An Experiment in Writing – Part 26: World-Building via 1stP POV

A technique I love for involving the reader/listener AND providing necessary story information ASAP is world-building via 1stP POV.

I won’t get into how the term world-building is a glom for all sorts of other things writers need to know in order to write well, things like atmosphere, character, dialogue, storytelling, style, tone, conflict, description, exposition, …

No wonder they glom it all together into “world-building!”

I mean, it’s a lot easier to do one thing poorly than develop the skills so you can use some while developing others and constantly adding to your repertoire/took kit, right?

Harrumph!.

As mentioned in experiments 5, 14, 25, and in other experiments, 1stP POV is immediate and intimate. The narrator is talking directly to the reader/listener. Someone talking directly to you and being vulnerable (whenever anyone shares their take on something – be it the weather, politics, food, people, … – they are being vulnerable. Being vulnerable, by the way, is how confidence players do their thing) is a quick way to build rapport, and rapport equals readers’ increase interest in the story.

 
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An Experiment in Writing – Part 25: Accidental POV Shifts

I’m critiquing one of Liz Tuckwell‘s alternate history pieces.

First thing, Liz is a gifted author (I enjoy her work) and a regular member of RoundTable 360° (a monthly meeting of creatives from all disciplines where we discuss challenges all creatives face and support each other).

Anyway, while critiquing Liz’s piece, I ran into something interesting, something craft-issueish, and because I’m anal-retentive about writing craft, it stopped me.

The interesting thing was a shift in POVs (viewpoints):

Tully found it hard to enjoy the food when he was tasting it for poison. Each mouthful of honeyed pork or spiced dove might be his last. That also applied to the excellent Jyptian wine he had to try. How he hated Tremulous for suggesting Tully could be his food taster.

  • Tully found it hard to enjoy the food when he was tasting it for poison. is a good line in 3rdPLO (third person, limited omniscient) POV
  • Each mouthful of honeyed pork or spiced dove might be his last. is also a good line but is it in 3rdPLO or 1stP POV (and possibly even Deep POV)?
    One of the great things about speculative fiction writing (and which definitely separates it from other genres) is 1stP POV is a limited viewpoint by definition in other genres, not so in speculative fiction. The latter allows a the full range from the character only knowing about themselves (but not being honest with themselves hence not being honest with the reader – the unreliable witness character) to having god-like abilities and knowing what’s going on everywhere everywhen. Each has its benefits and detriments.
  • That also applied to the excellent Jyptian wine he had to try. How he hated Tremulous for suggesting Tully could be his food taster. are both in 3rdP Omniscient.

    Going from 3rdPLO to 1stPDeep is fine because that’s how people think, but!!! the abrupt pullback can cause confusion. Usually the steps we take down a well (or into a character’s psyche) must equal the steps we take up a well (or a character’s psyche). We can run in either or both directions, and usually the steps have to be equal.

     
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    Liz Tuckwell’s website.

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An Experiment in Writing – Part 17: Author Voice, Character Voice (Part 3)

This is the third experiment in the Author Voice, Character Voice arc. I mentioned in Part 1.

My goal in this arc is to demonstrate the different voices at an author’s disposal. Part 1 focused on Character Voice. Part 2 focused on Author as Character, something often used when the character has no language and only experience, which causes the author write through the character’s POV but without internal or external dialogue, and when the character’s observations, awareness, and explanations are somehow limited (age, language, non-human, …).

This time out we consider how to craft the story when the Author is the character. The author writes directly through the character’s POV in 1stP, increasing intimacy and immediacy between character and reader.

Let me know how good a job I’m doing. Feel free to ask me to elaborate. Currently I recognize this is one of those things I know and never had to explain to myself.

 
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An Experiment in Writing – Part 14: Exposition via Character Revelation via Deep POV

This experiment follows a thread/arc started in An Experiment in Writing – Part 12: Overwriting, Toing and Froing and continued in An Experiment in Writing – Part 13: Exposition via Dialogue, the latter being wherein I offered

Exposition – an ugly lump of glucky words authors plop into their work with the intention of getting information to the reader.

Usually because they’re either lazy or don’t know any better.

Especially if it’s glucky.

 
I use Deep POV a lot and suggest it for the very purpose I demonstrate here: to get necessary story information to the reader and reveal character simultaneously.

Efficient writing that, dual purposing a section to incapacitate two aerial habituators penecontemporaneously.

Yeah, I’m an author. Can you tell?

 
Think I’m onto something? Take a class with me or schedule a critique of your work.
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An Example of the Experiments, 4 – Fains I – A John Chance Mystery

We left off in An Example of the Experiments, 2 – Fains I with the promise of sharing the original Fains I opening and the rewrite making use of multiple storycrafting techniques.

I shared the original first ~900 words in An Example of the Experiments, 3 – Fains I and here I share the rewrite, now the first chapter in a work-in-progrWe left off in An Example of the Experiments, 2 – Fains I with the promise of sharing the original Fains I opening and the rewrite making use of multiple storycrafting techniques.

I shared the original first ~900 words in An Example of the Experiments, 3 – Fains I and here I share the rewrite, now the first chapter in a work-in-progress, the Fains I – A John Chance Mystery novel.

My first question is, as a reader, does this appeal more to you than the original version? If yes, because…? If not, because…? Figure out what makes it better or worse and you’ll have some excellent handles on your own crafting.

Now to analyze…

First thing, what happened to Tim and his family?

Remember my writing “I realized the rewritten opening sucked because I didn’t know enough about the characters to really care about them. The shift from teenager going to the prom to elderly man on his deathbed drove the story in the correct direction and not enough.” in An Example of the Experiments, 2 – Fains I?

I was correct that the story had an older cast of characters (demonstrated in the rewrite above).

I also wrote “This brings us back to An Example of the Experiments – Fains I’s First Question: Who Owns the Story?”

As written earlier, the core piece – someone dies and Tim’s involved – was solid enough to carry the story, but nothing I came up with made Tim interesting enough to me to write about him and, as noted previously, readers will only be interested in your characters if you’re interested in you’re characters.

How to make “Tim” more interesting to me? Hmm…

The original story had a car accident resulting in a death. Too random. Yeah, there could be guilt and an accident is an accident is an accident, and accidents happen.

Give Tim

  1. a reason to murder someone and
  2. make him remorseless about the murder because
  3. he feels justified in the killing.

Okay, psychosociopathic youngsters are interesting but can be limiting because a youth doesn’t have the life experience to have those attitudes fully realized, so an older “Tim” who feels justified and has no guilt.

Gosh golly gee. Tim’s becoming quite three-dimensional here. He’s interesting.

What if the older Tim had committed several murders, believed all of them justified and remains remorseless and guilt free?

This Tim’s obviously got a) a history and b) some issues.

And the best part is such psychosociopaths are usually pretty good at hiding who they are from public view.

Sometimes you can let the reader know more about a situation than the characters know about this situation.

 
Alfred Hitchcock gave a great example of creating audience interest, empathy, and tension: Have two people eating lunch or having a drink at a picnic table or a an outdoor cafe. Now put a ticking bomb under the table and make sure the audience sees it and knows what it is.

Doesn’t matter if the audience likes or dislikes the people at the table, they’re interested in what happens.

So there’s a psychosociopath loose, no one knows it, and the reader learns it. Great! Excellent.

But don’t tell the reader everything at once. Foreshadow. Hint. Mislead and misdirect, all of which now stars with the novel’s A John Chance Mystery subtitle (Search – The First John Chance Mystery has already signalled regular readers more John Chance novels are coming and new readers Fains I is part of a series).

Ooo. This is getting better already. We’re starting to have a story.

The last part mentioned previously was have an interesting person in an interesting place doing an interesting thing and “Give the reader an interesting person in an interesting place doing an interesting thing. If you only give one, it’s got to be incredibly strong. Two is good, three is dynamite.” along with Relatability and the four basic ways people relate to things:

  1. they’re familiar with a place (Setting)
  2. they’re familiar with what’s happening (Plot)
  3. they’re familiar with the people involved (Character)
  4. they’re familiar with what’s being said (Language)

and remember to throw in And add in what makes a great opening: conflict, tension, oddness, …?

Throw all this in the pot, let simmer, stir occasionally, season to taste, and we get (I hope) something closer to what’s the story, a first pass of which is shown above. A detailed (pretty much line-by-line) analysis is below:

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