Point of View and Voice

Many newbie writers have trouble maintaining a consistent point of view (POV). It's entirely possible to develop scenes and chapters in different POVs if you don't allow your mind to meander all over the place. Clean POV also requires a consistent use of person. First, second, third, etc.

FIRST PERSON

Suppose you write in first person. That means you say, "I walked down the path." Third person means you say, "She walked down the path." Let's forget about verb tense for now. If you want to write in present tense, then go for it. However, you're not as likely to have me as a reader.

SECOND PERSON

Second person is possible, but incredibly awkward. Speaking to the reader is sort of like breaking into their apartment and acting like a serial killer. "You are walking down the path." The poor reader might think, "No, I'm not! Wait! Am I supposed to be walking someplace? But I'm sitting here reading. I don't want to walk elsewhere. It's hard to read when I'm walking!"

So, let's just say that second person is out of the picture. I really couldn't advise you on how to do this with any grace or style. If you insist upon second person, then I commend you, but don't expect to sell a lot of books.

VOICE

Okay, 1st person and 3rd person are both fine, but what if you want to get into the head of another character, perhaps the villain? Can you do this when writing 1st person? If both your main character and your villain are talking aloud referring to themselves, it might be a tad confusing, but it's doable if you carefully divide scenes and chapters and make it entirely clear who the "I" is in each. Also, you'll need to be watchful of voice. Oh, right. Voice. Did you think everybody talks exactly the same way? Of course, your MC is nice, good, heroic, etc. and your antagonist is mean, awful, and villainous. Here's some first person examples if you decide to present both MC and villain in first person:

"I walked down the path, my heart yearning for any sign of my beloved, but I continue to be ever watchful of signs that Mr. Blackness had passed this way."

"I stood in the shadows, watching the poor, sad sucker meandering down the path without a clue that I've got his beloved stashed in a dungeon guarded by ogres."

These examples, of course, are exaggerated to make the point of voice incredibly important when you're writing with multiple points of view.

THIRD PERSON

Easiest to do is third person. Everybody can have their say with little difficulty for the reader recognizing who's the star of a given scene.

Thing is, 3rd person is the writer's voice, the omnipotent story teller from on high (imagine your god-like presence hovering over the characters in your work).

Still, separation of points of view by scene or chapter is the best, easiest, cleanest way to keep the reader on track. You can change points of view between paragraphs, but expect your reader to have to backtrack to figure out who is out front in the story.

If you think you absolutely need to change POV without a scene or chapter break, then your last resort is a paragraph break and a time or place changing word to allow the reader a moment to switch gears.

Fred walked along the path, hoping to find some clue to Hilda's disappearance. MEANWHILE, Hilda pounded on the bars and screamed, desperately hoping to attract attention.

Here the time/place changing word is MEANWHILE. It signals the reader that the story is jumping elsewhere.

RECOMMENDATION

Stick to 3rd person. Change POVs only on a scene or chapter break. Keep the voice consistent to the character.

See? That's not so hard, is it?

EXCERPT EXAMPLE FROM SCOTCH BROOM

“Not at all, Barry. Pleased to meet you. I’m Ru...Ron Galdor.” Rune extended his own hand to shake and winced at the dart champion’s hard grip. When Barry turned his back on him, Rune mumbled a quick spell to change the name on his passport from Rune Fenwick to Ron Galdor.

“We’ll play ane-on-ane. Be that guid for you?” Barry asked, twirling one of his darts between his fingers.

“Sure, but I don’t have my darts with me. Can I borrow a set?” One of the men held out his set of three darts. Rune weighed them in his hand. He held up one and sighted it toward the board. “Hey, thanks. These are nice.”

“Da game is 301, double-in, double-oot?”

“Great. Anything is fine.” Rune watched the dart loaner erase the blackboard next to the dartboard and write Barry and Ron at the top. He added the number 301 under each name.

Rune smiled. He ought to make enough for the train in no time at all.

* * * *

“Hello, Ole? Is that you?” Thordis shouted over the Satphone. The sunspots were out and playing havoc with reception.

“Yes, yes. Thordis, so glad you called.”

