Getting Started

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If you want to write, I have one piece of advice. Write! And write and write and write! Write everything. Poems, stories, essays, letters, journals. Everything you can think of. Write often. Every single day if you can. That is how you will develop your writing muscles.

Find someone whose opinion you respect and ask that person what she likes about what you have written and what you might do better. Ask her what she doesn't understand, gets bored with, wants more of. And then rewrite! And rewrite and rewrite and rewrite! It's the only way to learn.

But wait, there is another arm to your learning. You must read, too. And read and read and read. Read the kinds of things you yourself want to write.

Stretch yourself and read work you would never think of writing yourself. Ask yourself which authors you love and why their work appeals to you. If something doesn't work for you, stop to consider why. Learn to read critically. Learn to read the way a writer reads, noticing how other writers accomplish what they do.

Beyond that, write what you love. If you love football, write about it. If nothing thrills you more than a walk in the woods, learn more about the woods, its plants and its creatures, then write about that. If you love to be scared, write ghost stories. If you write about something you really care about, the chances are good that you'll be able to make your readers care, too.

And finally, don't worry about trying to get published now. Except for those few places that are specifically set up to publish young people's writing, your chances of getting published are slim. But that doesn't matter. You can publish a book yourself, make the pictures and the cover, even makes copies and distribute it to family and friends.

More important, though, is that you simply keep writing. If you focus on getting published you will try to write what you think "the market" wants—and this is something I say to adults as much as to kids—you will write pieces that look like everybody else's. And that isn't what publishers are looking for. They want work that is new and fresh, but work that is written with the authority that comes from lots and lots of practice. And do you know what? If you keep writing, if you keep writing what you love—and then rewriting to make your work better—one day that new and fresh piece may come from you. And then you, too, will be published.

In the meantime, what matters is that writing is fun. I can't think of a better career than being a writer. I get to do what I most love to do every single day of my life. And if you love to write, you can do that, too. If you love to write, you are already a writer!

Choosing Topics

When you sit down to write something . . . anything, don’t choose a topic you think will please a teacher or anyone else. Write about something you love. Write about something you want to share with other people or that you want to learn more about yourself. If you love soccer—or you collect dolls—write about soccer or dolls.

But don’t always write about the same subject. That will get boring for you as well as for your readers. Even if dogs feel like the most important thing in your life, consider your other interests, too . . . like the way you have always wondered what makes countries go to war or how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.

I write many different kinds of books. I write for kids of all ages, toddlers through teens. And I write about many different subjects. But when I’m going to start a new book, I always start with something that interests me. For instance, I live in the upper Midwest where weather changes constantly and I love weather, every kind of weather. Weather makes my days interesting. So when I decided I wanted to try writing some nonfiction books for early readers, I chose weather as my topic. I knew I would want to learn about what makes rain or why the wind blows as much, so writing about those things would be fun. Being interested in my topic or in the story I want to tell, makes the work of writing easy.

Make a list of the topics that interest you, ones you want to learn more about, topics that feel like fun. Then choose one idea from your list and write an essay about it or an article for a newspaper. Or make up a story about it. I hope you will enjoy writing about one of your favorite topics as much as you like the topic itself.

Description

Description. It’s one of the most important parts of good writing, to be able to describe something in a way that lets your readers see, hear, taste, smell and feel it.

Did you notice that I used all our senses in that last sentence? That’s because we perceive the world with all our senses, not just our sight. So good descriptions don’t simply rely on what something looks like; when other senses matter, and they often do, a good description uses those, too.

Take an object from your desk, maybe a pencil, a piece of paper, or a book. Perhaps glue, a ruler, or a stick of gum you have stashed away. Look at it. Smell it. Feel it. Bang it or crumple it or see what other kind of sound you can make with it. Taste it.

Now, write about that object, using as many senses as fit. Use words to give someone else a sensory experience of that object. Maybe your book didn’t taste like anything, so you’ll leave taste out. But books have a smell as well as color and size. They have weight, too, and the covers are smooth and satiny or some covers are a bit rough. The pages are rough or smooth, too. Some books, especially old books, have a musty smell. Write about all that.

Now go back through your description. Have you used lots and lots of adjectives? When adjectives are piled on, they begin to lose their power. See if you can choose no more than one adjective for each noun in your sentence and still give us a clear, strong picture of the object you are describing. If sometimes you find you are certain that more than one adjective is necessary, that’s fine. But weigh each one to see if you are just piling on or if each one tells us something important, something that we need to know to experience the object you are holding.

Finally, hold the object and ask yourself, if this object were in a story I was writing, what is the most important thing I would want the reader to know about it? That the pencil is very sharp, so sharp it could hurt someone? That the ruler makes a loud sound when it slaps against the desk? That the stick of gum, though it’s old and brittle, still has a spicy smell?

Describe your object again, but this time choose just one sense, the one that seems most important for your readers to be able to experience this object, and describe it with that one sense.

If you were reading a story and came across your description of your pencil, your ruler, your stick of gum, would you pay attention? Would the object seem real to you?

That’s what writers do. Using only words, we make the world on the page come alive.

With Feeling!

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Last month I suggested that you describe an object, any object, using as many senses as you could to bring to life for your reader that pencil, book, stick of gum or whatever you chose. This month let’s go a step farther. This time instead of choosing any object that might be in front of you, choose one that is important to you, one you have strong feelings about. The object doesn’t have to at hand. It can be something you remember from the past. An old teddy bear. The flyswatter your brother used to chase you with. The piano you hate practicing … or the piano you love to play.

Do you have an object in mind? Now, describe it. Don’t tell, in your description, how you feel about the teddy bear or the flyswatter or the piano or whatever object you may have chosen. But describe it in a way that your readers will feel whatever it is the object makes you feel.

If you loved the teddy bear when you were very small, will you describe its button eyes as blank? Probably not. If you grew to fear that flyswatter, would you describe it as lacy? Not unless you use its being lacy as a point of contrast with the sharp sting a flyswatter can inflict. If you hate playing the piano, the keys could look like cruelly grinning teeth. If you love playing, their smooth surfaces might beg to be stroked.

Write your description—it doesn’t need to be a long one—and then share it with a couple of readers. Ask them how they think you feel about the object you described and how reading about it makes them feel.

Did you get your feeling across? If you didn’t, how might you revise your description to make the underlying feeling come through more strongly?

In writing, especially in writing stories, feelings are important. In fact, most readers turn to stories precisely because they know a story will make them feel. And part of that feeling comes through your description.

So, one more time … with feeling!

Using Verbs

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Using Verbs

For the last couple of times, we have been talking about description. And when you think of description, what part of speech do you automatically think of? Adjectives, right? And adverbs, too, of course. But there is another part of speech that is as important in description as adjectives and adverbs, often more important. It is strong, carefully chosen verbs.

Let’s start with an example in which the verb is neither strong nor carefully chosen: He came into the room. What kind of a picture do you get? Any at all?

You could say, He walked into the room. That’s a little better. At least we know how he moved . . . in an ordinary walk.

But what if you said, He stomped into the room? Does that give you more of a picture. This boy—whoever he is—must be angry to be stomping.

Try some other verbs . . .danced, stalked, meandered, slumped. Each one gives you an entirely different picture of the boy entering the room. Can you think of other choices that will give a clear picture?

Let’s leave the boy and the room behind and consider something else. Trees, for instance. Now, trees pretty much just stand there, not doing much. But are there verbs you might choose that would let us see a particular tree? It could bow in the wind. If it’s a weeping willow, it could droop. If it’s a poplar, it could stretch toward the sky. What about sounds a tree might make? It could whisper. It could sigh. It could even rattle if the wind is blowing hard enough.

When you are thinking about verbs, don’t automatically take the first one that pops into your head. The robin sang. All birds sing. That’s a pretty bland verb. Can you think of a better one to describe a robin’s song?

Sometimes you can use a verb that will surprise your readers in a small way. The crow barked a command. Or The alarm clock wailed. Those verbs give the readers a feeling about what is going on. The crows are bossy, in charge. The alarm clock intrudes in an unwelcome way.

Now, you write some descriptive sentences. Avoid adjectives or adverbs. Use strong, interesting verbs to let your readers see and hear and feel.

Situations and Stories

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Until now, I have been talking about description, an important element in every kind of writing. This month I’d like to begin talking about one specific kind of writing, writing stories.

I have been teaching developing writers for many years, and I’ve found that many people, both young writers and adults, will start writing a story and run out of steam. They get a few pages or a few chapters down and can’t go any farther. One reason, I believe, that their stories lose momentum is that they have failed to plan before they began to write. I’m not talking about creating an outline of each step a story will take. For most of us, such an outline would be deadening. We need to keep important elements of our developing stories open so we can keep making discoveries as we write. But many writers get bogged down in their story attempts for one simple reason. They haven’t made sure that the idea they have is suitable for a story. What they start off with may only be a situation.

