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Tag Archives: anchor
Jump into the action
Once you’ve settled on the who and the what, the when might still need a little fine tuning. In Revision And Self-Editing, James Scott Bell gives a great rule of thumb: “act first, explain later” (132). Start with action—a character doing something—and explain only what’s absolutely necessary, and even then, wait as long as possible.
There are other advantages to this approach, too. The primary advantage is that it piques the reader’s curiosity. This hearkens back to our series on tension and suspense, where one technique to increase tension within a scene is to start the scene with a bang.
One great way to create tension is not to explain these actions—at first. The reader is taken aback by this interesting or inexplicable action—and they’re eager to not only find out what happens next, but to learn why this is happening now.
As James Scott Bell says in Revision And Self-Editing, you can “marble in” this sequel information through the beginning of the scene.
This works on a story-level as well as the scene-level when used in the opening.
When done well, opening with action also helps to anchor us in the POV character’s head far better than, say, starting with their thoughts off in space could. Rather than thinking about the backstory, the character should be acting based on the backstory. Then slipping in that information will be natural.
In Don’t Murder Your Mystery, Chris Roerden distinguishes between “backstory,” the events that take place before a story starts, and “background,” which supplies information that was or still is true. To use yesterday’s example, Hamlet’s father being dead and his mother marrying his uncle are part of the background. By Chris’s definition, then, we want to get the background in so the story makes sense, but not so much we slow the story down—a classic problem of backstory.
Tomorrow we have a guest post from the magnificent Margie Lawson with more about managing backstory!
What do you think? What kind of action do you start with?
Photo by Horia Varlan
Posted in Technique
Tagged action, anchor, Backstory, bad backstory, beginning, beginnings, boring backstory, establishing tension, tension
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Techniques to establish deep POV
When we’re writing in deep POV, as writers, we have to get deep into our characters’ heads. We have to know what they’re seeing, feeling and thinking. But how do we get our readers into our characters’ heads, too (I mean, isn’t it getting a little crowded in here?).
Open in that point of view
Start the scene in the POV character’s head as opposed to, say, using someone else’s (or possibly even the POV character’s) dialogue. While an interesting line of dialogue may make a good hook, it can also make it harder to figure out whose head we’re in, and how we should interpret that line. This is especially important in the very first scene (an example of this from Edittorrent).
When we begin a scene in the character—talking about what they’re seeing, doing, feeling, perceiving—it gives our readers a clearer idea of what’s happening and just whose thoughts they’ll be privy to for at least this scene. You’re not required to make sure the first character named in the scene is the POV character, but it can help orient your readers if you’re using multiple viewpoint characters, and especially if you have more than one of them in the scene (another Edittorrent example).
Open with an anchor
Sometimes I get so into opening inside a character’s head that I make the mistake of opening scenes right inside their thoughts. For example, opening a scene like this:
Why was this her cross to bear? Why did it have to happen this way?
And on for several more lines. Say this is from the middle of a story and we only have one female POV character. The reader can figure out pretty quickly who’s thinking this—but let’s not make the reader work to figure out what’s going on.
When we open in a POV character’s head, we usually need some sort of anchor to let us know who, when and where we are:
Jessica flipped through the pages of her father’s journal in disbelief. Why was this her cross to bear? Why did it have to happen this way?
Note that this is totally, completely my opinion, but it’s an opinion I’ve arrived at from inspecting my own work closely.
Next week, we’ll look at even more techniques for deep POV, to make sure your readers stay in your characters’ heads, as well as how to convey your characters’ voice deep POV.
How do you establish POV in your scenes? What techniques do you use early on to make sure we know whose head we’re in?
Photo credits: door—Vinicio Capossela; anchor—Andrea Kratzenberg
