First person pov V third

Scott,

good practice for 3rd limited is just writing one character. Look at Beneath the Surface of Two Kills. I read that over and over and over.

Posted by: @scott_m_sands

I usually write in 3rd person POV, rarely 1st POV. But I naturally sway toward 3rd omniscient. Still working on how to really get some of the same meaning across and staying in 3rd limited. have tried to get across some world building info through dialogue but I have to be careful to avoid As You Know Bob. 

https://www.writersofthefuture.com/forum/the-contest-quarterly-topics-and-other-items/wulf-moons-super-secrets-workshop-challenge/paged/3/#post-24950

In case Forumites don’t know what As You Know Bobs or Maid and Butler dialogue is, here’s the Super Secrets’ lesson.

@axeminister

Thanks, Dustin. Will do.

Posted by: @wulfmoon

Posted by: @scott_m_sands

I usually write in 3rd person POV, rarely 1st POV. But I naturally sway toward 3rd omniscient. Still working on how to really get some of the same meaning across and staying in 3rd limited. have tried to get across some world building info through dialogue but I have to be careful to avoid As You Know Bob. 

https://www.writersofthefuture.com/forum/the-contest-quarterly-topics-and-other-items/wulf-moons-super-secrets-workshop-challenge/paged/3/#post-24950

In case Forumites don’t know what As You Know Bobs or Maid and Butler dialogue is, here’s the Super Secrets’ lesson.

I was going to ask that.

@craydimensional

As you're already aware Cray, Wulf's page will will summarise this much better than I could and explain that it's about not using dialogue in an unrealistic way to reveal details of the story.

And as I know Scott, you probably don't do this anyway. Good to check, though.

I encourage every writer to get ahold of the Turkey City Lexicon and learn it well. It covers a ton of things I see in critiques regularly, and is a good basis for understanding common mistakes. 

@rschibler

Looked it up, thanks. I liked the simple definitions.

'Fuzz' and 'The Rug Jerk' are good reminders for me.

The disturbing thing about reading articles like this is seeing things I'm guilty of.

Posted by: @rschibler

I encourage every writer to get ahold of the Turkey City Lexicon and learn it well. It covers a ton of things I see in critiques regularly, and is a good basis for understanding common mistakes. 

I've never read this before, but the "Poor Me" story set me laughing a lot, and made me feel deeply sorry for the poor slush-readers who I can only imagine encounter this sort of nonsense on a far more regular basis than I do...

I'm not guilty of most of these now, but I've been guilty of some before. Not-simultaneous used to blight my work, and to this day it still feels correct to me, which I suspect means I've seen it used in other writers' fiction a lot, as my gut feeling about right and wrong in writing is very much driven by the things I've read. That's one I probably still need watch out for, as I think those little poisonous seeds have been deeply planted.

(Legitimately, though, reading this actually made me feel better about one of the mechanics I'd used in my Q3, which--now that I think on it more closely--is very much not an "As you know Bob" passage after all, which probably explains why it didn't feel like utter trash to me while I was editing it.) 

Posted by: @rschibler

I encourage every writer to get ahold of the Turkey City Lexicon and learn it well. It covers a ton of things I see in critiques regularly, and is a good basis for understanding common mistakes. 

As you know, I have never read this before either but found it to be a very useful set of pitfalls and "shortcuts" to avoid. I feel I am guilty of a few, especially "Not-simultaneous". "AM/FM" made me laugh but mostly because I did not know what FM was going to stand for and it jumped out and struck me like, well, like you'd expect supercharged "FM" to strike.

Posted by: @time

Like, I guess, many, after seeing Wulf  say that WotF judges prefer third person pov, I think – yeah, but the number of 1^st person winning entries is high.

Flash Fiction Magazine has a free course at the moment. FREE How to Write Flash Fiction Crash Course | Flash Fiction Magazine It’s brief and okay. Pretty well seen it all before.

However, what they have to say about 1^st v 3^rd is interesting -

Like first-person, third-person limited is close and personal, but because there is some distance established between the language of the story itself and the character, it’s easier to describe what’s happening using concrete description and imaginable action.

But here’s the kicker: it then becomes harder to tell or explain why a character is doing something. And this is a key insight into writing compelling flash fiction, because when a character acts in a story without explanation—or, in other words, is unpredictable—the reader will engage more deeply to try and figure out why.

(I'm going to presume they don't mind me quoting a little from their course since it's free and I'm effectively promoting it).

They also say - The secret ingredient to writing great stories is getting feedback from professional editors and other writers who are learning just like you. (I'm not very good at doing this.)

I think it all comes down to: know your market. Flash fiction is very intimate. I've both subscribed and submitted to FFO in the past and can say first person present works very well for that medium. Exceptions exist for every rule, of course. But when the primary judges/editors say they prefer one POV over another, it's good advice to heed that preference for the best shot at success.

My wife is in the other room reading a first person present novel to my son. Out loud it just doesn't sound right. Maybe because I am so familiar with the reader's voice and being in space doesn't sound right, but the whole thing doesn't sound right aloud.

Maybe that's part of the whole truth to story being in 3rd person. Anyone can read a story about someone else, right? A fireside tale. But probably more difficult to suspend disbelief when it's 1PP read aloud.

Interesting...

One of the best stories I ever read — easily among my Top 10 — is Lauren Oliver's Delirium trilogy. Written in 1st person, I felt like it was totally absorbing and personal. Just a really fantastic and well-told story, and I thought Oliver pulled the narrative off masterfully.

The story, I think, determines the POV. I've written in both first and third. Some stories just "sound" better one way or the other inside my head.

Posted by: @axeminister

My wife is in the other room reading a first person present novel to my son. Out loud it just doesn't sound right. Maybe because I am so familiar with the reader's voice and being in space doesn't sound right, but the whole thing doesn't sound right aloud.

Maybe that's part of the whole truth to story being in 3rd person. Anyone can read a story about someone else, right? A fireside tale. But probably more difficult to suspend disbelief when it's 1PP read aloud.

Interesting...

Interesting... I tend to think in first person present tense, so it reads naturally to me, but I haven't read it aloud often.

Posted by: @rschibler

I encourage every writer to get ahold of the Turkey City Lexicon and learn it well. It covers a ton of things I see in critiques regularly, and is a good basis for understanding common mistakes. 

Not-simultaneous was the one that jumped out at me as something I do a lot of (as others here have also mentioned).

Posted by: @czing

Posted by: @rschibler

I encourage every writer to get ahold of the Turkey City Lexicon and learn it well. It covers a ton of things I see in critiques regularly, and is a good basis for understanding common mistakes. 

Not-simultaneous was the one that jumped out at me as something I do a lot of (as others here have also mentioned).

 

Example: The mis-use of the present participle is a common structural sentence-fault for beginning writers. “Putting his key in the door, he leapt up the stairs and got his revolver out of the bureau.”

It mentions shading into "ing disease". I use -ing A LOT. Carefully, and after checking each one to se... damn. Anyway, yeah. I could never remove my -ings. But I have nuked my -as's. I find them more often in crits than the others.

"He ducked as bullets flew overhead." See, now if that were the case - he'd be dead. He must duck first.

Posted by: @rschibler

I encourage every writer to get ahold of the Turkey City Lexicon and learn it well. It covers a ton of things I see in critiques regularly, and is a good basis for understanding common mistakes. 

That was some great reading, and also quite embarrassing. Apparently there's a name for my particular ailment: "Dischism."

"The unwitting intrusion of the author’s physical surroundings, or the author’s own mental state, into the text of the story. Authors who smoke or drink while writing often drown or choke their characters with an endless supply of booze and cigs. In subtler forms of the Dischism, the characters complain of their confusion and indecision — when this is actually the author’s condition at the moment of writing, not theirs within the story. “Dischism” is named after the critic who diagnosed this syndrome. (Attr. Thomas M. Disch)"

My characters frequently stop and "think for a moment" or are "not really sure what to say". Now I get to be painfully aware of it.

@morgan-broadhead Idea: write it anyway, k? Keep the fingers moving.

When I reach that spot I giggle, and I write it, then I consciously find two choices for the character. Like, literally think of two things, not one.

My stories tend to be horribly linear, so a pause to me means I haven't thought of the next linear event. This is why I deliberately think of two options, in the hopes the 2nd one will be what I wasn't going to think of had I not paused.

If you're really lucky, it will result in an "on screen" choice for the character as well.