What is the difference between a situation and a story?

A situation is simply a problem. We all have lots of those in our lives. A boy’s parents are about to divorce. A girl doesn’t want to babysit her younger brother. A puppy is lonely and lost.

A story starts with such a situation, but it requires someone to do something about the problem . . . or at least to attempt to do something. Notice that in each of the situations I’ve named, the main character, boy or girl or puppy, clearly wants something . . . to stop the divorce, to get out of babysitting, to find the way home. The moment you set that main character struggling to get what he wants—or at least to try to get it—you will have a story underway.

Your character doesn’t have to succeed for a story to work. Maybe the boy will discover that he can’t stop his parents’ divorce. It is, after all, unlikely that he could. Perhaps he will discover something else instead, that even if they divorce, his parents will each continue to love him and that his life will go on.

Maybe the girl will discover that her younger brother is important to her, so important that she doesn’t mind babysitting.

Maybe the puppy will have to give up on finding his way back home and accept a new home instead.

But in each case, the main character will have to struggle, trying to get what he wants. And it is that struggle that will make your story.

So let’s start by gathering some ideas for stories . . . your stories. What is your character’s problem? What does the problem make him want? What would a resolution to the problem feel like?

For this month, jot down story ideas as they come to you. Next month we’ll talk about the next step.

And in the meantime, if you are impatient to move on, check out my book, What’s Your Story? A Young Person’s Guide to Writing Fiction. Both adults—especially adults writing for children—and young writers have found it useful.

Story Problems

Last time I talked about the difference between a situation and a story. A situation is simply a problem without any resolution, without any growth or change for the character who has the problem. When a character begins to struggle to solve his problem—whether he succeeds or not—you have material for a story.

Before anyone can start writing any story, some basic planning is essential. I’m not talking about creating a story outline, though some writers do work that way. Many writers, however, perhaps most, find it important not to lock themselves in too firmly to the step-by-step progression of a plot before they begin writing. Most of us like to keep an element of surprise for ourselves as well as for our readers. That doesn’t mean, though, that most of us begin writing without any idea of where we want to go. I begin with a number of elements in mind, the most important of which is my main character, someone who has a problem.

So the first thing I ask myself is, Who is this person and what is his or her problem? All else follows from there.

Let’s look at one of my novels, The Double-Digit Club. I began with a girl, Sarah, who has a problem. She has been excluded from an important club. She is nine years old, and during the past year in fourth grade one of the popular girls started a club called The Double-Digit Club. To belong, a girl was required to be ten years old. This is the beginning of the summer, and Sarah won’t be ten until late August. The real problem is, though, that her best friend, Paige, is going to turn ten the next day. Sarah is afraid that Paige will decide to join the club and leave her behind without anyone to play with for the entire summer. A clear problem.

Now, if Sarah handles the situation well, it probably won’t be much of a problem, which means I wouldn’t have much of a story. She and Paige are good friends. Paige will, most likely, choose Sarah over the exclusive club. Story over. But the secret behind many stories is that the main character is likable but less than perfect.

She doesn’t make the right choices, at least not up front. Sarah is so worried about losing Paige that she bosses her, insists on going to the beach where they know the DDC’s will be and even tells Paige exactly what to say when she gets the invitation. And Paige, tired of being told what to do, goes over to the DDC’s. And the story is off and running.

Do you see from that description what is most important to know before you begin writing a story, any story? First, who is the main character? Second, what is her problem? Third, what—or who—stands in the way of solving that problem? In The Double-Digit Club, and in many stories, there is an antagonist, in this case Valerie Miller, the girl who started the exclusive club. But there is often a second antagonist, not another person standing in the main character’s way, but some flaw in the main character herself that keeps her from solving the story problem easily. Sarah is her own worst enemy. By trying so hard to make sure she keeps Paige, she drives her away. And Valerie, of course, is right there waiting to catch Paige.

So last time I asked you to think about some story problems. This time I want you to select one, one that feels important to you, and ask yourself an important question. Why can’t your main character solve his problem easily? Who stands in his way? Is he also standing in his own way? Is there something about who he is that makes the problem more difficult to resolve rather than easier?

When you have that, you will have the beginnings of your story.

Begin with the End

Let’s start by reviewing what we have already discussed about writing stories.

