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

Notice how the following scene 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 scene, this time told from Nevar’s perspective. We “hear” what she is thinking and only through her eyes know what Evod is doing:

Nevar turned over the food pack in her hands in the pre-dawn light. Silently she examined the craft’s hull and then unpacked her ceremonial suit. Out of the corner of her eye, she 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 it needs to be consistent throughout the story to establish “unity of effect.” Without a consistent point of view, the reader can lose track of who the story is about, and dramatic tension is weakened. 
 
Writing guidebooks often advise that your viewpoint ought to be from 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 main character. 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 usually 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, 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.

______________

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:

“Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.” – Donald Hall

“By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.” – Walt Whitman

“But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That’s all.” – Wole Soyinka

“Beware of advice — even this.” – Carl Sandburg

“If you wish to be a writer, write.” – Epictetus

______________

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:

As developing your story, maintaining a sense of tension is vital. Without dramatic tension – a feeling of uncertainty in the reader about how the main character will solve (or even if he will resolve) the central problem – the story will be flat and vanilla.

Creating tension involves controlling the story’s pace. Pace is the timing by which the major events in the plot unfold and in which the big scenes are shown.

The “better” the story, then the better that the author handled the pace. “Star Wars IV: A New Hope”, the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, Douglas Adams’ comedic novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder” all are examples of masterful pacing.

Every story has a different pace. Those that are more introspective tend to move at a slower pace while those that are action-packed tend to be fast. Because of this, all stories run on a “story clock”. This is a measurement in which action is internally described. As with the wider universe, however, there is no objective clock. A true sign of craftsmanship is when an author sets the story clock winding at the right pace for an individual tale.

Regardless of the story, however, good pacing always involves compression and expansion of time – In “real time,” events don’t unfold at the same rate as they do in a story. For example, a suborbital flight from New York to Tokyo in real time might take a hour, but in the story it’s handled in a phrase that takes a couple of seconds to read. Usually the authors speeds up or slows down the action to match the emotions he wants the reader to have.

Another aspect of good pacing is “travel time”. Characters don’t change their personalities or their minds about important decisions overnight. A character must “travel” a certain emotional distance to arrive at such changes. The author’s wording and dramatic action must mirror that pace.

Of course, you have only so many words to tell a story, so reducing that “travel time” is important. There are a few ways you can accomplish that without cheating on the emotional distance that a character must traverse:
• Intercut a different story – Sometimes a parallel story or subplot can help lead the character to change more quickly because he realizes, through analogy, that he must change.
• Fill intervening time with straight action – A change often doesn’t occur because one has thought through a problem but because physical experiences test and uncover what one truly believes. Straight action can be a crucible that helps the character come to a new understanding.
• Develop other characters – As with a parallel story or subplot, other characters who undergo change can affect the protagonist. Their changes can test and alter the protagonist’s beliefs.
• Offer description – Changes in the landscape and climate can symbolically represent the emotional currents in the protagonist’s thinking.

______________

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:

“There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.” – Saul Bellow

“If the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it – the effort, however humble, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded.” – Ann Radcliffe

“Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.” – Charles Caleb Colton

“The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.” – Sir Winston Churchill

“A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.” – Tom Bissell

______________

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:

If you have a completed manuscript, you actually should to format two ebooks – one for Kindle Direct Publishing and one for Draft2Digital. This actually is less work than it sounds as you can format an ebook that will work for both Kindle and Draft2Digital.

Why create an ebook for these two retailers?

You’ll want to go with Kindle because it dominates the market. As of the beginning of 2014, about two out of three ebooks are sold on Kindle. Not going with Kindle is like selling your paper book in only 16 of the 50 states (at best). You’ll also want to use Draft2Digital so you have a version of your book available in Nook, iPad, Kobo or Sony Reader. Draft2Digital is a one-stop shop for accomplishing this and much easier than developing a separate ebook for each ereader device and uploading it at its respective company site. By uploading your ebook to both Kindle and Draft2Digital, you’ll reach about 98 percent of the ereader market in North America.

As Kindle is much more flexible than Draft2Digital in how the file you upload can appear, follow the latter’s guidelines when creating an ebook. Having said that, you should still create an ebook for Kindle first, as you’ll be able to better review it online to ensure it looks good and as we’ll need to add wording to the title page to get it uploaded on Draft2Digital.

Since Kindle offers unique marketing opportunities for books that it exclusively sells, you may want to only upload to Kindle and not Draft2Digital. Still, by formatting your Kindle ebook manuscript for Draft2Digital means that once those promotional opportunities are used up, you’ll have an ebook that can be quickly uploaded to Draft2Digital to sell books at Barnes & Noble, Apple and so on.

Start by creating a Microsoft Word document. Call it whatever you like (I usually go with the book’s title) but include the word KINDLE in its name. Make sure it’s a .doc file rather than .docx or .rtf. While Kindle accepts all of these file types, Draft2Digital (at the time of this writing) only accepts .doc.

Changing the Word document so that it’s a .doc is simple. Go to “save as” and on the pop-up window that asks you where to save the file, change “save file as” to “Microsoft Word 97 – 2003 Document”.

Next, set up your .doc file for formatting so it:
• Uses regular typeface in one font size
• Uses single spacing with a line spacing of 1.0
• Does not use the “Add Space Before Paragraph” or the “Add Space After Paragraph” function
• Does not have any pre-set tabs
• Uses normal margins, as you would for typing a letter
• Uses Align Left so that the right margin is ragged

Next, open Notepad on your computer and copy and paste your manuscript to it. This deletes a lot of hidden coding that likely will be a problem for you as formatting your ebook. Finally, cut and paste the manuscript from Notepad to your new .doc. Be forewarned that if you have tables and charts in your Word manuscript, using Notepad almost certainly will mess up their appearance. You’re much better off to convert tables and charts into photos that you’ll later insert at the appropriate spots in your ebook.

Now you’re ready to get into the nitty-gritty of formatting – which we’ll cover in future blog entries.

If you don’t sell 5,000 books, still don’t despair. Instead, get working on that next book. Perhaps that one will catch on – and then readers will discover that masterpiece you’ve previously written.

__________________________

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 self-publishing guidebooks: