt certain things. I am a lawyer and a pretty strong woman, so the role of a more passive partner is not one that I am all that comfortable with. It took effort, but I was able to channel her thoughts and experiences. Working on the book brought all sorts of good things to my family and most of all, brought Mom and me closer together.

When the memoir I wrote with my mother was finished, we found a publisher, hired a publicist, and then went back to mom’s local roots for a mini book tour, which was highly successful. Mom loves to read and re-read her book. Now we are going on to the next 20 years. I hope you and your writing partner are equally delighted with the end result of your venture.

To learn more about the memoir that Deborah wrote with her mother, and to get more tips on how to write a memoir, please visit www.adalinesorace.com.