First, the difference between a situation and a story: A situation is simply a problem no one can do anything about. Not even a change of heart will help. A story is a problem someone must struggle to resolve. The main character may get what she wants or she may change—or both, of course—but in a story a resolution of some kind is possible.

Second, a story plan: Story begins with a character, a character who has a problem he must struggle to solve or who wants something she must struggle to get. So you need to know who your character is, what the problem is—or what the goal is—and what or who is keeping your character from getting what he wants. When you have the answers to those questions, you are almost ready to begin writing your story.

But there is one more piece to a story plan. I recommend that you have an ending in mind before you begin to write.

Really? But doesn’t the ending just come to you in a flash of inspiration as you are writing? Maybe. Maybe not. And if it doesn’t, what are you going to have in front of you for all your writing? A problem without a solution. In other words, a situation . . . and, once more, a situation is not a story.

I have heard some writers say, “If I knew the ending, I would never write the story. I write the story to find out how it will end.” And such a loose process may work for some writers. But when one of my writing students tells me that she is writing a story in order to discover the ending, I feel cautious. I may even feel a bit skeptical. Simply writing and writing and writing in order to find out what is in your head may be one way to go, but it strikes me as a journey fraught with peril. The chances of discovering that what you have in front of you isn’t a story at all are high. It’s a risk you may not want to take.

The solution doesn’t have to be neat. It certainly doesn’t need to be—and probably shouldn’t be—obvious. The best endings, in fact, are both inevitable and a complete surprise.

I grow impatient with stories that tell me too much about what kind of ending to expect on the first page. (If a story starts off with a kid who is afraid of an old woman everyone knows to be a witch, don’t you just know that it is going to end with the discovery that the old woman is really nice?) But what the best endings accomplish is an emotional pay off, a kind of, “Oh!” of surprise, followed by a sigh of satisfaction . . . “Of course!” And when you, as the writer, know what will bring that sigh of satisfaction, you will have your ending.

You may not know everything that is going to happen along the way. In fact, you probably won’t. Most of us start off with much that remains to be discovered. That is part of the fun of writing a story, making discoveries along the way. But if you know your ending, you will have your story under control from the first line.

Let me give you an example of the way knowing the ending before I began to write shaped one of my novels. Runt is the story of a wolf pup. Runt’s problem is that he realizes he is a disappointment to his father. He is too small, much smaller than his brothers and sisters, which is how he earned the name Runt. This is what I knew before I began writing, that Runt’s story would be his struggle for his father’s approval.

There could be any number of possible resolutions to such a problem. Runt could grow up and decide he doesn’t need his father. He could go off and leave him behind. Or he could learn to be tougher than any of the other pups, tougher even than his father, and he could fight the other pups—or even his father—to win his father’s respect. Or he could decide that being the pack runt is an honorable place. He could accept his role at the bottom of the pack, as the Omega wolf, the clown, the one everyone picks on. Or—and this is the ending I decided on—he could discover a talent that didn’t require either toughness or size. He could become the pack’s Singer.

Having decided that, that Runt would earn a new name and what it would be, I had the shape of the story complete in my mind when I sat down to write, even though much of Runt’s struggle was yet to be discovered. But I had Runt’s new name as my destination, and I was ready to begin my journey.

So this is what I recommend … begin with your character, his problem, and the solution for the problem. Don’t write the ending before you write the rest. Just know it in your head. If you write the ending first, you may well find you have run out of energy for writing your story at all. The desire to get to that important moment will pull your readers through your story, and it will pull you through the writing process, too.

History

So … you have your story idea, someone who has a problem he must struggle to solve, and you know how you want your story to end. What else is involved in a story plan? Are you ready to begin writing?

Probably not. I believe that more stories fail because writers don’t spend enough time making a plan before they begin to write than for any other reason. So what else is there to know?

Your character needs a history. If she is born the day she walks onto your page, she isn’t going to be very interesting. Everybody loves a newborn baby, but not many people want to spend a lot of time sitting around watching one. Newborns haven’t developed into interesting people yet. They have no history.

What kind of history does your character need? Everything that happened to him from the day he was born until the day your story starts?

Well, you could gather that much history, but it would take you a long, long time to do it, and then you would find that most of what you gathered wasn’t useful in writing your story. What will be useful? The history of your character’s story problem.

Let me use one of my stories, A Bear Named Trouble, to demonstrate the kind of history you will need. This story has two main characters, because it develops from two different story problems, the problem of an adolescent brown bear whose mother has run him off and the problem of a young boy, Jonathan, who will encounter the bear and eventually help save him.

