Should I Write in the 1st of 3rd Person?

This week, 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block is free on the Kindle. To celebrate that fact, we're going to look at some of the basic questions new writers ask. In this post, perspective is the name of the game.

Should I write in the 1st or 3rd person?

It's a question a lot of new writers ask themselves. Sometimes, they might not even know the difference. So first, some clarity:

The 1st person consists of the narrator telling the story from his or her own perspective. For example: "I walked to school", "It occurred to me", "The world is mine".

The 3rd person consists of the narrator telling the story from an outsider's perspective. For example: "John walked to school", "It occurred to Jane", "As far as Alex was concerned, the world was his".

There is the less-used 2nd person to consider, in which the narrator is telling the reader everything they're doing. For example: "You walked to school", "It occurred to you", "The world is yours". However, it's a more difficult perspective to get right, and the least popular among readers.

As to whether or not you write in the past or present tense, that's up to you. The past tense is most commonly used, even when referring to events that take place in the future (the narrator is, after all, referring to it as a history). However, the present tense can still be used to great affect. Darren Shan, a Irish children's author, writes predominantly in the present tense, and in the first person, keeping the interest of the reader by making the risks real and in the moment.

But which should you choose between 1st or 3rd person?

Personally speaking, I stick to 3rd person. I like to show the reader who my characters are from the outside, as they might see them if they met on the street. It also allows me to switch between characters in the story, to show the various sides of what are inevitably stories more complicated than who's right and who's wrong. (Taking a published example into account: Fionn in Balor Reborn can be perceived as the "hero", but that doesn't mean that Stephen - the other predominant character the narrative follows - is the "villain", even considering the events that happen in the story.) 

That's the big advantage of the 3rd person: you can show more than one point of view to the events of a story.

When it comes to the 1st person, you get inside a single character's head more than you would otherwise. While you can't jump around to different places in the story without dragging your protagonist along with you, you are granted a more consistent observation on the events of your book, open to speculation, commentary and doubt by your narrator.

The main concern you should take into account is this: do I need to show more than one perspective in my book? While some authors switch characters between chapters, it's not common practice when writing in the first person (and only lends itself to two or three points of view in that case.) Look at your favourite books to see which way it's done, think about the story you want to tell, and make your decision based on those observations.

(Note: Don't let your desire to write like another author determine which point of view you write from. Write from the perspective that best suits your story.)

Find out more about 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block below:

Have you ever struggled with writer’s block? Have you sat at your desk, looking at your work in progress, wondering what to do with a character who just won’t budge, or a poem that just won’t take form, or an article that just won’t work for you? Have you ever joined thousands of authors in the search for a way to beat writer’s block? 

From the author of Planning Before Writing comes a solution to the problem of writer’s block: 25 ways to tackle one of the biggest issues facing writers, each with an exercise to help you to develop as an author and improve your writing skills. 


With exercises to suit every writer, and drawing on over ten years’ experience in the craft, 25 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block is a must-have reference for your collection.

Available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HYMVZJ2
and Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HYMVZJ2

How Long Should My Book Be?

This week, 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block is free on the Kindle. To celebrate that fact, we're going to look at some of the basic questions new writers ask. I've addressed this next question before, but things have changed.

How long should my book be?

Figuring out how long a book should be is one of the more complicated aspects of starting out as a writer, by and large to the amount of varying sources online. Let's look at it this way:

A novella is anything from 15,000 to 40,000 words. Most publishers of novellas actually expect them to be in the region of 25,000 to 35,000 words. It's more obviously a book than a short story, but not long enough to be a novel.

A novel is, technically speaking, anything longer than 40,000 words. (This is the adult market, by the way. Books for young readers have considerably less words.) In general, publishers look for work that's at least 65,000 words in length, but different genres look for different word/page counts.

A safe bet is to aim for about 90,000 words for a novel. It's on the lower end of expectations by a lot of publishers, but still long enough that no one will turn their nose up at it as being a "short book". (Take this from a guy who works in a bookshop - the reading public expect shorter books to be cheaper, when that's very rarely the case.) Keep in mind, some books you'll see on the shelves are near or beyond the half-million word mark.

It really does come down to one thing: how long is the story you want to tell?

There's no point writing a longer book for the sake of writing a long book. It will become painfully obvious that you're writing just to add words, and most publishers would require you to cut out anything like that before publication. Write the book you want to write, and see how long it ends up being afterwards. If you want to write a long book, then make sure you have the story to back up your aspirations.

For a better idea of how long other books are, I'll point you in the direction of this website: http://commonplacebook.com/culture/literature/books/word-count-for-famous-novels/

But what about non-fiction?

Typically, non-fiction books are shorter than fiction (though, again, it depends on how much has to be said on a topic.) To put it simply: depending on the field you're writing in, your book could be extremely long (History books tend to be quite long) or short (short for a novel, typically looking at some health or relationship books.) Books at about 50,000 words are common - shorter still when they're from dedicated ebook publishers - but they tend to target a more niche market.

The best thing to do is to consider how much you have to say on a topic, and write the best book you can. Plan it in detail, do your research, and let the word count figure itself out.

About 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block:

Have you ever struggled with writer’s block? Have you sat at your desk, looking at your work in progress, wondering what to do with a character who just won’t budge, or a poem that just won’t take form, or an article that just won’t work for you? Have you ever joined thousands of authors in the search for a way to beat writer’s block? 

From the author of Planning Before Writing comes a solution to the problem of writer’s block: 25 ways to tackle one of the biggest issues facing writers, each with an exercise to help you to develop as an author and improve your writing skills. 


With exercises to suit every writer, and drawing on over ten years’ experience in the craft, 25 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block is a must-have reference for your collection.

Available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HYMVZJ2
and Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HYMVZJ2

How Do I Start My Book?

This week, 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block is free on the Kindle. To celebrate that fact, we're going to look at some of the basic questions new writers ask. We've looked at planning, but now for the age-old question:

How do I start my book?

Different writers have different things to say about this one. Some suggest writing any scene first, just to get yourself going. I prefer to follow a more linear route: start at the beginning. Don't worry about making it perfect. Find a point to start. One of the following usually works:

- Describe the setting, if it's important for the book. In terms of plot, this is only a useful way of starting if something significant is going to happen at the very start of the book that you'll then go on to describe.

- Describe an important character while they're doing something of significance to the plot. The fun thing about this is, they don't necessarily have to be doing something remotely similar to what they'll do in the rest of the book. Having the "ordinary life" before the events of the book is important, if that's the sort of story you're going to tell.

- Describe an event that's of importance to the plot, but that doesn't focus on your main protagonist. In Eragon by Christopher Paolini, the book opens on a woman walking through a wood about to be attacked - not the "hero" of the book.

- Introduce your protagonist. The reader should know who they are at some point, anyway, so why not from the word Go? Again, focus on the plot. If your protagonist is at school, there needs to be a reason. If they're on the bus, there needs to be a reason. Make your protagonist do something while the readers gets to know them.

The important thing is to start as you mean to go on. Keep the tone consistent. Establish certain rules that will be kept - in Harry Potter, the rule is that magic exists. Just because Harry doesn't know that, doesn't make it any less true. The rules are there, to be discovered if they're different to what we currently understand about the world.

Think in terms of how the world works. If your character goes to school, there has to be a good reason why they're suddenly abandoning their studies for a great big adventure. If your character has a job, they have bills to pay and can't just up and leave without consequences. If your character has a family, how will they feel if they leave? Those are all "rules" to be kept - not every hero in every book is a loner without a family or friends. Use your opening chapter to establish what's important in the regular life of your protagonist, and/or establish something important to the plot.

The most important thing, no matter how you start your book, is to give people a reason to keep reading. Make them want to know about your protagonist, or about the world you've created, or the events that open up the book. Read the first chapters of your favourite books for some clear examples of how others do it, and try figure out what made you want to keep reading.

Don't forget, you can get 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block for free at the moment! Read more about it:

Have you ever struggled with writer’s block? Have you sat at your desk, looking at your work in progress, wondering what to do with a character who just won’t budge, or a poem that just won’t take form, or an article that just won’t work for you? Have you ever joined thousands of authors in the search for a way to beat writer’s block?

From the author of Planning Before Writing comes a solution to the problem of writer’s block: 25 ways to tackle one of the biggest issues facing writers, each with an exercise to help you to develop as an author and improve your writing skills.

With exercises to suit every writer, and drawing on over ten years’ experience in the craft, 25 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block is a must-have reference for your collection.

Available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HYMVZJ2
and Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HYMVZJ2

How Do I Plan My Book?

This week, 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block is free on the Kindle. To celebrate that fact, we're going to look at some of the basic questions new writers ask. Previously, we looked at whether you should plan your book. If you're going to, let's now look at how you might do that.

How do I plan my book?

While I have a whole book on this topic - I'm that much of a fan of planning a book before writing it - this post can serve as a short master class for beginners. This practice works for more than just novels, too. All we're going to do is break down your book into scenes.

