Doing your own copy editing would have to be one of the most fraught jobs! It’s because we very often see what we expect to see, rather than what is actually on the page. When you have revised your story or novel or article 10 times, you stop “seeing” the actual words and punctuation, and instead “hear” the text. It’s a bit like having it read aloud to you. Hard to explain but you probably know what I mean. Because you have given your work to someone and they said, “Hmm, I picked up a lot of grammar and punctuation errors.”

What? You thought you got them all! After all you used the spell checker and the Word grammar checker, and both of them picked up lots of errors and you fixed them all, darn it. All except the ones you didn’t see.

How to get around this? You do need to fix this stuff because nowadays, if an editor thinks it’s going to take too long or cost too much to fix all your little errors, they’ll reject your work. It’s very rare that anyone’s storytelling abilities are so magnificent that poor grammar is overlooked. There are three steps I recommend, and they do take time and patience (but think how much money you’ll save – a copy editor might charge $3000 or more to edit a novel).

Step 1 – make a list of everything you know you struggle with, especially things that have slipped through in the past (ask a friend who is good at grammar and punctuation to read one chapter – the errors in one will show up everywhere). they should include repeated “tics” as well that need to be weeded out. These might include: wrongly punctuated dialogue; starting sentences with a stock -ing phrase such as Walking through the door, …; commas in the wrong places; overly long sentences that are confusing; point of view slips; tense slips; too many exclamation marks; unnecessary sentence fragments (they can be overdone); inconsistent italicising of thoughts (if you are using italics for thoughts – work out what is best); overstated chapter cliff hangers; pointless dialogue exchanges; poor time or location transitions; overuse of the verb “to be” and its variations; overuse of “would”, especially in memoir. These are the main ones that come to mind from recent copy editing jobs I have done.

You can see already that to fix all of these will require you to examine your manuscript, sentence by sentence, word by word. That’s good! It forces you to see the writing differently, and not get carried away by the story.

Step 2 – create a style sheet for your manuscript. I will attach a sample for you to use (link at the top). On this, write every word that needs to be consistent and correct. You will add to it as you copy edit, so you don’t need to fill it all out before you begin your second run through your manuscript. Some of the things that will go on your style sheet include: how words are capitalised; any acronyms you use (and the first use should be explained); particular spellings, such as whether in your country you use the -ize or the -ise ending; spelling of character names; hyphenation of words (use a dictionary – in Australia consult the MacQuarie for hyphenating); foreign words you have used (check spelling); anything that pops up in the manuscript that needs verifying and/or that will be used again. This way you will save yourself a huge amount of time. I often hear people say, “I’ll just do a search in the document for it”, but that takes a lot more time than simply recording it on your style sheet for quick reference.

Step 3 – re-check formatting. Have you double-spaced with proper margins? Are all your chapter headings consistent? Page numbering simple? Indents done with the tab rather than tapping the space bar? Font is what is recommended? Most editors and publishers ask for Times New Roman or something very similar. It’s easier to read and provides more accurate word/page counts.

All of this might sound incredibly time-consuming, but as I said before, if an editor or publisher has to pay someone to fix your errors, and that’s going to cost several thousand dollars … Besides, think what you will learn along the way about how you write and what your most common errors are. It’s actually an investment in making your next manuscript even better.

So what is the solution? Firstly (obviously), you have to immerse yourself in the era. I have two strong ideas for new historical novels and I know the research for each, if done properly, will take a couple of years. But if you can actually go to the place, no matter how changed it might be, you could well gain enough to add that extra “real life” detail to your story.

As an example, my current novel is set in 1665, and part of it takes place in a certain forest in England. I have spent countless hours on the internet, downloading photos, maps, and huge amounts of information. But until I actually went there last month, I truly had no idea (I realised) about the varying landscape, the plants and how they grew, the insects, birds and animals, and simply what the experience would be for my characters walking from Point A to Point B. Now I really feel I can revise this novel one more time and give it what it needs.

But I also know this is often not possible. What is my fallback? One option is to read historical novels by other writers so I can see how they did it (as an example, not for plagiarising). Another option is travel diaries and photos that people post on the net and on YouTube – often very informal and real. I would also seek out lesser known books, such as self published local histories and videos, as well as the visitor information centres and what they offer.

Letters by people who lived in the area in the time you are researching are a bonus – people wrote far more letters than we do today. So are diaries, and novels written at the time (post 1750 perhaps). Novelists in earlier times wrote far more description than we do today.

You may have other suggestions that you have found useful. If so, please do post in the comments!

He shook himself free of his overcoat and let it drip across the floor of the office to the hook on the far wall.

“Thanks for taking the trouble,” Cowan said.

“Apologies, Danny.”

“Daniel,” Cowan corrected him.

“Sorry, Dan.”

Cowan was seated on one of the desks, his legs not quite reaching the floor and exposing a pair of red paisley-pattern socks above gleaming black leather shoes. He kept polish and brushes in the bottom drawer of his desk. Rebus knew this because he’d opened the drawer one day when Cowan was out of the room, having already checked the two drawers above it.

Firstly, what is Rebus’s attitude towards his boss here? He drips his coat across his boss’s floor, he deliberately calls him the wrong name, and he’s checked the guy’s desk drawers when he’s not around.

It’s not that Rebus is sneaky or insubordinate. He’s been around a long time and likes to know exactly what he’s up against, whether his current boss is going to back him up or make life difficult. Would you agree that he has little respect for Cowan at this point?

More importantly, think about POV here. We are certainly getting Rebus’s world view about a lot of things, and not just his boss. He’s not into groveling, and even though later in this chapter, he acknowledges that Cowan is having problems being stuck down in Cold Cases, because Rebus also talks about his own “tingle” in response to an interesting cold case, he has even less respect for Cowan’s dismissal of potential cases and new input.

Finally, we have a bit of the author’s input here, too, because although Rebus might have noted the socks and shoes (and has indeed noted the polishing gear), it’s really Rankin who is adding to Rebus’s scorn of Cowan’s socks and shoes, and that works because Rankin gets so far inside his character’s head that you’d be hard put to see where one stops and the other starts. I think this is a great example of tiny details that tell us so much about character relationships. It’s worth you examining lots of stories in detail like this to see how detail enhances character.

One of the things that I found so useful while doing my MFAC at Hamline was the monthly deadlines for packets of work – usually an essay and 20-40 pages of writing. Those deadlines kept me focused on writing more and more pages, and revising what I’d done, rather than making excuses about why I hadn’t written that month. There were no excuses!

But even more important than those deadlines was the person at the other end waiting for what I was sending. That person was going to read and give me feedback, and set me new tasks. While some of you might shrink away from such strict expectations, it was a kind of wonderful freedom. Freedom to be able to put aside many of the daily chores and time wasters that I didn’t actually need to be doing, or that I could be speeding through and getting out of the way. Those monthly deadlines gave me permission to focus on my writing first!

Now the deadlines are different. The coursework assignments had to be in by a certain date – no excuses! I managed it but I had an awful lot of new stuff to learn; theory and history and intensive research I’ve never had to do at this level before. At times I thought my brain might explode. But it was worth it, given what I learned. I have regular meetings with my supervisors, but now the rest of my study is up to me. I have to decide how to pace myself, how to keep up, how to organize myself into a schedule that will produce results. Luckily, I think the past 3 years has helped me immensely. I can set my own deadlines to a great extent.

The bottom line, of course, is that the best deadlines – the ones we stick to – are those imposed by someone else. If you have someone waiting on your work, you usually find a way to meet the expectations. If it’s an agent or an editor waiting on a revision, for example, or even a finished draft of your new work, the impetus to get it in on time is enormous.

But what if no one is waiting for your novel? What if you have been working on it for two years or more, and you still haven’t completed a first draft? It can be very hard to keep going when a little voice in the back of your head (or a loud voice from someone unsympathetic in your family!) is saying, “Who cares if you finish it? It probably won’t even get published.” Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you tell yourself you are writing just for the love of it (like all those articles tell you to), there will be lots of days when the feeling of writing into a black hole just plain gets the better of you.

