Jami Gold

How to Hunt Down Sneaky Point-of-View Errors

Sneaky POV ErrorsBy Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

One of my favorite writing craft topics is point of view because, when we master point of view, it solves so many other writing problems. Properly executing point of view immediately strengthens our writing, makes it more immersive, and gives lightbulb moments for many other writing elements. (If you want to know about other benefits of a consistent point of view, you might want to take a look at my post on 7 Reasons Understanding Point of View Is Essential to Writing Great Fiction.)   

So I was very excited when Jami Gold asked if I’d write a post for her about clues for catching out-of-POV phrases. These POV errors happen any time we’re in a limited point of view—where we’re supposed to stay inside one viewpoint character at a time—and we write something that our viewpoint character couldn’t know, wouldn’t have experienced, or wouldn’t be thinking about. Out-of-POV phrases are sneaky POV errors. They’re less obvious than something like head-hopping, but they’re more damaging to our writing.

Please join me over at Jami Gold’s blog where I’m giving practical tips for hunting down and eliminating sneaky out-of-POV phrases.

Interested in more ways to improve your writing? Point of View in Fiction is now available! (You might also want to check out Internal Dialogue or Showing and Telling in Fiction.)

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Image Credit: Gregory Hoyl Jr./freeimages.com

Three Surprising Writing Problems Solved By Understanding Internal Dialogue

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

Today marks the end of my summer blogging travels, where I have some fun by guest posting at other sites. While I still guest post a little during the rest of the year, it’s significantly less than in the summer months. Next month, my regular blogging schedule returns.

For my final summer guest post, I’m at the site of the wonderful Jami Gold. Not only does Jami have one of the best sites for writers, but she’s also a super nice person.

So please join me over a Jami’s blog for Three Surprising Writing Problems Solved by Understanding Internal Dialogue.

Interested in more ways to improve your writing? Internal Dialogue is now available from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, or Apple iBooks.. (You might also want to check out Grammar for Fiction Writers or Showing and Telling in Fiction.)

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7 Essential Things to Know About Staying Safe on Twitter

Twitter for AuthorsBy Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

For all the wonderful things that technology provides us, it also comes with new risks. We need to be smart about our social media use because Twitter won’t be fun and our platform building won’t be sustainable if we don’t know how to stay safe.

So today I wanted to share seven tips for how to protect yourself and your information on Twitter so that you can make new friends, reach new readers, and grow as a writer.

Join me today at Jami Gold’s blog for the rest of my post on 7 Essential Things to Know About Staying Safe on Twitter.

You can buy Twitter for Authors at Amazon.com, at Kobo, or at Smashwords.

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5 Essential Elements for Pitching Romance

I’m still on the internet road this week, and today I’m visiting the blog of my friend Jami Gold, a paranormal romance author whose website is packed with great resources for writers of all stripes. She’s letting me talk about the five essential elements that need to go in any romance pitch. I hope you’ll join me there!

And don’t forget to read to the end where I give a 15% off discount code for my Show Me Your Fastball: Crafting Your Logline, Tagline, and Pitch webinar coming up this Saturday.

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And don’t forget that you can receive a free copy of my guide Everything You Always Wanting to Know about Hiring a Freelance Editor by signing up for my newsletter. <–Click right there. You know you want to 🙂

How to Make the Most of a Scene

Jami Gold paranormal romance authorI have a special treat for you today. As some of you might remember, I used to co-manage a writing blog called Girls With Pens with my good friend Lisa Hall-Wilson. We shut Girls With Pens down earlier this year, but I didn’t want the great content we’d collected to be lost. So I contacted Jami Gold, who’d written a fantastic post for GWP, and asked if I could run her post again on my site.

Not only did Jami agree, but she also sent me links for helpful worksheets she’s created since the post originally ran. Make sure once take advantage of those once you finish reading the post. They’re great tools for self-editing.

