POV

This may seem harsh, but I’ve had it with lame excuses. Point of view (POV) matters, and those who convince themselves it doesn’t are fools. There’s nothing wrong with writing as a hobby. In fact, I encourage it. But if you want to be published, learn the rules and follow them. Don’t waste my editing time if you don’t want to change a thing.

New writers all make mistakes. I made more than anyone. The most common is probably POV errors. The top two responses I get when I point out the problem are “The editor will fix it.” and “So and so (big-name author) does it.” To the first, the answer is no, the editor will not fix it. The editor will never see it. The first unannounced POV shift lands your manuscript on the reject pile. If you do it once, on the first page or in an early chapter, you’ll do it throughout the book. Publishers don’t have the time, money, or inclination to fix it. To the second excuse, once you’ve made the publisher millions of dollars with your best sellers, you can do whatever you want. Until then, conquer POV and stick to one per scene.

Keep points of view to a minimum. Giving a character a POV implies they are important. When I see an inner thought, I take note that this person matters. Don’t blow your readers’ trust. If you can’t figure out which character owns a scene, rethink the scene. By ‘owns’ I mean who has the most to gain or lose. If you want readers to know another character is nervous, happy, anxious, scared, etc, show it. Don’t go into their head to tell us what they feel. Show, don’t tell (a topic worthy of another rant). Most emotions are pretty easy for your POV character to observe. Nervous person? Have them pace, look out the window, check the mirror, give them a tick. Whatever. You can show nerves so easily there’s no reason to take the simple method of telling. Besides, that’s boring. You can show love through body language and dialog. The same goes for happiness, sadness, anxiety, fear. Let the reader observe what the POV character does, and let them see what he/she sees. This enhances your story by focusing on important characters, and helps readers by putting them in the scene.

You can change POVs, but let readers know by using stars or an extra space. Be sure to establish who’s POV you’re in quickly. Readers can only know what that character knows, thinks, believes, sees, hears, tastes, smells…If you violate this, you’ll soon start head-hopping. Next you’ll give an animal a POV. Then you’ll move on to having two characters speak in the same paragraph. At this point, you are lost. Beyond hope.

If you’re a serious writer, don’t be a lazy one. Don’t expect others to fix your work. Give an editor the most polished manuscript he/she has ever seen. Prove you know what you’re doing. Don’t think because a successful author violates POV willy-nilly, you can, too. Phootie. You can’t. Above all, don’t waste my time. Write to your heart’s content. Fill pages and pages and have fun doing it. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you want someone to read your book, give them the best you can do and be willing to hear it’s not quite good enough. Roll up your sleeves and get back to work.

More rants will follow. I’m sick of explanations and defenses after I’ve spent hours on a chapter or two. Show, don’t tell, is important. So is continuity. Self-editing can actually be fun. Character development is essential. I hope to hit on all these topics, and more, on my blog. Writing is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, and discussions of techniques are fascinating. How do you get backstory in? How much do you need?

Amy updates will also appear. She is, after all, the center of my world right now.

Amy Update

I'd planned on blogging about writing. POV to be specific. But that can wait. Amy added a new trick to her repertoire. Opening the fence gate. John had assured me it was secure. Right. One day last week she romped in the yard while I put away groceries. I checked on her several times, then went back to my chores. When I finished I went out to play with her, and there was no Amy. No bouncing pup coming when I called. Nothing but a quiet back yard. I went to the side of the house and saw the gate wide open and had a minor heart attack. After running to the house for her leash, I took off. When I say running, I mean balls-to-the-wall, full-out running. The kind you can only do when in a panic.

People are amazing. Most of the time they really piss me off, but on this day I loved them. Strangers stopped what they were doing and helped look for Amy. One lady left her own garage sale to drive me around. No kidding. I searched her favorite places and waded through very tall weeds. I ran the walking path twice. Cars on a road near us seemed to be in a race, so I stood in the street and waved my hands and yelled, "Slow down! A puppy is loose!" Yes, if you heard about a lunatic doing that, it was me.

Over an hour later I was a true mess. I'd run at least two miles and it was a hot, hot day. My hands wouldn't stop shaking and my legs felt like they'd give out any second. I was drenched in sweat and my top was soaked. I decided to go home and check for messages in case someone had Amy and called. Our names and number are on her collar tag. When I got here the neighbor boys ran to meet me. They'd found her and put her in the back yard and made sure the gate was closed tight. Naturally I burst into tears and hugged those kids so much I'm pretty sure they'll never come near me again. Poor things. Hopefully none of their peers saw.