Yes, you can create your own deadlines. You can say, “I will finish three chapters by the end of August.” It may or may not work. What does help a lot is if you can find a fellow writer and set mutual deadlines. “I will finish my three chapters if you finish yours, and then we can swap and read.” Even if you don’t want feedback from your writer friend yet, just the act of sending them your chapters to prove you did it, you met the deadline, can help. Light feedback on a first draft, more critical feedback on a revision, can be energizing and motivating.

One more thought – several writers I know organize weekend writing retreats, either on their own or with a writer friend or two. You book into a cheap hotel (or a nice one if you can afford it) from Friday to Sunday, a room each, and you write as much as you can in those two days. You only meet for dinner to celebrate your writing. It’s a mini-deadline of sorts. Try it sometime!

1. Where do your best picture book ideas come from? How do you develop them into texts (and how do you know when it’s not working)?

Ideas present themselves all the time. A snatch of conversation. A funny thing a child or pet does. Words and rhythms that jump unbidden into my head when I’m out walking with the dogs. I know that an idea is worth developing into a text when it digs its heels in and won’t let go. When shreds of dialogue or narrative rise to the surface when you’re washing the dishes or taking a shower. When you wake up in the middle of the night and have to scribble down the words that are clamouring for attention inside your head.

When it feels ‘solid’ enough I start trying to get the full text down on paper. This involves lots of false starts and faffing about. Weeks and weeks of it, usually. I try to think in double-page spreads as I write, wondering about page falls and whether there’s enough ‘meat’ in the story to illustrate. I cut and prune and rephrase and rewrite, then cut and rephrase again, sometimes only changing one word each time. In a picture book, every word has to count. This is my favourite part – crafting the language – after the scary part of coming up with an idea that is fresh and original and solid enough to last the distance.

I know something’s not working when the voice in my head stops, or I can’t think of a satisfying way to finish the story. Or when the sum of the amount of scribbled-on pieces of paper in the bin is greater than the bits that make it onto my desk, ready to be typed up.

2. You write in rhyme a lot. What’s your best advice for those who want to write rhyming texts?

Someone once asked me if I could recommend a book that would help explain rhyme and meter to them, as they wanted to write a picture book with rhyming text. I said I couldn’t – firstly because I don’t know the titles of any, though I’m sure there are lots that exist! – but mostly because I’m not sure this is the best way to go about it. You’re much better off reading – and reciting! – lots and lots of rhyming poems so that you ‘fix’ the way they sound in your head. Try the classic poetry of AA Milne, CJ Dennis, Alfred Noyes or Hilaire Belloc. Or more recently, Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo.

‘Good’ rhyme is never forced, it flows naturally and effortlessly, without those little extra ‘padding words’ you sometimes see that have been added in to stretch out the line e.g. ‘that he did see’. Above all, the text needs to make sense, and tell a story, not just be a collection of nonsensical lines with words that have been chosen for their rhyming qualities rather than their meaning.

The best way to tell if your rhyming text is working is to read it out aloud. Count out the beats by tapping your fingers on your desk or a table top as you read each line. If there are too many or too few beats, you need to rethink the words you’ve chosen – or even the whole plot of your story. If it’s really not working, perhaps consider writing it in prose instead.

3. How did you go about writing “My First Day at School”? What was your initial process?

A few years ago I noticed how verse novels were becoming increasingly popular. I liked the idea of writing a collection of poems that build up to tell a story, and wondered if this could be achieved using a picture book format, for much younger readers than was usual for verse novels. I thought it might also be a good way to introduce young readers to the ‘bones’ of poetry – poetic devices such as alliteration and assonance, imagery and onomatopoeia – because the illustrations could help to carry some of the meaning.

I chose the first day at school as a topic because it is an event which can inspire many different reactions and emotions, from anxiety to excitement. To gather material, I visited a few different schools on the day of their prep intake and sat quietly in a corner, scribbling notes as I observed the kids’ and teachers’ – and parents’! – behaviour. Some of these notes were simply descriptions of events and objects in the room. Others, however, took on a life of their own – I could feel different ‘voices’ developing as I wrote. It’s really interesting to look back at these rough notes now and see which ones developed into the poems that made it into the book.

