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You can also check out an audio interview with Rachel here, on marketing your way to a #1 bestseller.
I’ve always been a writer of one sort or another, but until four years ago my experience had been in writing creative treatments, plots for interactive programs or even board reports – none of which generally require significant emotional input. It’s hard to shed a tear over a flowchart – although sometimes it might want to make you scream with frustration.
When I wrote my first novel – Only the Innocent – I wrote for my own pleasure.
I never expected anybody to read it – not even family. But I was pressurized into sharing it, and I realized that if I was going to allow people to actually read it, I wanted to make sure that it was at least half decent. I was happy with the story, but I wasn’t convinced about the quality of the writing, and nobody was going to be allowed near it until I was. Of course, this was before I realized that you can’t just learn to write, like you might learn to recite the alphabet – it is forever a work in progress and an endless learning curve. Nonetheless, I took my fragile ego in both hands and paid to have my book torn apart by an expert.
In the end, the feedback wasn’t too bad considering it was my first attempt. However, it was full of phrases that I didn’t understand.
Apparently my biggest sin was ‘head-hopping’.
What?
On Point of View
I hadn’t the faintest idea what this was about, so I turned to Google and read every possible article I could find until it was ingrained in me. I was told that I was writing as if I were watching a film, sitting in an armchair. Where I should have been was inside the head of one of the characters – the person whose point of view the scene was written from. That person’s eyes needed to become my camera.
It took a while, but I got there in the end. I now make sure that every scene of every chapter is clearly marked in the draft with exactly whose POV the scene is viewed from in capital letters so I can’t forget.
If you are as ignorant as I was about this, a classic example of head-hopping would be:
“Nick dragged his gaze away from the road ahead and looked at Laura. Her eyes were heavy with unshed tears as she stared out of the window. But Laura didn’t see his glance. She was watching the dark brooding clouds, and thinking how well they matched her mood.”
First we’re seeing the scene from Nick’s perspective, and then suddenly we know what Laura is thinking. If your camera is inside the character’s head, you’ve just switched seats!
Now I know that this is quite basic stuff and you probably all got this long ago, but when you really do get inside a character’s head it can make you go slightly loopy. You have to start thinking what your character would think, feel what they would feel. You might want to see, hear and even smell their surroundings – just as they would do. So how do you describe what somebody is feeling?
There are two perspectives here. Let’s imagine there are two people in a room. Ellie and Leo (short for Leonora). These are two characters from my latest novel, The Back Road. Ellie is furious, and Leo is watching her. If you are in Leo’s head, you have to describe how that fury looks to you. If you are in Ellie’s head, you have to describe how the fury actually feels.
On Adverbs
I thought the first one was easy, but I was wrong – as I discovered when I read a book on self-editing and was told that under no circumstances should adverbs be used. “Words ending in LY should be eradicated from your writing,” it said.
Why? I thought, angrily. (There you go!! An adverb.)
I’d heard of the ‘show don’t tell’ advice, but didn’t really get it until the whole adverb issue was pointed out. I searched my novel. Uh oh – there were lots of adverbs. So now not only did I have to start thinking about whose head I was in, I had to think about how they would ‘see’ people’s actions. I started to look into body language and descriptions of facial expressions. If I can’t say ‘angrily’ – what would this person be looking like, or how would they be holding their body?
Whereas once I might have said “Ellie turned angrily to Leo,” I now had to think what an angry turn looks like. How would Ellie be feeling, and how would that portray itself in her actions?
“Ellie slammed the glass down on the worktop and spun round to face Leo.” Now I don’t need to be told she’s angry. I can see it for myself.
But to get to that point, I had to get inside Ellie’s head (even though at this point I was viewing the scene from Leo’s POV – just to confuse you) so that I could work out exactly how she would demonstrate her fury. Then I had to stand on the other side of the room and see it enacted through Leo’s eyes.
So I’ve experienced the rage, but now I am in calm place – all in a matter of seconds – witnessing this anger portrayed by another person. Now do you understand the ‘loopy’ comment?
