Tag Archives: reaction

Technique

When your character’s observing

Having a character act instead of react is generally better in fiction, especially when it comes to our POV characters. So, in general, it’s better to choose a POV character who’s participating in the action of a scene. But sometimes the discoveries that come from a character observing are worth the “reactive” POV character.

Binocular Bonanza

Constructing these scenes with POV characters that are more like narrators is a challenge. It’s easy to let our POV character disappear and simply focus on the action. However, readers can quickly forget about a narrator who never says anything—and when the narrator speaks up again, it can be a bit of a jolt. The action playing out needs to take center stage, but we also need to balance the narrator with that action, especially since the narrator’s reactions are the whole reason we’re in this POV.

Here are three steps to keep your narrator-POV character present in the scene!

Anchor the scene in the character

Have the scene start with the narrator-POV character doing something, some physical action—even something small. Opening with this anchor is a great way to establish the POV.

If we can establish the narrator-POV character well enough by showing them as an acting character, readers are that much closer to the character, and that much more sympathetic to his/her actions and reactions.

Ground the scene in the setting

The narrator-POV character must regularly observe his surroundings. This is more difficult to remember in scenes where the narrator-POV character’s observations are mostly heard, whether they’re hearing something they can’t see, listening to a transmission, or simply watching an argument.

By grounding the scene in the narrator-POV character’s observations of the setting (or the people he’s watching), we not only keep the narrator-POV character on the scene (and present in our readers’ minds), but we also keep the scene the narrator-POV character is observing grounded. Instead of showing talking heads floating in a vacuum, we can present a full scene through our narrator-POV character’s eyes.

However, stating, “Jimmy observed the large crates behind Peter,” is actually counterproductive here. Instead of being in Jimmy’s head, seeing things with him, it’s more like we’ve been kicked outside of Jimmy’s head, watching him watch the scene. Instead, we want to carefully construct the grounding to show instead tell:

A stack of large crates loomed behind Peter. Worry wore at Jimmy’s gut. This wasn’t going to end well.

Which brings us to the most important step to keeping our narrator-POV character present in the scene:

Show the character’s reactions

The point of showing a scene through a narrator-POV character is to show that character’s reactions to the scene as it happens—but sometimes it’s easy to forget to include those reactions! We need to have our narrator-POV character react with thoughts and, if necessary, even visceral reactions.

Once again, this is a balancing act. Unless the scene is very slow paced, we don’t need a reaction from our narrator-POV character every sentence, so save the wry commentary for the best moments, when it carries the most impact. At the other end of the scale, we can’t go too long without the reactions, or we give our readers that kick-me-out-of-the-story jolt when we suddenly remind them of our narrator-POV character.

I’ve found the sweet spot is every few lines of dialogue or every few paragraphs. This is one of those your-mileage-may-vary guidelines, but I like to make sure I have a reaction at least every 3-5 paragraphs (including lines of dialogue). (Some of my other personal guidelines include action/speech tags every three lines and using names every half-page or every third time I use a pronoun for the same character. That’s gold, right there, folks!)

Caveat: make sure it’s necessary

If you’re struggling to come up with reactions from your narrator-POV character, maybe it’s time to reconsider whether it’s truly necessary to show the scene through his/her eyes. If the most important thing about this scene is the action of the scene, consider showing it through one of the actors’ eyes. If the most important thing about this scene is your narrator-POV character’s reaction, then use the narrator-POV character.

Read more about choosing a POV character

An example in my work

1983-JULY-Yosemite2-Fuji-RD100_A_0035For one of my books, the climax of the book revolved around revealing two major secrets: the hero unmasking the murderer, and the hero unwitting revealing that he’s undercover and not who he’s been pretending to be, in front of the observer, the heroine.

Originally, I planned to show this sequence from the hero’s eyes. I planned to have him unmask the murderer, then reveal his true identity to the murderer—and then turn and see the heartbroken heroine there, who’d fallen in love with his false pretenses. Can’t you just imagine the guilt the hero would feel? And the surprise for him (and the readers)!

But as I approached this scene, I realized I wanted to show it from the heroine’s POV, because not only would that convey all the information we’d get in the scene from the hero’s POV, but it would also show her immediate reaction—the shock and the hurt, before we get to the anger that she’d probably be at by the time we got to her POV in the next scene.

So to do this, I made sure to anchor the scene very carefully. It starts off with the heroine arriving at the scene, interacting with people, then settling down, trying to sort through her feelings on the last big event. Then the murderer and the hero arrive, not seeing her, and have their confrontation. In my first draft, I didn’t have enough of the heroine’s reactions, and it created that “oh yeah, we were in her head” jolt I’ve mentioned.

Through a couple drafts and some editorial guidance, focused on her reactions, grounded her in the scene (she was sitting, so I had her turn in the chair, grip the armrests, etc.) and strengthened her visceral reactions to keep her reaction the star of the show.