“We just wanted to check whether Rune had any problem getting a ride to Transylvania.”

“Transylvania? According to Endy, he took the troller coaster to the Shetland Islands.”

“He did, eh? Well, that’s not what he was supposed to do.”

X X X

See, scene changed, POV changed and not even a hiccup in the readers forward momentum. The first scene shows what Rune is actually doing, while the second scene shows his Aunt Thordis discovering that Rune isn't doing what he was supposed to do.

SCOTCH BROOM: Book 3 of The Witches of Galdorheim

A magical trip to Stonehenge lands a witch in the Otherworld where an ancient goddess is up to no good.

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007ROH46K/

Print: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1481852418

Kat expects to have a great time on her graduation trip to Stonehenge. However, from the moment she leaves the witches’ arctic island, Galdorheim, she gets in nothing but trouble.  Her younger half-brother tries to horn in on her trip, she gets lost in the magical Otherworld realm, is led astray by a supposed friend, then she has to confront a Scottish goddess who’s fallen on hard times.

While dodging the goddess’ minions and trying to find her way out of the Otherworld, Kat soon learns she shouldn’t underestimate the old has-been for one second; the crone still has a few tricks that can drain a witch’s magic in a flash. To make matters worse, Kat's brother secretly followed her into the Otherworld. Now he’s in danger too.  Kat has to go one on one with the goddess to save herself and her brother.

Polishing Your ms. A Waste of Time.

I hear a lot of advice for writers to follow. One that always annoys me is to edit edit edit your work over and over. I disagree. Write, clean up the typos and obvious gaffes, then leave it be.

Heinlein's writing rules make sense to me. Thanks to http://www.gazetteofthearts.com/writer3.htm


HEINLEIN'S RULES FOR WRITING

----------------------------
1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

These rules appeared in the 1947 essay "On the Writing of Speculative Fiction."

We believe that they are as true today for all would-be published writers, whatever the field, as they were for writers in the golden age of science fiction magazine pulps.

Busy Busy

I've been working my butt off on finishing up the Bad Spelling edit. The end is near. No, that doesn't sound very good, does it? Although I can still read parts of the book and get a giggle or two, fretting over the first few chapters is enough to turn one's hair gray. Hence, my appointment with Lady Clairol last weekend.

Pearls Before Swine is an oddball comic strip you might know. Today's strip definitely describes me at this point in the process. Hard to read here, so here's the link to the daily strip.

Magical Mystery Tour

Well, maybe not magical or mysterious, but this is the place where you can find out where your fav authors are showing up to do book signings or readings.

Booktour.com has two sides: authors and readers. Of course, many of my readers happen to be authors so you'll be interested either way. Authors enter their own information and schedule of events. Readers can look up their favorite authors and see where they'll be.

I found this site on (what else?) an author's blog. M. J. Rose has a nice write up and interviewed the co-owner of Book Tour. Here's Ms. Rose's blog Buzz, Balls, & Hype. She has a lot of good information. Fav her link to keep up on the buzz in the publishing industry.

It you want to go straight to her write-up on Book Tour, click here.

Recommendation for Tales

Bryan Catherman (disclaimer: he's my friend) wrote up a recommendation for Tales of a Texas Boy on his blog. He is, indeed, qualified to express his opinion since he's read most, if not all, the stories while they were in various phases of readiness. He also bought the book and it was duly delivered by the postal service. So, since he's now read every last story, he is eminently qualified to comment.

Here's where to read the recommendation.

Oh, yeah. The picture above is one I used in the book. That darling little boy is really my father. The story: "No Angel." Every story has an old-time photo illustration. Some are family pictures and the rest are ones I found that just seemed to fit the story.

Tales Now in BIG PRINT

I've found that Tales of a Texas Boy has a great appeal to our venerable elders, that is, anybody older than I am. Thus, I created a large print version in 81/2x11 size book. Because the pages are bigger, there are fewer pages even with the larger size print. So (yea!), it's also cheaper. This will only be available through me or on Lulu. Since I've got two books to sell, I set up a Shopping Cart thingie through PayPal.

The buttons don't want to work inside this post so pop on over to my website and test them for me. Yes, you can cancel the order (or go ahead and buy a copy!).

