Tag Archives: Writer

How to get past the narrator.

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As I said in the last post: when it comes to the narrator’s voice I have a fear of it.

On the surface this fear was founded on show don’t tell and info dumping. In hindsight, there’s more to it and it’s about me personally.

I’ve always had a fear of giving too much away about myself. This led to problems with parents and my wife.

I didn’t want to let a side of me out. We are the narrator of our lives and if we don’t control the narrative others will through lies.

I had this fear of people not understanding who I was, what I wanted out of life or whether I was the type of person who would do horrible things. Then I realized, people will judge me no matter what I say.

When it came to narrating a story, I began to look at it similarly.

If I control the narrative of my life and people think what they want anyway, why should I care what they say? Why should the narrator in my novels and short stories be any different?

I shouldn’t!

Before, I would write a story worried about what someone thought about it. Now, after dealing with the narrator issues, I understood I can’t make someone like what I wrote so I should enjoy the process more.

I began to write better.

I put in better detail and stopped caring whether what someone would think about it.

My writing flourished and I started a new novel in the beginning of December 2018. I destroyed my word count because the fear I had vanished.

How has your writing flourished in the past year? What did you do different to improve? Tell me in the comments.

How I learned to embrace the narrator voice.

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For the longest time I’ve had a fear of using the narrator voice while writing.

As I write mostly fantasy, horror, and science fiction, I’m sure this fear comes from being told show don’t tell and of the dreaded info dump.

I spent the latter months of 2018 dealing with this fear.

I knew a couple things would have to change in my writing, and mindset, to fix this.

I would have to let the narrator speak what needed to be said and I would have to stop worrying about info dumps. Sometimes a small info dump is needed in a story.

When dealing with an info dump, I’ve made sure it’s either a character explaining things or if I’m using the narrator, it’s in small chunks.

I also didn’t want to sound pretentious. Which is something my wife says I’ve done with the narrator.

I read a lot of books this past year, and I took to analyzing how the author would speak with the narrator, either in description or in regards to world building.

The Wheel of Time series writer by Robert Jordan and finished Brandon Sanderson are a few of the best examples of this.

I love how Jordan does narrator voice. I don’t feel like there is an info dump when he’s world building and the narrator is consistent throughout the books I’ve read in the series. I’m on book 5 in the series.

With horror, it’s the same. I looked for how the author differentiated between the narrator voice and character voice. Doing this helped my writing a lot.

From the end of September until the end of November I focused solely on improving my narrators and how they dealt with the world.

These stories turned out well and I’m happy with them. I only wish I would have done it years ago instead of being afraid.

I’ll be talking about how I did this for the month of January.

What did you improve upon in your writing or life the past year?

Let me know in the comments.

Things…etc.

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When you feel life slipping and your goals trying, you have to understand that the world is difficult.

The difficulty of this life is that we have to get through it in any way possible.

Our any way possible can be whatever but our decisions along the road to our goals determines longevity.

I don’t usually think about these decisions but something changed. I’m not sure of the content of the change, but I do know it’s effects.

I’m aware of where my writing is going but there are times I’m unsure. I believe it’s impossible to be completely sure of our course. It’s not something we plan; only what we create.

I’ve written stories which were difficult to write and others I had no idea whether I’d come out the other side intact.

We get to where we need to be by working. There is nothing else.

Working, grinding, writing…etc.

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I’ve been away from the blog for a while, but I have been writing.

I’ve been submitting stories, getting rejections and contemplating life outside of writing. That doesn’t mean I intend to quit.

I’ve been think about whether I’m working hard enough to achieve my goals. The conclusion is, I haven’t. I don’t edit after I’ve finished something. I let it gather on my hard drive, sometimes never to see the light of day.

There is a problem, as you’ve all guessed, in this. It makes it look like I’m not producing when I am. I wrote 25 short stories over the summer, finished a novel and started querying another.

I hate editing more than almost anything except spiders. I’m working to break myself of this.

I started the read-through for the novel I finished this summer and started editing short stories as well. The writing group I joined is helping immensely.

My goal was to be published this year, it’s still my goal but publication may look different from what I thought it would be.

Anyway, happy writing. I’m still here just busy with writing and bartending.

The act of creating still baffles.

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When I write I wonder where everything comes from.

I’ve used beat sheets, outlines, and done discovery writing. My current project is at 52k after 29 days and all discovery written.

When the words come out, there are times I wonder where they come from. I finish my writing for the day, go back and read some of it and think, “that came from my brain, how?”

This little thing keeps me writing. I write not only because I love it but I’m often curious how the words will come out.

I think about times when I struggle to get the words and whether they’d be different if I hadn’t been struggling. I think of all the times I didn’t write and what I missed out on.

That last part is my major motivator.

What story was I not creating when I wasn’t writing? What worlds weren’t explored? What people did I not bring to life? These things keep me up at night more than the current draft.

I hope I’m not the only who thinks this way. I wonder what other writers are working on or whether some of my favorite books would be different if certain authors had written them earlier in the day or later.

Whether accidents they had or family issues they’ve dealt with changed the story because they were away from the page.

I write to find out these things. If I’d written longer today, what would be different from what I write tomorrow? What changes to the story would I have made and would they be good?

Without a time machine, there’s no way to discover these things.

I write because I like to wonder about how the story would turn out differently, how I would turn out differently.

If I had continued to write in my teens, would I be published today?

I know its not good to dwell on the past, but these things pop up when I work.

Mostly I think about the stories and how I create them. Where all of these characters come from and how I let them run the story.

When a character takes over a section of the story I feel like I’ve succeeded for the day. It’s happened a lot in the current project. I’ve never written as fast as I am currently. I know where the story ends, I know how, but getting there is fun as hell. I’m enjoying the process more than I have since the last book.

I’m working on my seventh book. I have one queried and another in revisions with my writing group. I submitted a short story last night and I’ll be working on others in the next couple of weeks.

My kids are back in school next week and I’m looking forward to all of us returning to our schedules, but most of all I’m looking forward to seeing where all of my stories go.