All of this helps me enormously with describing a person’s demeanor without resorting to adverbs, but what about when I am describing the emotion from within that person. If that scene had been from Ellie’s point of view, I would have had to describe how she was feeling. It somehow didn’t feel good enough to say something like “Ellie felt a ball of anger bubble up inside her,” because that didn’t really explain the raw emotion.
I needed to dig deeper.
There were a couple of points in my latest novel where I came unstuck. In both cases I was writing a scene from the point of view of the person who was experiencing the trauma, and so I had to find words to express how she felt. I couldn’t say ‘She sat disconsolately on the bed’ – I had to really think how to describe what ‘disconsolately’ would feel like (and anyway, it was an adverb!).
On one occasion I wrote something like ‘Ellie wondered why was it so difficult to describe emotional pain,’ to which my editor responded in large letters on the side of my manuscript – ‘it’s not Ellie who can’t describe it – it’s you!’.
Oops.
How right she was. But emotional pain is so very difficult to describe, and it’s not something that one wants to experience on a regular basis. So I had to dig deep down inside myself to think of something that had hurt me badly, and imagine it all over again so that I knew how it felt. That was a harrowing and distressing moment, but I’ve found myself doing it more and more often.
The second occasion was when I needed to describe fear. I’m not very often in situations where I’m afraid, I’m happy to say. I live on an island where nobody ever locks their doors when they go out, and crime is zero. But as luck would have it, one day I’d been out – leaving the door unlocked – and I came home just as it was getting dark. I was alone.
Then, from upstairs, I heard a thud.
It wasn’t subtle – and it was definitely in my house. I felt as if I a million tiny pins were pricking every inch of my body. It only lasted a second, but it was the first time I had bothered to even think what fear felt like. I was more interested in my reaction to that moment of fear than I was in what was going on upstairs in my house. I forgot about my burglar for a moment while I imagined the words I would use to describe my physical reaction.
Hopefully the title of this blog now makes perfect sense.
Since starting to write about people and the sometimes terrible situations in which they find themselves, I have had to explore emotions in a way that I have never done before.
I’ve had to interpret those feelings and put them into words – and they have to be words that will affect my readers and show them what each character is feeling. I am constantly examining how I react to events so that I can find the words to express each and every sentiment when the need arises, and the days of controlling my emotions to give an aura of outward calm have long gone.
So if you see somebody sobbing in the corner, scribbling in a black notebook, that’ll be me!
P.S. The loud thump from upstairs was a mirror falling off the wall (it didn’t break).
Rachel Abbott’s second novel The Back Road is available now on Amazon for £1.99. It will be released later this year in other formats in the UK, and in paperback and Kindle versions in the US.
You can find Rachel at Rachel-Abbott.com and on twitter @_rachelabbott
Top image: Flickr Creative Commons shipwreck by palestrina55
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1 2 3 4 Next »Thank you, Rachel, for great tips to keep in mind as I'm now editing my novel. (And thanks for telling what the thud was and not leaving me in suspense!)
Thanks Elizabeth - I nearly forgot the punch line, but I know that would have driven me mad if I'd read it. Good luck with your editing!
This realization is what makes the difference between good writers and great writers. Years ago I was also told to think of characters' eyes as cameras. I agree it has made a tremendous difference in my writing. It also might explain why so many great writers (e.g. David Foster Wallace) have developed serious emotional problems!
I don't believe that you have to be emotionally disturbed to be a great writer. In fact, I think dealing with emotional issues through writing can make you more stable over time. Once it's on the page, it can be out of your life.
Keep the drama on the page!
Gosh - I hope I wasn't suggesting that I am disturbed!! That wasn't my intention at all. More in touch with my emotions, undoubtedly - but I promise you I'm still sane (possibly more so).
Well, Nick, I am hoping to retain some degree of emotional health! But it's interesting about the eyes as camera. It works for me, but obviously you also have to turn the eyes inward too. I will try very hard not to go totally bonkers.
This article really put a few things into perspective for me, so thanks Rachel.
