Biographical Writing

I've just added a unit on biographical writing to my free online writing course. This looks at how to plan out your autobiography and offers some exercises for autobiographical, biographical and memoir writing. You can find the unit here, and the full Writing101 course on my website. 

Introduction to Literary Perspective

A beginner's introduction to literary perspective. I'm putting some of my old lectures online on my website. You can find the rest of the Literary Perspective unit here, and more writing units here.

Descriptive Writing

A little lecture I gave on descriptive writing. If you'd like to take the whole descriptive writing unit and do the exercise that goes with it, head over to my website. I'm putting a few of my creative writing units from the university online under the WRITING101 heading.

So, You Want to be an Editor?

At the beginning of this year, I vowed to do less stuff I don't enjoy and only take jobs I'm interested in. This was to help me free up time to pursue my new-found hobby of building pianos. I used to spend a lot of time pursuing contracts in international development, and sometimes getting them, but I fell out with the NGO world. I think it was inevitable for a writer. I like communication. I like inventing concepts and trying to get those concepts into other people's heads as directly and relatably as possible.

Conversely, I kinda feel the world of development goes out of its way to invent language that keeps people from clearly understanding it: key performance indicators this, sustainability cycles that, SWOT, PEST and gap analyses the other. All these buzzwords to make quite straightforward questions (is the project working? Does it need more money? Have you got everything you need?) that little bit harder to grasp for grassroots, second-language English speakers.

Following that line of thought, I set up shop ghostwriting and editing. I've always enjoyed words, though not always grammar. I was a late developer, but, as with many converts, now practise it with more zeal than those who have always been good at it.

Editing wasn't something I ever thought I could make a living out of, though. Coming from the UK, there's a lot of things like editing (and piano building) where the market seems sewn up. Everyone's a writer, everyone's an editor - no one needs you.

Then, a couple of years back, I landed a gig editing national curriculum textbooks in Kigali. The deadlines were tight, the pay wasn't great, but it was fun being part of a team and it was more money than I was making doing (ironically) fundraising training. I was actually being paid to edit full-time.

Jobs followed after that. I started editing for a couple of burgeoning publishing houses, an international development agency, a major global charity and an online e-learning platform. Mostly it's small pieces, billed monthly, but it starts to add up.

It's now my main source of income, so I thought I'd explain a bit about it. There are several different types of editor, but I mainly copy edit. That means I'm caught up on grammar, how things flow and whether the facts check out. I edit children's stories, YA (for schools and the general market), adult fiction and non-fiction (textbooks, reports, essays and memoirs).

What do you need to be an editor?

Academically, it depends where you are and who you're editing for. I have a friend who trained as a professional editor in the US, and others who came up teaching English for the British Council. I hold an MA in Language & Communication Research, but my thesis was on forensic linguistics, not English grammar. Editing, like fundraising and social media management, is one of those careers where your track record (who you've worked for, on what, and how successfully) speaks louder than paper qualifications. You're either good at it, or this happens.

Editors come from all walks of life, but I think they share a few traits in common:

• A fanatical obsession with the English language
• An eagle eye for detail
• A willingness to be pedantic at the risk of pissing people off
• An awareness of the trickery of language (especially invisible typos), and a willingness to do battle with it
• Happy to sit on their arse for hours on end making a frowny face at the screen
• Curiosity about a wide range of subjects

Editing really isn't for everyone. You might love the English language, but find hours behind a desk tiresome. You might love the trickery of language, but be incapable of training your eyes to see through it. You might be excellent at picking up every misplaced comma or apostrophe, but feel bad about marking it up because you don't want to run the risk of upsetting anyone.

You really do need a mixture of desk endurance, proficiency and self-confidence to do this professionally. Google is absolutely your best friend. There's no faster way to find the correct spelling of something than to type it wrongly into Google. Especially useful when undertaking technical or academic work, where (and I kid you not) you might come across 'washing dishes' referred to as a 'reproductive task' - and that's all right. Just wash your hands afterwards.

How do you charge?

This was the number one question on my mind, and therefore I suspect it's on yours.

Each editor has their own way of doing things, but I'll explain what works for me:

• Ask for the entire piece in .doc format
• Change the whole thing to Times New Roman (TNR) 12pt, double spaced
• Count the pages
• Check the level of English (how much work it's likely to take)
• Charge per page on a sliding scale of work needed

I have a lot of friends who do it by word count, but I don't like that. I mean - how much do you charge per word? Are we talking in pence, fractions of a pence? The maths gets awkward.

Changing to TNR 12pt double spaced, or a similar font, overcomes the issue of volume. You can't charge per page without giving the font specification, otherwise you're charging the same for a page of 10pt as you are for a page of 14pt. A difference of around 140 words.

How much you charge per page then depends on how bad the English is. A page of really good English might take ten minutes to proofread. A page of horrendous mistakes might take thirty minutes or more to edit. Once you've finished editing, your clean copy (discussed below) needs checking through to make sure you haven't missed anything, which also takes time. You can either include this cost in your page pricing, or as a separate fee added onto the quote, though you might have to explain to the client what this means.

You need to work out how many hours you have in a day, and how much you need to make per hour to pay rent and eat food. Then be firm about your page rate. People might walk away saying 'It's too expensive,' but editors rarely have one job on. Time you devote to underpaid work is time you're not devoting to fairly paid work, and the number of hours in a day doesn't change. 

One of my clients currently pays $8 per page as standard for their company. $80 for ten pages, usually high-quality English, an easy day's work. For smaller clients, I tend to charge around £3-4 per page, depending how bad. I also tend to round down for long-term clients and bulk manuscripts (over fifty pages or so). It's nice to have a few different things on the go as it varies your day.

When deciding what to charge, it's important not just to read the first page. Jump to a few random pages and check the standard is consistent. Sometimes the first few pages have already been edited by someone, and halfway through the English takes a nosedive. Be sure you know what you're getting yourself into. 

How do you edit?

One of my top tips for copy editing is not to read the manuscript before you start. Clients sometimes ask me, 'What did you think of the characters?' I can't tell them. I wasn't lying before when I said that language plays tricks. As this proves, your brain doesn't read every single letter in a word, it guesses by shape and length of word. The more familiar you are with a piece of work, the faster your brain fills in the gaps and the more errors you miss. That's why it's practically impossible to edit your own work effectively and another reason why you do need different types of editors. 

An editor working on character and plot development needs to read the whole story before setting to work. That's likely to make them a bad choice for copy editing the book. After I'm finished copy editing, I usually suggest a client gets the final draft proofed by someone else.

My process for editing goes as follows:

• All jobs are submitted as a .doc so that I can track markups using Word's Review Function. I save this under EDIT [name of original file]. Example: EDIT project end term report.
• Once all the edits are made, I clean up the markups by removing all formatting markups to leave just my comments and text deletions/insertions (the red bits). To do this, go to Review, Show Markup drop-down menu, deselect Comments and Insertions/Deletions, then Accept all changes shown. Go back and reselect Comments and Insertions/Deletions. This makes sure the important margin notes don't get lost amidst lines of font changes and italics.
• After that, save it as a second file: CLEAN COPY [name of original file] (CLEAN COPY project end term report), accept all of the changes and delete all of the comments.
• Finally, go through the clean copy using Word's Speak Function. This reads the document aloud to you in short chunks. It helps you catch any typos you might not have caught with your eyes - tiny things like my/by or starred/stared. Be sure to make any changes to the clean copy on the edited copy, too.

The edit shows the client all of the changes and suggestions you've made, in case they don't agree and want to change something. Some clients also like to read the notes to improve their own English. The clean copy is ready for use or submission.

If you're working on a novel or a lengthy piece for professional publication, it's also good to suggest a hard copy edit. This is where a single copy of the work is sent by the printer before commencing the print run. No matter how thorough you've been in Word, you'll always catch something in a hard copy edit, but not all publishers have the time or money. Even printing it out with a home printer can help.

Which jobs do you take?