A Brief Announcement

I'm now selling Tales of a Texas Boy direct from my website and from the sidebar on this blog. Buy directly from me and save the shipping costs. $13.95 paid through PayPal, and you'll get your book lovingly hand addressed and delivered by the esteemed Postal Service.

For overseas orders, I might need a couple more bucks to cover the extra shipping costs.

Now, we'll return to our regularly scheduled blog post. Next up: Interview with Jeremy Shipp, author of Vacation.

Plug Your Book

Steve Weber's name couldn't be more appropriate. He makes money from the web. He's an ebay entrepreneur, selling used books and, he's published a couple of books of his own. Specifically, "Plug Your Book: Online Book Marketing for Authors" and "The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site".

Weber Books
Amazon link to Plug Your Book
Amazon link to The Home-Based Bookstore

Marva: How did you get the idea for Plug Your Book. Just from selling your own book? This seems like ouroboros, it circles around: selling books, how to sell books, selling books on how to sell books

Steve: Exactly. When I finished "The Home-Based Bookstore," like most new authors, I mistakenly believed that the marketing would take care of itself. But I soon realized the book wasn’t selling because nobody knew about it. So I tried all sorts of advertising, I spent about $4,000 on Google Adwords and Yahoo search marketing. That was a complete disaster, I was spending $30 on ads to sell a $20 book.

So as a last resort, I tried grassroots marketing, and that’s when sales of "The Home-Based Bookstore" took off. The three most important things I did was starting a blog, networking on MySpace, and was getting Amazon Top Reviewers to review my book.

It was such a revelation: All the paid advertising I’d done had been a complete waste, but the free advertising was working wonderfully. So I put all those lesssons I learned into a new book, "Plug Your Book."

Marva: I see that you've put the entire contents of Plug Your Book on a website for all to read. Why do that? Don't you want people to buy your book?

Steve: Yes, I want to sell as many books as possible. But I do give away the entire text free online at Weber Books, on the theory that the more people who find out about the book, the more people will buy it.

My hunch is that the book is good enough that people who read a few pages online will be compelled to buy the paperback. Nobody enjoys reading something on a computer screen for more than several minutes. So if you can hook people with part of your book, I believe they’ll buy it.

So I’ve posted the entire book online using a Creative Commons license, meaning that anyone is free to read, print and share the book for noncommercial use.

Marva: Will this work for any book, or is this a tool for non-fiction? Is "The Home-Based Bookstore" available on-line, too?

Steve: I think it will work for any book, as long as the book fulfills a need, whether it’s entertainment, business information, or whatever. Having said that, it’s much tougher for the non-superstar author to sell fiction than nonfiction. A competent nonfiction book is very compelling to its target audience – it solves a problem or promises to help the read make money. With fiction, you’re competing against all the other leisure activities your audience may want to do. But I’d argue that this makes it all the more important for your target audience to discover the quality of your writing. The best way to do this is to give them free samples. You don’t need to give the whole book away, you could give sample chapters or other short stories you’ve written.

I don’t have the entire contents of "Home-Based Bookstore" online, but I give away the first few chapters.

Most big publishers still don’t believe in giving away your book as a way of generating word of mouth. But many authors have been successful doing it. Forbes Magazine recently had an excellent piece about this by Corey Doctorow.

The book includes just about every conceivable technique you could use to promote your book online. To give you a few specifics, here are some ideas that appear in the MySpace section:

Create a MySpace profile for your book. For example, author Marcy Dermansky creatively used her MySpace "Top 8" friends list to help promote her debut novel Twins. Drawing from her 3,000 MySpace friends, Dermansky found several with names matching the character names in her book, like Lauren, Chloe and Smita.

