The Wily Pronoun

Few parts of speech are as wily and confusing as the humble pronoun. Its function seems so simple--to stand in for one or more nouns--and yet pronouns are the source of more mistakes than any other type of word. Even journeyman writers have trouble with these from time to time.

Why do we need pronouns? The answer is because they are transparent. When you read a pronoun, you don't even really see the word itself. Your brain subconsciously and immediately substitutes the thing for which the pronoun stands: its referent. Take the first sentence in this paragraph for example. Did you pause to think about who "we" was? Did you even notice the word "we" at all? I'm willing to bet you didn't. You probably just intuitively understood that I was speaking about myself, you the reader, and other writers like us. That's a lot of work for a little two-letter word! It slipped all that information into your brain without you even knowing it was there. Pretty cool if you ask me!

Pronouns also help vary the pace and rhythm of writing. Writing the same noun over and over becomes repetitive; it feels like being clubbed over the head with words:

Bob Dole won't raise taxes. Bob Dole doesn't believe in higher taxes. That's just not the kind of man Bob Dole is. (Not an actual quote)

That kind of writing is best left to the politicians. Actual human writers use pronouns. Trouble is, a lot of us use them wrong.

To make sure you're using the right pronouns, it's helpful to know the different types and what each is used for. The following overview is adapted from this article. Check it out for a great quick reference.

Personal Pronouns

When you think of pronouns, these are probably the kind you think of first. They stand in for proper and common nouns, and they come in three flavors.

First Person (I, me, we, us): 

For a fiction writer, these are mainly used in dialogue or first person narrative. The main tip to remember is not to overuse them. First person stories can quickly get clogged with "I" sentences: 

I sat down at the table. I picked up my spoon. I turned to Jared and asked him to pass the salt.

Keep in mind that in first person, the reader always knows who the speaker is. It isn't necessary to re-anchor them very often. 

Also, phrases like "I saw" add narrative distance, and the point of first person is maximum narrative intimacy. To keep your reader inside your POV character's mind, write "A lamp glowed on the table" instead of "I saw a lamp glowing on the table"

Second Person (you): 

In fiction, "you" is typically only seen in dialogue. Novels like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have made successful use of a conversational style, but keep in mind that this is a risk. Any direct communication between a character and a reader necessarily breaks the fourth wall. It should only be done for a very good reason, because by definition it knocks the reader out of the story. Overused, it makes a writer look desperate to get his point across.

Third Person (he, she, it, they, them, etc.): 

Far and away the most common pronouns in fiction (even in first person), third person pronouns are actually the most difficult, because you're almost always going to need several at a time. Unless you're writing about a single character standing in a void (which sounds awfully boring), your story is going to be filled with people, places and things, and at most one of them will be referred to with something besides a third person pronoun. 

Jack picked up the gun. It was heavy in his hand.

Here, "it" and "his" are both third person pronouns, standing in for "the gun" and "Jack's" respectively. When you're dealing with one person and one object, things are pretty clear. But the more people and things you throw into the mix, the more slippery those pronouns get:

Before Tom met Jack, he was just an ordinary kid.

Here, "he" could refer to either Tom or Jack. Granted, this is a simple example, and I think it's pretty clear that "he" refers to Tom (because of an issue I'll discuss later), but you see how a reader might get confused. It would be much clearer to say "Tom was an ordinary kid before he met Jack."

The more people, places, and things you involve in a scene, the more nouns you're going to have to use to keep things clear. Occasionally, this can result in passages that repeat the same noun several times, and it can be conspicuous. The only way to avoid this is to keep as few balls in the air as possible. Simplify scenes when you can. If there are people and objects around that aren't directly involved with what's happening, don't mention them. And if a character is interacting with number of people or objects, try to write sequential actions, not simultaneous ones (more on the difference in this article).

No matter how careful you are, you're still bound to struggle with this once in a while. It's worth taking the time to figure out your pronouns, for your reader's sake. They won't thank you, they'll just understand.

I would be remiss if I didn't bring up the issue of gender. When referring to unspecified persons (or persons of a non-binary gender), it's somewhat frowned upon to prefer a single gendered pronoun. In nonfiction (for example, here on this site) the most accepted practice is to vary between masculine and feminine pronouns, and to write around them when possible. 