I'm being very selective at the moment, because the whole point of editing was to escape work I wasn't enjoying. For that reason, I don't say yes to everything I'm offered. My criteria is usually:

1. Is it easy?

2. If it isn't easy, is it something I'm interested in?

3. If it isn't easy and it isn't enjoyable, does it pay well?

What people find easy varies wildly. I find academic writing easy. I have an academic background and the language doesn't intimidate me. For other people, that might be a nightmare. I don't enjoy technical construction manuals. I've no earthly concept of how part A slots into part B, and zero desire to learn. Usually, though: the shorter it is, the easier it is.

If it's long, it's got to be something I actually find interesting. Either something educational or fiction that is engaging. Fifty pages of something you're not enjoying might as well be four hundred.

Which comes down to another important decision-making factor: is it financially worth it.

As I mentioned above, there are only so many hours in the day. Resist the temptation to lower your prices. The work will take the same amount of time, you'll just get paid less for it. Don't do that. And especially don't do it because you think 'Oh, but this client might bring me more work.' Better to accept a well paid one-off job than a repeat customer who underpays.

Once you've got a couple of clients on your CV, that's enough. As one client replied (after initially questioning my fee): 'Super. You're worth the money.' And we are, good editors. Stick to your guns, and make sure that you have more than one project lined up.

So, to sum up your decision making:

• Is it easy?
• Is it interesting?
• Is the deadline fair?
• Does it pay enough?

Where do you find work?

I have a massive advantage at the moment. I live in a country where English is a second language. There's a boom in local business, a lot of INGOs, and most of them are starting to wake up to the fact that good English is important.

I've picked up clients both for editing and consultancy through cold calling. Just dropping a line saying 'hello, I do this if you ever need me'. That works better in countries where skills are in short supply than it does in countries that are oversupplied.

So, moving to an SLE country is a good start. Failing that, target SLE publishers, organisations, companies and educational institutes. It takes a few minutes to do a sample edit of some dodgy web content or a poorly-written report and e-mail it to them saying 'look what I can do'. 

Some won't take you on unless you have a bank account in their country, because the cost of international transfers is oppressively high and some countries don't have PayPal. Others want you to do hard copy edits, which you also need to be in-country for because posting things can take ages. If you are contemplating approaching SLE clients, TEFL experience helps, or experience of working in SLE environments. There's a lot of peculiarities that can go with different forms of English across the globe, and jumping straight in can be daunting.

A lot of work comes through friends of friends and word of mouth. Since the textbook gig, I have a couple of editing friends and we stay in touch and pass work between ourselves. If I don't have time to edit something, I'll pass it on, and they'll do the same for me. Once you've done a few successful jobs, more start to follow.

For me, local expat and community forums are useful. I've seen a couple of people posting for ghostwriters and English editors. I've either replied personally or been recommended by friends. Again, most people are looking to find someone local as, unlike the west, meeting face-to-face is still important in a lot of countries. People here often want to sit down and tell me their ideas before hiring me, whereas in the west, where outsourcing has become an online art form, people don't really care what your name is so long as you get the job done on time.

I steer clear of online outsourcing sites like Upwork, mostly because USD doesn't translate well into GBP for me, and I find the commission they charge a bit steep. It's financially better to deal directly with clients. Plus, having a company name or an NGO on your CV looks more convincing than Joe Bloggs from OnlineOutsourcing. The amount of hours spent chasing contracts on those sites is time you could be editing something better paid.

Can you make a living out of editing?

At the moment, I'm not entirely sure. If I took every job I was currently offered, yes. Because I'm being picky, no. But combined with the ghostwriting I also do, yes. 

I have three clients I currently bill monthly. They send me short pieces of work throughout the month, or fill a Dropbox folder, and I work my way through it and add up the total at the end. I have a friend who edits on retainer for a couple of large companies, and that provides a regular, guaranteed monthly income that covers his bills. A retainer simply means you get paid a lump sum by a company to edit whatever they send you. If you're going down the retainer route, make sure to put a maximum amount of pages per month, or 'within reasonable limits' into your contract, otherwise you could find yourself inundated. He says it does fluctuate. Some months he gets a lot to do, other months very little. If you're billing page by page, you have the option to say no to work, but you might lose the client.