4. What happened in the revision process? What did you discover? Did the text alter when you got to the stage of working with the editor and illustrator?

Once I had this goldmine of material, I set about shaping it into a set of poems (from the point of view of different characters) that formed a narrative, beginning with the children arriving at school, and ending with them leaving. In the ‘middle’ came the experiences (and problems!) that make up their day: meeting their teacher, making friends, learning new ways of doing things – and making it to the toilet in time!

I realised fairly quickly that I had too many ‘voices’ at play – particularly for such a young audience. I narrowed them down to four characters, each with a different personality and approach to the day’s events: Zach, who is eager to ‘shake off’ his parents and escape into a new, exciting world; shy Amira whose friends help her join the class; nervy Ari who finds all the new rules and activities hard to follow; and livewire Zoe who has trouble keeping still. I was careful to resolve all their issues within the storyline so that readers are left with a positive view of school.

I had fun adding in poetic devices – a simile here, a metaphor there – but always things that younger readers could relate to: a boy with ‘frog hands’, a girl whose mat is ‘an island in a huge ocean’, another who is ‘as hungry as a lion!’, schoolbags that hung on pegs ‘like washing on a line’.

But, with a few exceptions, most poems were way too long for a picture book text! I had to slash and burn, remembering that I had a brilliant illustrator (who also designed the book) in Michelle Mackintosh to reinforce the imagery and bring it to life with her marvellous illustrations. I had a great meeting with Michelle and my publisher/editor, the insightful Helen Chamberlin, where we talked about how this could be achieved. And, of course, once the illustrations were in place, it became even more obvious where more text could be cut, or lines rephrased to fit the space.

5. Any good advice for picture book writers in Australia right now? Are there any trends, topics to avoid, gaps in the market?

I thought I’d found a gap in the market when I first started thinking about My First Day at School, back in 2007. There didn’t seem to be much around on this theme back then. But this year alone there have been at least five new books on the same topic – all from Australian publishers – and they’re just the ones that I know about! There seem to be plenty of perennially favourite topics for picture books for the very young: family life, dogs and cats, fears (and monsters) to be vanquished. It’s a matter of finding a fresh, unique way to tell your story – something that will make it stand out from the pack. And written in your very best way, with the strongest voice and the largest amount of passion for language that you can summon up. Good luck!

You can see all of Meredith’s books at www.meredithcostain.com.

Motivation is easy when you’re feeling it. Incredibly hard when you’re hungover or sick or just plain tired. Boring as it may sound, routine is what will save you.

Twice in 2013, I was in a small group of writers who committed to writing at least 2 pages (or for 30 minutes) every day, and then checking in with the group to say “Done”.

You might think this is easy. 30 minutes is nothing.

It wasn’t easy at all. Well, some days it was. Some days the 30 minutes whizzed past and before I knew it, I had 4-5 pages. Some days, though, I kept watching the clock and forcing out some more words and wishing those minutes would magically speed up so it would be over.

I did this group check-in twice (each time we did 54 days) because it worked for me. The commitment to 30 minutes was only half of it. The check-in was just as important. It was like a constant nudge in my back that said, ‘Have you written yet?’ And the checking in meant we were all in it together, so every check-in said, “I showed up today.”

The accountability part of this makes you feel less alone, and also reminds you that other writers have the same problems and everyone is doing their best. The 30 minutes/2 pages is also designed to make writing a habit. The theory is that you do three lots of 28 days, and by the end of the third lot, you have a habit.

That has worked for me. Somewhat. There are still days when I don’t want to write. Not necessarily because of time or energy constraints. More often, it’s fear of the blank page. One thing this 28 day thing has shown me is that I am least inclined to write when I have no idea what comes next in my story. I’m not a writer (usually) who can sit down and spill whatever comes out of my head onto the page. I have no patience with a 300 page mess that I have no idea how to fix!

I can’t remember which writer said they always stop in the middle of a sentence so when they come back the next day, once they finish the sentence they’re off and running again. Sometimes I do that – I will stop in a scene, even though I could keep going, because the next day I will know what comes next. More importantly, because I am committed to writing every day, I spend much more time thinking about my novel, and about what comes next, so the story keeps flowing, inside my head and onto the page.

