Grammar Basics: What Every Writer Should Know

Like every other vocation, writing comes with a plethora of technical terms—everything from past perfect continuous tense to non-defining relative clauses. Unlike many other vocations, however, writing is a task that can be performed with next to no knowledge of its technical aspects. In other words, you don’t need to know what a grammatical article is in order to use one correctly. Most people do this instinctually.

That’s not to say that a knowledge of the technical aspects of writing isn’t useful and important. Generally speaking, the more thorough a person’s knowledge of grammar, punctuation, and all of the technical details of writing, the more precise, legible, and skilled their writing will be. But such detailed expertise is not necessary to write a good story. That’s why I usually refrain from using technical writing terms in my blog posts: it’s not so important that you know what a present participle or a gerund is, it’s just important that you know how to use verbs that end in –ing.

But there is a minimum level of knowledge that every writer should have if they want to write for a living. You don’t need to be able to diagram a sentence, but most editors will expect you to know at least the following terms and what they mean:

Basic Sentence Structure: Subject, Verb, and Direct Object

I’ve gone over the basics of what makes up a sentence before: a subject, a verb, and (often) a direct object. Every writer should know what each of those terms means and be able to identify them in a sentence.

The subject of the sentence is the thing that is performing an action.

The verb is the action that is being performed.

The direct object is the thing that is being acted upon—the thing that the verb is affecting.

        Koharu         sipped          her sake.

        Subject           Verb        Direct Object

Remember that not all verbs require a direct object.

       Haruto     slept.

       Subject     Verb      (no direct object needed)

If a sentence does not have that central subject and verb, then it (usually) isn’t a sentence—it’s a sentence fragment.

Adjectives

An adjective is a word that modifies a noun, like so:

     Koharu was an intelligent woman.

Adjectives can be colors (the blue car), qualities (the adorable baby), materials (a wooden sword), nationalities (a Japanese car), ages (the seven-year-old girl), and more. The limiting factor is that they will always describe a noun.

Adverbs

Adverbs (the use of which is discussed here) are words that modify pretty much everything but nouns. They can modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, phrases, and even entire sentences. They usually end in –ly, but not always.

     Modifying a verb: Haruto spoke quickly.

                                   Koharu visited yesterday.    

     Modifying an adjective: Haruto thinks that he is extremely clever.

                                            Your overly worried sister doesn’t think so.

     Modifying an adverb: Haruto spoke very quickly.

     Modifying a phrase: Koharu drove us nearly the whole way. (Modifies the phrase “the whole way.”)

     Modifying a sentence: Eventually, we all decided to go together.

Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases

A preposition is a word that describes the location, direction, time, or possessive quality of a noun or action. Some examples:

     Location: Your coat is in the closet.

     Direction: Haruto drove to the store.

     Time: We’ll eat after the lecture.

     Possession: We’re going to meet the President of Japan!

A prepositional phrase is simply a preposition and the words it is linking to the rest of the sentence.

     My book was on the shelf.

     The creatures came from outer space.

     I’ll get this done before I clock out.

     The Queen of England won’t be there, sadly.

Tense and Perspective

You should know which tense and which form of perspective your story employs and be generally familiar with the most common tenses and perspectives. You can find a handy rundown of tense and perspective here.

Pronouns

A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun or noun phrase. Examples include I, you, she, this that, these, who, what, whose, mine, his, and so many more. There are a good ten or so categories of pronouns, which I don’t expect everyone to learn—just know what a pronoun is and the basics of how to identify them.

Now, again: I’m not saying that you would not be well-served in studying your grammar and punctuation—all the elements of writing, really—to a greater depth than what I’ve covered here. But at the very least, every writer should know the terms above and how to identify the parts of speech that they refer to. Instinct and experience can make up for a lack of detailed knowledge, but they can’t make up for the basics.

Remember what Uncle Iroh taught us all: learn the basics, as they are your greatest ally.

Reasons To Use Multiple Perspectives In Your Story

We’ve discussed perspective quite thoroughly in previous posts—first-person, third-person limited, and third-person omniscient, as well as a host of perspective errors. But we haven’t much discussed stories with multiple perspective characters, where the narrative jumps from point person’s point-of-view to another’s and back again.

Multiple-perspective stories can be written with any type of perspective, but these days third-person limited is the most common for these types of stories. Third-person omniscient stories are uncommon these days in general because they are difficult to write and to read (though they are all, by definition, multiple-perspective stories). First-person stories, on the other hand, can often be confusing if there is more than one perspective because readers can easily lose track of which narrator is speaking, since all of the narrators simply refer to themselves as “I”.

The number of points-of-view in a multiple-perspective story can vary widely. On one extreme, you have the Harry Potter books, which feature only two or three chapters across seven books from perspectives other than Harry’s. On the other extreme, you have stories like George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, which follows dozens of different points-of-view and switches perspective with nearly every chapter.

There is nothing wrong with writing a story from multiple perspectives—if it’s good enough for Homer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, then it’s good enough for the rest of us. Keep in mind, however, that writing from multiple perspectives is much more difficult than writing from a single perspective. If you choose to undertake this sort of difficult task, make sure it’s a choice that serves your story. If your story needs multiple perspectives in order to cover all of the plot, then put in multiple perspectives. If you’re only doing it because George R. R. Martin did it, however, then that’s not a good reason.

Here are some reasons a story might need multiple perspectives:

One person can’t be there for the whole story

Take a story like The Empire Strikes Back. At the beginning, the rebels are driven and scattered from their hidden base on Hoth. Luke goes to Dagobah to train with Yoda; Han, Leia, and the others evade the Empire through a strangely-cluttered asteroid field and then flee to Cloud City. Plot happens, and they’re (mostly) reunited at the end.

