POV

Silhouette of a man with outstretched arms standing in front a wall of monitors that make up a map of the Earth

Book Review: Where the Axe is Buried

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The Story In the future, an authoritarian regime named “The Federation” dominates its citizens through repressive technological surveillance and retribution. Their president, a man who maintains his grip on power by downloading his mind into successive bodies, faces a deteriorating body and a threat to his very existence. In Western …

Cowboy writing with pen next to a campfire

Showdown, Don’t Tell: Keeping a Consistent Narrative Voice

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Fiction writers have a lot of rules. “Show, don’t tell” sits near the top of the rulebook, right up there with point of view (POV), use of said tags, and eliminating adverbs. But sometimes we follow those rules straight into a literary box canyon. So take off your cowboy hat, …

Filter Out Filter Words

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The most common stylistic problem I find while editing early drafts (both my own and those of critique partners) is excessive filtering and filter words. Filter words are terms and phrases that filter action or insight through a character’s point of view (POV). Overusing them is like asking your reader …

3rd Person Omniscient POV

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The third person omniscient point of view is the most open and flexible POV available to writers. As the name implies, an omniscient narrator is all-seeing and all-knowing. — David Mamet Once a writer decides to use a third person point of view (POV) the next question is: what is …

Point Of View

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Trends In a list of the twenty most popular science fictions books of 2019, 60% were written in third-person point-of-view (POV), 40% in 1st person and none in second person. Although the story in each novel is very inventive, the authors adhere to the rules of point-of-view, much like punctuation …

Deep Third Person Point-Of-View

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What if you want to write a story with a personal, emotional and introspective point of view? You would have two basic choices: First person: The heat of the dragon’s breath warmed my face, increasing the pounding in my chest. Deep 3rd person: The heat of the dragon’s breath warmed …