Both times I did this commitment with my group, I wrote around 50,000 words in 54 days. Some days I wrote 500 words, some days I wrote 1500 words. It didn’t matter as long as I did my allotted time. Even the quality didn’t matter – it was a first draft.  Often what came out surprised me. Apparently my brain had been working quietly on its own and then giving me stuff – once I started writing.

If you want to write more in 2014, consider starting your own commitment group. Even one other person is enough. They don’t have to be writing. Their commitment could be a 20 minute walk, or 30 minutes of study. But you must check in every day to say “Done”. If you commit to 28 days at a time, it makes it less daunting.  You can keep the 28s going as long as you want.

For 2014, I have already started a commitment and check in. Every 28 days, I can look back and know that some days it was dedication, some days it was inspiration, and some days it was simply to know that I had written, despite everything else.

Mostly the answer to both of those questions is NO. But if you go about developing your idea and adding more things to it, you may well end up with something far, far better. One idea is OK, another idea that crashes into it and creates sparks is what you’re after. Often writers get so excited about their initial idea that they run with that and can’t understand why the final story is flat or uninspiring.

Like any kind of writing, your idea is only the first step. It’s what you do with it after that that counts. So here are the steps that will help you to a much better final draft.

1. Write down your idea – everything you think you know about it so far. (Apart from anything else, that way you know you won’t lose your original impulse and thoughts.)
2. Brainstorm all around your idea – use diagrams, word lists, word maps, pictures. Fill at least one whole page with whatever comes to mind. Don’t rush it. Come back to the page several times over a day or more. Add more pages if you want to.
3. Use a highlighter marker and mark anything that connects to your initial idea in an exciting or different way. Keep a look out for anything that creates a little buzz in your brain.
4. Now go back to your first idea and be open-minded about what you can add from your brainstorming. You should look first at the things that created the buzz. How do they connect to your idea? How will they add to your idea, make it more interesting, more original? Most importantly, how will they add depth to both your characters and plot?
5. Think about structure. Yes, right at this point! You need a story that has a central “problem” or conflict. You need the conflict to increase, and you need the tension to increase throughout the story (to create page turns). It’s a good idea right now to also consider the Rule of Three – are there three possibilities to make the problem worse for the character? If not, look at your brainstorming. Are there ideas in there that can be used to increase conflict?
6. Who is your main character? What is different about them? What about them will appeal to small children? How do their character traits help to both increase the problem and create the solution? These might sound like formulaic questions, but they are the basic structural elements that so many people ignore at their peril. The story you build on top will be yours alone, and original as you want it to be, but without the structure to hold it up, the story will falter and maybe fail.
7. How many illustration possibilities are in your story? How can you add more? When you look over your idea and where it’s up to by now, can you automatically picture at least 10 illustrations in your head? If not, you need to look for more action possibilities. An illustrator can illustrate action, but they can’t illustrate thoughts (or dialogue, really, either).
8. Where is the highest point of action in your story? Is this the climax? (It should be.) Is it going to come about ¾ of the way through the story, or near the end? If it’s in the middle, it needs to move.
9. How does the story end? Does it bring the reader back to the beginning in some way (circular) or does it take the reader to a new place? What do you think the theme is – what the story is really about? Is it layered underneath? If you don’t think you have a theme, can you see where you might add a little more to suggest it?
10. How will your story begin? Can you start with a great sentence or two that sets the scene, starts the action, will lead to the problem (or introduce it straight away, perhaps) and give the illustrator something tangible to illustrate? For some writers, once they have these opening sentences, the rest of the story will flow. For others, they will have to start with a “holding place” sentence or two and come back later to rework it. Whatever works for you to start your first draft.

If you have a picture book and you would like a professional critique, see my website at www.sherrylclarkwritingcoach.com/critiques/

Today’s novel is crime fiction, written in first person, present tense. This is always a tricky POV/tense combination to choose. It can create great immediacy and intimacy for the reader, if it’s done well. If not, it can be like a constant tic that eventually drives you away from the book.