If Luke were the only perspective character, the audience would miss Han and Leia falling in love, the dark intrigue of their arrival at Cloud City, their capture by Darth Vader, Han being frozen in carbonite, Lando’s change of heart, and Leia and the others’ escape from Cloud City. If Leia were the only perspective character, we would miss Luke’s plot-important training—from Yoda’s reluctance to train him, “Do or do not. There is no try,” Luke’s vision of Vader, lifting the X-wing from the swamp, Luke’s decision to disobey his trainer to go save his friends, all the way to the climactic duel between Luke and Vader and the famous reveal of Vader’s identity. If we were to follow only one perspective character, then we would miss half the plot—therefore, multiple perspectives are needed.

To avoid an overabundance of convenient coincidences (Chosen One Syndrome)

Almost every story from any place or time relies on a certain amount of coincidence. Characters just happen to be in the right place at the right time to overhear just the right conversation, or Luke just happens to crash on Dagobah within walking distance of Yoda’s house—those sorts of things. We all accept a certain amount of implausibility for the sake of story.

But single-perspective stories tend to necessitate more implausible coincidences than do multiple-perspective stories. Look at the Harry Potter novels—across seven books, how many times does Harry conveniently overhear an important conversation that he wasn’t supposed to? How many more do Ron and Hermione happen to hear and relate to him? The sheer amount of coincidence can get to be a little staggering. In a multiple-perspective novel, you can give the audience all of the important plot information that they need without having to get all of that information to a single person.

To avoid boredom (More Chosen One Syndrome)

When plotting a story, it is a good idea to follow the action—show whatever part of the story is most interesting and engaging, and skip over parts that are dull or repetitive. The problem that arises in a single-perspective character is that this means that your single protagonist has to be there for almost every plot-important event or conversation that ever happens. Everything! J.K. Rowling even had to invent the pensieve so that she could have Harry be present for plot-important events that happened before he was even born! (And it was an excellent way to handle this problem, in my opinion.) But not every story can whip out a pensieve when the main character needs to be present for something plot important. More often, they have to rely on yet more convenient coincidences and implausible situations.

When single-perspective stories try to handle this more realistically, the story tends to become less engaging. One of the most common complaints that I’ve heard about Mockingjay (book three of The Hunger Games) is that so much of the actual story happens “off-screen” while Katniss is doing little to nothing on-screen. It was realistic to have her suffering from a PTSD-esque problem; but planning a big, daring mission to finally go save Peeta and then not showing us when it happened? That was disappointing, to say the least.

Multiple-perspective stories can handily side-step this problem. If one character has to drive for three hours before they’ll get to where something interesting will happen, switch to a different character in a more interesting situation. More characters get to share more of the spotlight, and the story will usually be a bit more plausible for it.

To give greater understanding or increase tension

Have you ever read The Wheel of Time? There’s a character named Galad who is in and out of the story throughout the entire fourteen books, and almost everyone hated him. He was cold and strict, a man whose devotion to what he believed was right led him to throw in his lot with dangerous, unthinking zealots. Or at least, that’s what he was for ten books or so. Then, I think in the eleventh book, we were for the first time shown a scene from Galad’s point of view. For many people, it was a revelation. Once we could see things from his perspective, he became sympathetic and understandable. Once scene was enough to make him suddenly likeable for the rest of the series, even when we weren’t in his perspective.

Writing a scene from a character’s perspective is an excellent way to get the audience to understand and sympathize with the character, if that’s what you need. (Or, if they’re despicable enough, it’s a good way to get the audience to quickly dislike or fear the character.)

Multiple perspectives can also increase tension. Show us a scene from a side character’s point of view that reveals that they are a traitor with a plan to bring down the other characters. Bam. All of a sudden, the audience knows that something bad is coming that the main characters don’t. That’s dramatic irony, folks, and it’s a handy tool that is only available in multiple-perspective stories.

So there’s some handy reasons for using multiple points-of-view in a story. Next time, we’ll go over some of the difficulties and hazards to look out for when composing multiple-perspective narratives.

Perspective Errors: Over-Writing Action

Several types of perspective place you inside the head of the protagonist: third-person limited perspective and first-person present-tense perspective both embrace the concept that you are being shown the story in the moment that it happens through the lens of the perspective character. Third-person omniscient and first-person past-tense perspective also sometimes relay the narrative in this manner—through the eyes of a character as it is happening.

We’ve discussed before the importance of describing scenes, action, and other characters in a way that is appropriate for the perspective from which you’re writing. For example, an illiterate thug who grew up on the streets probably wouldn’t describe his perceptive friend as “perspicacious,” even in his own head. He might not even use the word “perceptive,” for that matter. So if you’re in the thug’s head, you shouldn’t describe his friend that way. It doesn’t matter if you, the author, would describe someone as perspicacious; you’re trying to place your audience in the mind of the perspective character, and using out-of-place language breaks the illusion.

Now, the way you describe action and the world of your story should also be influenced by any temporary conditions that your perspective character is under. A blindfolded character could not describe her surroundings visually, and so she would have to focus more on sounds, smells, and other senses that she normally would. A character who has taken a blow to the head might be dizzy or have trouble thinking clearly, and the language you use while they are in that state should reflect that.

One such state that frequently arises but often does not affect the prose of new writers is action. A character in a high-adrenaline situation, where they are perhaps fighting for their life, should not usually perceive their surroundings and their actions in the same way that they would in a calmer situation. Here’s a few things to look out for when writing actions scenes from the perspective of your character:

Match your description to your time

     Jenna moved forward slowly, careful to place her feet gently to avoid making any sound. Between each step, she peered through the trees, checking the darkness between the trees for the source of the noises she had heard. She held her rifle ready—the noises couldn’t have been made by anything smaller than a person.

     A black shadow suddenly loomed above the foliage ahead of her. The moment she noticed it, the creature—an enormous, scarred black Jinduan bear—charged with a deafening roar. Behind it, three small cubs growled, watching Jenna curiously.

White oak branches cracked and shattered out of the bear’s path, and Jenna only caught a glimpse of gleaming yellow irises and massive white canines before she was knocked to the ground by a heavy paw with muddy, five-inch claws. She attempted to raise her rifle, but there wasn’t enough room.

Most action happens quickly. In this example, the bear charged so quickly that Jenna was unable to shoot it, even though she explicitly had her rifle ready. And yet, in that time, she was able to discern what type of bear this was, that it was scarred, how many cubs the creature had, what they were doing, and what type of branches the bear was charging through. Doesn’t that seem a little unrealistic? Even if Jenna might have been vaguely, peripherally aware of these details, they probably wouldn’t have been occupying her attention in the moment that the angry bear was charging her!  Limit your description to fit the focus and observational capabilities of your character in the moment that events are happening.

In action, simple words can trump more complicated or specific words

I’ve posted several times about the need to use more specific, evocative words in description. In action, however, this rule doesn’t always apply. When adrenaline is pumping and action is happening quicker than rational thought, your prose can reflect your character’s inability to think quickly enough to keep up with the action.

For example, in our example above—if an enormous bear was charging you and you caught a brief glimpse of its face just before it attempted to ruthlessly, messily kill you, do you think your mind would be going, “Hmm, look at those gleaming yellow irises and massive white canines. Oh, and what heavy paws with muddy claws. Why, I do believe that those claws are approximately five inches long. My, my.” Of course you wouldn’t be thinking that! Unless you are the most hardened, constantly-in-peril protagonist in all of history, you would probably be thinking, “TEETH!! SCARY EYES!! HOLY @#!% THOSE @!&#ING CLAWS ARE HUGE!! I’M GOING TO DIE!!!

Now, you don’t need to reduce your narrative to nigh-incoherent screaming, and I certainly hope that you would avoid such horrible over-use of capital letters. But you should probably try to find a good middle ground. If your normally-well-spoken protagonist suddenly drops all of her eloquence in the middle of an action scene, it could be a useful and effective way to convey unthinking fear or urgency. Even if your character keeps their head, they should probably be too busy fighting for survival to consider the specifics of every detail.

Mordu, did you know that one of your incisors is broken? Oh, sorry, we're busy, aren't we? This probably isn't the best time.

Shorter sentences are preferable to longer sentences

This is an oft-repeated bit of advice for action scenes, but it is oft-repeated because it is good advice. Short sentences serve the same purpose as simple words—they convey that events are happening quickly, that the character doesn’t have time to think, that her mental state has been reduced to a more basic, primal, survival instinct.

Now, your action scenes shouldn’t consist of nothing but sentence fragments—in fact, many of your sentences may still turn out pretty long. But you should avoid more complicated sentences. If you’re busting out semicolons, colons, or too many em dashes, you’re probably decreasing the tension of your action scene. Your character is having to react too quickly for them to think much, and you want your readers to feel that. But if they have to slow down to decipher or consider complicated sentence construction, that won’t happen.

Perspective Errors: Matching Description and Viewpoint

One of the most important aspects of writing is getting out of your own head and into the heads of your perspective characters. Some characters might be quite a lot like you, but many of them will view the world much differently—and it’s important that you keep your perspective (or the perspective of other characters) from bleeding into the heads of your protagonists, especially when you’re describing the world around them.

In this post, we discussed one way that such perspective bleed can happen—when an author is an expert on a certain topic, it can pop up in their writing even when it shouldn’t. For instance, I’m pretty well-trained in English grammar and editing. If I were writing from the point of view of a well-educated librarian, I might have her note that the text on a sign misused a present-continuous participle and left a modifier dangling. However, if I were writing from the perspective of a largely-illiterate street thug walking past the same sign, describing the sentence using those detailed terms would be completely out of place.

This problem—describing things in ways your perspective character wouldn’t—is probably most common when a perspective character is of a different nationality, race, or gender from the author. For instance, here is the single most common and jarring example that I have come across (and I have come across versions of it many, many times):

     Diana frowned at Detective Mullens. “My husband didn’t keep secrets from me, detective. If he had been involved in something illegal, he would have told me.”

     Detective Mullens raised his hands in a placating manner. “I’m not trying to cast aspersions on your husband, ma’am. I just have to follow every lead and possibility I come across. Do you recognize these ledgers?”

     The detective handed her a three-ring binder. She did recognize it—it held their family finances. It usually sat on a shelf in her and her husband’s bedroom. She hadn’t even realized it was missing. “Where did you find this?” she asked.

     Before the detective could answer, the front door opened and Diana’s twenty-three year old daughter Stefanie walked in. She’d clearly been jogging—her bronze skin was glistening with sweat, her body firm and lean but still curvy. Her dark hair was pulled up in a simple ponytail, though a few strands had fallen loose to dangle in front of her vivid brown eyes and her full, red lips. Her ample breasts were outlined clearly through the tight sports bra she wore, moving up and down as her heavy breathing slowed to normal. She bent down almost sensuously to brush some dirt from her tight red leggings, and Diana frowned when she noticed that Detective Mullens was watching appreciatively.

     Diana cleared her throat, and Stefanie looked up in surprise. “Oh, hi,” she said. “I didn’t see you there. What’s going on?”

Now, I sincerely hope that you all can see the problem in this passage. We’re in Diana’s head—that’s clear from the fact that we’ve been given her thoughts and no one else’s. Therefore, everything we see should come through the filter of Diana’s mind. Everything should be described as she would describe it—and if that is how she would describe her own daughter, there’s something seriously wrong with this family.

These particular scenes usually happen for one of two reasons. First, the (probably male) author is describing the daughter as he, the author, pictures her without any regard to viewpoint. This is poor writing—if your viewpoint doesn’t allow you to describe something in the way you’d like, either change your viewpoint to one compatible with your description or change your description to one compatible with the viewpoint.

The second possibility is that the author wants to convey how Detective Mullens sees Stefanie, because he’s the actual protagonist and we’ve only temporarily leapt to Diana’s perspective. If that’s the case, then why are we in Diana’s perspective? Very few stories are well served by multiple viewpoints—you might as well keep the point of view with Detective Mullens.

(By the way, this particular problem—sexualizing a character while in the viewpoint of a character who wouldn’t sexualize them—is much more common from male authors than female writers. But female writers are definitely not immune to this error, so be on guard!)

These two people should not describe things in the same way. Don't describe what he sees in a way she would describe it, or vice versa.

Always remember that description should match the perspective of the character—don’t let your personal viewpoint or the view of a non-viewpoint character influence description, unless you want to make some unfortunate implications about the perspective character!

For more on this topic, check out this post.

Description and Degrees of Familiarity, Part One

Today we’re going to return to an example that I gave in the Writing Spicy Description post:

Don’t use two words where one will suffice: I once edited a story where a character approached a sea where “along the shore was a row of several straight wooden walkways that jutted out into the ocean, held up by thick pylons sticking up out of the water.” I edited this to say, “Along the shore was a row of wooden docks.” So that you don’t have to count for yourself, that’s nineteen fewer words. Everyone does this, at some point—I’ve done it myself. Always look for the shortest, most descriptive word possible.

This is generally good advice, but it’s not universally applicable. Let’s delve a little deeper into a few situations where you might want to say more than just “a row of wooden docks.”

When the perspective character is unfamiliar with an object

     Juba scuttled through a field of tall, thin plants. The tops of the plants were wider than their stalks and waved in the breeze.  They rasped against his carapace, far drier than any of the plant life on his planet.

     The field ended suddenly at a wide pathway of some black, rock-like material. More of the tall plants waved on the other side of the path, but the path itself ran to the left and the right as far as Juba could see. A series of yellow lines and dashes ran down the center of the pathway.

In this example, we’ve opted to describe a field of wheat and the road that runs through it without ever using the words “wheat” or “road.” The reason for this is that our perspective character, Juba, is some sort of alien being who has never seen wheat or paved roads—he wouldn’t know the proper terms for them. In fact, if we were to use the proper terms for them, it would be a perspective error! We can’t tell our audience what our perspective character doesn’t know, as we’ve discussed before.

Let’s return to our above-mentioned description of a row of docks. This description would have been entirely appropriate if the perspective character had never seen or heard of docks; in fact, that’s what I assumed after reading the passage. The problem arose a few sentences later when it became clear to me that the character not only knew what docks were, but had also been to these very docks before. It’s the Figure Problem—describing something or someone without first identifying what or who they are implies that the perspective character is unfamiliar with whatever is being described. This is a useful tool for implying unfamiliarity; just make sure it only happens when you want it to.

Caution: When using this technique to imply unfamiliarity, the character must remain unfamiliar with whatever is being described. To continue with our example from above:

     Bright lights suddenly appeared from down the pathway on the right, accompanied by an odd, grinding roar. Startled, Juba darted back into the wheat to hide from whatever was coming.

Wait, when did Juba figure out that these plants were called wheat? We’ve already used our description to indicate that he doesn’t know that term, so we absolutely cannot use the word wheat until someone else gives it to Juba. 

Writers generally make this mistake for one of two reasons: first, it’s awkward and difficult to write about a field of wheat without using the word wheat. That’s just too bad—you’ll have to soldier through. Don’t use this technique unless you’re ready to commit to it. The second reason is that the writer assumes that because the audience has probably figured out that the plants are wheat, it’s all right to call them wheat now. It’s not—in this case, what the audience knows is irrelevant. You have to keep the perspective consistent.

When the audience is unfamiliar with an object

Suppose your perspective character is a human colonist on a strange, distant planet. She is out exploring when suddenly she is attacked by a ruger! Now, she is an expert explorer—ruger attacks are a near-daily occurrence on this planet, and she is quite familiar with the beast and how to deal with them. The trouble is that your audience, of course, has no idea what a ruger looks like. So you absolutely have to describe it clearly enough for your audience to picture comfortably.

The trick to this situation is to describe the ruger without making it seem unfamiliar to the perspective character. We’ve already taken the first step toward this—we’ve identified the creature as a ruger.

Picture yourself walking down the sidewalk. A stray dog crosses the street toward you. When you see it, do you think, “hmm . . . a four-legged, furry beast is walking toward me with its tongue lolling out of its long snout—this is a dog”? No, of course not! You think, “a dog is walking toward me.”

Identification implies familiarity.  The more quickly your character is able to identify a creature or object, the more familiar they are implied to be with said creature or object, and vice-versa. So, if your colonist immediately identifies the approaching creature as a ruger, the audience will know that she is familiar with rugers. If she sees the creature and you describe its appearance before she identifies it as a ruger, then the implication is that she knows about rugers but isn’t intensely familiar with them. If she describes the creature but never identifies it as a ruger (as Juba did with the wheat and the road), then the audience will know that she is entirely unfamiliar with rugers.

Once your colonist has identified the ruger, you are free to describe it without creating perspective errors. Be sure to keep the description true to the perspective character, of course—don’t use terms they wouldn’t, even if it would get the image across to your reader. Bonus points if you can frame the description in such a way that it seems natural for the character to be mentally dwelling on the description: perhaps your colonist notes that this ruger has different coloring than most and is unusually large. In describing how this ruger is different from most rugers, you can potentially tell the audience about rugers without it seeming out of character for the colonist to dwell on the ruger’s appearance.

Next time, we’ll discuss two more reasons to dwell on description—when a character is intensely familiar with a type of object, and when you just want to.

Perspective Errors: Too Little Information

            A knock at the door awoke Sally. She squinted against the light coming through the window and groaned, pulling her warm blanket over her head. But the knock came again, louder and longer this time. With a sigh, she pulled herself out of bed, keeping her blanket wrapped around her shoulders for warmth.

            She opened the door again mid-knock, and found Beth standing there with her fist still raised.

            “It’s about time,” Beth said with a frown, lowering her hand. “Go get dressed, we’re going for a drive.”