She moved them to her "Top 8" friends list. For the more unusual names in the book, like Jürgen and Yumiko, she had to search for new friends using MySpace’s search engine. New friends who got invitations were so intrigued about the book, they often bought it simply to read about namesake characters, adding to the book’s buzz. Her MySpace profile is at ChloeAndSue

Become MySpace friends with well-known writers in your genre. Horror novelist Michael Laimo says he got more than a dozen big media interviews after reporters noticed his MySpace page, which is linked to several big-name writers. He inked his first movie deal through MySpace after an independent director sent him a MySpace message asking about film rights. Hundreds of fans have told him they bought his books after seeing his MySpace profile: MichaelLaimo

Browse the "friends" lists of similar authors. Find the MySpace profiles of authors with similar books, writing style and similar target audience as yours, and send them a friend invitation. For example, up-and-coming memoirist Josh Kilmer-Purcell sends friends invitations to fans of David Sedaris and Augustine Burroughs, bestselling memoirists in the same vein. Each time he makes his rounds on MySpace, Purcell watches his Amazon sales spike for days afterward.

Marva: Here's the place to add anything you'd like. Go for it. 500 words or less.

Steve: All right. Here are the most common questions and answers:

QUESTION: What are some other ways authors can get exposure?

I’m a huge believer in "amateur" book reviews. The balance of power is shifting to book readers, and away from gatekeepers like professional critics. Online book reviews by amateurs are crucial now, especially for new authors. The word of mouth from Amazon customer reviews can be tremendous. "Plug Your Book" has a whole chapter devoted to getting customer reviews on Amazon and encouraging Amazon "Top Reviewers" to review your book.

QUESTION: How do you approach an Amazon reviewer and convince them to read and review your book?

· Click on the pen name for anyone who's written an Amazon review, and you'll find their Amazon profile containing biographical and other information they’ve posted about themselves.

· Ensure your book is of interest. Some reviewer profiles explain what types of books they prefer--some reviewers stick with fiction; some review only movies or music.

· Contact potential Amazon reviewers from their profile page, clicking the link "Invite to be an Amazon Friend." This generates a pop-up form where you can enter a message, and Amazon will forward it in an e-mail.

· Safeguard yourself a bit by requesting that readers not post a review if they simply hate the book. But it’s the reviewer’s call, don't do anything to suggest you're expecting favorable treatment.

· Avoid sending your book to reviewers who usually post harshly negative reviews, but don’t shy away from those who offer frank criticism. These voices lend credibility to your book.

· Ask readers who praise your book to post an Amazon review. For example, whenever you receive an e-mail from a satisfied reader, you might respond this way: "Thank you for the kind words about my book. If you ever have a spare moment, it would be a great help if you could post a review of it on Amazon and let other potential readers know why you liked it."

Marva: Wow! What great advice. Thanks for shining some light on this for the many writers out there needing to publicize their books, be they traditional or self published.

Steal This Book

Abbie Hoffman had the right idea. It's so establishment to go to a bookstore and buy a book that will mostly profit the publisher and the bookseller. The author is on the bottom of the food chain. His book title suggests what he thinks the potential reader should do: Steal it.

I went to the dark side again and had Lulu publish "Tales of a Texas Boy." The snobs over at Absolute Write would curl their literary lips in disgust. Lulu is a step up from Publish America. It has no pretensions of selectivity. You write it, they'll print it. End of deal.

If you happen to see the book laying around somewhere, by all means, please steal it.

Although, Tales is a darn good read, it doesn't fit any of the molds for major publishing. Short story anthologies get published only if the author is Mr. or Ms. Already Famous. The likelihood of little Eddie finding a print home is zero.

Therefore, I did it myself and it looks very good. The straw that pushed me over the edge was a special for the Published By You distribution package. Marked down from $149 to $50, it was just too good for me to pass up. I've not quite shoved the book off the bank into the river of self-published books. It's still clinging to the Lulu dock. At some point, I'll hit the Approve button and off it will go to Bowker's Books in Print. If it floats, then fine. If it sinks, yanno what? I don't much care. The point was to get the danged book printed up in a nice format for my father. He's 85, he's the little Eddie in the stories, Father's Day is coming up soon. Do the math. Wouldn't you do the same thing?

So, go buy it over at Lulu if you want. I'm not counting on that happening, so you could surprise me big time if you did. I offered everyone the chance to get a cheaper copy and nobody took me up on it, so I hardly expect anybody to buy the higher priced book ($14.95 plus about $2.56 shipping).

I'll say it again: You know what? I don't care.