Firstly, in first person, we need to be inside the character’s head. In fact, that’s a given, so much so that we do not need to be constantly reminded that this character is seeing, thinking, doing. As you walk along the street, are you thinking – I am walking along the street, I am greeting my neighbour, I notice he has grown a beard …? No, you just do these things and show through action and dialogue.

In today’s “pick apart” novel, my first tic came on page 4 with The steam in my shower stall shifts, disturbed by a draft, and I think I hear someone. Instantly, I’m annoyed.  It’s followed two  sentences later with I think... Both of these are unnecessary in first person and are easily rewritten to keep us inside the character’s head instead of at a slight distance. There is a lot of dialogue, which helps move the story along, until we get to Chapter 2 where we gt two pages of the character looking at herself in the mirror and telling us her family background, along with a character assessment. I crave beauty and and feel deeply, but I’m an aberration, too. I can be immutable and unrelenting, and these behaviors are learned. etc etc. I don’t want to be told these things. I want to understand them through the character’s actions, reactions and emotions. Fiction Writing 101.

Further on, pages 41-50, there are multiple examples of I look, I get a glimpse, I see, I observe, I hear, I wonder. These are all the kinds of super-obvious unnecessary verbs that I underline in students’ work and point out that they are obsolete. If we are in the character’s head in first person, of course they are doing all these things. The reader simply wants to experience the world, not be continually reminded that the character is a filter.

The other thing I’m going to pick on is the dialogue tags. It’s another basic that new writers are told, for good reason – just use said (or in this case, says, since we’re in present tense). Instead, this author uses says maybe once per page on average. Otherwise we have answer, repeat, add, and a lot of asks. Not so bad? We also get puzzle, decide and inquire. Over  two pages 43-44 we get adds, states the obvious, goes on, puzzle, answers, suggests, coaxes. Oh, and one says.

Yes, I am being picky! These are small things but after 50 pages of them, I can’t read any more of this book. These are things I tell my students not to do, because they’re basic craft elements. No wonder they come back to me sometimes and say, “Look, this author does it.”  The book for “pick apart” today is Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell. I’ve always enjoyed her books, most of them anyway, but this one is going to stay unread.

Everything that has happened to a person in their life goes into making who they are right now. In ten years’ time, something new might have changed them, such the death of a child. We all have dozens of events that have gone into forming us, just as our characters do. The problem for writers arises when you pile too much into the backstory, and then don’t understand what the possible effects might be. It’s why some writers consult psychologists and psychology texts as research.

I had my first introduction to this in a screenwriting workshop, where the tutor explained the different outcomes for a person who has had either a very distant mother or an overly intrusive mother. Here I became aware of the psychological depths of different fears – fear of abandonment, fear of intimacy, etc. Of course, it can get very complicated, but even a smattering of knowledge can help you.

For example, a character who had an idyllic childhood may have a false sense of the world being a safe and wonderful place – your job in the novel might be to cause a catastrophe that entirely explodes their utopian beliefs. On the other hand, a character who has been abused as a child will inevitably carry that through to adulthood somehow. Somehow is the key word.

The problem with giving your character a child abuse backstory is this – everyone deals with it differently. Some people never get over it and suffer terribly, sometimes committing suicide. Some go another way and cut themselves off from any emotional relationships. Some are able to grow away from the abuse and become tough (maybe too tough) and others dedicate their lives to helping children in similar situations. There are many possibilities.

If you give your character this backstory, your challenge as the writer is to research and make the character, as they appear in your novel, believable and get your reader to care about them. Giving the character an abuse backstory doesn’t automatically ensure either will happen. You also need to recognize that probably this is enough trauma for one person and not load anything else onto them!

This is a more extreme example. Loading too many things into backstory can be a much simpler problem that leads to a character who never seems to know what they’re doing on the page, because their actions and reactions each time are coming from different places. Let me explain. Recently I was working with a character (let’s call her Mary) who had been a beauty queen as a teenager. Mary is now about 35, and has a daughter who is obese toward whom she feels some revulsion. Mary is still beautiful, slim, and is a musician/singer who works with elderly people in music therapy. You can probably already feel Mary groaning under all the “stuff” I loaded onto her!