But there is one more piece to a story plan. I recommend that you have an ending in mind before you begin to write.

Really? But doesn’t the ending just come to you in a flash of inspiration as you are writing? Maybe. Maybe not.

And if it doesn’t, what are you going to have in front of you for all your writing? A problem without a solution. In other words, a situation … and, once more, a situation is not a story.

I have heard some writers say, “If I knew the ending, I would never write the story. I write the story to find out how it will end.” And such a loose process may work for some. But when one of my writing students tells me that she is writing a story in order to discover the ending, I feel cautious. I may even feel a bit skeptical. Simply writing and writing and writing in order to find out what is in your head strikes me as a journey fraught with peril. The chances of discovering that what you have in front of you isn’t a story at all are high. It’s a risk you may not want to take.

The bear doesn’t need much history, but he still needs some. Here is Trouble’s history. He has always lived with his mother. And when the story opens, for reasons he doesn’t understand, his mother sends him away and refuses to let him come back to her.

Jonathan’s history is somewhat more complex. His father is a keeper at the Alaska Zoo, and Jonathan, who is ten years old, has moved to Anchorage with his dad, leaving his mother and little sister behind in Minnesota. His mother is a teacher and has to finish out her teaching year before the family can be reunited. That is one important fact.

Another is that, because Jonathan’s sister is bound to a wheel chair, Jonathan has developed a game in which he imagines himself inside various animals. Then he describes for his sister the way it feels to fly or to move in other kinds of ways. And the final thing to know about Jonathan is that he is lonely. He misses his mother and his sister. He spends lots of time at the zoo, imagining himself inside various animals, and he has, especially, developed a relationship with a tame goose named Mama Goose.

Every one of these facts will affect the choices Jonathan will make in the story. Because he is fascinated by animals—and because he is lonely—he will set out to attract and even to pursue the adolescent brown bear when he shows up at Jonathan’s house. Jonathan knows better. His father has taught him about respecting bears. But his loneliness and his desire to be “inside” this young bear are stronger than his discretion, and so he sets out to build a relationship with Trouble … until Trouble encounters his beloved Mama Goose.

Do you see how the story is spun out who Jonathan is? If Trouble had shown up at another boy’s house, he probably would have responded very differently. It is Jonathan’s history that gives him the specific response he has. It is Jonathan’s history that makes him a particular boy, not just any boy encountering a bear. And it is his history that provides the foundation for his story.

And that is what your main character needs … a history that relates directly to the struggle that will form his story. What has happened to your character before now that will frame his response to the story problem? If you are writing about a boy being bullied, has he ever been bullied before? Is he big for his age, but just not a fighter? Why doesn’t he want to fight? Or is he small and he’s tried to fight the bully before and always lost? Or is he perfectly capable of fighting, but he’s made a promise to his father that he won’t? Why has he made such a promise? What has happened in the past for his father to have asked him to make such a promise? Is your character afraid of his father, or is he afraid of disappointing him?

Keep asking questions until you understand exactly who your character is and how he is apt to react in the face of the story problem you have set up. The history you develop doing that will make your story rich and interesting. Knowing that history will also make it possible for you to keep writing once you begin.

You need to be filled up before you can pour yourself out in a story, and part of that filling up—an important part—is understanding who your characters are through their histories.

Struggle

Okay, so you’re writing a story. You know who your main character is. You know who the surrounding characters are. You know what your main character wants. You even know how you want your story to end. You’re ready to begin writing … right?

Well, maybe. There is another crucial question to consider. Who—or what—stands in the way of your main character’s getting what he wants? In other words, what will he struggle against?

The word that is often used in any discussion about writing stories is conflict. Conflict is a perfectly good word, but I prefer to talke about struggle. I have seen too many writers attempt to write stories in which the main character sits around all day long and looks at, thinks about, considers the conflict before him without ever doing anything about it.

When we say struggle we think of action, of someone doing something. And that’s the way I think of a story, as someone struggling to do something, change something, be something. It is that struggle that makes your story come alive. It makes it active and interesting.

Here’s an example. In my novel Runt, the main character, the wolf pup Runt, has a problem. He is the smallest of the litter. He has even been given the undignified name Runt by his father, because his father is convinced he will never survive in the wolves’ hard world. What does Runt want? He wants to please his father. He wants to prove himself to his father.

Runt tries various ways to impress his father, following the hunters when he and the other pups are left behind, standing up to a porcupine that leaves him with a muzzle full of quills, being brave enough to accept help from humans, and on and on, but none of his actions bring his father’s approval. In fact, they each make his father less pleased with him.

There is an antagonist in this story, too, someone who makes Runt’s problems harder. The antagonist is Bider, a wolf who is trying to take Runt’s father’s place at the head of the pack.

Many stories, perhaps most, have an antagonist. To have a character who is creating the main character’s problem—or at least making the problem worse—gives the writer opportunities for strong, active scenes and interesting dialogue.

In this story, Runt’s failure to win his father’s approval prompts him, finally, to leave his pack and follow Bider into danger. And that decision leads to the climax—the moment when everything comes very close to tumbling into complete failure—and beyond. Bider, the antagonist, is eliminated, and Runt turns back to his pack. The story ends with his earning a new name from his father. He leaves his old identity and his old failed relationship with his father behind.

So when you think about story problem—when you ask yourself that crucial question, “What does my character want?”—think about struggle. Ask yourself not just what does your character want but what is your character going to do to try to get what he wants. Ask yourself, too, who or what is standing in your character’s way.

Struggle lies at the core of story. Set your main character to struggling, and your story will come to life.

Many stories, perhaps most, have an antagonist. To have a character who is creating the main character’s problem—or at least making the problem worse—gives the writer opportunities for strong, active scenes and interesting dialogue.

In this story, Runt’s failure to win his father’s approval prompts him, finally, to leave his pack and follow Bider into danger. And that decision leads to the climax—the moment when everything comes very close to tumbling into complete failure—and beyond. Bider, the antagonist, is eliminated, and Runt turns back to his pack. The story ends with his earning a new name from his father. He leaves his old identity and his old failed relationship with his father behind.

So when you think about story problem—when you ask yourself that crucial question, “What does my character want?”—think about struggle. Ask yourself not just what does your character want but what is your character going to do to try to get what he wants. Ask yourself, too, who or what is standing in your character’s way.

Struggle lies at the core of story. Set your main character to struggling, and your story will come to life.

Point of View - 1st Person

For more information on point of view or other aspects of writing a story, try my book, What’s Your Story? A Young Person’s Guide to Writing Fiction. Both young writers and adults—especially adults writing for young readers—find it helpful.

If you have been going through the various steps I have suggested, you have gathered many ideas for your story. You are ready to begin writing...or almost. You have one decision still to make. What point of view will you use?

The first part of that question has to do with whose point of view you will be in. Usually the answer to that part of the question is easy. Most likely you’ll want to tell your story from the perspective of your main character. If you have two main characters in mind, then most of the time you need to choose one.

In fact, if you have planned to have two main characters, you probably need to rethink your story to give one character more ownership in the story problem than the other, to make it that character’s story. That will be the one whose point of view you will write in.

There are occasional stories told from the point of view of a side character, someone observing the action, but those are rare. So for now, let’s just assume that your main character is your point of view character.

Now...how do you want to tell the story? With the main character referring to him or herself as I and talking directly to the reader? That is a first person point of view. “I walked down the street, and I saw...”

The other standard way of telling of a story is to use third person, but we’ll talk about third person another time. For now it’s enough to know that writing in third person means that you tell your story through an invisible narrator who refers to your character by name and as he or she. That’s the way most stories are told. “Jason walked down the street, and he saw...”

For this time, though, I’m going to talk only about first person.

In some ways using a first person point of view is the easiest way to tell a story...or at least it seems easy at first. You simply write the story the way you would write a letter or tell a friend about something that has happened to you. The only difference is that this is your character talking, not you.

Another advantage to writing in first person is that a first person voice makes your story feel intimate, as though your readers were actually reading a letter addressed only to them or listening to a friend recount an event.

Another advantage is that, when your character tells his own story, you will probably find it easy to let us know what that character is thinking and feeling, a crucial part of getting us connected to and caring about your character and his story.

Another is that using first person will give your story an aura of “truth.” We are inclined to believe what someone tells us in so intimate a way. Thus first person can be used to good effect when your story might otherwise be hard to accept. “It’s a ghost! I know, because I saw it.”

All that sounds as though first person is the way to go, doesn’t it?

But there are disadvantages to using first person, too. The biggest one is that writers who haven’t had a lot of experience writing fiction are very apt, in first person, to tell their story instead of showing it. They talk about what happened instead of acting it out for us. And your readers won’t be nearly as involved in your story as you need them to be if it is summed up and told to them instead of being dramatized.

It isn’t that a first-person narration can’t move into action as effectively as a third-person one. But you may well find it too easy to talk your story in first person instead of showing it. And if you do, your story won’t be a strong as it needs to be.

Another is that when you write in first person, your narration usually comes out sounding a lot like you. That’s fine if you and your character have much in common. If you are about the same in age, gender, education, ethnic background, etc., you probably don’t have to change your natural voice to make your character believable on the page. If your character is very different from you, though, writing in first person may be difficult. You must make your character sound like herself, not like you.

This is why many adults have difficulty writing through a young character. The younger the character is the harder it can be for someone who has long passed that stage of life to make him sound real. And that is also why most young writers have a hard time making a first-person narrator sound significantly older than they are.

And finally, if the tension of your story comes from having your readers worry about whether or not your character survives, writing in first person gives away your ending. We know, at the very beginning, that your character survived to tell the tale, because that’s exactly what he’s doing!

Sometimes you simply know, without having to think about it, what point of view seems right for your story. Sometimes you may have to try first person and then third to get a feel for what works for you for this particular story.

Just remember, though. One point of view isn’t right and the other wrong. Either first person or third can work very well.

The trick is to decide which one is right for you and for your story.

Point of View - Limited 3rd Person

Last time we talked about writing your story in first person, that is letting your main character tell the story, referring to herself as I. That is one clear choice you have as a fiction writer, and we all know stories which use that choice well. If you haven't paid attention to point of view when you read—and most people except for fiction writers probably don't—start paying attention now.

Notice whether each story you read is written in first person, I, or in third person, he or she. And if a story is written in third person, notice whether the writer always stays in the point of view of the main character. When you read do you share that character's thoughts and only his thoughts, no one else's? If the character goes to sleep does the story stop until she wakes again? Do you know nothing except what the main character knows, sees, hears, thinks, feels?

If the story is told in third person but confined to your main character's point of view, that is called third-person limited. The writer is writing in third person but limiting herself to the perspective of one character. That is the way most stories are told.

Third person gives you as a writer a combination of freedom and control. You can write in your own voice only mildly influenced by your main character. You don’t have that freedom in first person where your language must seem to come directly from your main character.

There are great advantages to confining yourself to the perspective of your main character. When we as readers enter a character's thoughts, share his feelings, look out at the world through his eyes, we tend to become that character. And it is that becoming which draws us into the story, makes us care deeply about the problems of the main character, and makes her victory or loss at the end of the story our own. We all read stories in order to feel, and it is that close connection with one character, more than any excitement of plot, that makes your readers feel.

So how do you climb inside your main character in third person? In first person, it's easy. The character just tells us what he is thinking, how he is feeling, what he is experiencing. In third person, the process of staying with your main character just takes a bit more practice.

In third person, action comes easily for most writers. If Ben dashes down the street, you just write, Ben dashed down the street. But getting inside your character is important, too. You just need to be aware that you need to do that. You can start by telling us what his senses know. He could hear the feet pounding after him. Or you don’t even have to tell us that’s what he’s hearing. If we're inside Ben we can simply hear with him: Feet pounded after him.

It's also easy to get inside Ben's head and tell us what he is thinking. One way is direct thought. Will they catch me? he thought. That does the job, but direct thought interrupts the flow of your narrative the way dialogue does. So if this chase is going to be a long one, direct thought begins to feel awkward.

Most of the time what works more smoothly is indirect thought. You simply stay in the past tense and third person of your narrative and go on writing. Were they going to get him? What would happen if they did? He had been stupid to walk down that alley. Really stupid. He knew those guys always hung out there. We know that we are inside Ben's head and we are drawn into his panic.

The problem with third-person limited isn't that it's difficult to let your readers experience the world through your character. It's that action is so easy, you can easily forget to write through your character's senses and thoughts.

The first step in learning to inhabit your character, to move fully inside him and let your story happen through him, is to begin to read differently. Notice when you are reading whether the authors are working in first or third person. Notice, whichever point of view they choose, the techniques they use to inhabit their main characters. Then practice. Take your main character and walk her into her bedroom and let her describe that room, first in first person as she would actually talk to us, then in third person where the language is yours but the senses and reactions to the room come through your character.