As with any freelancing job, you're at the mercy of the market. Some days no one wants anything editing, some days they want 100 pages by yesterday. I was making good money when I was editing textbooks, but that was short-term work so the money had to last. The more clients you have, the greater the chances you'll make enough money each month, but also the greater the risk you'll get too much to do. It's a balancing act and you need to find your rhythm.

As editing isn't the only thing I want to do with my time, I'm happy not making a full-time living out of it. If I did want to turn it into a full-time profession, I think the work is out there, but it would probably mean taking more of the stuff I don't enjoy. 

At the moment, I'm finding the mixture of editing and ghostwriting pleasantly varied. It's satisfying intellectually and I feel like I'm contributing to interesting projects. However, as a writer, it leaves  little time to pursue my own work. 

This is my take on things at the moment. I hope it's been useful if you're thinking about becoming an editor.

If you have any questions I haven't answered, please drop a line in the comments.

It would also be great to hear from you if you're an editor with a different approach.

Character Perspective

Teaching again tonight, so thought I'd share another little introductory unit on the importance of character perspective when starting your story. I've covered a bit about 1st person v. 3rd person before, but this gives you a bit more info, and there's a quick test at the end.

DOWNLOAD PRESENTATION

As with The History of Creative Writing, it's a narrated PowerPoint, so if you're using Mac, you may need Flip4Mac for the audio to play.

Writing 101: Safe Punctuation

As part of my Writing 101 section, I sometimes give out tips and tricks on writing which I've picked up myself over the years, and which I teach in my fiction course in Kigali.

A topic which comes up regularly is punctuation for dramatic effect.

I believe this is one of the major factors which separates professional writers from those who are still developing their style. What I mean by this, is that if you pick up a published work of literature from a bookshop, you won't see these mistakes:

1. People using ellipses to... build suspense, or end sentences... 
2. Constant! Use of exclamations! To keep you! In a state of surprise!
3. Regular use of semi-colons; especially where a comma; or full stop would work better

In short, there are some punctuation marks which are safe. You can use as many of these as you like, but only one at a time. These are:

Full stop (.)

Comma (,)

Apostrophe (') - in the right place

Question mark (?) - but never ?? or ???

Then there's the difficult punctuation. The stuff that, if over used, can really drag down your manuscript. That's not to say you can never use these punctuation marks. Of course you can, every punctuation mark has its purpose, but use them extremely sparingly, and only when you're absolutely convinced nothing else can do the job with more subtlety. Once or twice in a book is fine. Once or twice every page is not.

These are:

Semi-colon (;)

Exclamation (!)

Ellipsis (...)

The reasons for this:

Punctuation is the unsung hero of literature. Its purpose is to make writing flow effortlessly, so that the meaning is clear without detracting from the story.

Semi-colon (;): 90% of the time, a full stop or a comma work better and detract less. A semi-colon does one specific job. It partitions two separate sentences that are so closely related, they could be the same sentence. Meaning that the sentences sound disjointed with a full stop, and can't be separated by a comma because they aren't joined by something like and or then or which - the second sentence really is a complete sentence in itself. The instances of this occurring in a novel are pretty slim, and the likelihood of it being the only way of saying what you want to say without tweaking it to a full stop or a comma, even less so. If you see yourself using a semi-colon more than a couple of times in a chapter, you probably want to rethink how you phrase things.

Exclamations (!): An exclamation is the highest point of extreme excitement or surprise you can get. If you see it used lots! Like, more than once or twice in a chapter! Then your reader will be in a constant state of surprise! It's really irritating! Also, it's often used when it's surplus to requirement!

For instance: 

"Come here!" she shouted.

The shouting and the exclamation denote the same thing. It isn't wrong, but it's just as right, and perhaps more succinct, to choose one - the punctuation mark or the descriptive:

"Come here!"

"Come here," she shouted

Use exclamations extremely sparingly throughout your manuscript, and only when you're writing on the edge of your seat.

