First person or third person: which is better? From Rick: A few years back, I did a post on the differences between a story, an anecdote, and an essay and how to tell which you’ve written. Classifying your piece properly
Read MoreThree useful articles for writers From Rick: I wasn’t able to finish Part 2 of the Formatting and Templates series for this week, so here are a couple of articles to read in the meantime. I know I’ve talked before
Read MoreFrom Rick: In my previous post a month ago on omniscient POV, I talked about what omni-POV is and isn’t, with emphasis on the latter. OMNISCIENT POV—PART 1 In that post I said that head-hopping is NOT omniscient POV and
Read MoreFrom Rick: I am frequently impressed with the quality of the tutorials and information from my good friends at Reedsy.com. This week they provided me with the perfect blog topic wherein I don’t have to do anything other than introduce
Read MoreFrom Rick: In Part 1 last week I talked about the problems we found in The Mosaic, specifically the problem with too many viewpoints. I also said that I would discuss two other things. One of those dealt with the
Read MoreFrom Rick: There’s an old joke that the difference between a sadist and a masochist is that the masochist tells the sadist, “Beat me, whip me, punish me,” and the sadist tells him, “No.” A parallel in self-publishing might have
Read MoreFrom Rick: A writer recently asked the following question: “I’ve read novels where the POV shifts from one character to another. Is it frowned upon to do so in a short story? Even in flash fiction?” The writer then observed
Read MoreFrom Rick: This past week, I came across an excellent article from Anne Allen (whose blog I have linked to before) that points out ten things that will flag you as a beginner because they represent poor or weak writing
Read MoreFrom Rick: “Why would I want to write in second person?” you ask. “Well, maybe because you can capture a voice, mood and tone with it that no other viewpoint can,” I reply. Before I answer that in detail, let’s
Read MoreFrom Rick: In part 6, I promised to wrap up this series with some pointers on how to select, hopefully, the best point of view (POV) for your story. Along with those, I’m going to discuss choosing the right verb
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