In the meantime, while I was dashing on a path and waving my arms at cars on the street etc, Amy had opened the back door to the house. When my husband got home she was inside, in air conditioned comfort, the back door was wide open, and I was nowhere to be found. He saw my purse and knew I'd never go anywhere without it. My car was in the garage. Now he was worried about me! Our relief when we all saw each other again can't be described. I had another crying jag. By the way, I'm not a crier.

It is amazing what one little dog can do. Such joy. Such worry. Such love. Such worry. The fence gate now has more locks than a New York City apartment. Even Amy can't undo all of them.

Okay, now that's off my chest. My next blog will be a POV rant. Why do so many people think 'someone else' will fix their mistakes? Their laziness? Writing is tough. Deal with it or quit.

Out of Print

After much debate with myself, I've asked Mundania Press to cancel my contracts, and they graciously agreed. Amanda's Rib and Oblivious will no longer be available new. However, they are both offered in some used book stores. I'm not sure about Kindle and how all that works.

I don't believe Mundania is a *bad* publisher managed by terrible people. I think the owners mean well, but are overworked and understaffed. This is just my opinion. I'm not even sure they have a full-time employee. Now I know to look for things like that. If you're offered a contract, be smart and contact some of the publisher's authors. Ask them a few questions. How long does it take to fill a book order? Do they have any full-time employees? How long does it take to receive your royalty after a sale? Do they have a library distribution channel with Baker & Taylor? There are a great many questions to ask before signing.

Small problems cropped up with Mundania before my first novel was even released. That's probably normal, and I let them go. Over the years the troubles increased rather than decreased, until I decided this was one case where nothing is better than something. Orders for my books had a habit of 'falling through the cracks'. Not once. Not twice. Many times. That I know of. How many don't I know of?

All this has led me to think long and hard about the writing business. One issue I debate with myself is the question of publishing at all. If the house is small, is it worth the trouble? Publishers expect authors to promote, and most of us do. But why promote something that isn't delivered when ordered? Would I have been happier not knowing any of the walls I'd run into signing with a small house? Is ignorance bliss?

My rights revert to me in September, so I have until then to decide what to do next. Try to find another publisher for Amanda's Rib and Oblivious? Publish them myself? Put them on the shelf and move on to another passtime? I don't know. Right now I'm just plain tired of if all.

First Pages

Everyone writer knows the importance of hooking a reader quickly. Knowing it and doing it are two entirely different things. Slow beginnings have many reasons. Today I’m going to focus on one of them. Backstory.

There is a tendency to stuff first chapter(s) with backstory. Please don’t do that. If we don’t know the character, why would we care how s/he felt as a child when his/her parakeet died? I compare book openings to parties in one way. We are meeting people for the first time. When you meet someone at a party, do you immediately learn their life story? Would you want to? Probably not. We want to learn more about people as we get to know them, and characters are no different. Make your protagonist(s) interesting and/or likeable, and we’ll keep reading. Telling us (and backstory usually takes the form of ‘telling’ instead of ‘showing’) the hero/heroine’s life right away seldom intrigues readers. We drop the book and pick up another just like we would avoid a bore at a party.

When I work with new writers, I usually find their opening near the end of the first chapter. Then the writer asks how readers will understand it without the first part of the chapter. That’s the point. We don’t have to understand, we only have to want to understand. It’s up to us to create characters and/or a situation which draws the reader in, and we have to do that fast!

My best advice on openings is to keep backstory to the barest minimum. Any character history we need to know, emphasis on ‘need’, can be slipped in later, teaspoon at a time.

As you develop your characters and plot, ask yourself what you want readers to know vs what they must know. My bet is much of what you think we need to know is really only something you want to tell us. You love your characters. At times they feel a part of you. You want readers to love them, too. That’s natural. But if you make them interesting and/or likeable, rather than telling the story of their lives, readers will follow along just fine. They’ll want to know more, and that’s a hook!