After outing a tribe of incubi in government, Jami Gold moved to Arizona and decided to become a writer, where she could put her talent for making up stuff to good use. Fortunately, her muse, an arrogant male who delights in making her sound as insane as possible, rewards her with unique and rich story ideas. Fueled by chocolate, she writes paranormal romance and urban fantasy tales that range from dark to humorous, but one thing remains the same: Normal need not apply. Just ask her family—and zombie cat.

Take is away Jamie…

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How to Make the Most of a Scene

By Jami Gold

Whether we plot our stories ahead of time or write by the seat of our pants, we need to ensure our scenes are working as hard as they could be.

  • If we’re plotters, we consciously decide on the focus of our scenes ahead of time.
  • If we’re pantsers, we make up our scenes as we go along, and the conscious evaluation doesn’t happen until revision time.
  • And if we’re somewhere in the middle, we might have an idea of where the scene is supposed to end up, but we take a rambling path to get there, so our revisions will look more like pantsers.

However we get there, at some point we’ll be taking a hard look at every scene. Is this scene needed? Is it too long or too short? Does it have tension? Does it avoid information dumps? Etc., etc.

Great, but that’s all a little vague. After all, how can we tell if a scene is needed? Sure, some scenes might be obviously unnecessary as we pantsed our way down a rabbit trail, but other scenes feel like they’re needed. So how can we tell?

Guidelines for What Makes a Good Scene

Good scenes should have at least three reasons for existing. Those evil info dump or backstory scenes falter not only because of bad structure, but also because they fail to be relevant to the overall story. They’re missing those other reasons for existing.

So as we go through our story, we need to make sure every scene has at least three of the following revelations:

  • a plot point
  • a character’s goal
  • action to advance the plot
  • action to increase the tension
  • character development
  • a cause of character conflict
  • an effect of character conflict
  • how stakes are raised
  • a reinforcement of the stakes
  • character motivation
  • character backstory
  • world building
  • story theme
  • foreshadowing
  • the story’s tone or mood

Janice Hardy has a great blog post about how to mix and match these elements in a way to make the scene feel like a full meal. She points out that some elements, like foreshadowing, world building, or tone should be treated more like appetizers. In other words, those elements shouldn’t be the main point of the scene.

I Have Three Elements in This Scene, Am I Good Now?

Making sure every scene has three reasons to exist proves the scene needs to be in our story, but we still haven’t checked to make it the best it could be. When we’re consciously evaluating a scene—whether during initial planning or revisions—we need to be aware of the main reason that scene exists.

In her post, Janet talks about the elements that are legitimate main points for a scene: Is a character pursuing a goal? Are we revealing important information? Is the plot advancing? Those questions ensure we’re not just padding an info dump scene with two other minor elements.

But even those questions don’t get to the heart of a matter. A story is more than just a collection of plot points. Stories are meant to evoke emotion. So the most important question to ask ourselves is:

“What do we want this scene to accomplish from the reader’s perspective?”

Maybe we want the reader to be scared, or worried, or excited, or whatever. Then we need to look at the actual plot points, dialogue, revelations, character emotions, and whatnot in the scene and decide:

“What’s the best way to show the elements of this scene to accomplish that?”

Once we know what we want to accomplish, maybe we’ll decide the words of the dialogue are revealing the right information, but the tone is wrong. Or maybe we’ll decide there’s a better way to show the protagonist’s vulnerability. Or maybe we’ll decide we let the protagonist advance the plot too easily.

This takes hard brainpower and conscious focus. I’ll admit this deep evaluation doesn’t come easily to me. But if I take the time to do it, I’ll often see how a sentence here or a reordering of paragraphs there will create stronger emotions in the reader. And that’s what good storytelling is all about.

Have you evaluated your scenes in depth like this before? Does it come easily to you or not? When you’ve evaluated your scenes, what have you discovered?

Find Jami at her blog, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and Goodreads. And don’t forget to download her elements of a good scene checklist and worksheet!

I’d love to have you sign up to receive my posts by email. All you need to do is enter your email address below and hit the “Follow” botton.

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And don’t forget that you can receive a free copy of my guide Everything You Always Wanting to Know about Hiring a Freelance Editor by signing up for my newsletter. <–Click right there. You know you want to 🙂