Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Wednesday's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts

I’m back!

Over the weekend, I published my fourth book, THE EMERALD BROOCH, and ran the New York City Marathon. I’ll share in a later post what I learned about the experience, but the biggest takeaway was that I ran back-to-back marathons and went into the actual race mentally exhausted. You can’t run 26.2 miles without your head in the game. I crossed the finish line, which was my goal, but it took me 6:45 minutes to get there. A half an hour longer than I had hoped for.

I have a cool medal, a poncho, and currently the #1 Time Travel Romance New Release. That’s a heck of an accomplishment. I couldn’t have done it without the help of a fantastic editor, Faith Freewoman (Demon for Details Manuscript Editing). From character traits and weaknesses, to plot issues and resolutions, to themes and settings and funny jokes, Faith was an email away with an answer or suggestion. She’s a wonderful collaborator with creative solutions.   

And, most importantly, I couldn’t have done it without the best boyfriend in the world who took me on a tour of the South to visit World War II museums and to Europe to visit Bletchley Park and Normandy, and provided medical solutions for my characters.

I have traveled the Oregon Trail, toured Civil War Battlefields and Museums, flown on a B-17, and run on Omaha Beach. Writing historical fiction brings history to life every day, and I’m having a blast.

Next up is The Diamond Brooch. It’s an early 1900s romantic adventure and mystery set in New York City in the early days of baseball. I can’t wait to see how this story ties in with the others, but it will!

Happy writing and running, Kathy

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5 TIPS FOR FINDING POINT-OF-VIEW OF VIEW ERRORS

By: Marcy Kennedy

Point-of-view errors come in two “sizes.” The big POV error is head-hoppingwhere we jump from one character’s viewpoint to another’s without a proper transition. Once we understand what head-hopping is, it’s usually pretty easy to spot.

Small-scale POV errors (what Jami calls out-of-POV phrases) are much harder for us to see in our own work, so I was excited when Jami asked if I’d share some tips for tracking down those out-of-POV phrases.

But What’s So Bad About Small POV Errors?

Compared to head-hopping, small-scale POV errors can seem like they’re not a big deal. After all, we’re not yanking the reader entirely out of one character’s mind and tossing them into another’s without any warning.

But, in some ways, out-of-POV phrases are actually worse. With head-hopping, the reader might get whiplash and stumble around for a moment, but they’ll eventually figure out that they’ve moved into another character’s head. In other words, they’ll know why things didn’t feel right for a minute.

With out-of-POV phrases, the reader can’t always explain why they’re feeling disconnected from the viewpoint character or like something is “off” with the writing and they couldn’t “get into it.” And because they can’t say exactly what made them less engrossed in the life of the main character, they’re turned away from our work more than if they could say “I hated how the writer jumped back and forth between the characters, but…”

So let’s take a look at how we accidentally use out-of-POV phrases and how to spot them.

#1: We Attribute Emotions to Non-Viewpoint Characters

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To read the rest of the post, click here:

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If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are again:

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