For my part, I tend to favor first and second person, but I try to oscillate back and forth between "he" and "she" when referring to "the writer" or "the reader". In some cases (especially in my older articles), I even use "they" as a non-gendered pronoun, but that practice is frowned upon by much of the writing community. 

Grammar geeks within the LGBT movement have made various attempts to come up with a non-gendered third person pronoun. Some even prefer to be referred to as "they". Even before LGBT issues were a household topic, writers have posited their own solutions for situations where gender is simply unspecified. None of these efforts have gained traction, and in everyday conversation, "they" seems to be the most commonly accepted solution. Personally, I'm a fan of "they", since it's already being used every day. But I acknowledge the reasoning against it: "they" is a plural pronoun, and shouldn't be used to refer to singular subjects.

This issue will probably be in debate for a long time, and I won't presume to solve the world's problems, even ones as minute as this. But I will say that if enough people just keep using "they" in this context, it will eventually become accepted usage. Take that, Grammar Nazis!

...moving on.

Relative Pronouns

A relative pronoun does exactly what it says; it relates a following clause to the rest of the sentence.

The gun that he used to kill President Lincoln has been found.

Relative pronouns basically force entire clauses to function as descriptors. In the above case, "he used to kill President Lincoln" functions as an adjective modifying "the gun". What you'll notice right away is the pronoun "that" simply isn't necessary to understand the sentence:

The gun he used to kill President Lincoln has been found.

This is true of many relative pronouns. Instead of "the man who killed Lincoln", just say "Lincoln's killer". Cutting relative pronouns is one of the main ways I tighten my writing when I edit.

One issue that many writers struggle with is the difference between "who" and "whom", both of which can be used as relative pronouns. I personally didn't master this until I was in my thirties. Luckily, it's actually pretty simple. Anywhere you could use "he", use "who". Anywhere you could use "him", use "whom".

The man who wrote to me. <=> He wrote to me. 

The man to whom I wrote <=> I wrote to him. 

"Who" is used to stand for the subject of a verb--the person or thing that does the action. "Whom" is used for the object of the verb--the person or thing being acted upon.

Another issue that trips some people up is the difference between "who's" and "whose". We'll talk a little more about this below, but basically all you need to know is that "who's" is a contraction for "who is", whereas "whose" is a possessive pronoun that can also be used as a relative pronoun:

The man whose arm was broken

Here, "whose" relates the idea of the broken arm to "the man".

Relative pronouns are clutter, more often than not. Make sure they're needed, or write around them.

Demonstrative Pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns are basically like pointing your finger.

Tom grabbed the gun. "Give me that!"

Here, we know "that" refers to the gun. In situations where we know what object is being referred to, demonstrative pronouns work as a shorthand. Use "this" or "these" to refer to things that are close by. Use "that" or "those" to refer to things that are at a distance.

"That" is one of those overused words that trip writers up, perhaps because it can also be used as an adjective ("Give me that gun!"), adverb ("I wouldn't go that far"), and a conjunction ("she said that she was hungry"). "That" is a complicated issue, best left for another article. For now, just know the pronoun use is one of the acceptable ones.

Indefinite Pronouns

Indefinite pronouns refer to something unspecified. Did you catch that? In that first sentence, "something" is an indefinite pronoun. You probably use these pronouns all the time: "There's something in your teeth.", "Somebody is coming.", "Is anybody there?" "Is everybody coming?". Indefinite pronouns are nice and transparent, and are unlikely to cause you much trouble. Pronouns are mainly an issue when it's hard to figure out what is being referred to, But indefinite pronouns aren't really referring to anything specific, so you'll never be searching a previous sentence for their referents. Just make sure not to use too many of them, or your writing will seem vague.

Reflexive Pronouns

A reflexive pronoun refers back to the subject of the sentence, indicating that the subject of the verb is also the object.

He shot himself.

Remember, this is all reflexive pronouns do. If you aren't referring back to the subject of a sentence, don't use one. Some people misuse the reflexive pronoun "myself" in sentences like "My mom came to pick up Tom and myself". Because "mom" is the subject, "myself" is incorrect here. For a great look at misuses of "myself", check out this article.

Interrogative Pronouns

A pronoun is interrogative if it's used to ask a question.

"Who are you?"

"Whose candy is this?"

Interrogative pronouns are unlikely to trip you up much. Just make sure your verbs are in the right mood and tense, and you'll be fine.

