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Writers Point of View for Stories – Who Gets to Talk?

Nov 102011

Who gets to talk?

Readers get attached to characters they care about and have built relationships with, just as in reality. Kill off a favorite character from your reader base and you’d better believe you’re going to hear about it! Alter that character’s world somehow and again, you’ll get feedback. But what if the hero and heroine both have something to lose? Then what do you do?

Cover for Sascha Illyvich's 1NightStand story by Decadent Publishing

Refer back to length of the story. Who has the greatest loss, and the greatest gain? Write from THAT one character’s POV and ONLY change scenes if word length allows for it and only if that character’s journey makes us feel something universal.

I recently read a story where head hopping occurred so much because the writer thought to write scenes like we see in TV. Take Burn Notice for example: We have Michael Westin, (The hero) Fiona (Heroine) and all the side characters, most notably Sam, the drunk former CIA op who we get to see frequently. POV switches don’t really occur much because the story is narrated by Michael Westin, but when we do get those changes, Westin is still narrating. That works because people need to see a lot of visuals and TV/movies allow for those shifts to occur. The average attention span is not that long.

But FICTION writing doesn’t. You’ll end up with unsmooth transitions, annoying head hopping issues that make the reader THROW YOUR BOOK THE FUCK AWAY!

In FICTION, y

ou do two things. You show the reader what YOU want them to see; otherwise they’ll see something else. And you make the story smooth. By sticking to word limit/reason for changes, you’ll eliminate guesswork in your plotting.

Some writers can get away wit

h multiple POV changes. Sherrylin Kenyon for example can, she has a built in audience that somehow doesn’t care about the change from the H/H to Ash or Stryker. So does Laurel K. Hamilton, but because she writes in First Person POV, she doesn’t have that ability. But if she wrote in third person, she could afford to change because she’s ESTABLISHED. Chances are that you’re not them. (And if you are, thanks for reading my article!)

Christine Feehan does an excellent job of keeping the POV between her hero and heroine. So does Richelle Mead. And Rebecca York. Those authors are authors who don’t write what I do, but I learn from them because they’re where I hope to be someday.

To reinforce the key points, I’ll leave with my two rules for simplification.

Tell the story from the character’s POV that has the MOST to lose
Use word length 20k = 1 character. 40k, 2 characters. 60k-100k+=3 and ONLY three.

The obvious exception would be if you have a reason for a secondary story such as the one used in Back in Black by Lori Foster where she had the main conflict going on and for what I felt was literally a second story all it’s own, but was tied together neatly by the author. That will be a different post though, when we break into deeper POV and more on storytelling craft.

That should simplify things in your stories. Happy writing!

Sascha Illyvich

http://www.saschaillyvich.com

Listen to The UnNamed Romance Show Mondays at 1 PM PST and Thursdays at 3 PM PST on www.radiodentata.com – hear from Sascha as he shares his work along with interviewing the hottest authors in today’s romance

New Sale and a best of

Oceania, Sascha Illyvich No Responses »

Jul 072011

For those expecting our lovely Audio Goddess Oceania, she’s off this week and for one more round while she handles some personal business. There are nine of us and from time to time it’s bound to happen that things come up.

So first, I’m going to mention my recent sale to Total E-bound in hopes that A: it peaks your interest and B: It helps me drag out a blurb. That’s right, there is a lesson here and a new one at that, though only a short one.

You see, when you tell your readers you sold a book to a publisher, they undoubtedly want to know what the book is about. Is it a new genre for you? Or a different sub genre like paranormal romance when you normally write contemporary romance stories? Or are you continuing a story line from a previous series? Either way, once you tell the first reader, they’ll get excited but if you repeat the same thing to over 100 readers at 98 different times it gets pretty tiring.

So you go for the quickest explanation possible. Case in point: My puma story tentatively titled Burning for Derrick has a very Burn Notice like feel but the sequel will feature Max, Derrick’s brother who IS a cross between Max Myers of ACC Cigars and Michael Westen from Burn Notice. People understand that even though most of my friends don’t know Max. Once I say Burn Notice, they’ll get a reference point and I’ll only need to mention how I’m working in Max’s love interest.

But this isn’t the story I sold. It’s in second draft mode. But it gets the wheels thinking on how to craft that blurb for the story so I can tell the publisher this will sell because of the blurb. That is the goal, after all.

The traits of the story in question are thus:

It’s a menage. Both males used to be lovers but morals divided them, yet they unknowingly share the same female lover.

It’s paranormal: Both males are wolves, the heroine is a witch.

It’s GLBT – both males are into each other and the woman, equally.

I used the big themes of the story there for sales purposes. This lets me play with the big concept. Get it? Now I can try to pull out the plot.

The wolf packs in Albuquerque NM are dying from an incurable sickness and only Iolite has the resources to research the illness. Being of human origin with wolf blood gives her an advantage but her two lovers are the ones who can really help as they are full blooded wolf shifters. If they could just settle their differences long enough…perhaps the three of them could come up with a solution to what is killing off both their packs.

