What Point of View?

Let’s imagine for a moment that you have written a little bit of something. It may be a paragraph or two, or a page or two, or maybe even a complete short story. If you haven’t, then write something now. Something short will do.

Now that you have a passage written, take a look at it. What point of view have you chosen to use?

If you have written a lot of ‘I did this’ or ‘I did that’, then you have used the First Person point of view (POV). If, however, your sentences look more like: ‘He did this’ or ‘She did that’, then you have used Third Person POV. You may even have been adventurous and used ‘You did this’, which is the Second Person. If you have a mixture, then you may want to begin by rewriting your passage using only one of these points of view.

Most of us feel more comfortable with either the First or the Third POV and will often find that we tend to begin writing in whichever one feels most familiar to us, perhaps modelled on our reading. But, take a moment before you go on, to think about whether you actually have the best point of view for the piece.

It can sometimes be useful to rewrite a new piece using an alternative point of view, and maybe even again in a third. Sometimes you will find that a different point of view has a different feel to it, and it may be that you feel more comfortable or inspired by using an alternative.

Of course, each point of view has its advantages and disadvantages. A first person point of view can only be told from the perspective of the character who narrates the story. Otherwise, the piece may feel awkward and confusing to the reader. However, it can feel more personal than the third person can, particularly if you are writing something that involves a lot of inner dialogue or the thoughts of one character.

Third person can allow a little more distance between the narrator and the reader: to experience the story from a little bit further (or a lot further) away, to observe it from the outside, so to speak. It also makes it a little easier to handle multiple character perspectives.

Second person is something a little rarer. It can be used in an attempt to make the reader feel completely absorbed and complicit, as if the events in the story are happening to them. However, it can be quite a difficult point of view to handle well and may be better attempted once you have some experience under your belt. But feel free to experiment with it. It can produce surprisingly interesting results.

Here is an example of a short passage in two different perspectives. Examine them and see if you can detect any differences in the way you respond to each of the points of view.

First, let’s start with one of the most common - the third person perspective:

Data was an android with human features but pale skin. His dearest wish was to be more like his human friends and he worked hard at replicating their emotions and humour.

Now, let’s try this with the first person. Note, one can’t really describe oneself without resorting to cliché, so a complete rewrite will be required:

Being an android, I have no real feelings, but I would dearly love to be more like my human friends. Every day, I stand in front of my mirror in an effort to replicate their emotions. My attempts at humour, however, appear to need much work.

As you can see, first person has limitations but it can be quite an intimate and revealing perspective, and it may even make it easier to express the character’s voice for some writers.

Third person can allow more freedom, and it can be written in a way that is very close to the first person, a style that remains with the experiences of the one narrator. But it can also be used for a more omniscient (all-knowing, God-like) perspective where you can move around, at will, from the head of one character to another (often called head-hopping). However, take care when using the latter, as it can be difficult to keep the writing coherent and often takes a skilled hand to pull off.

As for second person, well, this article is written from that perspective. But, maybe you can try rewriting my invented sentence above, or one of your own, to experience the effect for yourself.

This is only a very brief introduction into the subject of Point of View, and I will write more on the subject in later articles. But, for the time being, I am going to treat my audience like my blog – beginning and new to all this.

Free Writing

Talking about storytelling leads me naturally on to the subject of Free Writing. This is simply the name for a particular exercise designed to help you get into the creative mode and free up your imagination (as well as get your fingers moving!).

So, you sit down to write and maybe find yourself stumbling; you can’t seem to think of anything worth writing, or maybe something that you would tell to someone easily feels awkward when faced with a blank page. But don’t worry - writing is a little bit like exercise – the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that when you write frequently you never get writer’s block, or that procrastination (a chronic writer’s condition) becomes a thing of the past. It’s just that, as you begin to write, no matter what it is, the words begin to flow. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

So, whether you are a new writer, an aspiring writer, or even a more experienced writer, the key to getting started is to write – anything - everything. Whatever is swirling around in your brain at the time, let it out. It doesn’t even matter whether you use punctuation or grammar. In fact, it may be best to use as little ‘thinking’ as possible – just write. Sometimes, even just a few words about what you are feeling helps to get the brain and the fingers in synch, working together to produce words, and after a while, you begin to find the words flowing. Not just the words, but also the ideas.

© Gordonsaunders | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

It may be that, as you write you are inspired by a creative thought, or a story, or even a sentence. You decide to abandon whatever it is that you have been writing and begin to develop that new idea further. This is fine. This is to be expected. It’s what happens to me almost every time I sit down to write. It is, if you like, the whole purpose of the exercise.

