Thursday, January 13, 2011

Make a Choice!

I'm currently working on a major revision of my first ms, MANIFESTED, and while doing so, I'm striving to drastically improve each chapter, each page, each paragraph, sentence, and word. A challenge indeed.

And yet, I am enjoying the revision process.

One thing I'm striving to do is create strong voices for each character. So, I turned to my favorite book on the craft of writing: THE FIRE IN FICTION by Donald Maass:

"What about point of view? Do you lurk in the third person or vocalize in first person? Do you stick to your protagonist's point of view, widen to others, or explore unexpected perspectives? There is nothing wrong with any particular choices. What bugs me is that many writers do not seem to have made a choice in the first place. Most manuscripts wander along in the way that it first occurred to their authors to write them. They do not confront me, insist that I listen, or seek to surprise me with a different way of seeing" (page 125).

Make a choice. Insist that your reader pays attention to your words. Surprise your reader.

Easy. Peasy.

Right? Write...

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