Avoiding POV as a POS

Okay, so that's not the title of the workshop I attended at Surrey, it is however the underlying theme of the session. The teacher was Joanna Bourne, who did a fabulous job and I would like to give you the highlights of the workshop that could help with POV. It certainly did that for me.

• New writers almost always use 1st person or omniscient narrative.
• 3rd person is more difficult, not more logical
• Don't just add a POV character to add info. Scenes are for advancing the story.
• (This is my favorite) "Readers are like mother cats." If a mother cat has only three kittens and you take one away, she notices. If a mother cat has nine kittens and you take one away, she won't notice. Same with readers. If you have lots of characters, they (the readers) will not really notice/care. If they have only a few characters to attach to, they will identify and care more about what's going on.
• An intrusive narrator breaks POV's voice and does not make you care about the characters
• If you have a good POV it should feel like 1st person when its actually in 3rd.

There was a lot more to the class, it was three hours of POV and Voice, we covered linguistics and how that can help your writing, scene development, character voice and lots more, so I will add to this topic another day. Hope these tips help!

Rifting Aragon at Surrey 2010

This is my 100th blog post and I wanted it to be, well, epic is the only word that comes to mind. Seeing as I just came home from SiWC and am full of inspiration from all the wonderful speakers, I thought that perhaps instead of being epic on my own, I would let someone else do it for me. Namely, Robert Dugoni who gave THE most epic of all speeches. Keep in mind that this is as close to it as I could come with my faulty memory.

"When looking at the publishing world and trying to break in, for those of you who are still trying to make it past the front gate, its like looking up at the Black Gates of Mordor. Like an impossible task with talk of publishing houses cutting back, e-pubs taking over and the recession hitting hard. But I would say to you this,

Writers of Surrey! My brothers and sisters. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of writers fail, when agents and editors forsake us and we break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you to write. An hour of rejections and shattered pens may come when the Age of writers comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day, this day we write!"