What do you think? Do you have the occasional scene where the POV character is only observing? How do you handle it?

Photo credits: Binocular bonanza—Laura Gilchrist; photographing the photographer—David Prasad

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Technique

When to take critiques

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Obviously, nobody else knows our story and our characters like we, the authors, do. While critique partners are absolutely invaluable in telling whether a scene or even the whole plot works, they don’t have to be the be-all and end-all when it comes to determining what, exactly, goes into your story. As I said yesterday, immediately changing your work based on one person’s opinion is a knee-jerk reaction means you’re writing to an audience of one.

This is exactly why we need more than one critique partner. In fact, it’s why we need even that first critique partner. When one person has read your story (i.e. you), you have the feedback from one person. When you get feedback from one other person (who, let’s face it, may be just as blind as we are when it comes to storytelling, craft, publishing or what have you), now you have two people’s opinions. What if there’s a tie? What if one of you is dead wrong and cannot see it? What if you both missed something?

We need several pairs of eyes to look over our work, to catch our mistakes, to offer different points of view, to get as broad a range of opinions before we start trying to get our books out there and published. (Oy—do you know what it feels like to get feedback in a rejection that you’ve already gotten from a critique partner?)

Take your time in getting critiques (the hard part for me!) and in applying them. Let the feedback set in for a few days, and see if your critique partners all or mostly agree on those points.

Several of Rick Daley’s rules for taking critiques hearken back to this principle:

Rule # 3: Seriously contemplate your changes. Take time. Work through it. You never microwave a roast. Slow cooking always turns out better. (NOTE: what’s with all the food references?)

Rule # 4: Look for common threads in the feedback and start there. The advice of the many outweighs the advice of the few. . .

Rule #7: Be ready to disregard any feedback that doesn’t make sense. Sometimes people will tell you to say something different, but that does not always equate to better. Some people may give ill-advised feedback. If it doesn’t make sense and if clarification [rule #6] seems unnecessary, just disregard it.

The majority doesn’t have to rule, of course—it’s still your story. You can do what you want, what you feel is right. But if some advice is truly wrong for your story (because, say, your CP hasn’t read the whole thing yet and couldn’t possibly know that person is the murderer), still look to see if there’s an underlying issue prompting this advice that needs to be resolved. Maybe that character’s behavior in this scene is too strange or leaves too big a clue.

And what if they tell you to cut your favorite part of the story?

The fact that it’s your favorite may be a bad sign in and of itself. We all have our “darlings,” and yes, some of them must be killed. Give the advice some time. Weigh it out. Contemplate how cutting or changing that element would change your story. Could you take it in new directions? Would it deepen the characters? Make the plot stronger? Or just plain be more interesting?

I’ve mentioned this before, but even if we’re initially opposed to some advice, sometimes thinking it through makes a huge difference:

I should add here that fortunately I’ve been a victim of this one, too. My favorite example here is when a critique partner suggested I add a scene near the beginning of the book. I hemmed and hawed over this privately—until the scene started playing out in my mind. It was so entertaining—and just like she said, solved so many problems—that I just had to write it, just to see what it’d look like. (And when I still liked the finished product, I stuck it in there.)

And, as always, remember to thank your critique partners!

What do you think? How do you know when (and when not to) take advice from critiques?

Photo by Casey Smith

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Technique

How to take critiques

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We’ve talked about receiving bad advice before. And sometimes, recognizing bad advice is as easy as reading it, like when I received a suggestion that would kill all the tension in a story—or kill the murderer in the opening scene.

But not all advice we have an adverse reaction to is bad. Sometimes it just hurts us on an emotional level, and we react from that place instead of really listening to the ideas in the critique.

Rick Daley, who runs the Public Query Slushpile, offered this advice on receiving critiques:

Rule # 1: Don’t pout if you hear something negative. Remember that you asked for the feedback in the first place. Don’t get defensive and don’t argue.

What’s the best thing to do if the advice hurts? Do. Not. Engage. If you respond emotionally to something a critique partner said analytically, first of all, the CP’s entire frame of reference is off. This can escalate very quickly into emotional and even personal attacks—when really, your CP (probably) wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings. (This assumes your CP wasn’t unnecessarily harsh or otherwise insane critique partner.)

If you find the critique painful, simply thank your critique partner and put the critique away for a while—however long it takes to take the edge off, and then some. (It might also be a good idea to take a step back from your work for a while, too, if you’re still that emotionally invested. Critique partners are only the first of many people who will respond to your work!)

Critiques can be a good way to work on developing that “thick skin” that you’ll need when you face rejection after rejection, endless rounds of editorial revisions, or harsh reviews.

Of course, just because some feedback hurts doesn’t automatically mean you should follow it. Immediately changing your work based on one person’s opinion is another knee-jerk reaction that may not be helpful either. We’ll look at how to determine whether to follow hard advice tomorrow.

What do you think? What do you do when a critique hurts?

Photo by Paul Iddon

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