Possessive Pronouns

Just like possessive nouns, possessive pronouns show ownership or belonging. The main difference, and the thing that trips some people up, is that possessive pronouns never take apostrophes.

I'll be the first to admit it: it took me years to master the difference between "its" and "it's". I got so frustrated with my inability to differentiate that I actually considered getting it tattooed on my wrist. "It's" is a contraction of "is is". "Its" is a possessive pronoun.

As mentioned above, "whose" and "who's" is a similar issue. Just remember; if a pronoun has an apostrophe, it's a contraction.

There is also the issue of possessive pronouns used before a noun:

Give me my socks.

Here, technically, "my" is an adjective! As confusing as that may sound, I'd be willing to bet you've never worried too much about pronouns in this sense. If you know who a thing belongs to, you know which word to use.

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Despite all the different varieties and uses of pronouns, the problems they cause all tend to fall into one category: vagueness.

In a recent editing project, I came across this passage:

Feedback from friends is valuable if your friends are writers. But they can be tricky to get feedback from.

To whom does "they" refer? Friends? Writers? Oddly enough, the first time I read this sentence, I actually had a split second where I thought "they" referred to "feedback". Obviously, "they" would be the wrong pronoun in that case, but it alerted me to an interesting fact.

When I read a pronoun in one sentence, I tend to assume that it refers to the subject of a previous sentence. In the above example, "feedback" is the subject of the first sentence, so when I saw a pronoun, that's where my mind went first.

I might be crazy. But still, I stand by what I told the writer: if you have a sentence where both subject and object are present, and then a following sentence with a pronoun, it's natural to assume the pronoun refers to the subject. This was the rephrasing I recommended:

Friends are a great source of feedback, especially if your friends are writers. But they can be tricky to get feedback from.

To me, that's much clearer. That passage went through a few more revisions before we both thought it was perfect, but I made a note of this one because I had never thought about it before.

Remember this example from above?

Before Tom met Jack, he was just an ordinary kid.

I might not change this sentence if it appeared in one of my stories. Because "Tom" is the subject of the verb "met", I assume that the next pronoun ("he") refers to him. But I may be the exception in this matter, and the revision I suggested above is definitely clearer:

Tom was an ordinary kid before he met Jack.

Another issue with pronouns is that they grow more vague the more distance you put between them and their referents. Even a single sentence can be too much.

The mountain towered over the treetops. A fierce wind whipped the leaves. Its snowy peak reflected the sunlight.

Obviously, neither the wind nor the leaves could have a snowy peak, so you know that "its" refers to the mountain. But the fact that several nouns appeared between "the mountain" and "its" made it momentarily confusing, didn't it?

Granted, the confusion isn't likely to last more than a second, if that long. Any reader can figure out what a pronoun refers to if they give it some thought. But passages like these are speed bumps; they may not knock the reader out of the story, but they certainly impede her progress. In this case, swapping the second two sentences is an easy solution, but it won't always be that clear. Just try to keep pronouns close to their referents, and keep as few pronouns in play as possible. If there's even a ghost of a chance a pronoun could refer to more than one thing, try to rephrase.

***

Pronouns seem simple and innocuous until you realize just how many you use, and just how many ways you use them. Misused, they can rob your writing of clarity and frustrate your readers. But they're a necessary part of prose. They provide transparency, which keeps readers focused on the story, not the words. Use them well, and keep your readers reading.

How to Handle Description

Description--how much to use, where to put it, and how to write it--is one of the most troubling issues for writers. Not enough description and you've got mannequins talking in a white room. Too much, and you've got a boring list of facts that's sure to knock readers right out of your story.

The common wisdom is that good writers supply just enough description to kick-start the reader's imagination, and the reader fills in the rest. A further refinement of that maxim says that writers should only report the details that aren't obvious. The reader will fill in the obvious things.

But how do you know which is which? And how do you know when to stop, and when to keep going? This is when I use a little trick I like to call The Inverse Coco Chanel Principle.

Fashion icon Coco Chanel said that when you're accessorizing your outfit, you should "Put everything on, then take one thing off." This means once you have your outfit on, put on earrings, bracelets, necklace, watch, brooch, rings, scarf, headband, etc, etc, then, once it's all on, take one item off, and the outfit is complete.