Now, Mary is not the main character in my novel. She’s a supporting character. I needed her to be “real” and for her actions and reactions (especially towards her daughter) to be believable and understandable. More importantly, for the story, her singing and music turned out to be the key to her backstory. After quite a bit of free writing (I used a favorite technique of “interviewing” Mary and free writing her answers), I realized that the beauty queen part of her backstory was too much. Mary’s real lack of understanding of her daughter comes from another place – her failures as a musician – not from the beauty pageant stuff. In fact, once I did the work on Mary, the beauty queen element seemed almost farcical.

You might ask why I would do so much work on a supporting character, yet I find any time a character is not coming to life, it’s time to develop their backstory and make them real. The more interaction they have with my main character, the more important this becomes.

If you want more exercises to help you develop your novel, go to my 30 DAY PLAN FOR NOVEL DEVELOPMENT

Whose eye is seeing the story – what happens, and how?

Over many years of teaching fiction writing, I’ve debated with myself over where and when in the semester to teach point of view. After character? At the end just before theme? Somewhere in the middle, maybe just before dialogue? I’ve discussed it with other teachers. The impulse is to teach it first, because which point of view you choose to tell your story in dictates so many other things.  It influences description and setting, for example. A first person narrator is only going to notice and remark on things that are directly relevant to them at that point in the narrative. A frightened narrator will focus on their fear and what’s causing it. They won’t describe the weather or the extra sounds and the way the moon looks unless those things are impacting directly. In third person, you can include some of that description to enhance atmosphere, to make the fear more about the reader as well as the character.

I now think that point of view needs to be part of every single aspect of fiction writing. It’s like voice. Without developing a strong, rounded character you won’t achieve their voice on the page. But the two go hand in hand. It’s only by writing a lot in the character’s voice that you come to know who they are and how they sound (or how you sound on the page as you tell their story – a whole other can of worms).  Without developing character and voice, you can’t make a decision on how first person might work for this story. And every story will be different.

Some writers say they naturally fall into first person all the time because it seems the most natural – especially if they write YA fiction. Others avoid first person because it’s way too constricting. One of the pitfalls of first person is actually in dialogue. When you are immersed in first person POV, it’s an easy trap to have all of your characters sound the same, because that’s how your narrator hears them – translated, this means it’s just how you as the writer hear them. Not enough work done on other characters leads to first person laziness.

Regardless of all that, it’s only by writing and thinking and reading and thinking that you can come to a place where, as a writer, choice of POV comes instinctively. Even then instinct might let you down. Ultimately, despite all the work we do on that other stuff (character, plot, dialogue, description, theme), it’s point of view that influences every single one. And I have found over the years that it’s point of view that gets most new writers into tangles. So here are some tips to help – not rules, because point of view defies them. And these tips require work, so be prepared!

* For every major character who could be a point of view character, write at least ten pages in their first person POV to see how they sound. Are they different? An individual with a unique perspective on the story? Will this benefit the story? What will they see and hear and know that will be a big influence? How much of the story will they be engaged in? Will the events of the story change them?

* If you know who your POV character is, write at least ten pages in first person. Write another ten pages in third person limited. (If you don’t know the difference between these, search on this site for other posts.) As the writer, free write an interview with the character. Ask them all those questions about why they should tell the story, and what they have to show you.

* Make a list of the key events in the story (at least 12 of them). Is your POV character present at every event? Is what happens important to them? A POV character can only narrate what they see and hear and experience. It’s why thrillers are often third person – more action, less emotion.

* For the most emotional scenes in the story, what effect will the events have on your character? If they are highly drastic and over the top, you might want to lean towards third person to avoid melodrama or sentimentality.

Finally, sometimes the only way to work it out is to write 50 pages in first person, and then write 50 pages in close third person. Don’t write first person and then just change the pronouns from I to he/she. You do need to write afresh to truly see and understand the differences and possibilities. Yes, it’s work, but it’s important to make the right choice. It could save your whole novel.

As for other points of view, they’re a little simpler to sort out. First person and close third person are the ones that usually give writers the most trouble!