Once inspired, let that ‘exercise’ go, and continue to follow whatever inspiration follows. The initial words were only the tool to help oil the creative cogs. Even once you begin truly writing, it may be that you need to go back later and change, delete, or edit, but this is fine, just keep going at this stage. Sometimes, if you begin to ‘edit’ too soon, you can lose that flow; your creativity can become shackled by logical thinking.

Once you get into the swing of things, begin to tell your story, whatever it is, whatever form it takes: diary entry, story, poem, article, memory, anecdote – it matters not. Just go with it and you will soon realise that you do have stories to tell.

If you are a new, and perhaps nervous, writer, this can be a good way to begin, to get over the fear. But, even experienced writers can use the ‘write any old rubbish’ to connect with the more creative side of their brain and focus on what they want to produce.

Our lives are full of distractions and we constantly have to listen to the logical ‘left-brained’ side of our intellect. But, by free writing, we can make a transition and connect with our creative brain. I imagine it as lying somewhere in my subconscious yet I don’t always know exactly where that is, so I need a conduit, a way to bring it to me. And free writing is often a good way to invite it forward.

So, what are you still doing sitting here reading this? Go on – write something!

There’s a storyteller in all of us

Being faced with a brand new blog is almost as difficult as facing a blank page. With the page, sometimes, you feel you can’t think of anything to write. A new blog is slightly different in that there is so much to write, but where do you start?

I’ve decided to begin at the very beginning. All writing comes from a need to tell a story. It does not matter whether this is a true story or a piece of fiction, a piece of advice or a report. In essence, they are all telling stories.

If you ask a room full of people how many of them would describe themselves as storytellers, you might find one or two hands raised in response. Yet, what few realise is that we are all storytellers. It is the basis of most of our conversation.

If you’ve ever complained about your horrendous journey into work; if you’ve ever explained why you can’t make it to a social gathering; if you’ve ever shared your feelings about that great film you watched last week; if you’ve done any of these things, you’ve told a story. It may be a true story, it may be slightly embellished or exaggerated, it may even be an outright fib, but it’s a story all the same.

So, if you have an urge to tell stories, but think that you don’t know how, just begin by writing down the little stories of your own life. It might be something you did, a thought, an opinion on something that happened in the world, a note about the people you have met during the day, or an event on the way to work. It doesn’t really matter as long as it gets you writing.

All humans are storytellers: if you think, if you talk, if you use social networking, you are telling stories. So now that we’ve cleared that up and you know you can tell stories, what’s stopping you?

Everything you would ever want to know about me and a bit more.

Hello everyone.

As this is the first post on a new blog, I'm going to begin by telling you a little bit about me and what this blog is all about.

I am a novelist, writer, tutor, and workshop leader. I am currently studying an MA in Creative Writing at The Manchester Metropolitan University, after receiving a First Class Honours in English Language and Creative Writing with The Open University.

I'm a Scot by birth, but I now live in the West Midlands, England and a 52 year-old grandmother of six (and feel much to young to admit this), so I am a mature student, to say the least. But the reason that I decided to gain my degrees so late in life is because I suffered a stroke in 1999. Well, at the time, I was involved in the entertainment industry. I taught professional adult acting for 20 years in Manchester, both for stage and screen. But, I also found myself working in several other areas during my career (professional actor, casting director, director, producer and screenwriter).

After my stroke, I found many of the activities I had been involved in to be very physically demanding and had to have a major rethink regarding my future career. Of course, writing had been something I had always done. I'd written for competitions at school; I'd written several short (but not too good) short stories during my lifetime for fun; I'd written stage plays that were performed; and, I'd written both short and full length feature films (commissioned, optioned and produced), and I'd even been a runner up in the Sci-fi Channel's Sci-fi Short competition many years ago. I'd even written business plans and CV's. Most of my writing, however, was either a means to an end, a spare time hobby, an unexpected request or a necessity. I had never really considered it as a full-time career.

As I enjoyed writing and had gained experience in many formats, and because of my tutoring experience (which I enjoyed immensely), I decided that I would side-track a little. Although I had written several screenplays (and spent years critiquing screenplays for others), I wasn't really interested in a full-time career as a screen writer. I may continue to write and critique them, but I really wanted to begin writing novels - don't we all?

Of course, I didn't need a degree to begin writing books, and I did write my first novella 'A Bed of Thorns', which I adopted from my screenplay (currently optioned by MCP Films), whilst studying my BA. However, I did want to combine writing with teaching and I had no formal qualifications other than my O-Levels. So I undertook my first degree with the Open University.

My career aims are to combine my writing with teaching and motivating and inspiring others. So, this blog is intended to be my first window on the world where I hope to share samples of my own writing and short stories, spotlight other new and exciting writers, but mostly, I want to share thoughts and advice on the craft itself. I may also share some thoughts on books that I read, particularly if I think they are brilliant.

If this blog helps just one reader or writer discover something new and interesting, then I will have achieved my main goal.