He got mojo filter

Look at this sentence:

She noticed John waving furiously to get her attention.

As the novelist and teacher John Gardner tells us, new writers often fail “to run straight at the image.” In other words, they filter imagery needlessly through some observing consciousness. That’s what is happening in this sentence.

Gardner says:

Generally speaking, vividness urges that almost every occurrence of such phrases as ‘she noticed’ and ‘he saw’ be suppressed in favor of direct presentation of the thing seen.

To avoid filtering the image (what she saw—the act of John’s waving) in the example sentence, change it to read:

John waved furiously to get her attention.

In context, the reader knows that the point-of-view (POV ) character (the woman) sees John waving. You don’t have to tell the reader that she is seeing him waving at her.

Another example:

He saw two dogs fighting over a bone.

Change this to:

Two dogs fought over a bone.

In other words, let your POV character filter emotions and information for the reader, but present the sensory details directly. Search for and rewrite sentences in your text that include phrases such as she noticed, he saw, she could see, she could hear, etc.

Paul Thayer
Your book editor

Scenes: show, don’t tell

Instead of beginning a scene with omniscient narration, which is like voiceover in a movie, begin with a framed scene, allowing your characters to interact. In other words, SHOW your story instead of TELLING it. To show your story, you need to write dramatic scenes. Then your readers can sit back and watch the action and listen to the dialogue and the other “sound effects” as if they were watching a play being presented on a stage. That’s how you should think about writing fiction: You are presenting a stage play in novel form. When you do that, your readers will experience an emotional response. That’s the only way to engage your audience. People read novels for emotion, not information.

What do I mean by "framing" a scene? You must settle your readers quickly into each scene by doing the following:

• Identify the setting and give the reader a sense of where we are.
• Let the reader know how much time has passed since the previous scene.
• Indicate who your point-of-view character is and describe his/her frame of mind.
• Mention everyone who is present so that a character doesn’t suddenly pop up out of nowhere or so that character’s dialogue doesn’t come as a surprise to the reader.
• Subtly place any props your characters need, so when they reach for a briefcase or gun or chair, the reader will already have that object in their vision of the setting.

Offer these required elements in a different order each time for variety.

Remember that you must plan a scene before you write it. I have read too many first novels that have scenes that have obviously not been planned. To plan a scene you must first ask yourself, "What is the purpose of this scene" and "What do I want to accomplish in this scene?"

Every scene should serve a purpose. To keep this in mind, tape this list to your monitor:

The SCENE’S PURPOSE is to:

• Move the main plot line ahead

• Present necessary information

• Introduce or develop characters

• Create atmosphere or develop setting

• Introduce or worsen a problem

• Solve a problem

• Set up a later scene


The scene should serve at least one of these purposes. Also be sure to note the primary action that will occur in the scene.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com 

Scene framing

Novelists should settle their readers quickly into each scene. To accomplish that, do the following:

• Identify the setting and give the reader a sense of where we are.
• Let the reader know how much time has passed since the previous scene.
• Indicate who your point-of-view character is and describe his/her frame of mind.
• Mention everyone who is present so that a character doesn’t suddenly pop up out of nowhere or so that character’s dialogue doesn’t come as a surprise to the reader.
• Subtly place any props your characters need, so when they reach for a briefcase or gun or chair, readers will already have that object in their vision of the setting.

For variety, offer these required elements in a different order each time you write a scene. You can make a quick check of your scene framing by asking Who? What? Where? When?

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com

Choosing the viewpoint character

When you plan a scene you must carefully consider your choice of the point-of-view (POV) character. Before you write the scene, determine its purpose in the story and what information you want to impart, then decide which character will best communicate that to the reader and help to advance the story. The viewpoint character (VPC) should be someone who is important to the story, such as the protagonist or another one of the primary characters, not secondary or third-rank players, and that person should have a significant role to play—a part that fulfills at least one of the purposes of the scene. Maintain that character’s viewpoint for the whole scene.

When you employ just one character’s POV per scene, you’ll find that the scenes will be more compact because you won’t be reporting more than one person’s experiences, thoughts, and emotions through narration, which is a good way to tighten your writing. Professional novelists sometimes write a scene two or three times, using a different VPC in each one, and then decide which one works the best.

Remember: To follow the tenets of scene-framing and third-person limited narration, you must choose just one person in each scene to serve as the viewpoint character. If you know that a VPC is going to be knocked unconscious in a scene, for instance, but want the scene to play longer, then you’ll have to give another character the POV; otherwise, the scene has to end when the VPC conks out.

Maintaining consistency of point of view can be a subtle thing sometimes, but it really separates the pros from the new writers. It serves an excellent purpose by grounding the reader in one space, behind one person’s eyes, in each scene, thereby developing characterization and avoiding reader confusion.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com

Subtle viewpoint shifts

I have already discussed viewpoint, or point of view (POV), in fiction. The most obvious mistake is shifting the POV from the viewpoint character (VPC) to another character in the same scene. Less noticeable POV shifts are from the VPC to an omniscient narrator—the all-seeing, all-knowing invisible intelligence—which is really the author in thin disguise. Writers often fail to see these inadvertent shifts, but a good editor will catch them. Here’s an example:

Braelynn rounded the berm and headed for the bluff, fistfuls of her skirt bunched in her hands to keep her legs free. But before she reached the crags, more horsemen appeared on the cliffs. The lass skidded to a halt. . . .