Step 1, figure out some key events in your book. These are the ones you most likely thought of when you were thinking about your book. Before I plan a book, I can already see some scenes in my head, like two characters meeting for the first time, or (as is the case with many short stories I write) a setting that sticks out because of how unusual it is.

How many key events you can imagine depends on how many ideas you've had for your book before this point. Don't worry, we're going to fill in the gaps soon. What we need before we do that, though, are a beginning, and an ending.

Your book will fill in the events between what happens at the very start, and what happens at the very end. If you're planning to write a series, it helps to know how the whole thing will end before you begin, and how many books you want to write. 

Say, for example, you're writing a trilogy. You need three powerful scenes to end each of your books on, that are natural endings to each part of the story, as well as concluding the individual tale contained in the book.

When you have your beginning and your ending(s), then we can move on to Step 2: filling in the gaps. Start with the scenes you have already. What needs to happen for your story to progress from one scene to another. For example, in the first Harry Potter book, we begin at Privet Drive, and later find Harry at Hogwarts. If we took those two key events/scenes to begin with, we then need to figure out what happens between each point.

Do that with each scene or idea you have, jotting down briefly what sort of event would lead to the next scene. Harry needs to get his invite to the school, so that has to happen. But, because we know the Dursleys don't want him to be a wizard, they'll try to keep the letter from him. To deal with that, the invitations keep coming, pushing the family away from the house, to the cabin where we meet Hagrid. You get the idea: each time you decide what needs to happen next, figure out what other steps need to be taken to keep the story moving from one scene to the next.

By the time you reach the end of your book, you should have a lot to work with. Break it up into chapters - use the larger events as a guide to where the chapter breaks will be.

Step 3: write it out neatly, and add in more detail if needed. I usually write out a paragraph for each scene in the book, but that's up to you.

If you want more information on planning a book, you can check out my ebook Planning Before Writing.

You can also find 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block on Amazon, currently available for free download while the promotion lasts. Read more about it below.

Have you ever struggled with writer’s block? Have you sat at your desk, looking at your work in progress, wondering what to do with a character who just won’t budge, or a poem that just won’t take form, or an article that just won’t work for you? Have you ever joined thousands of authors in the search for a way to beat writer’s block?

From the author of Planning Before Writing comes a solution to the problem of writer’s block: 25 ways to tackle one of the biggest issues facing writers, each with an exercise to help you to develop as an author and improve your writing skills.

With exercises to suit every writer, and drawing on over ten years’ experience in the craft, 25 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block is a must-have reference for your collection.

Available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HYMVZJ2
and Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HYMVZJ2

Should I Plan My Book?

This week, 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block is free on the Kindle. To celebrate that fact, we're going to look at some of the basic questions new writers ask. Let's start off at the beginning:

Should I plan my book?

This comes down to the individual author. Some people never plan a book before writing, and others don't write a word without a plan. Personally speaking, I have to have a plan. Sometimes it'll be a mind map. Other times it'll just be a list of chapter titles. But I have to go in with a plan.

There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I like having a guide to keep me going even when I start to lose my focus. The plan is done in a moment of inspiration - or drawn up from ideas that came to me in a moment of inspiration - and it's enough for me to know that what I'm going to write had some basis to it beyond "I need to keep writing."

The second reason I write with a plan is because I live in a house full of distractions and interruptions. Unless you have an ideal set-up that allows for a lot of peace and quiet, you can't guarantee that no one will burst in on a writing session.

Alternatively, you can write when, and only when, you feel the inspiration to write without a guide. Plenty of authors do that, especially when working on their first ever book, because they find it much more enjoyable. I did the same thing when I wrote my first novel nine years ago, but through a combination of only average writing ability at the time, a lack of focus in the book, and a lack of interest in the existing draft, that book won't see the light of day without a complete re-write.

At the time, however, it felt right. That's what you need to think about when deciding whether or not you're going to plan your book: does it feel right to use a plan, or do you feel better writing without one? For a first-time novelist, that's the only thing that should determine whether or not you should plan your book.

That said, and this is important, if you want to write a series of books, you need a plan. A series should have a longer story than any one book can tell. If you don't plan for the earlier clues as to what the rest of the series is about from book one, you'll struggle to sell your manuscript.

Think of it like a television show. Each episode is a story in itself, but they build upon each other towards the series climax and finale, when all the little pieces come together and make sense. Trying to write a series of books without a plan, without anything in mind for how to tie the whole thing together, is like a television show consisting solely of stand-alone episodes that aren't related to each other enough to keep an audience interested. Those shows get cancelled.