When describing something in fiction--be it a character, setting, or prop--I take the inverse approach. I pull up a blank document, and write every detail I can think of. I describe it as exhaustively as I can, holding nothing back. Then I begin deleting things until I am left with only those details I cannot bear to part with.

If you can get it down to a single detail, great, but I find that's often not practical; and not generous enough to the reader. But I try to get it to three or less at any cost. Thus, The Inverse Coco Chanel Principle can be stated:

Put everything on, then take all but one (or two) thing(s) off.

And the thing is, this process can still result in a nice, long paragraph, because there are multiple orders of magnitude at play.

Say I'm describing a coffee shop, and the two details I choose to point out are the mural on the wall, and the guy working the register. Each of those things may be a single detail of the location, but they are in themselves detailed things. So for each of them, I can choose one or two details. Each detail can be described in any variety of ways; with a metaphor, or with information from any of the five senses (the more senses you involve, the better, but that's another post).

So if each second-order detail gets a sentence, you still get a generous paragraph of description, organized in such a way that you aren't just listing boring facts about a place, but giving concrete images that spark the reader's imagination.

It's tough to do this right, and it takes time, but the results are always worth it. The trick is to make sure you have the right amount for the situation.

You have to keep in mind that descriptions are observations, and observations belong to somebody. Assuming you're not writing from an omniscient point of view, then any description must belong to the POV character. If your POV character is experiencing an extreme emotional state (like, say Captain Picard in the Cardassian interrogation room), the setting does not deserve a full two-level description, because people under duress seldom pause to consider what the furniture is made of.

However, if the POV character is relatively calm, and the location is important, you should go into more detail. The first time you visit a location you plan on returning to at least once, give a full two-level description of the place. The concrete, sensory details you supply the first time can be used as anchor points every time you return to that setting. The next time your character goes back there, simply fire off one of the details from earlier, and the reader will quickly re-sketch the scene in their minds.

The same goes for a character. If you're introducing a character in the midst of a tense or emotional scene, don't pause and talk about their clothes for ten sentences. Just give us a quick one-level description (or none at all), and make sure the details are congruent with the emotion of the scene. If you introduce a battered mother in a scene where the eight-year old POV character walks in on his deadbeat dad slapping her around, don't talk about her freshly-laundered dress, or her shiny shoes. Show us the messy hair and mascara-streaked cheeks (sorry for the dark example, but it's the best I could think of).

If you're introducing a character in the midst of a relatively calm moment, and if they're going to be a regular in the book, go ahead and give them a two-level description; perhaps one to three details about their face, and one to three details about their clothes.

In each case, the easiest way to arrive at the right details is to brainstorm every detail you can think of, then only supply the ones you cannot part with. Those will be the strongest ones, and they will be the keys that unlock your reader's imagination.

Description is a tricky business, and it has close ties with setting, character development, and point of view. The Inverse Coco Chanel Principle is an effective way to make sure that your description is precisely proportioned to the needs of the scene, and easy to refer back to when you need to re-anchor your reader.

How Long Should Your Story Be?

The first time I set out to write a novel I was fifteen. I was taking a writer's workshop class in high school, and I had asked my teacher permission to submit chapters of a single work each month instead of short stories and poems, like most of the other kids.

But like, if I miss this concert, my life is like, over! You'll
 never understand my sophomoric, middle-class problems! 

As you might imagine, I didn't get very far. If memory serves, I turned in two chapters of a Dirk Gently-inspired paranormal detective story, another two chapters of a Final Fantasy-inspired sci-fi/fantasy epic, and by the end of the class I broke down and wrote a bunch of angsty teenage poetry, some of which might have made good emo lyrics.

Part of my problem was that I was fifteen. Part of it was that I didn't know the distinction between Plotting and Pantsing. I figured I could just wing my way through an entire novel, as if a novel is something you just sit down and write, and when you're done it's done.

But a subtler problem was I had no idea how long a novel should be.

This problem stayed with me through college, through my mid-twenties, when I didn't write anything, all the way until the early years of my career. Until about three years ago, I was still thinking of novels in terms of page numbers. But the truth is, that's like measuring your tire pressure by calculating the volume of the tire. (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!)

A novel's page count is up to the publisher. I mean, they can print the entire bible (approx. 750,000 words) in a book about the size of a box of matches. True, you have to read it with a magnifying glass, but it can be done. On the other end of the spectrum, 3 Futures was barely 35,000 words, but Catharsis Fiction fudged it up to 200 pages.

