Latest Posts by notsoaveragebear - Page 2

A Song of Ice and Fire + PoV characters

“Nobody is a villain in their own story. We’re all the heroes of our own stories.” - George R. R. Martin

some notes on POV

I wanted to type up a little rundown of quick n dirty writing tips based on things I see a lot in fic/ amateur original manuscripts, and, uh, it turned out that they all revolved around POV. Nailing point of view in fiction writing is both crucial and one of the least intuitive building blocks of writing to learn: an understanding of POV has been the only useful thing i took from my college creative writing classes, and god knows how long I’d have stumbled along without it otherwise.

So! I am saving you, baby writer, the trouble of slogging through a miserable writing class with a professor who’s bitter as FUCK that genre fiction sells better than his “sad white man drinking” lit fic novels. Here are some assorted writing tips/ common mistakes and how to fix them, as relating to POV:

(this turned into a WALL OF TEXT so i will be using gifs to break it up)

> “I watched the ship tilt” “he saw the sky darken” “she noticed flowers growing on the rusted gate.” no. If the character who felt/saw/noticed etc is your POV character, whether in first or third, then this is called filtering and it takes the reader out of the story by subtly reminding them of the separation between the POV character and themselves. in most styles of writing, this is bad, not to mention it unnecessarily complicates your prose. try again: “the ship tilted.” “the sky darkened.” “flowers grew on the rusted gate.” Readers will instinctively understand that the POV character is witnessing the story happen, they don’t need to be told it.

I’m not telling you to never refer to your character “watching” something, of course: “I watched the birds dart around for hours,” isn’t filtering because watching is a notable activity, here, rather than an unnecessary obfuscation of the “real” thing happening. But understand how phrasing can jar readers momentarily apart from the character viewpoint, and use it with intention.

> Close Third Person POV still requires you to be mindful of your POV character. this is a rookie mistake i see allllllll the time. “Josh cried stupid tears at the beautiful display by the dancers,” is a sentence in Josh’s POV. “Stupid” tells us how he feels about the tears, “beautiful” tells us how he feels about the display. ok. all good so far. BUT.

“Josh cried stupid tears at the beautiful display by the dancers. It was everything he’d wanted from this production, from the lighting to the costumes to the exquisite choreography. Martha had to suppress a fond smile at his reaction; he was always so sweetly emotional after the curtain fell.”

Do you see what’s wrong with this paragraph? The first two sentences are Josh’s POV, and then the third one suddenly becomes Martha’s. A lot of amateur writers don’t even realize they’re doing this, which in its most egregious form is called “head-hopping,” but it’s disorienting and distracting for the reader, and makes it harder to connect with a single character. In multi-person close 3rd POV story, the POV should remain the same for an entire chapter (or at least, for an entire scene/ segment,) and change only between them. If you’re new to POV wrangling, watch your adjectives/ interiority (we’ll get to that in a second) and think “which character am I using as a lens right now, and am I being consistent" every once in a while until you get the hang of it.

> Related: let’s talk about interiority. Interiority is a more sophisticated way of thinking of a character’s “internal narration,” IE bits of prose whose job is not to advance the plot, set tone, or describe anything, (although it CAN do any of those things as well, and good prose will multitask) but to give us a specific sense of the character’s internal life, including backstory, likes, dislikes, fears, wants, and personality. In the above example paragraph, the middle sentence “It was everything he’d wanted from this production, from the lighting to the costumes to the exquisite choreography” Is interiority for Josh. It tells us that not only did he love the show, he’s very familiar with this art form and thus had expectations going in; likewise, listing the technical components is a way of emphasizing his enthusiasm while pointing out that it’s informed, implying that Josh himself is intellectually breaking down the performance even in appreciation.

“That’s a lot for a throwaway sentence you made up for an example.” Well, yeah, a little interiority goes a long way. Interiority is what creates the closeness we have to POV characters, the reason we understand them better than the non-POV characters they interact with. It’s particularly key in the first couple chapters of an original work, when we need to be sold on the character and understand the context they operate in.

If readers are having trouble connecting to or understanding the motivations of your character, you might need more interiority; if your story’s plot is agonizingly slow-moving (and you don’t want it to be) or your character is coming off as melodramatic, you might need less. It’s not something you should necessarily worry about; your amount of interiority in a WIP is probably fine, but being able to recognize it for what it is will help you be more mindful when you edit.

(Fanfic as a medium revels in interiority: that’s how you get 10k fics where nothing happens but two characters lying in bed talking and having Feelings. Or coffeeshop AUs that have literally no plot to speak of but are 100k+ long.)

> try not to describe the facial expression of a POV character, even in third person. rather like filtering, it turns us into a spectator of the character when they’re supposed to be our vessel, and since it’s *their* POV, there should be other ways available to communicate their emotion/ reactions. There are ways of circumventing this, (the example sentence where “Martha had to suppress a fond smile” is an example) where their expression is tied up in a physical action, or something done very deliberately by the character and therefore becomes something they would note to themselves, but generally, get rid of “[pov character’s] eye’s widened” and “[pov character] smiled.”

so that’s what i got! go forth and write with beautifully deliberate use of POV.

My Current WIPS

Last Updated: November 14, 2024

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Visions of Kyber (Star Wars Visions) - CURRENT

Episode I - The Sparks of Hope - CURRENT

Episode II - The Crimson Heir

Episode III - Rebalance of the Force

Crisis: When Earths Collide (DC Comics) - a five-part adaptation of Crisis on Infinite Earths featuring DC animated shows, with the first four fanfics focusing on separate stories set on their respective earths - JUST THE OUTLINES

Blood and Shadow - Teen Titans - outline posted

Injustice for All - Young Justice

Legion of Two Worlds - Legion of Superheroes x DCAU

The Final Countdown - DCAU x Gods and Monsters

When Earths Collide - the actual crisis

@swsource star wars week DAY 6 – LIGHT SIDE: Luke & Leia

Happy Star Wars day! May the Force be with you! @swsource Star Wars Week: Day 6

I call upon the fan fic writing gods to bless you with the perseverance to finish one of your unfinished drafts. 

May your fingers dance along the letters upon your device with ease, may the devil of distraction stay far from you, and may your work not need much editing.

I pass this blessing upon every fan fic writer out there.

"i want more media with zero drama, no tension, and zero problematic characters and i am not joking"

Great! Here are my recommendations:

im taking media away from some of u guys until you can pass a 6th grade literary analysis test

ASOIAF POV Characters + Ages when they enter the series

Some characters’ ages are estimates.  Ages/estimates depend on which book they enter the series during, not necessarily their ages at a consistent time.  Calculated using | Fancasting 

5 things your character can't do while speaking

Choke. Just think about it, seriously. Think about what choking is and imagine speaking while it’s happening. That would fuckin’ hurt, man.

Hiss. Look, it’s just not possible, okay? No matter how “evil” you want your character to seem.

Snarl. Animals snarls. The Beast from Beauty and the Beast snarls. The Hulk snarls. You know who doesn’t snarl? PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE SPEAKING.

Shriek. Come on, 99% of the time, “shriek” is not the word you want.Let’s face it: if you put an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, your reader gets the picture. Don’t bring to mind banshees and screaming toddlers.

Sneer. I’m not even going to bother explaining this one. “SNEER” ISN’T EVEN A SOUND.

Yeah sure we’ve all binged a long fic, but have you ever read a WIP and followed someone’s life?

Tidbits of information - (“I graduated today!”) - and small joys (“It’s my birthday!”) and you get to be there to say “This chapter made me cry, happy birthday, thank you for gifting us this”.

I remember reading this fic of someone at the end of high school, older than me then. They seemed infinitely wise, spoke of their future career and getting into the college they wanted. I remember them posting on days they felt like nothing could bring them down - and on days the whole world did and it’s the aftermath of a hospital visit. Cancer, I think it was, their father. I got to the end of the story, I know their father was fine, but also they got to finish their WIP. I graduated three years later than them, still dutifully wrote thank you notes in every comment. I wonder if they remember me, or just the collective of people reading the story as it updates.

Four years ago I was into my first year of university, my first year of figuring out being out in public spaces. I made excuses as to why my name didn’t match my paperwork and read a fic on the train, the same five chapters over and over again for the next years as I thought the story abandoned. It updated this week after such a long hiatus, I left another thank you comment.

There’s an author I love, they update their stories like a clockwork. When they don’t, I check their blog, just to see if their doing alright, not because I feel like they owe me, just to ensure whether I better get out my laptop to write that really detailed university level essay chapter analysis to get them smiling when their day sucked.

And then, once, when I was 17, I read a fic that hadn’t updated in over a decade. I wasn’t even in primary school when it started posting. On the last chapter, I left a comment that, in retrospect, was horribly rambly and most likely full of grammar mistakes. The author replied and though I couldn’t see their face, I thought of them crying. They were married now, had children, and hadn’t thought about this fic in years. They went through their files again, found another half written chapter and an outline. I got two new chapters to read that year.

And then, recently, someone told me they got back into writing original fiction because of my comments. I get to read nearly weekly chapters.

I love binge reading a finished fic, but nothing is ever going to top the feeling of anticipation of waiting for a chapter, the pure joy when someone tells you I was done with this, but you made me think of it again, so this is for you.

Anyway, I think we should romanticize reading WIPs more, growing up alongside the authors writing the stories we love.

Star Wars - art by Kevin Nowlan (1982)

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Some tips for using a few words to describe voices:

1. Tone Words: Use tone words to convey the emotional quality of a voice. For example, you can describe a voice as "melodic," "soothing," "sharp," "gentle," or "commanding" to give readers a sense of the tone.

2. Pitch and Range: Mention the pitch and range of the voice. Is it "deep," "high-pitched," "raspy," or "full-bodied"? This can provide insight into the character's age, gender, or emotional state.

3. Accent and Diction: Describe the character's accent or diction briefly to give a sense of their background or cultural influences. For instance, "British-accented," "Southern drawl," or "formal."

4. Volume: Mention the volume of the voice, whether it's "whispering," "booming," "murmuring," or "hushed."

5. Quality: Use terms like "velvet," "silken," "gravelly," "honeyed," or "crisp" to convey the texture or quality of the voice.

6. Rate of Speech: Describe how fast or slow the character speaks, using words like "rapid," "slurred," "measured," or "rambling."

7. Mood or Emotion: Indicate the mood or emotion carried by the voice. For example, a "quivering" voice may convey fear or anxiety, while a "warm" voice may express comfort and reassurance.

8. Resonance: Describe the resonance of the voice, such as "echoing," "nasal," "booming," or "tinny."

9. Timbre: Mention the timbre of the voice, using words like "rich," "thin," "clear," or "smoky."

10. Cadence: Highlight the rhythm or cadence of speech with descriptors like "staccato," "lilting," "rhythmic," or "halting."

11. Intonation: Convey the character's intonation by saying their voice is "sarcastic," "apologetic," "confident," or "questioning."

12. Vocal Characteristics: If applicable, mention unique vocal characteristics, like a "lisp," "stutter," "drawl," or "accented 'r'."

when I was 14 I worked in a grocery store and one day I got to bag Stephen King’s groceries and of course, being the little horror fiction nerd I am I was completely starstruck

I think he thought I was gonna ask for an autograph because I was not even lowkey staring I was full on moon-faced and bouncing and he kept looking over at me hesitantly like aw jeez kid fuck off

anyways I finally managed to squeak out that I was a huge fan and asked for advice on writing, “how do I write as well as you do?” in my horrible thick German accent and broken ass English and he gave me the best writing advice I have ever received

“shit kid, stop worrying about how other people do it and just write your story”

14 years later my wife and I nearly hit him with our car because he was jaywalking

Honestly, ever since becoming a fanfic writer myself I’ve become like 500% more understanding and patient about other authors’ update schedules. An author takes 6+ months to post their next chapter? Yeah, totally get that real life can get in the way. An author abandons a fic? Disappointing, but it happens- sometimes inspiration for a story just dies. An author apologizes about taking so long to post a 10k word chapter? Dude, that’s like 18-20 pages on Word single-spaced. It takes me at least a week to write an essay for school a quarter the length of that, and that’s with a deadline. 

It’s probably the most important thing writing fanfic has taught me, tbh. How to fully appreciate the hard work someone else has put into their story. How important the role of the audience is to an author. And that no matter what, you are never entitled to demand more of a story that you are getting for free. 

heeppy hoolida