In Today’s Journal
* My Quote of the Day
* I Had Another Thought re POV Character Description
* Another Thought on Scams, and Not Scams
* Yesterday
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
My Quote of the Day
“The nasally lilt of his voice reminds me of Truman Capote combined with an ancient, whiskey-soaked barfly: whiny, but with the sound of heavy iron chains being dragged over gravel.” POV character Jack Striker in BO-53
I Had Another Thought
re POV character description in a first-person narrative:
Third-person limited omniscient (or full omniscient) narrative is by far the easier way for a writer to tell a story.
(No hate mail, please. I’m neither endorsing nor condemning third-person, and if that’s how you prefer to write, that’s fine. I’m only saying it’s easier. I’ve written in both third- and first-person. The story itself usually dictates which I use.)
Now, with any luck, the characters are still living the story as it unfolds and the writer’s being as hands-off as s/he can be.
But third-person narration invites the writer in as narrator. And that invitation lends the writer the comforting, underlying sense that s/he’s in control of the story. So the line between the storyteller and the story is blurred at best and invisible at worst.
In first-person narration, the line between the storyteller and the story (and the characters who are living the story) is more stark and bold.
So it’s maybe a little more difficult in first-person narration for the writer to intrude and insert something from himself into the story.
As such, first-person narration is maybe the easier way to ensure the POV character tells the story that he and the other characters are actually living.
Maybe that’s even a good thing, since every word in any story—description of character, setting, action, and dialogue (whether presented in first- or third-person)—should come directly through the POV character’s physical and emotional senses.
As to the sticking-point problem of how to describe the POV character in a first-person story, I suspect part of the reason it’s so difficult is because to the POV character, it isn’t a big deal.
After all, he knows what he looks like, at least to himself (his self-image), so in that way it simply isn’t important. So maybe relax and don’t worry about it so much.
All of that said, the above are only my wandering thoughts as they might pertain (shrug, or might not) to you and your psyche as a fiction writer.
I’ve also found over the years that some stories lend themselves more readily to first-person narration and some lend themselves more readily to third.
(Second-person narration, in my experience and in which the POV character addresses “you,” is something that occasionally seeps into either of the two major forms of narration, and when it does so it seeps in naturally and quietly and is of little or no concern.)
Whatever else you do, please write fiction in whatever way you want.
Another Thought on Scams, and Not Scams
A few days ago in my post on scam marketers, I wrote, “Underlying everything else was my sense that anything that seems too good to be true probably is.”
Ironic, isn’t it?
I mean, especially given that I talk almost constantly about writing into the dark and that such a freeing, unbridled non-process is the best way to write and publish authentic stories—
I recognize the irony of my decision not to blindly trust the company not to be a scam.
But it really isn’t the same thing.
When I talk about writing into the dark, I’m not asking anyone to send me money, or even to blindly trust me.
I usually even mention that they can always go back to the ‘safety nets’ of outlining and conscious-mind revision and rewriting if WITD doesn’t work for them.
I only urge others to give WITD a real, honest try so they’ll know definitively for themselves whether it works. Like I did when I stumbled across it back in 2014.
When I first learned Heinlein’s Rules and heard about “writing into the dark,” I was extremely skeptical. I decided to give it a real try only to prove to myself that it wouldn’t work.
But it did work. I thought it was a fluke so I tried it again. Then again. Then again.
When the smoke cleared, I’d written 72 short stories (one every week) and several novels in 72 weeks, and I haven’t looked back. I broke my short-story-every-week streak, but since then I’ve written 238 more short stories plus 122 novels and 10 novellas.
So it doesn’t matter to me personally how anyone else writes, but I’m honestly stymied that some refuse even to try WITD.
I’ve told the story before about a young woman who, in the middle of one of my seminars on WITD, stood up, gathered her papers, and said, “I can’t do this. I just can’t,” then raced from the room. She was almost hyperventilating.
I’m still shaking my head over that one. Still wondering what she thought would happen if she abandoned her outlines and revisions and rewrites and her careful, word-by-word approach to writing fiction. (She’d told me previously if she managed 250 words in a day, that was a ‘great’ day.)
Anyway the fears are all false. There IS no actual risk in writing into the dark, and there are huge rewards. And zero cost to you other than the time it takes you to give WITD a real, honest try.
But again, my standard disclaimer: Every writer’s different, and how you write is up to you. It doesn’t directly affect me or anyone else at all. I just find it all very curious.
Questions about anything above? Email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Deck the Draft: Make Your Story Sparkle A lot of conscious-mind stuff here. I urge you to learn with your conscious, critical mind, then forget it and write with your creative subconscious.
Terminally ill baby ants…. They “emit a chemical signal that prompts adult ants to kill them, helping protect the rest of the colony from infection.” Story ideas abound.
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 1010
Mentorship Words…………….. 240
Total Nonfiction…………………. 1250
Writing of Blackwell Ops 53: Jack Striker | The Next Level
Day 1…… 2035 words. To date………… 2035
Day 2…… 2217 words. To date………… 4252
Fiction for December……………………… 4252
Fiction for 2025…………………………… 758899
Nonfiction for December.………………… 5880
Nonfiction for 2025………………..……… 271010
2025 consumable words………………… 1022340
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 18
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 36
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 122
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29