First person point of view remains one of the trickiest strategies for any writer, as well as one of the most effective and popular ways of telling a story. This class will provide key insights into writing in first person: thinking of yourself as a character in a story; changing your point of view in the course of the story; reaching a meaningful conclusion that will interest readers. We will discuss first person point of view in memoir, travel pieces, humor, and other genres.
Anne Lamott teaches us about life and the craft of writing in her luminous stories.
TOP TIPS FOR WRITING IN FIRST PERSON
1) THINK OF YOURSELF AS A CHARACTER – The first person you assume in the story is a selection, not your whole personality, and you want to select carefully so that the aspect of yourself that you highlight works well within the entire narrative.
The part of yourself that you emphasize will depend on the kind of story you’re planning to tell. In one story you may want to emphasize your competence at croquet, in another your incompetence at softball. But remember that you’re choosing a selection of yourself, not necessarily the whole person. In first person, you’re assuming an aspect of your personality, and turning that aspect into a persona, a character who fits within the larger story. The narrator is a part of you, not all of you.
2) EMPHASIZE THE UNIVERSAL – Though you can sometimes get away with prattling on about personal fetishes and pet peeves, you’re most likely to connect with the reader when you write about the parts of yourself that are similar to those of the reader. You want to become a kind of every man character. You want to make your experiences representative. Phillip Lopate’s wonderful essay, “Against Joie de Vivre,” contradicts this strategy, following the tradition of the contrarian essay, but this is a much more difficult path to follow.
3) MODESTY IS THE BEST POLICY – Generally speaking, be modest and self-deprecating or at least reserved about your talents and achievements. Excessive bragging is not a winning strategy. Always treat your accomplishments with a healthy dose of irony. Self-loathing gets old after a while, too, but gee-whiz-aren’t-I-great stories get old immediately.
4) BE ENGAGING – Remember that writing is a performance; make the words sing and jump. Try to be amusing, clever, witty, chatty, sensitive, honest, forthright, informative and pithy. “I started writing when I was seven or eight. I was very shy and strange-looking, loved reading above everything else, weighed about forty pounds, and was so tense I walked with my shoulders up to my ears, like Richard Nixon.” From Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.
For more on how to write in first person, consider signing up for my fall class, Revising Your Life.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright uses summary leads throughout his work. Photo-Credit-to-Kenny-Braun.
These leads allow you to get to the point of your story quickly and easily. The trick is to make them appealing as well. Writers using summary leads often employ wordplay or humor to liven them up.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens
“The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once famously observed that “Hell is other people.” And he worked from home. Imagine if he had been one of the millions of us who are forced to navigate the psychic minefields of the modern corporation.”
From a book review in the Wall Street Journal, 4/4/06 by Martin Kihn.
Normally, the milk of human kindness doesn’t leave a sour taste. Unless, that is, you happen to be a Northerner taking too big a gulp of Southern hospitality.
From the Wall Street Journal, 10/29/96, by Eleena De Lisser of which discusses the reception Northerner’s get when moving to the South.
This lead works because it puts a surprising twist on what normally would be a cliché (ie. the milk of human kindness). In this way, it intrigues and appeals to the reader, encouraging the reader to find out just what she means by all this. The second line introduces in summary fashion the subject of the story.
De Lisser then introduces a quote which backs up and further explains the lead:
“It’s the most irritating thing I can think of,” complains Diane Kuhn, an ex-New Yorker now living in Nashville, Tenn., referring to the South’s idea of highway hospitality. “Drivers will let 12 cars” enter their lane, she says. “I say you let one in. Maybe. If you’re in a good mood.”
Then De Lisser moves to the nut graph, which introduces the larger issue:
For the most part, the North these days can’t seem to get enough of the South–its music, its cooking, its John Grisham (of Oxford, Miss.) A lot of Northerners are coming on down.
She then goes on to explain that the Northerners don’t appreciate the social courtesies of Southerners. Such a topic would confound most newspaper journalists, but De Lisser handles it with deftness, humor and aplomb. For more on writing summary leads, sign up for my fall class, Revising Your Life.
Persistence pays off. That’s the lesson former student Diana Noble learned in trying to place her latest novel, Not That Kind of Call Girl, under the pen name Nova Garcia. Diana pitched some 200 agents on the mystery novel before landing a contract with Wild Rose Press after pitching the book at a conference.
“Is it worth the time, uncertainty and hassle?” she asked while speaking at my summer class for The Writer’s Workshop, Writing for Story. “For me, yes!”
Persistence. It’s got to be the most under-rated ingredient in every writer’s success. Talent? Sure? Stamina? Definitely. Imagination? Certainly. But none of these other qualities would result in writing or publishing success if the writer lacked persistence.
Diana demonstrated persistence not just in pitching but in writing the book. It took her seven years to complete the manuscript. Along the way, she learned the following tips:
1. There’s so much to learn—get out there and don’t stop
2. Networking matters
3. Be humble, your writing can always improve
4. Put on your big girl pants; it’s a bumpy ride
5. Pantser vs plotter, I’ve made peace with my style
6. Grammar, you may think you’re perfect, but…
7. The art of querying agents—make an
impression; it’s got to be personalized and perfect
8. Active writing
9. Show, don’t tell
10. Hooks & tension— make ’em hungry
“A Simple Way to Create
Suspense,” Lee Child, 2012
11. Beware information dumps
12. Step away from the computer
13. Read for inspiration
14. It doesn’t end with a published book
15. Give yourself some grace—this is hard stuff
16. Write with a purpose
17. Persevere
Diana is hosting a book signing on October 3rd, 2024, 5-9 pm at Brigid’s Bottle Shop 188 Sunset Ave S Edmonds, WA 98020. Guitarist Jerry Battista will perform from 7-9 pm. : www.novagarcia.net.
Most authors prefer writing to marketing, but learning how to sell your book is a necessary skill in today’s publishing world.
“Publishers want to know what tools you’re bringing to the table,” said Molly Woolbright, Publicity Manager of the University of Washington Press, who spoke to my spring Seattle Narrative Writing class, The Nature of Narrative. “It’s never too early to start doing this. You want to build these networks out.”
Overview of Book Publicity
An in-house publicist at a traditional publisher works on a variety of books at a time, striving to secure a mix of trade reviews and regional and national media for each. From the general public’s perspective, a book campaign is typically about 3 months long; from an author and publisher’s perspective, the work begins at least 6 months before a book is published.
Long-Lead Media
About 6-8 months out from publication
Advance reader copies (otherwise known as ARCs or galleys) sent to media outlets that work far in advance, including: Print magazines, Trade journals (Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, etc.), Podcasts.
Short-Lead Media
About 1-2 months out from publication
Finished copies sent to media outlets that work on a shorter timeframe, including: Newspapers, radio, TV, blogs.
Local/Regional Media
Often overlooked in favor of bigger or more prestigious national media outlets, your local newspaper, magazines, blogs, radio, and TV stations are a great starting point to build buzz (while still striving for national hits). The Amazon algorithm is fed by any and all publicity, and local media is more likely to take notice.
Optimizing Your Author Platform for Media
Book promotion, regardless of genre, is often more about the author than the book—it’s about you and the expertise you can provide or discussions you can spark. Whether you’re working with an in-house publicist or you’ve hired a freelancer, one of the most helpful steps you can take to assist her efforts in securing media is to boost your online presence.
Website
From a publicity perspective, a website is the most useful asset you can have as an author. Whereas social media is ephemeral, a website offers a consistent representation of you and your work. Think of it like a toolbox where journalists/reviewers/editors can go to find more info.
For more on book promotion and writing technique, please consider signing up for my next Seattle writing class, online writing class or travel writing class through www.thewritersworkshop.net.
The American Master: Mark Twain provides a model for many of my writing classes.
These are vivid word pictures that introduce a character and bring them to life on the page, as Mark Twain does in his stories and books. The character sketch should be short, vivid, succinct. Include distinctive details; try to SHOW rather than simply TELL about someone. Include one tag or crowning detail that the reader will associate with them.
Most writers have little trouble with the ‘telling side’ of characterization. They quickly and easily sum someone up: he is a grump; she’s an entertainer. But writers often have a much harder time of explaining why they formed that opinion of the person. As a result, they don’t know how to demonstrate the truth of that assessment to the reader. Here are some ideas of what to look for in a direct or ‘showing’ approach to character sketches:
SHOWING CHARACTER
–APPEARANCE – What do they look like? What size, color, shape, weight is person? What kind of clothes do they wear? Do they have a narrow face, or a round, cherubic face? Green eyes or brown eyes? Do they wear a smile or a frown?
–MANNER – How do they move, walk, sit? What’s they’re posture like? How do they smoke a cigarette? Vape? Drive a car? Eat an ice cream cone?
–SPEECH – What do they say? How do they say it? Do they have a distinct dialect? How can you use this to characterize them? Is their speech individuated? How can you capture this?
–CHARACTER IN ACTION – How do they behave in their work, social and family life? What do their actions tell us about who they are? This is an especially effective way of characterization. Follow someone around work or at home. Record details of speech, manner, etc. See how they interact with other people.
We’ll discuss character sketches in my spring class, The Nature of Narrative. Let me know if you’d like to sign up!
In organizing a piece, narrative writers tell the story in terms of scenes linked chronologically, creating interest and suspense, pulling the reader forward through the story. Commentary, explanation and description can be added to the scenes or placed around them as long as they don’t detract from the narrative momentum, or profluence, as John Gardner referred to it in The Art of Fiction. Such stories have a beginning, middle and end, although not necessarily in that order. They arise out of a conflict that is resolved by the end of the piece.
Good story ideas for narrative writing meet the following criteria:
1) BASED ON SCENE – Organized around one or more scenes. Unlike a feature story, these pieces should be composed almost entirely of scenes. There can be passages of narrative summary that provide background information, but these should be incorporated into or around the scene.
2) EMPHASIZE CHARACTER – Elucidation of character lies at heart of these stories. They can convey information, but this should be done through the personalities central to the story.
3) ENCOURAGE CURIOSITY – Writers should appeal to readers’ curiosity, pulling them along with suspenseful storytelling, not letting them go until the end.
4) CONFLICT AND RESOLUTION FORMAT – The story has to be organized around a conflict, whether an external one like climbing a mountain, or an internal one of overcoming stuttering. Most of the best stories have a conflict that embraces both the internal and the external. Example: John has to overcome his fear to climb the mountain. Melissa meets a supportive speech therapist who helps her speak normally.
For more on story ideas, consider signing up for my spring writing class, The Nature of Narrative.
Scenic writing is the basis for some of the most moving, satisfying, sophisticated works of literature. It is especially effective in bringing readers into the story because it helps them create a world, a world that you the writer have inhabited and can share with the reader through words. Scenes present a visual, sensual world the reader can inhabit, a kind of imaginary garden with real toads, whether that’s the world of the astronaut program of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, the vast landscapes of the Southwest in the work of Terry Tempest Williams, or the hard-bitten, humorous Irish Catholic childhood of memoirist Frank McCourt or the gripping nonfiction books of Pulitzer Prize winner Lawrence Wright, pictured below.
a) OPENING SENTENCE: Find a sentence that creates suspense and foreshadows what will happen. This makes clear to the reader that information in summary lead is important and needs to be read. In William Stafford’s memoir Down in my Heart, he uses the opening line, “When are men dangerous?” which accomplishes this perfectly.
b) SETTING DETAILS: Provide details that suggest what will happen in scene. These should be chosen for their inherent interest, color and humor and also for what they illustrate about main point of story. For instance, in Down in My Heart, Stafford includes details like “loafing around in the Sabbath calm.” These details help set the scene, and also create suspense. Readers suspect that something will soon shatter this tranquility. The best scenic details do double duty, both painting a picture and creating suspense.
c) NUT GRAPH: After sketching in the scene and introducing the people, the writer makes a transition to the action. This transition is crucial, often spelling out the main point or alerting the reader that something important will happen in the scene. William Stafford’s repetition of the phrase “When are men dangerous?” clues in the reader that the tranquil atmosphere of rural Arkansas is about to end.
This transition usually leads to a nut graph, a paragraph that suggests or explains the larger point or goal of the scene and furnishes its larger context. It’s called a nut graph because it puts all of these things together in a nutshell. Who? What? When? Where? And most importantly, why? As in, why should the reader care? What will the scene accomplish?
For more on how to set a scene, please sign up for my winter narrative and Seattle writing class, The Arc of the Story.
Go to the library or bookstores or magazine shop and begin reading publications. Some writers wouldn’t deign to do this, but it makes all the difference. What kinds of places publish profiles of political figures? Should you send your piece about airport security to an airline magazine or a travel magazine? How do you choose which outdoor magazine to contact about a mountain biking story? Reading the publications will help you answer these questions. Magazines and newspapers have distinct personalities, almost like people. Writers need to get to know them and then the questions of where to send a story soon becomes clear.
Our online writing classes teach the art and craft of writing.
If you don’t take time to do this, you’ll be wasting time and money. Every newspaper or magazine occupies a certain market niche, serves a particular audience and is looking for a specific kind of story. For example, don’t bother pitching a story on a national political issue to your hometown newspaper unless there is a local angle.
Get to know the publication. Visit the publication’s website for writer’s guidelines; most publications will furnish these free of charge. Then read the magazine thoroughly, look at the ads, the letters to the editor. What kind of audience are they aiming at? Socially conscious? Upwardly mobile? Cigar Aficionado will not want your story on the evils of second-hand smoke but Mother Jones might pick it up.
What’s the style of the magazine? Straight reporting? Satire? Political commentary? Are the stories long or short? Are they mostly staff-written or written by freelancers?
What part of the magazine is easiest to break into? Many magazines include a front section of short profiles, often written by freelancers. Newspapers often publish reviews of books, restaurant s, concerts that are written by freelancers. Scope out the publication to figure out which department you’ll target for your query. We’ll discuss all this in more detail in my fall Narrative Writing Class, Tell Your Story, for The Writer’s Workshop.
Mike Medberry, author of Living in a Broken West: Essays, talked to my spring narrative writing class for The Writer’s Workshop about how to self publish a book. All those interested in deciding if and how to self publish their book will benefit from this talk. I’ve include the summary of it below.
By Mike Medberry
Henry David Thoreau who self-published the American classic, Walden, wrote that if you have built castles in the air, all of that work need not be lost as that is where your castles should be. He added, “Now put foundations under them!” You’ve written an interesting book at with extreme effort, and you’d like to sell it, so put a foundation under it! Do some research, take a critical look at your own writing, and a define how much self-publishing will cost and yield. The following are a few of the things that you might want to consider:
1) Define what you expect in publishing your own book. Is it for your friends or colleagues or do you think that your book serves a much broader audience? Your next steps will depend on that decision. Keep in mind that about 800 million books are published every year in the US, half of them self-published, and they sell only a handful of copies. Average book sales per year (standard publishers and self-published) are 200 copies and less than 1,000 copies in that book’s lifetime. Can you do better?
2) Build a foundation for your work: create a good website for $500 – 2500, develop high numbers of supporters on your defined social media networks like Facebook or Twitter, write supportive blogs on the web or articles in hard copy magazines or newspapers. This is all so basic but people often fail to accomplish it because it is hard, consistent, long term work.
3) Have your manuscript edited and understand what editing means. Good editors are expensive at $20 to $100/hour, but they are indispensable. There are essentially five kinds of editing: a) Developmental Editing which looks at the basic content of the manuscript; b) Structural Editing which looks at the logical flow of the manuscript, style, tone, and overall quality of your writing; c) Copy Editing which assesses the tone, reads for clear and consistent style, asks who is your audience, and looks at word choices and grammar; d) Line Editors should go through your writing line-by-line to look closely at the impact of your writing, word choices, and add polish that will allow your writing to be clear and eloquent; e) Finish Editing is the last stage of writing which focuses on raking up all of the missed minor errors like capitalizations, misspellings, word choice–things like using “there” when you meant to use “they’re” or “their.” All of this is pretty painful, but get used to that pain.
4) Design your book! I know, I know: it was news to me that I had to think about a million arcane details to make my manuscript look like a classy book. But, of course, I wanted my book to look like one of the very best! This should be a fun process, but you can get bogged down in accomplishing the many details to the point of its becoming numbing. I could always hire a consultant to iron out the particulars, but I would learn nothing. I found it very fascinating to learn. I suggest that you hire a good designer at roughly $2,000 to $5,000, retain many of the critical details, and work closely with her. Learn what she is doing for you. It is a lot! I will simply list the items: Define your book cover. Approve of the text, graphics, Table of Contents, and chapters. Place photos and write the captions. Create a publication page: define the International Standard Book Numbers or ISBNS, barcodes (which set the price of your book), QR codes all of which are available through the mystical company Bowker, which, it turns out, you must use. The publication page also includes acknowledgements, the author, credits, and defines the critical subjects that bookstores depend upon to create a shelf your book fits into, like adventure, memoir, or outdoor recreation. Inside the back cover includes your vita, photo of yourself, and defines your other publications. The outside of the back cover includes your picture, a great summary of your book, great quotes from recognized authors supporting your book, the logo for your publisher, the QR code, and the barcode. That is all you need… But the bookstores will know exactly what is needed!
5) Print the book and publish your book. Nowadays, it is much simpler, much cheaper, and more effective to print books than it was ten years ago because of self-publishing software and Print on Demand services. It is your decision to have your book printed in exactly the way that you’ve imagined and there is no stigma about publishing your own book, as there was in the past. Using color or distributing photos across the book or making editorial opinions are decisions that can be made by you and are now relatively cheap.
6) Find Target Audience – I think that self-publishers, you or me, can effectively aim at smaller audiences than standard publishers can and still make money; that is strictly a matter of your expenses and theirs, in which you are able to saturate your target at a more local place and at a reasonable price.
7) Choose publishing platform – Publishers include Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and IngramSpark among many others, but in my world those two are absolutely key to consider. If your manuscript is in good shape, there will be no problem publishing your book with either or both publishers. If the manuscript is in bad shape, well, good luck… Read the contracts carefully or your book may be pulled from publication if you don’t follow their guidelines. You will come to understand that: Profit with Ingram = book price – 30% – printing priceAnd that will set the price you can choose.
8) KDP vs Ingram – There are significant differences between KDP and Ingram, however. All independent bookstores will reject KDP books (or will offer you a consignment plan) and will favor Ingram because Ingram will guarantee that bookstores can return any book. That will cost you money, but you will have many more places to sell (all of the indie bookstores!) if you’re using Ingram. With the e-books the circumstances will reverse, however. It is a yin-yang relationship with publishers; you need both, and you must read that annoying contract very, very carefully with any publisher.
9) Distribute and sell your book. Your foundation and all the work you’ve done to publicize your book will come into play when you go to distribute and sell your book. With an action plan that extends one-year from the publication date you would be able to rack what is happening with your book and will help you plan readings. Keep good track of your book sales for tax purposes. This is particularly important when a store offers you a consignment plan, which will be hard to collect-on without good records.
10) Road to Success – Now, as if all of that wasn’t enough to think about, I’d say that you are on the road to a most extravagant and interesting success! And all of us should cheer for every other writer who treads upon this path.
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.
Flannery O’Connor
Literature is nothing but carpentry.
Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
…with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always.
I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced…the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always.
Ernest Hemingway
For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth.
For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
Anne Lamott
One false word, one extra word…
One false word, one extra word, and somebody's thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store.
Patricia Marx
There are only two or three human stories.
Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes for thousands of years.
Willa Cather
The difference between the right word and the almost right word…
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
Mark Twain
Pleasure in a good novel…
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Jane Austen
The forms of things unknown and the the poet’s pen…
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
William Shakespeare (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world.
It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.
V.S. Naipaul
Just follow your hero.
First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!
Ray Bradbury
Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you.
Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.
Barbara Kingsolver
Get it down. Take chances.
Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.
The Writer's Workshop 