Your first line doesn’t have to be a grabber, but it’s nice if it is. If not, have something which makes us want more by the end of the first or second paragraph. Not long ago my husband said, “The clock on your computer is wrong.” I said, “Oh, that’s right. It’s Thursday.” The look on his face was priceless. Later I thought what a great opening that would be. I’d have to read more just to figure out what in the world a clock had to do with Thursday. (My computer clock always goes off on Thursday. I have no idea why.) Your hook doesn’t have to be an explosion or corpse or any spectacular event. Just something offbeat can grab a reader’s attention. Lewis Black does a hysterical routine about one line of an overheard conversation driving him nuts. He heard one woman say to another, “If it wasn’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have gone to college.” That’s all he heard and it made him loopy. He wanted to know more, and kept hearing that sentence in his head and wondering what it meant. In other words, that one line had him hooked.

If you're interested in reading them, the first chapters of Amanda’s Rib and Oblivious are at my web site. I went with a first line grabber, then tried to build interest. www.cyndiadepre.com

Amy Update

It's been a week since her oral surgery, and Amy is doing great. She slept for two days when we brought her home. I worried she wasn't eating, but I guess animals are smarter than people and only eat when they're hungry. She takes her pills quite well, which is a relief. She's back to her usual eating habits now.

I've gotten rid of all her hard things, just in case. One of John's co-workers has a dog and he loves all those bones and unbendable toys. He's one happy dog because he got a large bag of them. Amy now has only things I can bend or break easily. Plus some new soft toys. She'll be one year old tomorrow and I have some surprises waiting for her. We're also having a doggie party this weekend with the neighborhood animals. I have lots of treats for them. It sounds dumb, but it's really not. By the end of the day she'll be too tired to nag us, so John and I can have a nice supper and watch a movie.

Now life can return to what passes for normal. I still don't feel like writing, but a couple ideas are bouncing around in my head. Hopefully I can get back to work soon. In the meantime I'm doing some editing. One thing is clear...POV is a problem for a lot of writers. Maybe next week I'll talk about that. It's really not hard. You just have to get into a character's head and stay there.

New Amy Woes

Now we have a new problem with the pup. Digging. The people behind us have several dogs, and Amy wants to meet them. I mean she really, really wants to meet them. She's always enjoyed digging along the fence line, but nothing like this. I'm at the end of my rope with it. She can get her head under the fence, and I'm scared she'll hurt herself. Or get the rest of her through and take off and get hit by a car. Filling the hole again does no good. She merrily digs it again. We may have to put rocks all around the fence line. Say goodbye to a couple thousand dollars we don't have. Any ideas? Shock collar? Electric fence? I'd hate both, but I'd hate seeing her hurt more.

Amy

Amy, our wonderful pup, broke a tooth. She's not quite one year old, and managed to break a lower canine, which is a pretty big deal. The problem is, she's a hard chewer. I mean a HARD chewer. Soft toys only last a few minutes. She rips a hole in them, then goes for the squeaker. Since I'm admittedly a tad overprotective, and a worrier, I toss those immediately. Can't have her choking on stuffing or squeakers. But she loves toys! So I bought tougher and tougher ones. Number tens on a scale of one to ten. They lasted a bit longer, but not much. Very few had a chance with Amy biting on them. The good folks at the pet store recommended one particular bone. Amy loved it. She took it with her from room to room. She'd lie by the sliding doors and gaze out while gnawing on her special bone. It seemed a problem had been solved. Entertaining a pup for more than a few minutes is a challenge.

Now her tooth is broken, probably from that bone, and I feel awful. It's not the fault of the pet store. How could they know the determination of a young Brittany Spaniel? Especially this one? Nope. I blame myself. I'm not sure why. Probably habit.

We're trying to save the tooth. An extraction would leave her without it for years and years. We're planning on her outliving us. It could also break her jaw. Imagine that. So we're taking her to a doggie oral surgeon for a canine version of a root canal. She goes in on the 30th. Please think of her that day and cross your fingers all goes well. I'll get a list of allowable chew toys from the surgeon and stock up on those. She shows no sign of pain and loves playing with her ball and two of her strongest toys...a dragon and a cow. She runs in the yard and smiles at us and eats well. The vet gave me pills for pain and others to fight any infection. Amy takes them without complaint. One of the best things about a dog is they don't talk. Unlike people they don't yammer useless gibberish in your ear endlessly. But for just five minutes I wish Amy could speak English. I'd ask if it hurts and what feels good. Then she can go back to normal. An occasional bark. Contented grunts.

I could write more. In fact, when it comes to Amy, I'd love to share some of her finest moments with you. She's a hoot! But right now I think I'll just go give her a hug and maybe work on a few commands. She likes that. When she does something right, which is most of the time because she's so smart, she gets a treat.