The Everything Guide to Writing a Novel by Joyce Lavene

Author:Joyce Lavene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebup, ebook
Publisher: Adams Media
Published: 2010-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

Putting too much back story at the beginning of the book can cause your readers to lose interest. Give readers a chance to get to know your character before enveloping them in back story.

Choose the Point of View

There are plenty of books and workshops on what point of view is and how it can be used to your advantage. Basically, point of view (POV) refers to who is telling the story — whether it’s a first-person (I) account or a story with an outside narrator who describes all the characters in third person (he, she, it, they). Some novels have more than one point of view, which may alternate from chapter to chapter. If you don’t decide how point of view will work in your novel before you begin writing, you should expect to make major revisions.

First Person

Are you going to have one character tell the story from her point of view? If you go this route, every bit of information has to be filtered through this character. For instance:

I knew what Jean was talking about. I hated for her to go but she never listens to me. I said, “Jean, don’t go there. You’ll only get in trouble.” But would she listen to me? Probably not.

Remember that the first-person narrator cannot know everything. Everything that this narrator recounts must have happened already. Because this places limitations on the narrator, first-person point of view is not used as frequently as third-person.

Third Person

This point of view allows the author and the reader to explore all the characters in the novel. You don’t have to limit yourself to what one character is thinking and feeling. If you take the previous bit of story and change it to third person, it would look like this:

Betty knew what Jean was talking about. She hated for her to go but Jean never listened to her. “Jean, don’t go there. You’ll only get in trouble.” Jean wasn’t listening. She wanted to go and nothing Betty said was going to stop her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.