            “What?” Sally grumbled. “Why would we do that?”

            Beth folded her arms. “It’s about the Grimoire.”

            Sally blinked, suddenly alert. “The Grimoire? What happened?”

            “We can’t talk about it here,” Jacob said from beside Beth. “Just get ready.”

I’m sure you noticed the problem at the end of that passage—if Jacob was standing next to Beth that whole time, why wasn’t he mentioned when Sally first opened the door? This is another common type of perspective error, when the author fails to share every important thing that the perspective character knows or can sense.

Introduce things to the scene before they're being used

Picture another scene: A burly man in a black suit drags Sally into a parlor, where a sinister-looking old woman is waiting. Clever and threatening words are exchanged, and then the woman tells her burly henchman in the black suit to take Sally out back and dispose of her. The man reaches for Sally, but she grabs the bowling pin on the table and hits him over the head with it.  And then the reader goes, “wait, what bowling pin? Since when was that there?”

If there is a bowling pin on the table, that is something that Sally would have noticed when she came into the room. If you didn’t mention it when it would have been visible, then you can’t use it later—that’s the rule. If you get to the middle of the scene and realize that you need a bowling pin for Sally to use, then scroll back and put it in at the beginning of the scene. The important thing is that your character becomes aware of things naturally; the scene won’t feel real, otherwise.

Now, if your character suddenly realizes that there’s a bowling pin on the floor by their feet just a moment before they grab it, that’s okay—there are situations where that’s the best way to go. The important thing is that you show your character becoming aware of it, so that your reader can become aware of it, too:

Sally suddenly noticed a bowling pin, of all things, lying on the ground by her feet. Without taking time to think, she snatched it up and swung it at the burly thug’s face.

This is still a little abrupt, but it is acceptably and realistically abrupt.

Using perspective errors to create tension = bad writing

The examples above are simple mistakes; the writer forgot to mention Jacob and the bowling pin when they came into the scene instead of when they became important. There will be times, however, where you are tempted to break perspective in this way deliberately. Why? Almost always, it will be for the purpose of artificially creating tension.

For example: Sally, after hitting the thug over the head with that convenient bowling pin, runs from the room. She gets out of the building and into the spacious yards around it. But as she runs up to the open gate that leads off the grounds, a guard steps in front of her and points a rifle at her head. She stops and raises her hands. He tells her to turn around and go back. She pleads, explains, cajoles, and maybe even threatens him—she talks and talks and talks, stalling. Then Jacob suddenly hits the guard over the head (probably not with a bowling pin), having crept through the gate while Sally was distracting the guard.

The writer didn’t mention Jacob until he hit the guard over the head so that the readers would wonder how Sally was going to get out of this situation. If they’d known that Sally could see Jacob sneaking through the gate (she was looking that direction, after all), then the tension of the scene wouldn’t have been as high.

I’m not going to mince words—this is a cheap trick, and you should not do it. Your readers will feel cheated, and they’ll be right to; you flat-out lied to them in an attempt to keep them from figuring things out sooner than you wanted. Your characters can lie to one another all you want; if your story is narrated by one of the characters, then you have the possibility of having them lie about the events of the story (though it won’t necessarily feel less cheap if you do this, so be careful); but you, as the author, as the person telling this story to your readers, cannot ever lie. If you do so, it will be bad writing, and that’s the end of it.

Find a better solution

So, when you’re tempted to do this, just don’t. Find a way around it. Rearrange the scene so that the guard is standing near a corner that Sally can’t see around, so that Jacob can appear suddenly without a perspective error. Have the guard come up behind Sally, so that she can’t see Jacob sneaking up. Give Jacob the ability to teleport, for all I care—unless you’re writing creative non-fiction, then you can do whatever you want—the possibilities are limitless! Just don’t lie to your reader.

To make things even more difficult, the same thing goes for the information your character knows. If you’re writing from the perspective of a detective investigating a murder, and at the end of the story you suddenly reveal that he knew all along that their primary suspect was innocent and that his boss was the real murderer, then you’ve cheated. If he knew that the whole time, and we were in his head, then we should have known, too.

Picture Ocean’s 11 written through Danny Ocean’s perspective: it wouldn’t have worked, because the movie ends with a big reveal about what the real plan was. In a movie that's okay, because we’re not actually in Danny’s head—there’s not technically a perspective error. No lies. But in a book from Danny’s perspective, it wouldn’t work. If he knew the plan from the beginning, and we were in his head, then we should have known, too.

You can get around it—take us out of the detective’s head and put us in someone else’s head (as Arthur Conan Doyle did in the Sherlock Holmes stories, relating them through Watson) or have the detective suddenly figure it out at the end instead of having known the whole time. For your version of Danny Ocean, have the plan go wrong and he suddenly has to improvise; or put the story from someone else’s perspective, someone who wouldn’t be in on the plan. Again, there’s tons of options. 

Just don’t use the perspective error because it’s easier—you want to be better writers than that.

Perspective Errors: Too Much Information

Another very common perspective error occurs when the author gives the audience too much information—that is, more information than the perspective character should have. For example, let’s say you’re reading a book written in third-person limited perspective from the viewpoint of a man named Sam, and you come across this passage:

     Sam glanced at the notebook on the table and then shook his head. “I won’t need it today,” he said, turning and walking out the door. Little did he know that, by leaving his notebook behind, he had just ensured that this would be the single worst day of his life.

Do you see the problem? Since this story is written in third-person limited perspective, we should only receive information that the viewpoint character has access to. Sam doesn’t know that he’s just ruined his day . . . the passage explicitly states that he doesn’t! Therefore, in giving us this information, the author has just made a perspective error—they leaped briefly from third-person limited to third-person omniscient narrator.

Generally, when an author makes a TMI perspective error, it’s because they’ve described the emotions, thoughts, or motivations of a non-viewpoint character:

     “I’ll be fine,” I said, kissing Emily on the cheek. “Go have a good day.”

     “Wait a second James,” she said, worried that I was still upset. “You’ll still call me at lunch, right?”

or described action that the viewpoint character cannot see:

     “I don’t want to go,” Missy said, thinking of the long drive and the awkward silences that would surely fill their conversation on the way. She turned away from Frank to look out the window at the storm. “It’s just going to get cancelled because of the weather, anyway.”

     Frank sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Well then, what do you want to do?”

In the first example, we’re in James’s perspective—therefore, we shouldn’t know that Emily is feeling worried. James can speculate that perhaps she is worried, or note that she looks worried; he can even say that he knows she’s worried, just as long as the action remains in his head rather than jumping into hers.

In the second example, Missy is our viewpoint character. She has just turned away from Frank, and therefore she cannot see when he runs a hand through his hair—and if she can’t see it, we shouldn’t be able to, either. 

Here are some options for how the previous examples could be fixed (italics for emphasis):

     “Wait a second James,” she said, probably worried that I was still upset. “You’ll still call me at lunch, right?”

     “Wait a second James,” she said. Her face still looked worried. “You’ll still call me at lunch, right?”

     “Wait a second James,” she said. I could tell that she was worried I was still upset. “You’ll still call me at lunch, right?”

     “I don’t want to go,” Missy said, thinking of the long drive and the awkward silences that would surely fill their conversation on the way. She looked out the window at the storm and then turned back to Frank. “It’s just going to get cancelled because of the weather, anyway.”

     Frank sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Well then, what do you want to do?”

     Frank sighed and stepped up beside her, running a hand through his hair. “Well then, what do you want to do?”

     Frank sighed. “Well then, what do you want to do?”

Perspective Errors: Slip-ups

Now that we’ve gone over the different perspectives from which most novels are written (first-person, third-person limited, and third-person omniscient), we can begin to discuss the many, many ways in which writers can make mistakes in regards to perspective.

A perspective error is any point in the story where the writer unintentionally presents information that is not consistent with the perspective in which the story is written.

The simplest type of perspective error is when an author accidentally switches perspectives. It happens most often in stories that have been adapted from one perspective to another—say the first draft was in third-person limited, but the author decided the story would have more impact written in first-person perspective from the protagonist’s point of view. So, they rework the second draft into first-person, but they miss a few lines here and there. Other times, this is just an absent-minded mistake. Here is an example:

     “You can’t keep going like this, Rachel,” Geoff said to me. “You need to get some sleep.”

     “I need to be here when Diana gets back,” I replied, shaking my head.

     Geoff sighed. “Rachel . . . it’s been two weeks. No one survives outside the walls for more than a day. You know that.”

     She refused to look at him. “When Diana gets back, she’ll need someone to throw her a rope.” I knew that she was still alive, somehow. But I couldn’t say it out loud. I just couldn’t.

Although the example is written in first-person from Rachel’s point of view, there is one point where Rachel is referred to as “she” rather than “I”—a slip into third-person perspective.

The two best ways I know of to catch these slip-ups are:

1. Read your story out loud—often, your mouth and ears will notice mistakes that your eyes didn’t.
2. Have someone else proofread your story—you know what you’re trying to say, and often your brain will fill in what a sentence was supposed to say rather than noticing what it actually says. Other people won’t have this problem when it comes to your writing, so ask them for a hand.

This is just the first of dozens or even hundreds of ways that writers can make perspective errors. We’ll discuss more in the future.

Overview: Third-Person Omniscient Viewpoints

Third-person omniscient is a viewpoint where the perspective jumps from character to character, showing many points of view over the course of any given scene at once. It generally comes in one of two styles: the omniscient narrator or head-hopping omniscient.

Omniscient Narrator

As the name implies, a story told through an omniscient narrator is given through the perspective of a usually-nameless storyteller, someone who is not a character within the story. This narrator is, so far as the story goes, omniscient, with complete knowledge of what all the characters are thinking or doing at any given time. They will often tell the audience what one character is thinking, and then mention what another character is thinking immediately after, rather than restricting what the audience sees to the perspective of one character at a time. Here is an example from the opening of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis:

ONCE there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs Macready and three servants. (Their names were Ivy, Margaret and Betty, but they do not come into the story much.) He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair which grew over most of his face as well as on his head, and they liked him almost at once; but on the first evening when he came out to meet them at the front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy (who was the youngest) was a little afraid of him, and Edmund (who was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it.

As soon as they had said good night to the Professor and gone upstairs on the first night, the boys came into the girls' room and they all talked it over.

"We've fallen on our feet and no mistake," said Peter. "This is going to be perfectly splendid. That old chap will let us do anything we like."

"I think he's an old dear," said Susan.

"Oh, come off it!" said Edmund, who was tired and pretending not to be tired, which always made him bad-tempered. "Don't go on talking like that."

"Like what?" said Susan; "and anyway, it's time you were in bed."

"Trying to talk like Mother," said Edmund. "And who are you to say when I'm to go to bed? Go to bed yourself."

"Hadn't we all better go to bed?" said Lucy. "There's sure to be a row if we're heard talking here."

"No there won't," said Peter. "I tell you this is the sort of house where no one's going to mind what we do. Anyway, they won't hear us. It's about ten minutes' walk from here down to that dining-room, and any amount of stairs and passages in between."

"What's that noise?" said Lucy suddenly. It was a far larger house than she had ever been in before and the thought of all those long passages and rows of doors leading into empty rooms was beginning to make her feel a little creepy.

"It's only a bird, silly," said Edmund.

Notice how over the course of these few paragraphs the narrator first sets the scene without focusing on any specific character, and then how he describes to us the internal thoughts and emotions of both Edmund and Lucy. These are hallmarks of third-person omniscient.