This shift occurs when the writer says “The lass.” In the first two sentences, Braelynn is the VPC. After that an omniscient narrator intrudes, because Braelynn would not think of or refer to herself as “The lass.” Only an omniscient narrator or another character—who shouldn’t have the POV—would. To avoid the POV shift, “The lass” should be changed to “She.” That maintains Braelynn’s viewpoint.

Sometimes an omniscient narrator—that crafty bugger—sneaks in here and there with words that describe something that the VPC cannot, or probably cannot, know. One book I edited said a character wore an Armani suit and Italian-made Moreschi shoes and talked to a Bengali sales clerk. An omni narrator could recognize an Armani suit, Italian-made Moreschi shoes, and a person from Bengal, but can the VPC? I doubt it. In most such instances the author has provided these details.

See what I mean? Writers should review their work carefully to eliminate such unintentional viewpoint shifts. Better yet, get an editor to do this for you.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com

Viewpoint in fiction

Aside from grammatical errors, the most common sin I find in the work of new novelists is "head-hopping"—that is, giving the viewpoint, or point of view (POV), to more than one character in a scene. This is a big no-no.

Point of view is the perspective from which a story is told. Writers have three basic choices: the first person singular (“I”), the second person (“you”), and the third person (“he”/”she”). In the first-person point of view, the story is told by an “I” who is a character in the story—often the lead character, but not always. In third-person the author actually has two narrative perspectives to choose from—the third-person pure omniscient point of view, which is told by an “outside” voice that has access to any character’s actions and thoughts, and the third-person limited omniscient point of view, which is similar but is limited to the thoughts and perspective of a single character per scene.

First-person novels are popular, but second-person narratives are useless to new writers because they’re mostly considered to be experimental works and are nearly impossible to get published. Most fiction houses today are happiest with the third-person format, believing it to be the most commercial approach. We may also note that many novels on the best-seller lists are written this way, perhaps because stories of action and adventure lend themselves so well to the less constricting third-person viewpoint.

That doesn’t mean you should avoid using the first person. Many first-person novels are published. Despite the limitations of the first-person POV, I like them, mainly because they are a refreshing change from all the third-person novels out there and because I can get to know the protagonist better and identify with that person.

Long gone is the popularity of the verbose, pure omniscient third-person narrator. Many nineteenth-century novelists used and abused this narrative style, pushing the envelope to include a great deal of narrative by an unseen, godlike intelligence who knows all the details of the past, who can see the future, and who loves to comment on the action and the story people with a variety of asides, lectures, and sermons like an Olympian sportscaster. Such writers would frequently insert copy something like this:

            The coach departed in a clatter of hooves and a great swirl of fog, leaving MacGregor standing alone in the dark, gazing apprehensively up the long curve of road leading to the dim mansion, cloistered in oaks, at the top of the hill. It would be a difficult climb, burdened as he was with two heavy portmanteaus, but he was determined to make it. O foolish man! You suspect nothing, anticipate only joy. But ahead, for you, lies more evil than you ever expect to encounter. Pity him, gentle reader, for the unutterable horrors he must soon face, and pray that his moral fiber and his long-held convictions will see him through these tribulations.

I wrote this all by myself. Pretty impressive, eh?

Would you enjoy reading a novel filled with dreck like this? Neither would anyone else. That’s why ninety-nine percent of nineteenth-century novels and their authors have slipped into obscurity—and why today’s novelists should make every effort to avoid such a bloated omniscient prose style.

These days the third-person limited omniscient narrator is much more palatable. In this viewpoint the story is told only in the third person, but it is limited to the perspective of a single character in each scene. That’s the most rigorous view of this form of narration, anyway—and the safest one for new writers. In other words, little or nothing appears in the scene that the viewpoint character (VPC) doesn’t experience directly, and anything that character didn’t experience is still related from his or her perspective, with the explicit or implicit understanding that this information was related to that character by someone else. If your POV character faints, the scene ends. If your POV character walks out of the room, the reader goes out the door, too, and never stays behind with the characters who do not have the point of view. Most important, you should never allow your POV person to be shoved aside by some divine stage manager who comments on the story and its players.

When writers of fiction lose their grip, narratively speaking, on this limited form of viewpoint, then they slip into the realm of the unrestricted omniscient narrator. Considered in the strictest sense, all background information, character sketches, history lessons, travelogues, and such occupy the province of the all-seeing, all-knowing pure omniscient narrator. The only way to avoid that is to couch such material cleverly, offering it to the reader via the intelligence of the POV character.

If you’re limited to the viewpoint of only one person in each scene, how then, you may wonder, can you convey the thoughts of a character who is not given the POV for that scene? Here are a few tips:

• Put that character’s thoughts in dialogue.

• Put that character’s emotions on his/her face and have the POV character correctly interpret those feelings after looking at him/her.

• Wait until that character is given a point of view, then have him/her reflect on the previous scene and relate his/her thoughts.

Please, please, friends, no more head-hopping!


Paul Thayer
your-book-editor.com