Category: Writing Tips

Did you know my short story MAD DOG DONALDSON has been published in 3rd Person POV before?

Here’s the original in first person (one of many free to read short stories here on my site): MAD DOG DONALDSON

I got some kind of critique/complaint on first person point of view and took it to heart enough to revise this short western story into 3rd person. While I reverted to the first person POV, I kept some of the lines that I’d added because they helped clarify the story.

I’ve had other stories that started out in one point of view before I changed them in a future draft.

It can change a story, it can make one that didn’t work, work. I find it is easier to convert a First Person POV to 3rd person, just because you’re eliminating all the I, Me, My, Mine, etc. And if it’s limited 3rd person you can keep many of the thoughts and feelings of that particular character.

But switching from 3rd to 1st, can be a lot more fun. When you make that switch you get to throw the character’s personality into every action of your story. Their commentary can be used to switch the tone of the story or amplify the mood.

Just like the title says . . . One of the best ways to learn is to see other people’s mistakes–and successes.

Although, most of the time, most of us are going to be mostly critical of our own work, but sometimes, more often than not–we actually have BLINDERS on and so, we don’t notice what’s wrong with what we wrote because we clearly wrote it specifically like that for a very important reason and our choice in punctuation or lack thereof can be defended . . . until we see it elsewhere.

I often realize my own bad habits when reading another friend’s story.

There is a difference to being the author reading your own story vs. being the reader expected to be critical of another’s work. By keeping a metaphorical mirror nearby, you can see where your friend’s mistakes are yours as well.

Here’s a tip for when you just can’t get your head in the game. You’ve tried all the tricks that worked for you in the past and you’re just not where you want to be in order to write.

Revisit the rules, tips, tricks that inspired you in the first place. Go back and remember what you might’ve forgotten.

Here’s a link to all the past WRITING TIPS.

One of the things I’ve found myself doing lately (mainly because I struggle to write sequels–but that’s another post) is that I’ll write a story and then come back and write the story that happened before it (decades, centuries prior!).

I might even just focus on a small detail like the broken-down truck in a driveway. How did it get to that state?

What this allows me to do is similar to having an ending to my story before I start, in that I know what will happen. But it’s different in that it is a different story–likely even a different tone or genre.

And this informs that story that I already wrote, so that when I go back to edit the first story, I have new details, new threads to weave into the existing story. It becomes a conversation between the two tales that allows the change for additional depth I likely had not considered when I wrote the first story.

Even if one of the stories ends up not being up to par, you’ve accomplished a different way of improving the other story by having the knowledge of one of those stories to help flesh out the other.

As a reader, my favorite authors often surprise me with thing I didn’t know.

While reading is primarily something I look to for entertainment, I like when the entertainment educates me or treats me to some fact I would not have looked up on my own.

Don’t stress over making sure it’s an obscure fact, many people and most people don’t know everything, and chances are something so trivial to you is news to someone else.

People like secrets, too. We don’t often read about the lives we are already living. We want to know how others live, what other people know.