So how long should your story be? That depends on what you want to do with it. If you're trying the traditional publishing route, thoroughly read the publisher's website, contracts, and any other documentation they provide. Chances are, their word-count expectations are in there somewhere. For short story writers, I've found that most markets favor stuff in the 4,000-7,000 range, but that's not a hard-and-fast number. Whatever you're writing, wherever you're trying to sell it, check the market's guidelines first. If all else fails, email the editor and straight-up ask them.

But if you're self-publishing, or if you're not writing for a specific market, it's good to have some idea of what separates a novel from a novella, from a short story, etc. Before I launch into this list, I should note that different genres carry different expectations. Fantasy and sci-fi readers expect and want longer books, and literary fiction is all over the map. But the following list is the general guideline I use to categorize my own writing, no matter what I plan to do with it.

Flash Fiction/Vignette: 1,000 words or less

Flash fiction is intended to highlight a particular moment, idea or emotion. It's intended to be read in just a few minutes, so anything longer than a thousand words is pushing it. There are lots of markets for flash fiction because it's as easy to present as a blog post (and even a troglodyte like me can throw together a halfway readable blog).

Short Story: 1,000 - 10,000 words

Short stories can be anything from an extended vignette that really delves into a particular theme, to a fully structured story that happens over a relatively compact timeline. There are dozens of ways to structure stories in this length range, which is part of what makes them so fun to write. Generally, a short story is meant to be read in a single sitting, two at the most. I find that a meaty short story takes about as long to read as it does to watch an average movie, and I'm a pretty slow reader.

Novella/Novelette: 10,000 - 50,000 words

In my own work, I make no distinction between a novella and a novelette, but some genres do. A novelette is shorter, about 10,000 to 25,000 words. Anything below 50,000 is generally considered a novella. While a publisher might find this distinction important for marketing purposes, I find readers aren't hip to the difference, so for me, the distinction is splitting hairs. I figure anything under 50,000 words can be read in one to three sittings, and will present a short, cohesive series of events without subplots, multiple POV changes, and all the complexities of a full novel.

Novel: 50,000 words or more

Here is where you start seeing major differences between genres. A lot of lit-fic sits down at the low end of this range. Slaughterhouse-Five and Fahrenheit-451 are just a smidge under 50,000. Then again, Alan Moore wrote a draft of a novel that was over A MILLION words long, and he refused to cut it (the self-indulgent bastard). Most sci-fi and fantasy rests between 80,000 and 120,000. Mysteries and pulp novels tend to be shorter. When I set out to write a novel, my default goal length is around 80,000. In other words, I try to make sure there's at least 80,000 words of actual story. For me, this usually means I have to fully develop two, three, or even four POV characters, and include a handful of subplots. As of the time I'm writing this, I have yet to come up with 80,000 words of story centered on a single character. It can certainly be done, but my brain just doesn't work that way.

***

Whatver you're writing, whatever you plan to do with it, it's a good idea to set a goal length, and track your progress toward it. That's the main reason I came up with my Process Breakdown template, which you can download if you wish. However you choose to count words, it's an essential part of being a professional writer. Readers and publishers have certain expectations, and the people who meet them sell more books. Even if you don't give a hoot about expectations, it's good to be specific about your goals, so you know what you have when you achieve them.

The Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing, Part Eight

As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.

In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.

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Commandment Eight: Thou shalt not meddle with point of view

I've talked a lot about point of view. I've talked about how to edit for point of view. It's pretty obvious that I'm opinionated on the subject, and I've taken the time to express those opinions. So this is going to be a short post.

I've also talked a lot about the fictive dream. The fictive dream is the joy of reading fiction, and anything that meddles with it threatens that joy. And POV is the portal through which we enter the fictive dream (like this quote? Click here to tweet it!).

POV is a delicate thing. In the hands of a master, it can produce startling effects. In the hands of a careless amateur, it can make a story totally opaque.

When you supply too much information, you clog the portal with facts, and the fictive dream disappears. When you shift unexpectedly from one POV to another, you close one portal, and force the reader to search for the new one. When you use a first person narrator to tell a story whose scope goes beyond that character's experiences, you build the portal too narrow. When you use an omniscient narrator to show and tell everything, you build the portal too wide, and the reader is unable to focus.

