Tipsy Tuesday

Jerry D. Simmons is a former editor for Random House and has a valuable FREE service he offers to writers -- the sharing of information. At his website Nothing Binding, he also offers free networking opportunities in addition to a lot more.

In his most recent newsletter he had some thoughts about mistakes writers make with point of view. I want to paraphrase a bit of that here.

First of all, you need to choose to write in someone's POV. As soon as you write a line (or more) in what's referred to as the omniscient POV, it yanks the reader right out of the story unless it's done very, very well. On the flip side of that, don't write in everyone's POV. We don't really need to know what the grocery clerk is thinking while the hero is weeping as he buys a frozen pizza and ice cream. (Just kidding. You'd better not have your hero crying over something so trivial.) *G*

When you're in a character's POV, you don't need to use things like "he thought" or "she wondered". (I'm guilty of this, I admit. It's very easy to do.) If the thought is clearly written, you don't need the tags.

And you also need to make sure you remain true to your character when you're in POV. I would describe my home town one way; the hero of my current WIP, a British cop, would describe it completely different, because his eye would be drawn to different things than mine. Plus he's male, and I'm not. That makes a difference, as you all know.

For more great information from Jerry, check out his blog.