Head-hopping Omniscient

The “head-hopping” variation of the third-person omniscient viewpoint is similar to the third-person limited viewpoint in that it eschews narrators and instead conveys the story directly through the viewpoint of the characters, as though the reader were riding along in the characters’ heads. However, unlike the limited viewpoint, the omniscient viewpoint jumps from perspective to perspective within any given scene—hence the “head-hopping” description. Here is an example from the beginning of Frank Herbert’s Dune:

Paul felt his left hand aching, uncurled the clenched fingers, looked at four bloody marks where fingernails had bitten his palm. He dropped the hand to his side, looked at the old woman. "You did that to my mother once?"

"Ever sift sand through a screen?" she asked.

The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen. He nodded.

"We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans."

He lifted his right hand, willing the memory of the pain. "And that's all there is to it—pain?"

"I observed you in pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation."

He heard the confirmation in her voice, said: "It's truth!"

She stared at him. He senses truth! Could he be the one? Could he truly be the one? She extinguished the excitement, reminding herself: "Hope clouds observation."

"You know when people believe what they say," she said.

"I know it."

The harmonics of ability confirmed by repeated test were in his voice. She heard them, said: "Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Haderach. Sit down, little brother, here at my feet."

"I prefer to stand."

"Your mother sat at my feet once."

"I'm not my mother."

"You hate us a little, eh?" She looked toward the door, called out: "Jessica!"

The door flew open and Jessica stood there staring hard-eyed into the room. Hardness melted from her as she saw Paul. She managed a faint smile.

"Jessica, have you ever stopped hating me?" the old woman asked.

"I both love and hate you," Jessica said. "The hate—that's from pains I must never forget. The love—that's...."

"Just the basic fact," the old woman said, but her voice was gentle. "You may come in now, but remain silent. Close that door and mind it that no one interrupts us."

Jessica stepped into the room, closed the door and stood with her back to it. My son lives, she thought. My son lives and is ... human. I knew he was ... but ... he lives. Now, I can go on living. The door felt hard and real against her back. Everything in the room was immediate and pressing against her senses.

My son lives.

Paul looked at his mother. She told the truth. He wanted to getaway alone and think this experience through, but knew he could not leave until he was dismissed. The old woman had gained a power over him. They spoke truth. His mother had undergone this test. There must be terrible purpose in it ... the pain and fear had been terrible. He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.

Although there is no narrator directing us through the scene, notice how the reader is shown the thoughts of all three characters at various points—the Reverend Mother, Paul, and Jessica.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Third-Person Omniscient Viewpoint

Advantages of the Omniscient Narrator

Easier to write than head-hopping: Since this perspective is very similar to first-person (a narrator relating the story to the readers), it can be somewhat easier to write than the head-hopping style of omniscient.

Tension: Since the author can share with the reader any character’s thoughts or even information that none of the characters know, it is easy to introduce tension through obstacles that the characters don’t know are coming.

Infodumping: Since the narrator can show thoughts from multiple characters and even pause to explain information, it is possible to get across a lot of information in a very short space of time.

Direct address to the reader: As always, a narrator can address the reader directly if necessary.

Advantages of Head-Hopping Omniscient

More immediate than the narrator: Since there’s no one between the reader and the events of the story, the narrative can feel more immediate and real and less like just a story.

Tension: Just as with the narrator, you can convey information from multiple viewpoints or information that none of the characters know.

Infodumping: Again, it is possible to convey information from multiple perspectives very quickly, rather than having to give a separate scene to each perspective.

Most reliable narrator: With its absence of a biased, actual narrator and ability to show the thoughts of many characters in quick succession, this is the single most reliable narration that a writer can provide to a reader.

Disadvantages of Both Types of Third-Person Omniscient

Difficult to write correctly: Third-person omniscient is the most difficult to write without creating viewpoint errors or getting confusing—when you move from head to head, the reader can get lost very quickly and become unsure who is thinking what.

Unfamiliar to many readers: To make matters worse, very few books are written in third-person omniscient these days, so readers are unused to reading it. This means that even if you get it right, readers may still end up confused. This is particularly true with the “head-hopping” variation of omniscient, because to the reader it will often seem like third-person limited until the first time the narrative jumps to another character’s thoughts. This can be very jarring to readers, even if they’ve read omniscient before.

Lack of tension: It can be difficult to keep secrets and tension going if the readers are getting too much information about what is going on.

Infodumping: While it is an advantage that omniscient allows you to convey lots of information more quickly, this is a very difficult thing to do well. Often, this can turn into a firehose-esque flood of information that the reader will be unable to follow.

Overview: Third-Person Limited Perspective

Today we'll continue our series of discussions on common perspectives. We've already discussed what perspective and tense are and first-person perspective; today we'll delve into third-person limited perspective.

Third-person stories are told from the perspective of someone who is not part of the story; hence, all of the characters are referred to as "he," "she," or "it," rather than "I" or "we." In third-person limited perspective, your goal should generally be to not draw attention to the narrator—in a way, you're pretending that there isn't a narrator, that the audience is simply riding in a character's head and seeing what the character sees and thinks. Take a look at these examples from the first and second chapters of Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin:

     It was not until they were mounted and on their way that Bran allowed himself to taste the sweet air of victory. By then, his pup was snuggled inside his leathers, warm against him, safe for the long ride home. Bran was wondering what to name him.
     Halfway across the bridge, Jon pulled up suddenly.
     "What is it, Jon?" their lord father asked.
     "Can't you hear it?"
     Bran could hear the wind in the trees, the clatter of their hooves on the ironwood planks, the whimpering of his hungry pup, but Jon was listening to something else.
     "There," Jon said. He swung his horse around and galloped back across the bridge. They watched him dismount where the direwolf lay dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A moment later he was riding back to them, smiling.
     "He must have crawled away from the others," Jon said.
     "Or been driven away," their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone would have opened his eyes while the others were still blind.
     "An albino," Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement. "This one will die even faster than the others."
     Jon Snow gave his father's ward a long, chilling look. "I think not, Greyjoy," he said. "This one belongs to me."