I think the toughest point of view challenge for me was STAR GAZING, the novel that didn't have a "point of view" because the heroine was blind - and not just blind, but congenitally blind, so she'd never had a point of view. Much of the book was written in the first person. Imagining what life was like for the blind wasn't as difficult as removing "sighted speak" from my writing. I had no idea how much our language is based on visual phrases: (Oh, I see what you mean . . . Now look here . . . The way I see it . . . Reading between the lines . . . I didn’t see that coming! . . . You get the picture? )
Writing STAR GAZING changed me and it changed - permanently I think - the way I write. I realised how narrow our experience is when it focuses mainly on the visual. As writers we tend to use the sense of sight far more than the others but I had to find a different way of conveying my heroine's experience of the world. I worried readers would be bored without a visual element, but they weren't. They said they were fascinated.
So now I try to experience my own world using all my senses. I also try to use all my senses to enrich my writing. Writing "blind" really opened my eyes!
That's fascinating Linda, and you're right about visual being the default position. I am also inspired by Terry Pratchett, whose vision has deteriorated with his Alzheimers and now he dictates his writing to a secretary and edits through dictation.
Very interesting how it sounds almost as though you are describing how an actor would go down into themselves in order to portray emotion. One of the things I've found myself doing is talking to actor friends about how they do that, and that has helped immensely when writing things I may have only experienced indirectly. I think the key for writers is that we must never "protect" ourselves from those dark places in ourselves because that does a disservice to readers. Makes writing a shattering business though
Exactly Dan - and something we can only grow into. I am finding this latest book, Desecration, is taking me further into my own thoughts around death and the physical body - things I couldn't have tackled a few books ago. As we mature as writers, we're able to go further into these more difficult topics, and perhaps find the right words to express them.
I now worry about protecting others from my dark and twistiness :)
One thing I often struggle with is making the emotions believable for that character. I once had a story rejected because the editor said, "No one would react that way in that situation." It was based on something that had happened to me, and I actually did react the same way as my character, so that really stung. It also made me realize I had to go back and write the character in a way that her reaction would be the most natural thing for her (and once I did, the story was accepted by the next publication I sent it to).
I would argue that the editor was wrong and perhaps you should have kept your story as your version of the truth ... that is one of the joys of being an independent author.
Very interesting feedback - thank you all. I can see how it must be very hard to write from a blind person's perspective, so well done for that! And in terms of the whole method acting bit, I actually said to my husband that this is sometimes how I feel. For me, I have to be inside that person's head - and as I tend to write from multiple points of view, it makes me somewhat confused! But I do think it's important, because sometimes and editor might make suggestions for a change, and I can honestly say that my characters wouldn't say or do the things that are being suggested. You have to live in their heads - strange as it might seem.
Great post, Rachel, and congratulations on your continuing success. I read Only the Innocent, and enjoyed it.
As to POV: I had no problem with that in your first book. You handled it well. I think the POV issue is one that is mostly in the heads of agents/editors/writers. Readers don’t recognize it unless it is horrible. Even in the example you cited—
“Nick dragged his gaze away from the road ahead and looked at Laura. Her eyes were heavy with unshed tears as she stared out of the window. But Laura didn’t see his glance. She was watching the dark brooding clouds, and thinking how well they matched her mood.”
—I have no problem recognizing whose head I’m in. If a reader can’t make that switch they should go back to elementary school. I actually think that writing in this manner can be more effective if done well, allowing the reader into Laura’s head, instead of getting Nick’s interpretation of it. I don’t know when all of the vehemence against switching POVs came about, but it seems like it started in the 80s. Look back at some of the greats, though, and you’ll see POV switched around like crazy. Alexandre Dumas, Mark Twain, and a host of others. And those guys didn’t write comic books; they had a few good books!
As to Adverbs: Same thing. Everyone has jumped on the ‘beat up the adverbs’ wagon. Adverbs are words too. Like any other part of speech they shouldn’t be abused, and if you are mindful of how you use them, it can help your writing, particularly dialogue, beats, tags, etc... By the way, for anyone interested in improving in that area, there is a book called The Emotion Thesaurus, by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman, that is fantastic. (I have no association with them.)
As to digging deeper: I am in complete agreement with you. I have a Post-it note pinned to my computer to remind me of just that. It says, ‘If I don’t laugh, or cry, or get angry, or sad, or afraid...then neither will the readers.’
I haven’t read your new book yet, but I have it on the TBR list. I’m sure it will be as good as the last. Good luck and keep writing good stuff.