If you have doubts about your ability to wield POV, err on the side of caution. Don't try to pull any tricks just for the sake of being tricky (as I've said before in this series).

And most importantly, think about what you can and cannot know, given a certain point of view. If your detective story is written in first person, your detective can't know what the murderer is doing while he's walking the beat. If you're writing in an intimate third person, you can't see what's going on behind walls or across vast distances. If your narrator is retelling stories from her past, remember that she is going to have a different perspective on those events than she did at the time.

In short, don't fiddle. POV is a tool, not a toy. Pick the right tool for the job, and don't mess around with it, or you'll hurt yourself.

The Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing, Part Five

As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.

In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.

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Commandment Five: Thou shalt not bear false witness unto the reader

This one is bound to stir up some controversy, but I'm pretty convinced of this rule. In short, you should never mislead the reader.

The operative word there is "you". You, the author, have a responsibility to the reader. Whether you want them to or not, they assume whatever you say is true, within the context of the story. Assuming you've written it clearly, they imagine things just the way you say them. If you then pull a switch on them, you break that trust. For the remainder of your story (and possibly your career) readers will be eyeing every word with suspicion, and that knocks them out of the story. Instead of focusing on your plot and characters, they're focused on figuring out what sort of tricks you're playing.

One of the most cited examples of this mistake is the technique of beginning with a false awakening. On one hand, false awakenings are a real part of human experience, so writing about them is justified in that sense. But on the other hand, they break a story's momentum right at the beginning. It's not fair to open on a dramatic situation, get readers into it, and suddenly tell them it's not real. (That said, I have been guilty of the false awakening beginning. But I had a reason: my story centered on a character who suffered from nightmares, which in turn fueled his chronic hypnophobia. Without a glimpse of his nightmares, I felt the hypnophobia would have been less believable.)

Similarly, the "twist-for-twist's-sake" ending (employed most famously in the works of M. Night Shyamalan) is almost always a poor choice. In most situations, a gigantic twist at the end of a story simply negates everything that came before it. It signifies that everything we've just read or watched didn't really matter. Who wouldn't feel betrayed by that?

If you're writing a mystery, misdirection can be good. In fact, some degree of it is expected. Mystery as a genre challenges the reader to figure out the truth before the protagonist does. But really, that's not the type of misleading I'm talking about here. In a mystery, a clue is presented as possibly true. The detective eyes every piece of information with suspicion, and so does the reader. And more importantly, the detective and the reader are aware of the same things. The detective does not hide anything from the reader.

What I'm against is unreliable narrators--unless they are a character in their own right. Let me explain. (If you've read my articles about Narrative Mood and Point of View, you might be able to guess where I'm going with this.)

If your narrator is going to lie to the reader, they have to have a motive. If the narrator is simply you, the author, then your only possible motive is to seem clever to the reader. True, readers do like surprises, but not when they arise out of an effort to be cute. It's the literary equivalent of a pun. Readers get it, but it makes them groan internally.

Readers expect a disembodied, non-character narrator to be impartial. Whether that narrator is omniscient or not, they exist merely to recount events as they happen. When they disregard that task, their reason for existing is called into question, and the fourth wall breaks down.

However, if your narrator is a character in their own right, they might have any number of motives to lie. As a character--even if they're not directly involved in the story--they are behind the fourth wall, and thus their disingenuous narration does not break the fictive dream.

As with so many of these commandments, this boils down to avoiding any practice which makes the reader aware of you instead of the story. The joy of reading fiction is that you become immersed in another world, and anything that threatens that threatens the joy of reading.

So don't lie to your readers. By all means, have your characters lie to them, but don't do it yourself. (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!)

Editing for POV

Point of view is one of the most subtle and powerful tools in the writer's toolbox. It's also one of the most troublesome.

I would guess 90% of the work I read from my peers and clients has at least some POV issues. Whether it's an unclear POV, too much narrative distance, or unwelcome POV shifts, most writers struggle to master POV. I myself, have yet to master it, but I've found it helpful to draw some very clear borders between POV types. I've already written a lengthy article on the subject, but let me go over it again.

I distinguish between two main types of POV, each with their own sub-types:

• First Person - "I"
• Third Person/Omniscient - "He", "She"

[Note: In the aforementioned article, I discuss Second Person as well. It plays a role in other POVs, but I do not consider it a viable option for an entire work of serious fiction]

With first person, you have two main subtypes:

• Present tense, where the POV character narrates events as they happen
• Past tense, where the POV character is recalling events that have already happened to them.