     [Chapter Two]
     Catelyn

     Catelyn had never liked this godswood.
     She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers.

In this example, there is no narrator to speak of—we don't know who is telling the story, because the narrator isn't a character. Instead, the narrator follows the thoughts and experiences of some perspective characters: Bran Stark in the first chapter and Catelyn Stark in the second. Even though Bran and Catelyn aren't personally telling the story, as they would be in a first-person narrative, we still see the world through their eyes. This is what limited perspective means—our view as an audience is limited to that of one character at a time. When the author wants to switch perspective characters, he begins a new section or chapter.

Advantages of Third-Person Limited Perspective

Reliable narrator: Because the narrative is not relayed by one of the characters, third-person stories tend to seem more trustworthy and objective. The audience feels like they're inside a character's head without a narrator, so what they are shown is probably true.

Character sympathy: While not usually quite as intimate as a first-person narrative, third-person limited stories can still feel very close to the characters—the story takes place in their heads, after all.

Multiple perspectives: As demonstrated by the example passage, third-person limited narrative makes it very easy to switch from one perspective character to another. Some books have two or three perspective characters, while others—like Game of Thrones—have dozens and dozens.

Eloquence: Not all characters are as intelligent or well-spoken as others. If you wanted to write a first-person story from the perspective of a thick-headed thug, it would be difficult to describe the action as well as you would like with the thug's limited vocabulary. In third person, however, you can write a scene from the thug's perspective without sacrificing eloquence or creativity.

Disadvantages of Third-Person Limited

Easy to over-do: Just because you can write from multiple perspectives does not mean that you can do so well. Many new authors attempt to branch their story out among too many perspective characters, resulting in a slow and confusing story that loses track of its own plot. Yes, George R.R. Martin did it—but you're not George R.R. Martin. (Unless you are, of course. Hi George! Thanks for stopping by.) Try to keep your novel to two or three perspectives until you've really got the hang of juggling all those characters.

Difficult to withhold information from the reader: Since the narrator is so reliable in third-person limited, and since the audience is inside the heads of various characters, the audience will often feel cheated if you don't tell them information that the main character should have known.

Perspective errors: It is very easy to make perspective errors when writing a third-person limited story; in fact, this perspective probably sees more mistakes than any other perspective. We'll cover the many errors that writers make in third-person limited in future updates.

Overview: First-Person Perspective

I discussed here the most common perspectives and tenses that are seen in fiction writing. Over the next few weeks, we'll delve into each of these modes of writing with a little more specificity and discuss some of the strengths and foibles of each.  Today we'll look at first-person perspective.

A story told in first-person perspective is being told by one of the characters in the story, usually the central protagonist. Here's an example:

     I closed my eyes and jumped off of the roof, silently praying that Dall was as good a pilot as he claimed. The duke shouted in alarm, screaming for his men to stop me, and then his voice was drowned out in an angry rush of wind.
     I had been determined to keep my eyes closed as I fell, in hopes that I would be less afraid if I couldn't see the ground approaching. But it turns out that not knowing how far away the ground is was far more frightening than knowing. My eyes popped open after only a few seconds of falling.
    The ground wasn't nearly as far away as I would have liked, and for a brief moment I panicked; then Dall's skimcar appeared from around the side of the building. Dall waved at me from the cockpit as he pulled up alongside me, matching my pace. I reached out and grabbed the top of the car, my fingers clenching so hard that I thought they might actually bend the di-steel.
     Dall slowly maneuvered the skimcar beneath me and then slowed our descent. He slowed more abruptly than I would have liked, and I thudded into the cockpit with a grunt, spread-eagled. It wasn't bad enough that it hurt, but it did knock the wind from me.
     "Sorry, Joan" Dall said with that irritating grin of his, his voice muffled by the glasstic between us.
     "Just let me in!" I shouted.
     He shook his head. "Not until we come to a complete stop. Too dangerous otherwise."
     "Too dangerous?" I shrieked. "I just jumped off a three-hundred story building without knowing for sure that you were down here, and you think that would be too dangerous?"
      I should take a moment to mention that I'd had a little problem with heights ever since I was six years old, and Dall knew that perfectly well. He was just being a jerk.
     "You'll be fine out there for a minute or two," Dall replied, still grinning.
     "Two minutes?"

In the case of this example, one of the characters—Joan—is telling the story, as though she were sitting in front of us speaking. She uses "I" to refer to herself, marking this as first-person perspective.

So, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of first-person perspective?

Advantages

Intimate: Because the character is relating the story themselves, first-person perspective often creates a more close, intense, and intimate feel than other perspectives, and the action often feels more immediate.

Strong Personality: When a character is relating a story "in their own words," so to speak, it can often be much easier to get their personality across than it might have been in another perspective.

Unreliability: If you want to tell a story with an unreliable narrator, first-person perspective is often the way to go. Since the perspective character is telling the story, their opinions and prejudices can color the narrative, or they can even outright lie to the reader. This can make for some very interesting stories.

Info Dump: It's easier in first-person for your narrator to step away from the story for a moment to explain something that the reader needs to know; Joan did it near the end of our example.

Simplicity: First-person can often be one of the easiest perspectives to write without making perspective errors.

Disadvantages

Most limited perspective: Since one of the characters is telling the story, the author cannot relate anything that the main character cannot see. If you want your audience to know something, then your main character has to know. You can't just jump to someone else's head for a bit and then come back. (There are stories with multiple first-person perspectives, but these can be very tricky to write well.)
Difficult to explain character appearance:   After all, if I were sitting and telling you a story, I wouldn't need to explain what I look like, would I?  Look back over our example; there's not any information there on what Joan looks like, and it would be very awkward to try to fit in a description of her anywhere.
Difficult to make the audience worry for the character: Since first-person perspective requires the main character to be alive and well to tell the story, it is difficult to get your audience to worry about the safety of the narrator. How would the story be told, after all, if the main character weren't around to finish it?  This is particularly true of first-person stories told in the past tense.