Also, only in dialogue, not in the body of the prose.

The point of writing is to describe situations and emotions. If you do that well enough, your reader will be on the same page as you anyway, without needing sledge hammer punctuation to illustrate a subtle point.

Ellipsis (...): This is sometimes used to build... suspense, but most often used to end a sentence when the character is trailing off...

It's the opposite of an exclamation. An exclamation is really immediate! It denotes urgency! Everything needs to be read quickly!

With an ellipsis... it sort of... y'know... slows everything... down... a lot...

Again, it's something you use in dialogue, not prose. It has its purpose, but like a semi-colon, there's usually a better way to do it. Use your words:

"I don't know. I feel like..." 

"I don't know. I feel like," James paused, trying to find the right words. "I feel like I should have used a comma instead of an ellipsis."

Ange wholeheartedly agreed.

Sometimes an ellipsis is used to show characters interrupting one another. I'd suggest an em dash works better:

“Just listen, I’m trying to—”

"Trying to what, Marion? Teach me grammar?" 

An em dash is a long hyphen. You get it in Word by typing two hyphens together and hitting enter (--). I think you can also achieve it with ctrl+alt+minus (not hyphen). 

Those are my top tips on punctuating a solid manuscript. Like I say, it's not that you never use the difficult punctuation marks, it's just that they speak very loudly and can detract from the flow of your story. Choose your moments, and grow to rely on the safe ones. Never forget that it's your words, your descriptive, that guides the reader through the story, and the character's emotions, above the use of punctuation.

That said, check out this poem.

New Year Autobiography Exercise

I'm predominantly a fiction writer, but people often come to me asking advice about writing their life story.

Really, the two things are not so very different. The same things that make fiction gripping, make for an interesting life story:

• Truth
• Honesty
• Mystery
• Adventure
• Momentum
• Insight

The tale is in the telling - how you present your story.

New Year makes for a good time to practise writing biographies and autobiographies.

• Autobiography - when you write about your own life
• Biography - when you write about somebody else's life

Rather than attempting to recount the whole of your life in one go,  let's take a single year to begin with. A good autobiography isn't about how many small details you can recall, but about what makes your life truly interesting. People read biographies to live experiences they never will. You're the tour guide to your own world.

A subject I touched on briefly in Lucid is the aboriginal concept of time. In native Australian culture, time isn't generally linear. The things that you remember most clearly, that have the biggest impact on your decisions in life and your sense of self, are the closest in time. You don't remember what you had for breakfast this time five years ago? That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but it's not important. Yet the way someone looked at you in high school, the tone of voice your mother uses when she's angry - those things happened a moment ago.

This is really what you're looking for in a good autobiography. What are the things that make you, you. What makes your life unique?

What's your aboriginal timeline - what is close in your memory, and what is very far away?

Break open the post-it notes and colouring pens.

What were the big events that happened to you in 2016?

When you close your eyes and let your mind wander, what rises to the surface first?

Each year I do an Oath, Boast & Toast roundup, featuring some of the highlights from the last twelve months. I tend to put them in order of the things that made the biggest impression, rather than chronologically from January to December.

Do this for yourself. Brainstorm the things that happened to you. If you keep a dairy, it might be useful to refer to it, but try not to get bogged down in the day-to-day minutia. Go for the really big things that feel significant.

Aim for five or six experiences. If you have more than that, start cutting back. Rank the post-its in order of importance and drop some off the bottom. Remember, an autobiography isn't an account of everything you've ever done, but the things you've done that will really interest other people. The stuff that gives a real insight into human nature, and what it's like to be somewhere, meet someone, or do something that others probably haven't.

I'll post another time about chronology in storytelling, but the two key things to remember are:

1. The order of time is often less interesting than the order of reason

What this means is that whether something happened on a Monday or a Wednesday, really doesn't mean much to your reader. They won't remember it five pages on. But why something happened - the cause and effect - is important. Why a character got blindingly drunk in a bar and started a fight is far more interesting than what time of night he started it. In an autobiography, you are your own character. Help the reader to understand why you did the things you did, and how previous experiences converged to create that moment in time.

