This stage of editing is where you really need to lock in your perspective. There are four basic POV perspectives.
First Person
This is as if you, the narrator, were the protagonist: the story uses ‘I’ and ‘we’ or variants thereof to refer to themselves, and observes other characters and settings from this perspective. The author essentially takes the role of the main POV character/s.
Second Person
This is as if you were having a conversation with the reader, and they are the protagonist. It’s the kind of narration a dungeon master uses to direct a character around a dungeon.
Third Person Intimate
This is where you write from an external perspective (out of the character’s head), But follow the thoughts, gesture and observational field of only one character.
This is currently the most popular perspective in modern genre fiction, closely followed by first person. The trick is to imagine a camera on your character’s shoulder which moves as they do, recording only what they can see, but not from behind their own eyes. Example: J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
Third Person Omniscient
This is where you narrate as if you were an eye in the sky, capable of seeing, hearing and depicting everything that occurs in the narrative, including the thoughts or activities of multiple characters. This was a very popular perspective in early science fiction.
As you might expect, the line between the different ‘distances’ possible with third person is often blurry. Stories can and do expand into omniscient without outlaying a scene or setting and then narrow the focus back to the POV character.
If you write in third person, check over to make sure that the widening of your narrative field is controlled rather than see-sawing between intimate and omniscient at random.
There is no one perspective that is better than any other, though certain perspectives suit particular genres more readily than others. Third-person intimate is currently the most popular, perhaps because it mimics the film or television experience and gives the reader a deep understanding of a single person.
Your choice of perspective very much depends on your style, voice, and genre.
Romance being an intimate genre, benefits from intimate perspectives. Science fiction and Epic Fantasy are often less focused on the intimate lives of the characters, and third-person omniscient is more common in these genres.
That’s not to say that you can’t or shouldn’t use a given point of view for any particular story, but if you’re determined to write yourself a third person omniscient romance with a cast of thousands, you certainly set yourself up with an interesting challenge.
If you have written your novel in second person, I sure hope it’s an experimental literary work and not something you want to sell.
It is an extremely difficult perspective to do well for long periods of time, as readers quickly become frustrated when they are told what to do over the course of a story.
One of the best authors to use second person point of view was Franz Kafka, so if you’re wanting to dabble, I recommend you read his short stories.
Generally speaking, you pick one perspective and stick to it throughout the novel. Some books successfully play with perspective, swapping it around and changing between chapters.
This is more common in literary fiction than it is in genre fiction, which conventionally employs one perspective throughout the entire novel. In that case, check your manuscript for strategic consistency — it doesn’t have to be ‘typical’, but it does have to be harmonious.
Pacing
Pacing is a huge factor in any book. Many first-time authors are so eager to get into the action (because that’s what we are told we should do, and often) that they cram too much into the first page at the expense of suspense.
Your first page shouldn’t be like one of those old Myspace pages, crammed with too much bling and obnoxious midi tunes.
At this crucial early stage, your reader doesn’t know any of your characters. If there’s nothing to break up your dialogue and actions they get no sense of who these people are and why they should care about them.
- Do you have stand-alone dialogue without associated actions to break up people speaking? Add actions.
- Is all dialogue and every action clearly assigned? Make sure they are.
- Are all indications of body language, mannerisms, tone, mood? Add them in.
- Could the actions of your first pages be transferred to any setting without significant changes made? If so, it isn’t well grounded in the setting you intended. If your City skyline fight could be moved to an open desert with only the addition of sunlight or sand, you’ll need to rewrite it to better place it within the intended setting.
- Do you notice that this opening scene could be done by any character, not just your main character? Stepping out of a car is a good example. Anyone can step out of a car onto a crime scene. What is something only your character could do?
Screen for slow-moving scenes, sentences, or for ‘participial phrases’. These are sentences which typically begin with an ‘-ing’ word: ‘Having moved from the table, the Queen picked up her letter from the Herald’s tray and anxiously toyed with it in her fingers.’
