Mess these two words up, and you may be hitting the back space key. That all depends on what side of the Atlantic you’re on, though.

If in America, use backward, no “s”.

If in Britain, use backwards. Unless you’re using “backward” as an adjective, then use backward as in “The people of the north country revel in their backward ways.”

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

So you’ve written a scene packed with action, ripe with conflict, and filled with tension – but every time you read it, the writing feels flat. The problem may be that you’re writing in passive rather than active voice.

Active voice is when the subject of the sentence does (or acts upon) something. In the following active voice sentence, the subject (streak of light), does something (arcs):

The streak of light arced across the sky as if a falling star.

Passive voice, however, occurs when the subject is acted upon. For example, the above sentence in passive voice would be written as:

Arcing across the sky, as if a falling star, was a streak of light.

Passive voice generally should be avoided, for a couple of reasons:
• It’s dull – It’s like telling you something “exists.” In the above example, the author really is saying “In the sky exists a streak of light.” Sleeker and more economical, active voice speeds up the story.
• It’s awkward – Notice how the phrase “as if a falling star” seems stuck in the middle of the sentence, as if it is out of place. Rewriting the sentence so it’s in active voice would give the phrase a place to fit.
• It’s wordy – The passive voice sentence above says in 14 words what the active voice sentence says in 13 words. One word may not seem like much, but in a 100,000-word novel, it can mean a few unnecessary pages of copy.

Of course, sometimes “passive voice” is needed. You do need, on occasion, to tell people that something “exists,” especially when writing exposition. In addition, you don’t want to overdo it with active voice. The reader can only go at high speed so long before getting motion sickness.

How do you know if you have a passive voice sentence? Look for “being verbs” – these are verbs that show the subject “exists.” There are only eight being verbs: is, are, am, was, were, be, being and been. Also, look for the three words had, has and have, which are week fill-ins for the verb “possess”. If any of those words appear in your sentence, you need an active verb.

Converting passive to active voice is a simple process. First, identify the sentence’s subject, or who/what the sentence is doing something. For example, in the passive sentence “Through him was running an icy shiver,” “shiver” is the subject.

Next, place the subject at the sentence’s beginning. You would then have a sentence that reads “An icy shiver through him was running.”

Then identify the verb, or the words that describe what the subject is doing. In this case, its “was running.” Place those words immediately after the subject so that the sentence now reads “An icy shiver was running through him.”

Finally, get economical by cutting out the being words – in this case “was” – and reworking the verb so it makes sense in the sentence. The sentence we’re working on now would read “An icy shiver ran through him.”

You now have a sentence in active voice.

Sometimes you may have to replace the being verb with an active voice verb that actually shows action. For example, in the passive sentence “Miles of salt flats, a dry bed of crimson and pastel green, is between them”, “is” needs to be replaced with a verb. “Separated” would work much better. The sentence “Miles of salt flats, a dry bed of crimson and pastel green, separated them” is in active voice.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.” – Ernest Hemingway

“If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.” – Richard Bach

“I wanted to invent myself as a fictional character. And I did, and it has caused a great deal of confusion.” – Jeanette Winterson

“Basically you come up with the fictional idea and you start writing that story, but then in order to write it and to make it seem real, you sometimes put your own memories in. Even if it’s a character that’s very different from you.” – Jeffrey Eugenides

“I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.” – Penelope Lively

Today’s sophisticated readers generally demand that your stories contain three-dimensional characters, that is, a protagonist who behaves like a real person and who probably grows by learning something along the way. But how do you create such a character? A three-dimensional, or round, character would do the following:

Express multiple emotions
In our daily lives, we rarely express a lone emotion all day or react to all things with the same single feeling. We are cheerful, we are frustrated, we are pleased, we are angry, we are lustful, we are bored. In fact, whenever a person constantly displays only one emotion – sadness or anger, for example – we tend to worry that there is something wrong with him. Except for the most dire of circumstances, such as to show a character has sunk into deep depression, always have a character express a number of emotions, as the plot permits.

Struggle with conflicting emotions
Most of us find ourselves doing what we think is best though we don’t feel like doing it or vacillating between thoughts as our feelings play tug of war inside us: we want to tell off someone but know we need to bite our tongue; we don’t want to attend our loudmouth neighbor’s party but know his good-natured wife will be offended if we don’t. Have your main character grapple with his emotions as well.

Possess flaws
No one is perfect, except for hackneyed story characters. Allow them to make mistakes, to have weaknesses and fears. If they don’t have a flaw, they risk becoming a comic book-like caricature. Make their flaws integral to the plot so that it stands out.

Undergo change
As a real person, you experience and learn something new everyday; though it may not be earth-shattering, it does affect who you are so that the person you are today is not the person you were 20 years ago. In a story, a protagonist ideally will experience and learn something that changes – for the better – his perspective on himself or the world.

Display some unique quirk
Each of us has some habit or subtle tic that sets us apart from others – biting one’s fingernails when nervous, twirling one’s hair when uncertain, winking at others when feeling happy. Your main character also should have some quirk that is uniquely his, that can come to be associated with him.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Many writers have unfinished novels and short stories sitting on their hard drives or as printouts in a desk drawer. Often coming up with a story idea isn’t a problem, but finding the time or knowing how to finish the work is.

There are several approaches any writer can use to finish their story:
• Set a deadline – Sometimes nothing works better than the challenge of a deadline. This forces you to avoid waiting for inspiration and to get down to the hard work of writing. Simply set a realistic goal for how many words or pages you will write a day. Figure out how many words/pages you still need to write to finish a work. Then divide those number of words/pages by how many words/pages you can write in a day. That gives you the number of days needed to complete your novel, and that many days out is your deadline. For example, suppose you can write 1,000 words a day. A short novel is about 70,000 words; suppose you’ve written 40,000 so far. That means you’ve got 30,000 words to go. At 1,000 words a day, that means you could finish the novel in 30 days (30,000/1,000). If today is Aug. 18, your deadline is midnight Sept. 18.
• Outline the rest of the book – Often writers get stalled because they’re not certain where their book is going. Plot out the rest of the story, describing beat-by-beat how you want the story to develop and how you want the main character to resolve the tale’s central problem. The more detailed you can be, the easier writing those last chapters will be.
• Find a writing partner – Someone else who also is trying to finish their story can be a great inspiration. He can offer encouragement and critiques of your work. If you meet regularly, ensuring you have text for one another to read can serve as a “deadline.”

Of course, sometimes the story is so poorly done in its opening sections that there really is no good reason to finish it. Despite that the story may be unpublishable, I’d recommend finishing it anyway. Completing one story makes completing the second one all that easier, in the same way that completing your first 5k run (even if you’re not going to win the race) makes finishing the second 5k run all that more easy. Finishing the story gives you the full experience of writing one, after all, and that may help you avoid pitfalls on the next go.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Good stories center on the clashing of characters’ goals and motivations. Sometimes a character’s goals and motivations center around finding his identity. Here are four writing prompts for stories that involve the motivation of finding one’s identity.

Man vs. nature
Your main character is stuck in a perilous environment in which he comes to question all he believes in, as he barely is able to survive his journey to safety. What new virtues does he come to cherish, and how does he come to define himself, as he slowly, achingly, closes on a successful conclusion of his journey?

Man vs. man
A person with amnesia arrives at the main character’s doorstep. How does our main character help the amnesia victim find his way in the world? How does the main character search to determine the amnesia victim’s identity? What if this amnesia victim doesn’t want to learn who is?

Man vs. society
Our main character finds himself stuck in a place where he is unable to communicate with others. How does he find his way? What if this society looks down upon him because of his inability to communicate?

Man vs. himself
The main character finds he is unable to settle on his own identity, which is exemplified in his constantly changing outward expression of self (haircut, facial expressions, clothing, favorite verbal expressions, etc.). How through self-examination does he determine what is meaningful to him? How in the end does he imagine his future so he can determine who he is today?

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Ever see words so mixed up that you wanted to pinch your nose shut? That happens with me whenever I see these two words confused.

“Breathe” is to inhale and exhale, as in “We must breathe oxygen to stay alive.”

“Breath” is a solitary moment of inhaling or exhaling or the actual air that is inhaled/exhaled, as in “He stopped to catch his breath” or “His breath stunk like garlic.”

In short, you may not want to breathe someone’s breath.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Every story has an angle or perspective from which it is told. This perspective is called point of view.

Notice how the following passage is from an outsider’s perspective, as if the narrator were looking down upon the action from a viewpoint that is able to see all:

Even before the sun rose, Evod and Nevar prepared themselves for the race. Silently, they inventoried supplies, examined their craft’s hull and unpacked Nevar’s ceremonial suit. Evod inspected each items with a drill instructor’s eye, discovering problems that really weren’t.

Here’s the same passage, this time told from Nevar’s perspective. We “hear” what he is thinking and only through his eyes know what Evod is doing:

Nevar turned over the food pack in his hands in the pre-dawn light. Silently he examined the craft’s hull and then unpacked his ceremonial suit. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Evod staring at the control panel, fretting again about a problem that really wasn’t.

Selecting the best point of view is important because each perspective dramatically changes the reader’s understanding of what is occurring. Often novice writers select a point of view because they like its “sound” or because it allows them to write a passage in a way that another point of view wouldn’t allow. What should be most important, however, is for the author to determine what he wants the reader to get from the story then choose a point of view best serving that goal. After all, which point of view an author uses determines what aspects of a story will be left out and deeply affects how the reader relates to the main character.

Writing advice books typically recommend that you tell your story from the viewpoint of the character who has the most at stake, and as a general rule, it is a good guideline to follow. But point of view selection is a more sophisticated process than simply writing the story’s perspective from that of the protagonist. Sometimes the main character’s viewpoint is not suitable for revealing the story’s theme.

Even if you’re consistent with your point of view, should you select the wrong perspective from which to tell the story, you run the risk of writing a story that reeks of:
• Mannerisms – The author’s persona shouldn’t become more important than the story’s events itself. Often flamboyant diction occurs.
• Frigidity – Excessive objectivity can trivialize the story’s events.
• Sentimentality – This occurs when trying to evoke an emotional response that the story’s events cannot evoke by themselves.

For beginning writers, point of view perhaps is the most difficult element to master. Scenes often are envisioned in different points of view and so are knitted together. These individual scenes may be the best options for what the author wishes to achieve, but when connected to the rest of the story, they cause the story to lose unity of effect.

When writing, follow these point of view guidelines:
• Use one point of view per story. Jumping around is confusing.
• Usually the point of view in a scene is that of the story’s main character.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out my writing guidebooks about point of view: