Ask a published writer

[Kyriakos]

Do any of you have experience writing in first person? I decided to try my hand at it and I'm finding it rather difficult. Any tips to help make it flow better and easily?

I almost always write in first person.

You can pretend it is some letter, or a diary note.

Also if you want to make it closer to 3rd, while keeping the perks of 1rst, you could have a second character be the main one, and the first person narrator is someone merely talking about that character.This way you have all the freedom to do what you want to with the other character, and still have your narration as you like it.

 

[SKILORD]

First requires a lot of on the body sensation, it is best to put yourself in the character's shoes as much as possible. Not just, what do they think/believe, but how do they experience things. What are their reactions to various physical sensations, temperature, pain, human touch, think about how they think about various types of surfaces (metal, wood, plastic, carpet).

If you want to get into the head of a character, get into their body, these sort of feelings are foundation for much of their beliefs and thoughts.

I write 1st person about 2/3rds of the time, you can always Great Gatsby it, the way Kyriakos mentioned, but I tend to just rely on the Johnny Depp method and spend weeks attempting to experience things through the eyes of a character before I try to write it. Then write the sensations, know your character, and let the plot flow.

It's tougher to do the less in common you have with a character, but it is also an interesting way to devise experiences as research matter. I have a vampire story in first person, for instance, but thankfully the important character elements of that Vampire did not involve drinking too much blood so I spared myself that grisly research. His important character elements had more to do with self-control and his crazy sense of duty (He's a... slave in the old south, and reformed warlord).

But I won't deny, experiments with whips aside, that trying to get in his head was a satisfying and rewarding experience.

 

[Kyriakos]

Interesting,

I have to say that i am way too lazy and egomaniac to really bother emulating a really different person in a story.So the narrator is always myself, and usually parts of me are also the main other character.Then the truly less significant following characters can represent others, be it the notion of "others"or specific other personalities.
However i enjoy other kinds of works too, i just have come to not choose them as my own.

 

[Kyriakos]

Some more positive news

Another literary magazine accepted a very short (2 pages) story of mine, initially for its web-page, but it asked for more work, supposedly to include it in its publication... I really hope they do, and i sent them something i consider respectable

If they end up accepting the latter story for the printed form of their magazine, it will be my second periodical publication, again in a long-standing and good magazine... I just hope they do.

 

[SKILORD]

Good to hear bro.

My method probably wouldn't work great for everyone, my writing is primarily influenced by my insanity, and a lot of peple lack the psychological... tools(?) To do things my way. Still, I find it useful. It turns my weakness into strength.

 

[Kyriakos]

That is great, i too turn my weaknesses into strengths (hopefully) in many ways in writing.
"The most circulated individualism of authors is their way of covering up their weaknesses" F. Kafka.

 

[SKILORD]

My favorite writer ever.

 

[Kyriakos]

(edited)

 

[Kyriakos]

Just got an email from the editor of a second magazine...

He says he will publish a story of mine in the next issue.

This is great, my second ever periodical printed edition...

Also this is the mag which has as an editor someone who has expressed very good opinions of my work, so i hope it will be the first of many stories published in it.

I am happy

 

[Kyriakos]

Some more news from the paper front:

-Some e-zine which had published two of my works (one due to its relative distinction at a contest) announced to me that it will publish in the next 4 months two more stories by me.

-A third printed magazine has replied to my work claiming that it will evaluate it with caution. It seems likely it will accept to publish something...

-I just sent a letter to one of my old teachers in highschool, who once asked the class to write a short prose piece, and my own earned me some positive remark. Since the school is quite prestigious, and it also has a literary magazine, maybe something by me will find its way there too (?)

 

[kochman]

If I wanted to get a book of poetry published... how would I go about doing that?

 

[Kyriakos]

Probably best to find a good literary agent. They do not exist here, so i had to improvise. However poetry possibly is even harder to have published than prose, due to (i think elsewhere too) less people reading it and more people producing it?

Anyway the question had come up before in the thread, and answers in detail were given. I can only say for this country, but like i said we have no literary agents so the game is very different.

 

[mayor]

Some more news from the paper front:

-Some e-zine which had published two of my works (one due to its relative distinction at a contest) announced to me that it will publish in the next 4 months two more stories by me.

-A third printed magazine has replied to my work claiming that it will evaluate it with caution. It seems likely it will accept to publish something...

-I just sent a letter to one of my old teachers in highschool, who once asked the class to write a short prose piece, and my own earned me some positive remark. Since the school is quite prestigious, and it also has a literary magazine, maybe something by me will find its way there too (?)

cool

 

[Kyriakos]

Just to note that the second published in a periodical story is now a reality, as of today

So, after the December edition which had the story "The flaw" in it, now the other periodical has my story titled "The darkness". I hope many more will follow

 

[Kyriakos]

And the cover of that magazine

 

[Kyriakos]

A week later and i went to a publisher today. He gave me two magazines for free, so that i can begin to familiarize myself with his editions, and we had a little discussion. It was rather pleasant, and happened at a monstrously sized old building in some back alley of the city. The make-up of the edifice was labyrinthine, each floor had 11 doors, and there were 7 floors. His office was at the first floor.

He said again that he will most probably have my story in the next edition of his magazine, and showed me the pages being created in the computer. Thus begins my journey into making connections with publishers.

Also i got invited to a celebration of the international day of poetry, by another publisher who already has released a work by myself. It is tomorrow and i am thinking of going. Hopefully i can achieve something with that

 

[Luckymoose]

You should start capitalizing "I" when you use it.

How popular is your work?

 

[Kyriakos]

In Greek we never do that (I in Greek is Ego, but usually it is inferred and not even quoted).

As to my work, it seems it is hopefully beginning to become wanted. A few more magazine editions and familiarity with editors and i will have reached the point where requests for work generate themselves (i hope)

In google i have around 20K hits, although they alter from time to time, and i guess 1-2K are not about me but about other people with the same surname. So in the web too i am in the first stages of becomming somewhat known.

 

[Harvin87]

It can happen. With my first book, the US publisher changed a few of the lines quite substantially without telling either me or my UK publisher, which rather annoyed the latter. I wasn't enormously bothered. The text changes so much between my initial draft and the final publication that I generally can't remember what it was like to start with anyway. Minor changes (i.e. those that don't affect the meaning) are usual and frequent, of course, and a copy-editor wouldn't normally bother contacting the author about those unless they really affect the flow or sense of the sentences. I didn't when I was a copy-editor, at any rate - some tend to contact authors more frequently. I had a terrible copy-editor once who sent me enormously long query lists and tried to change everything in the book to suit his own agenda. That in itself might have been OK but he had a very hectoring, arrogant tone - it was like he was marking the text, like a teacher - and he was pretty rude about the aspects he didn't like. Which is unprofessional and completely unacceptable.

An interesting thing you learn as you take different roles in publishing: proof-readers spend their time complaining about the copy-editor who let so many mistakes get through. Copy-editors spend their time complaining about the author who made so many mistakes in the first place. Authors spend their time complaining about the editor who won't let them exercise their artistic integrity with perfect freedom. I don't know who editors spend their time complaining about - probably all of the others at once.



This is the kind of thing that it's fantastically useful having an editor (as opposed to a copy-editor) for. When you're sick of the text and don't know how to improve it further (i.e. which bits to cut out) you can just send the whole thing to the editor and ask for suggestions. By the time you look at it again, with the suggestions, everything is much clearer.

I always write far, far too much, which means most of my "writing" time is actually spent cutting down. The longer the book, the more there is to cut. The worst one was the time I had to cut out 50,000 words from one book - that was miserable. But one of the first things you learn as an author is that you cannot be precious, you cannot get emotionally attached to the material, and you have to be ruthless. Because what you think is good and what actually is good probably don't coincide all that well.

This. Great advice Plotinus.

 

[Mouthwash]

How do you get through a story? I can barely finish a few chapters of a project before losing interest.