Try doing that with other places in your story and with other story situations. Let your character think about the problem that is going to form the core of your story. How would he think about what he wants, in first person, in third? Put her in a hot bath or a cold shower and describe the feeling of the water against her skin. After you have tried inhabiting your character in various situations appropriate to your story, begin writing the story itself. Let what you have learned from this exercise flow through your story. Don't sit your character down for long periods to think. Let him think while he's carrying on a conversation with his friends...or being chased down a dark alley. Let her senses bring each moment alive.

In art, limitation is power, and staying with your main character, truly with him, will hold your readers into your story powerfully.

Next time I'll talk about other forms of third person point of view. Once you leave third person limited, other choices come with built-in hazards. It is important, though, that you understand what the choices are and learn to recognize them in your reading, whether or not you are ready to employ them in your own writing.

For more information on point of view or other aspects of writing a story, try my book, What’s Your Story? A Young Person’s Guide to Writing Fiction. Both young writers and adults—especially adults writing for young readers—find it helpful.

Point of View, other ways to use Third Person

For more information on point of view or other aspects of writing a story, try my book, What’s Your Story? A Young Person’s Guide to Writing Fiction. Both young writers and adults—especially adults writing for young readers—find it helpful.

We have talked about the different points of view from which a story can be written: first person, when a character tells the story directly, referring to himself or herself as I; third-person limited, when a story is told through a single character, but the character is referred to as him or her.

But there are other choices in third person. They are somewhat more complex ones, however. In most cases it takes an experienced writer to handle them.

One is a narrator who tells the story from the outside, not sharing anyone's thoughts, just describing action and telling us what they are doing. That's the way most old fairy tales were told. It's the way most picture books are told, too. Such a use of distant third person is called the objective or dramatic point of view. Readers witnesses the action as they would in a play or movie but they aren’t inside anyone.

In picture books that works because picture books are written the same way poetry is, the words signaling the feelings that lie in the unspoken. That is called resonance, and its the resonance that draws young listeners back to a picture book again and again and again. Those same satisfying feelings come up every time.

In fairy tales it works for a different reason. The characters in fairy tales are rarely individuals. They are known stereotypes—the handsome prince, the beautiful, young maiden, the ugly witch. So we don't need to know much of anything about the contents of their minds. In most modern fiction, though, we want characters who are individuals.

Some fiction is written through an omniscient—all knowing—narrator. Prior to the mid-twentieth century, most stories were told that way. The all-knowing voice can tell the story from outside but also move inside any character. Your narrator knows everyone's history and knows what everyone is thinking, what each character intends. No surprises. Your story, told in an omniscient point of view, can follow any character any place. And it can, as a consequence, gather great richness.

That richness can be difficult to contain and control, however. Your narrator can, too easily, begin to sum the story up and hand it to the reader as a package, not as action to be lived through. Or even more likely, your story can become splintered. The readers' loyalty and attention is divided between too many characters. When that happens the connection to your story through a single main character can be lost.

The no-surprises I mentioned earlier can be a problem, too, because story tension is often based on information's being withheld from your main character and, consequently, from your reader. If your reader knows more than your main character, that knowledge can sap story tension.

Sometimes, however, used just right, having the reader know what the main character doesn't can build tension, too. The classic example is the perspective shifting between the hero and the train he doesn't know about bearing down on him.

Charlotte's Web is an example of omniscient point of view, but if you read it, you will see that it is an omniscient point of view used very sparingly. The narrator's comments slide in and out through the entire story, but that voice doesn't call attention to itself. We inhabit Wilbur from time to time, too, more than any other character. Sometimes we know what he is thinking, feeling, what he's perceiving through his senses. Sometimes we know all that about other characters, too. But much of the story is presented objectively. We watch it play out and resonate with it emotionally even as we observe Wilbur's panic over the idea of becoming bacon. It's masterful work by a masterful storyteller. Unless you have been writing fiction for a long time, though, you probably aren't ready to balance such a demanding technique.

It's important to know about it, though. And it's important, if you want to write fiction, to begin to read stories differently. Notice the point of view from which a story is being told. Notice what advantages a writer gains from choosing first-person point of view, or third-person limited, or objective, or omniscient. What are the advantages of each choice? What are the limitations?

And, of course, there are limitations, whatever choice you make. Art is built out of limitations, though. It is limitations that give your stories shape and power . . . if they are the right ones for your telling. Usually, it is the limitation of the perspective of your main character that commits your readers to that character, keeps them from getting out ahead of your character by gathering more information than the character has, and gives your story emotional power. But there are other choices, too. Learn about them. Notice them when you read. Try them out in your writing.