Does that grab you? It’s a rough start and ignores the romantic conflict. But as I said, this is a short lesson.

As promised, a recap of recent Oceania posts as audio is an important medium. Look at the success of “Go the Fuck to Sleep” for proof.

Writing Is____

Forgive Me Father, I must have Sinned

Audio Books – Break On Through to the Other Side

Those are popular posts for a reason. Until next time…when we return with Deborah Riley Magnus’s post…

Developing Your Creative Personality as a Writer Part II

Jean Marie Stine No Responses »

Jun 232011

Last time I had the blog we talked about developing a creative personality for the mind in writing short stories

Publishing the hottest in classic and current erotica and erotic romance

The following is a high-octane problem-buster that will make child’s play of even the hardest brain-stumpers and grind down to a manageable size even the most insurmountable dilemmas. It is a development of ideas pioneered by Tony Hodgson, and others.

It’s based on the well-established finding from psychological research that the more different perspectives we bring to a problem, the more ideas we are likely to generate and the more complete our perceptions of it.

You’ve heard of seeing the world through ‘rose-colored glasses’, which cause one to see only the sunny side of things.

Imagine the effect of seeing the world through ten different pairs of colored glasses — one for each hue in the rainbow (and each different spectrum of our mental processes).

Regardless of how difficult the dilemma, you’ll have found the answer long before you’ve tried on the tenth pair. By examining a challenging circumstance through each set of ‘colored glasses’ (each different mental perspective), we achieve a complete, rather than a partial, view, and engage our minds to consider it far more deeply.

Here are the TEN COLORS

*White – cognitive, the way our mind functions when we are learning, thinking, increasing knowledge or understanding.

* Grey – factual, the way our mind functions when we are absorbing information, scanning for important and critical data.

* Yellow – opportunistic, the way our mind works when we view possibilities from a sunny cheerful, optimistic, positive point of view, and see how we can capitalize on and make the best of events and situations around us.

* Black – critical, the way our mind functions when we are serious, skeptical, analytic, seeing the potential problems on the road ahead.

* Green – creative, the way our mind functions when it sends up the shoots of fresh, new imaginative, creative, innovative new ideas.

* Brown – practical, the way our mind things when we are being down to earth, thinking things through logically, incrementally, objectively, within existing systems and assumptions.

* Blue – holistic, the way our minds work when we are looking at the big picture and engaged in strategic planning.

* Orange -molecular, the way our mind works when we are attempting to throw light on the individual parts of something, either to identify or place them.

* Violet – directive, the way our mind works when we are thinking about crucial aims, objectives, decisions, when we have arrived at a turning point or crossroads, and have to make a gut-level choice about what it is we truly want.

* Red – Opinionated, the way our mind works when we are offering our own view or seeking the views of others, and either arguing our position, debating another, or melding the two together to achieve a greater understanding or consensus.

Next time we’ll cover the last lesson from me on Developing your Creativity

Welcome to 2011!

Sascha Illyvich 1 Response »

Jan 062011

Can you believe that it’s been a year since we started this blog? I’ve been so lucky and blessed with the company I’ve been keeping here, started new projects with some of them, worked with others for a more prosperous career and ultimately helped a ton of you to become better, more educated writers. The purpose of this blog was and is simple: Educate the writer on the craft of writing erotica in any form, be it a little hint of smut here or a lot of sex there.

When I chose the players, I had an idea in mind. Not only did I want to partner with other professionals, but I wanted to bring something different, a powerhouse of well rounded talent that you the writer would benefit from. Becoming a successful writer isn’t just about writing a great story. It’s never been just about that. Though that IS the secret to making money, right? Just cracked the formula, didn’t I?

Sort of.

A great story is one that not only reads well, is written well but reaches a broad audience. Using the proper words to create images in the readers mind helps define your style as a writer but it also gives you potential for an even greater opportunity to capture market share. We’re not competing against one another, but rather working towards a common goal of enjoyment and entertainment, albeit sexual in nature. Some of us want a little romance, others want a little kink, and still others are uncertain until they’ve been exposed to your work.

Having stories that fit an audio market capture that all important sense many of us miss out on. It’s important to understand what audio erotica is and why we’re talking about this.

A need to be varied and flexible with story craft is important too. So is the desire to crank out fresh material.

All of these things plus the rest of the previous blog entries all come down to one thing in the end. You, the author. What IS your author platform? What is the hook, line and sinker you’re going to use once you’ve written that great book to sell it to a publisher? Are you familiar enough with the marketing aspects of basic blogging so that once the work is released, you can effectively market it?

The problem for most new writers is still that they have trouble wrapping their heads around all of the above mentioned things. That’s why we’re here. WriteSEX adds value to your platform, helps your career grow. If you’ve questions, we’ve more than likely got answers.

Because a world without questions, only has answers. I will resume story craft on my next post. For now, we’ve solidified a unique group with well over 100 years of combined experience in writing. And it’s my sincere belief that 2011 will be the year of the writer.

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