Indie writers, I love ‘em, but sometimes . . .
I love indie (also known as self-published) writers. I really do. My Kindle (which I also love) is chock-full of outstanding indie fiction, indie memoir, and indie writing advice. I am in several indie writing communities.
But, I have to tell you that every time someone raises – usually under a flag of neutrality, but sometimes with his freak flag flying and daring you to tell him that some rule actually matters – *takes a breath* Where was I? Oh, yes. Sorry. Whenever someone raises the subject of rules and do we really have to follow them, I just want to reach right through the internet and knock some sense into people.
I could end this now. YES, rules matter. They are there for a reason. DO NOT break them until you are quite sure you completely understand them. Grammar rules. Punctuation rules. Sentence structure rules. Point of View rules. Plotting rules. Sure, most of these can be bent and some can be broken if you’ve got good enough a reason. But if you go breaking them without knowing right down to your bones what you’re doing, you will write a mess.
Point of View is one of those tricky little beasts. I’m not going to write a whole book about point of view. There are are excellent books on that subject. Here are two just off the top of my head:
The Power of Point of View by Alicia Rasley
Write Great Fiction – Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress
You can find others.
Let me just say now that skipping around merrily from one character to another giving the reader the thoughts of each of them all in the same scene on the same page will eventually wear out our patience. And, no, just because Johnny is kissing Sally at the same time Sally is kissing Johnny we still don’t need to be inside both their minds at the same time.
One last thing. NO! George R.R. Martin is not breaking the rules of POV characters when he uses ONE, count ‘em ONE, POV voice for each separate chapter of his epic Song of Fire and Ice books. Because, ladies and gentlemen, that is the rule: One POV per chapter. It’s been further sliced to one POV per scene but classically and traditionally One POV Per Chapter is totally correct.
Why in the name of all that’s writerly would someone use Martin as an example of someone who is breaking the rules?
My own preference – not always adhered to – is to write in first person. Yes, it’s limiting. I like that. I like showing the reader only what the narrator sees and hears and knows. Because, guess what, the narrator can be wrong. She can trust the wrong person. She can misinterpret what she sees. And she takes the reader right along with her. Then I write third-person chapters (NOT just paragraphs and not usually scenes, usually whole chapters) that take place away from the first-person narrator, showing events of which she has no knowledge. After all, Joan Hess and Elisabeth Peters use this technique all the time. Not that I’m in their league, you understand. It’s just an effective technique.
I’ve said it before and will no doubt say it again.
Indie writers have got to be BETTER than traditionally published writers. We have to write cleaner, fresher, prose; we have to make fewer typographical errors; we have to create stronger plots and more lifelike characters. We have to be twice as good to be thought half as good.
As long as we settle for almost as good – heck, as long as we settle for the faint praise of “just as good” – we are doomed to live on the edges, kicked to the curb, and ignored.
I’d like to know which Indie books you really liked because every one I’ve ever picked up, I’ve put down inside of 3 pages. And don’t even get me started on cover art.
There is a tsunami of crap everywhere these days. Even newspapers are guilty contributors. Without agents or editors to ride herd over this, readers will spend a lot of money to slog through the quicksandy crap alone. As writers we can’t give readers a reason to spend their time with movies, video games, or, heaven help us, reality television instead of with us. We are supposed to be smarter than that.
I will say that I don’t necessarily require one POV per chapter, nor do I write that way. But I do require a break between scenes for a POV change.
Hi, Sheila!
The standard is one POV per scene. I can deal with that without any quibbles. One per sentence, however, gets on my nerves.
There are a couple of reviews on this site of a couple of good indie writers. I’ll send you a list.