Unless you’re really in love with this as a stylistic thing, rewrite these sentences into an active voice. You’ll often do well to break participial phrases into two sentences.
A good rule of thumb is that each sentence should do one thing or carry through one action at a time.
Telling the reader about your world through dialogue between characters — also called exposition through dialogue — is a really bad way to hide clumsy exposition:
‘Nazis? What are those?’ Fred gasped.
‘Well, after the fire at the Reichstag in 1933…’ George explained.
Scenes
A scene is a block of action in your manuscript that progresses the plot.
This is a very specific definition.
Progress the plot.
No matter how you choose to structure your book, every single scene must push the plot (or subplots) forward in some way.
Now that we have a definition of suspense, you can probably make the connection that scenes are, ideally, either creating suspense or resolving suspense at any given time.
The rhythm of this build and release of tension is a unique part of your voice and will depend entirely on your tastes and the requirements of your genre.
You might have one scene per chapter or several scenes per chapter. In all instances, you must ask yourself:
- Does the scene belong in the book? Does it advance the action and enrich the story?
- If a scene is between two or more characters, does it advance the story or character development arc between those characters? This includes all sex scenes and romantic or witty romantic/systematic interludes.
- Do you give the characters time to reflect, plan, and make decisions? This is not the same as a ‘filler’ scene where someone is doing something prosaic, like going to the bathroom because they need to. Some of the best character development comes out of scenes where characters are fielding ideas or engaged in suspenseful planning. These ‘downtime’ scenes often end with an explosive revelation, or a new problem which is encountered during the time of reflection.
Every scene has a beginning, middle and end of its own, from the opening line to the conclusion of the scene and then the beginning of the next.
It should have a small conflict of its own, either internal, interpersonal, or external. But remembering the previous warnings about ‘slice-of-life’ material, characters staring into mirrors, characters thinking while eating their Cheerios, etc.
Let’s say that you’re protag and her love interest are involved in a key scene where they are breaking into EvilCorp’s headquarters. The two ladies sneak into the lobby and the conclusion of the scene is that they look up, see a camera pointed at them, and gas begins to fill the room.
Before we reach that mini-climax, the scene still has to have suspense of some kind played throughout. This could be the whispered answer that distracts them from the presence of the camera.
Maybe they thought to take out of all the other cameras by cutting the power, but this particular one runs on an independent power source and they weren’t expecting it to be running.
Maybe they ninja in over lasers and get through, only to cop a face full of gas anyway. You get the gist. A scene where they suddenly waltz into the museum and nothing challenges them until ‘SUDDENLY, DOOM!’ is blah, at best.
End the scene at the point where the conflict is either made worse or resolved in some fashion.
Cut any material that goes on after this point — save it to insert into a later scene if it’s truly important.
As you work through scenes it’s important to keep track of time and place. You must make certain that your characters are physically able to get from place to place in the time you’ve given them.
Ripple Effect
Changes you make near the beginning of your manuscript will have a ripple effect on the rest of your book.
As you become more familiar with the structure of your manuscript, you will start to really get a sense of how the story is put together, what it needs to function properly.
It’s easy to end up with plot holes and ‘dead end’ subplots: plots that you used to have in the book which are partially cut out of the manuscript as you revise it, but that now and suddenly don’t resolve.
To smooth this out — and to keep track of any changes you make — nothing beats good old-fashioned index cards.
Use them to mark your plot and the changes you have made to it at various points in the editing process.
Authors and screenwriters have used index cards or index card like things since time immemorial because they work and they work really well.
Whether you use a program like Scrivner or a pack of paper cards pinned on a corkboard, you can use cards to prevent and discover any problems in your plot at this point of editing.
Need editing or publishing help with your fiction story or memoir? I offer free consultation and personalized quotes. Let’s connect. Send me an email: griffinsmith74@gmail.com