2. Start in medias res

This is a literary term simply meaning 'in the middle of things'. It's the opposite of David Copperfield (I am born...) or the Bible (In the beginning...). 

Instead of: I was born... I went to school... I graduated (or didn't)... I was in a terrible car crash... I got married...

Start with the car crash.

Begin by describing whatever is at the top of your memory list for the past year, the anecdote you're most likely to tell at parties, then take it from there.

Have a think about how the experiences on your list connect with each other.  Try to shuffle your vivid moments into some sort of order. You can peg them to a washing line, space them in a circle with a central event in the middle, stick them to a sheet of flipchart paper and draw joining lines. Whatever works for you visually.

When we tell stories about ourselves, we very rarely keep to a straight timeline. We bounce about, changing the direction of our narrative as we remember things we had forgotten and things that came before, or after, but are related to what we're talking about now. Next time you're having coffee with a friend, or asking a grandparent about their early life, pay attention to how they tell their story.

It's perfectly fine to do this when writing an autobiography, so long as things don't get confusing. If your sideline runs for more than a paragraph or two, perhaps devote a new chapter to it. 

When sectioning up your autobiography, do it by theme, not time. Instead of:

• School
• College
• Work
• Travel
• Retirement

Try:

• Discovering my parents were human
• First love
• Realising life is worth more than money
• Stuck up a tree in Timbuktu
• How to cope with ageing

You've found the defining moments of last year, now find them for a lifetime. Use each chapter to talk about a theme, and use your life experiences to illustrate that theme. 

See where you get to.

Ready to Edit: Three Top Tips

Well, my own editing isn't going very well at the moment, as I took another proofing job. I'll get back to my own stuff once that's done, but I thought I'd fill some whitespace with a few tips from the writing course I teach in Kigali. Hopefully it might help others who are going through the editing process.

As writers, we all start in the beginning... repeating many of the mistakes and foibles of every other writer who has gone before us. It takes years to get good at what we do. I've spoken in the past of my backlist shame. When I edit, proofread and teach, I notice the same issues cropping up over and over. 

In this post, I've plucked the three big ones that tend to turn great writing into average writing. There's a little exercise at the end to practise on.

The aim is to produce concise, clear prose which make the story effortless for your reader, allowing them to lose themselves in the plot. 

The Obvious, Obviously

We all think we know when we're stating the obvious, but it's actually really easy to miss because daily language is saturated with obvious phrases:

It was a dark night (well, duh)

He shouted loudly (by definition)

She cried salty tears (or milk - milk would be cooler)

She sat down on the chair (she didn't levitate? How disappointing)

These are the sort of things we just say automatically. That's fine, but when we start to write things down, space becomes precious. A good novel should be filled with wonderful words and interesting curiosities. Don't waste space on blanks that most readers could fill in for themselves.

If the woman sat cross-legged on the grass, braiding daises, sure, tell me about it, or if the chair happened to be one of those high-backed, Gothic jobbies carved out of bone - that, I'd want to know about. But just a mundane chair? Get on with the conversation she's having, or the deep gnawing inner guilt which threatens to destroy her entire sense of self-worth.

Think of the obvious like eyebrow hair. Take a pair of tweezers and comb through your manuscript, plucking it out. It really hurts at first, because you feel that without those obvious phrases, there won't be enough of a sentence left. It was dark, he shouted, she cried and she sat may be a lot shorter, but length isn't the worth of a work.

Now add the things we can't guess for ourselves.

Aggravating Adjectives

I don't need to bang on about this, many more famous writers already have. Mark Twain really put it well:

When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them — then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when close together. They give strength when they are wide apart.

This is really the essence of it. The shorter a sentence, the more punch it packs. Each adjective weakens the blow.

I won't go on about it, but my rule of thumb is: try your hardest to pick one, never more than two.

The mysterious, tall, blue, creaky door - is an abomination

The mysterious, blue door - is better

The mysterious door - is perfect

Like obvious things, there's a little panic button goes off in the back of a writer's mind as they start to trim back a sentence: will it be sufficient, substantial, meaningful, if it's short? 

Yes. Yes it will. Things will flow, meaning will be had, life will be good.

Save your manuscript to a test file and try it. Go through, reduce all adjectives to no more than two at the absolute most. Choose the adjectives that don't say anything obvious or inconsequential. Only go for the ones that tell the reader something they couldn't otherwise guess, or that they might find particularly interesting, or the ones that sound pretty or alliterate (usually the same thing).

Go to town. Don't hold back.

Only judge at the end.

Better?

The Little Words

The little words are the at, the, this, them, a, an, to, as and ifs of this world. 

The joining words, though I like to extend it to longer words if they carry little meaning.

In the first draft of anything, we use too many of them. 

Good writing is like wine - potent. Each little word is a drop of water to that wine. Whilst editing, you're looking to remove the water and distill an excellent vintage. 

It's all about tightening up your prose.

For example:

It wasn't long before the doorbell rang. With a sigh, Emma pulled herself from the sofa and went into the hall to open the door. Outside in the street it was looking overcast. It would probably rain within an hour or maybe two. For now, she had to deal with the man who was standing in front of her.

Makes for much better reading after you cull the little words:

The doorbell rang. With a sigh, Emma pulled herself from the sofa and went to answer. Outside was overcast. It would probably rain in an hour or two. For now, she had to deal with the man in front of her. 

Nothing I chopped out of that leaves anything unsaid. It's just taken us from point A (on the sofa) to point B (stranger at door) much faster, reserving words for interesting things like secret government agents, an estranged father she hasn't seen in years, or an alien invasion.

EXERCISE

So, here's the exercise (.doc).

It's in Word format, so you should be able to edit to your heart's content.

Three short story snippets, each in three paragraphs.

Go through them.

1. In the first paragraph of each story, take out anything that states the obvious. 
2. In the second paragraph of each story, pick one, no more than two, adjectives (remembering the obvious rule).
3. In the third paragraph of each story, cull the little words and tighten it right up.

See how much better those stories read?

Now go do it to your own manuscript.

Writing 101: First Person v. Third Person

The first novel I ever wrote, Lucid, was written in third person. I think the reason for this was that pretty much every novel I remember reading as a kid was written in third person. I just assumed that's how you did it. 

Lucid was the first written, but the third published. Angorichina became my debut novel. It was a story I had long wanted to tell, about a TB sanatorium in 1930s South Australia. Somewhere I had passed through, and whose ghosts still haunted my thoughts.

I tried several times to write that novel, but it just wouldn't come. Not until I switched to first person one night, and suddenly it was as though all of the characters had turned up to tell me their stories. 

This started a trend: Georg[i]e, Splintered Door, Those Rosy Hours at Mazandaran, The Children of Lir and my nemesis novel (the one in a drawer, that will never see the light of day), were all written as first person, and it's only with my most recent endeavour, The Secret Order of the Literati, that I've switched back to third. 

Before I go any further, let me just clarify these terms so that we're all on the same page:

First Person: I

Example 1: I saw him approaching across the room.

Example 2: Those were mine and I wanted them.

Third Person: She/He

Example 1: She watched him approaching across the room. 

Or: Sarah watched him approaching across the room

Example 2: She looked at him as though she didn't know him.

Or: James's wife looked at him as though she didn't know him.

So, what happened to second person?

Second Person: You

Example: You are walking down the street when you are approached by a strange man. You look at him, but you do not recognise him.

This doesn't sit so comfortably in fiction, so we ignore it unless we're writing Fighting Fantasy or Choose Yours Own Adventure books.

Whether you're going to tell your story from first or third person is one of those important details you really ought to figure out before you start writing - even if you're not a planner. 

You should know by the end of the first page which perspective you're going to use, because - like tense - it's a total bugger to change later on. Every single line on every page reinforces the perspective you've chosen, so to switch from one to another is going to require editing every single line on every single page. A problem best avoided with a few moments' forethought.

A quick test is to think of a scene in your novel. Even if you haven't thought out the entire thing yet, there must be a small idea, a scene, a character rattling around at the back of your mind - something that typifies the tale you wish to tell.