When I'm working in first person past, I always decide on some definite period of time between the events happening to the narrator, and the narrator relating those events. It helps me decide how much perspective to provide. If the narrator has just finished living through the events, they won't have as much perspective as they would if they were separated from the events by several years. The narrator's feelings on the events will color the prose, and that color deals with a concept I call Narrative Mood (see this article for more on the subject).

Another first person subtype related to mood is the conversational style. But conversational first person isn't as simple as you'd think. When considering any POV, you need to ask yourself whether the narrator is aware that he or she is narrating, and in turn, if he or she is aware of who they are narrating to. It might also be helpful to ask if the narrator is aware of the medium in which the story is delivered, or if the narrative is a transcript of some other means of delivery.

For example, does the narrator know their words are being read as a book, or are they speaking the whole story aloud to a fictional audience? In an epistolary novel like Dracula, the narrative may well be in first person, and the narrator may well be speaking to an audience, but the narrator is not necessarily aware of the reader, nor that his or her narration is being read as part of a story. Additional dimensions like the epistolary technique can enhance a story's sense of realism, but they also require an extra degree of care on the author's part.

I view third person as a sliding scale, with narrative intimacy on one side, and narrative distance on the other. A story written in an intimate third person will read very similar to first person, just with different pronouns. All events will be filtered through a single POV character at a time. You can have multiple POV characters, but in every case, the POV character is distinct from the narrator (more on that in a moment). A story written in omniscient sacrifices almost all of its intimacy in the name of perspective. Omniscient provides more facts about the story, but less emotion, and less character. It has its uses, but it's difficult and risky, because it's often less engaging to the reader.

In most forms of third person, the narrator is a faceless, nameless non-being--a camera, essentially--who exists for the sole purpose of conveying the story. This camera can be zoomed in or out as needed, and that is the true strength of third person narrative. But it's important to understand what the camera can and can't see, and to know when the camera should be turned on and off.

It is also possible for a third person narrator to have a personality, and this can be particularly effective in omniscient. It has been done to great effect by the likes of Charles Dickens and Douglas Adams. A third person narrator might also be a non-central character in the story, like Ishmael in Moby Dick.

The main thing in all this is to take time to carefully consider who or what your narrative voice is, what spatial and temporal relationship they have with the events of the story, and what feelings, if any, they have about the events.

These decisions are best made during the plotting phase of your story, because it's a lot of effort to change your POV after the fact. But that doesn't mean there's no POV work to do during the editing phase.

In most cases, a POV change in the editing phase will necessitate rewriting the story entirely, or close to it. But there are very good reasons to do it. First off, you should always choose the right POV for the story, not just whichever suits you best. It's better to change your writing to serve the story than vice-versa. (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!). Second, even if you're an obsessive plotter like me, you won't always know exactly where your story is going. You might go on a detour that changes the essential nature of your story, or makes one character more important than originally intended. When this happens, sometimes it's necessary to change the POV to suit the new story.

Say you started off in a fact-laden omniscient, but as the plot developed, you found yourself falling in love with a particular character, and following them more than others. It's probably worthwhile to consider rewriting the whole story through that character's POV, either by making them a first person narrator, or by developing an intimate third person relationship with them.

If you're happy with your original POV choice, that still doesn't mean there's no POV work in the editing phase. Even if you're skilled in this area, you need to read your manuscript with a keen eye, to make sure you haven't written any accidental POV shifts.

Third person allows you to throttle the narrative distance up and down, but the transition needs to be smooth. It works just like zooming a camera lens in and out. Professional film makers modulate the distance of each shot, and zooms are a common technique, but it's rare to see a fast zoom in or out because it's jarring to the eye. The same is true in novels; rapid, careless modulations of POV are jarring to the mind.

It's also important to make sure POV modulations are warranted. If most of your novel is written with a fair amount of distance, but you have one important, steamy love scene, or an important, heated battle scene, it's probably worth it to zoom in on the character, and temporarily close that narrative gap. But if the scene isn't that important or intense, leave the distance where it's at.

...

Editing for POV is tough. There's no two ways about it. But like most tough things, it's worth doing. A well-controlled POV will distinguish you as a professional.