Write it down - just a couple of paragraphs.

Have you written it in first or third person?

You have probably already gravitated towards one or the other. If it reads well, and you're happy with it, that's probably the perspective to stick with. If you're uncertain, then just try rewriting that paragraph from the other perspective and see if it reads any better.

Here's an example from Rosy Hours, which was written in first person:

Dignitaries from around the world had gathered at the Rose Palace that night. I heard accents from Turkey, Russia, England, and many more that Eirik had to whisper the history of. The costumes were like nothing I had seen: charmeuse satin, shot silk, ciselé velvet and chiffon. The women wore dresses much like mine, their bosoms prominent, their backsides angled like the billowing sails of a ship, which gave them the impression of gliding across the floor. I came to see that I was an anomaly. A dark-skinned, dark-haired woman in a sea of milk and honey.

This is how it would have read in third person:

Dignitaries from around the world had gathered at the Rose Palace that night. Afsar heard accents from Turkey, Russia, England, and many more that Eirik had to whisper the history of. The costumes were like nothing she had seen: charmeuse satin, shot silk, ciselé velvet and chiffon. The women wore dresses much like her own, their bosoms prominent, their backsides angled like the billowing sails of a ship, which gave them the impression of gliding across the floor. She came to see that she was an anomaly. A dark-skinned, dark-haired woman in a sea of milk and honey.

It's a subtle change, but it can make a big difference to your story.

To understand why, it's worth exploring some of the pros and cons of each perspective:

First Person

Pros:

• It is very immediate. This will engage your readers quickly.
• The reader feels as though they are living the story through the eyes of the character.
• It allows you to explore a character's thoughts and feelings in depth.
• It's easy to mislead a reader, or direct their attention, when they only receive the story from one perspective.
• It's easy to show a situation from two completely different angles if you use multiple first person. For example, two characters witnessing a car crash - one by the side of the road, another from the passenger seat. The reader thinks they understand what happened, until they get the other side of the story.

Cons

• If the reader doesn't like the character, they may disengage sooner.
• You can't explore the thoughts and feelings of other characters with such intimacy. You can only observe their expressions or speculate on their inner thoughts based on what your main character can see and hear.
• You are tied to the location of your main character, unless they're having an out of body experience. 
• The reader can't easily know something the character does not, unless they've pieced together clues the character appears blind to.
• If you have multiple first-person characters, they can start to sound like the same person unless you give them very distinct voices.

Third Person

Pros

• The reader can view the story from an observational stance, like looking through a window. They pick up pieces of the story from many different locations and characters, rather than just what they're told by the narrating character.
• You can flit between characters easily because you're not tied to the location, observations and emotions of one character. The narrator is omnipresent.
• It's easier to fool about with time frames and chronology when you're not rooted to one character's experiences.
• The narrator can comment freely on what is going on without having to maintain character at all times. Something can happen, and the author can make a quip or a judgement in the text without it having to be spoken or felt by a specific character.

Cons

• It is less intimate than first person, so may take a little longer for people to get into the story. The author acts as a middle wo/man between the reader and the characters.
• You may have to work harder at building an emotional attachment between reader and character, and readers may forget minor characters quicker, or become more easily confused, because of that lack of first person emotional anchor, and the increased speed of plot that omnipresence affords.

Everybody will have their own opinions on this, but a general rule of thumb might be:

First Person When:

• You are telling a story that is strongly rooted in emotions and emotional reactions.
• Your story centres on one main character or a small number of main characters.
• Your story relies on the difference of perspective between characters (i.e. what really happened that night at the party).
• You want the reader to see the storythrough your characters' eyes.

Third Person When:

• You are telling a story that is strongly rooted in action.
• You have multiple characters.
• Your story relies strongly on the interaction of those characters, and the consequences of those actions, across multiple locations.
• You want your reader to journey with the narrator, and see the big picture.

Most writers have an instinctive feel for the perspective of their story at the outset, but it really is worth playing before you commit.

If I've missed anything out, do drop a comment below.