Keep that in mind if you want to write a series, but otherwise the decision of whether or not to plan is down to you. (For the record, I'm so pro-planning that I wrote a whole book on the matter. If you disagree with this blog post, it's probably because I focus so much on why it's important.)

About 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block:

Have you ever struggled with writer’s block? Have you sat at your desk, looking at your work in progress, wondering what to do with a character who just won’t budge, or a poem that just won’t take form, or an article that just won’t work for you? Have you ever joined thousands of authors in the search for a way to beat writer’s block? 

From the author of Planning Before Writing comes a solution to the problem of writer’s block: 25 ways to tackle one of the biggest issues facing writers, each with an exercise to help you to develop as an author and improve your writing skills. 

With exercises to suit every writer, and drawing on over ten years’ experience in the craft, 25 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block is a must-have reference for your collection.

Available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HYMVZJ2
and Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HYMVZJ2

Subject to Change

I have dreams. I have big dreams, and I have little dreams, and I have dreams inspired by books that I read. I aspire for things now that I didn't think I would ever aspire to ten years ago, and almost every new book I read makes me want to do something else amazing. My dreams are subject to change.

When I read The Millionaire Messenger, I decided to become an expert in writing. I made a conscious decision to publish an article a week on my website on the subject, and I've been keeping to it. I built a schedule to publish new material across my three main sites regularly: my writing website, my personal blog, and my poetry and prose blog. I haven't missed a day all year. I'm still on the path to establishing myself in the field.

As part of this, I wanted to write and publish three books on writing that go a step above and beyond Planning Before Writing and 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block. I planned all three, and I still intend on writing them. Today, I drew up the schedule for completing a novella, and then beginning the first of these three books.

When I read The $100 Start Up, I decided that it wouldn't be too difficult to start a publishing house. I drew up lists of ideas to get things off the ground. I drew up lists of what people I knew had experience in. I ended up with two potential publishing houses that I could, in theory and with some persuasion, follow up on.

One of these has been on my mind for a long time. The other first came to mind last summer. I still haven't followed through on either idea beyond the lists, because I have to acknowledge something: there's a time to start a business, and a few months before planning to begin a one-year, full-time Masters is not that time. In the interim, I still have books to write and publish myself, giving me a full 18 months to develop:

- My publishing prowess
- My ability to market, including cover design and through video
- My plans for publishing
- My audience
- My ability to guide writers in the right direction

The dream job of working in publishing still exists, and there are some things I can only learn through experience. That said, there's a lot to learn before I start out trying to publish others on a regular basis. I don't know that I would do anybody justice taking control of the publishing of their books right now, not on a professional basis. (I can offer help, or give it if asked, but I can't be The Publisher.)

When I started reading Teach Yourself: Make Money From Freelance Writing, I decided that I could build upon existing ideas, and work from previous research. The world of established publishing is looking more appealing. It's also reshaping the three books I've planned. By the end of the month, I intend on having an established plan set out - or at least a new name for the first of the three books I have planned on writing. (I need to re-visit the plan before making a decision on whether to change it entirely or not.)

When I read The Curve, I had an idea of how to actually do all of this in a changing world. A publishing business can't exist in a vacuum. If I pursue digital publishing, I need to be prepared to offer alternatives, and I need to find ways to make everything more appealing than just another ebook on the virtual shelf. I decided I wanted to be more than a publisher, and more than a writer. I wanted to be the go-to guy that The Millionaire Messenger was encouraging me to become, but with a more direct focus on how to it in the face of the future.

I have big dreams, and I don't know how long it'll take until I start ticking them off the proverbial list. I aspire for great things, and all the time my aspirations are subject to change. Every book I read, every experience I have, that's relevant involves a degree of fine-tuning, or gear changing, or adding a whole new perspective on the unseen potential at hand.

I'll talk a lot about how I want to do X, Y and Z, but you've probably noticed by now that a lot of the time the talk remains that way until I'm actually ready to do something about it. I know how quickly life can change and how that affects even the simplest ideas, and I'd like to say I'm doing everything I can to anticipate those changes before they do any real damage.

Here's how I see things right now: I want to write professionally, and I want to do it as a hybrid writer - part Indie, part Traditional. I want to see a novel in the bookshops, a book on writing on a nearby shelf, and articles in the media, and I want to put more work online by myself, managing those decisions myself until or unless someone else decides they look like something they want to publish. I have dozens of ideas to work with, and I don't want to limit myself.

By mid-April, I'll have a lot of freedom in my life, and a lot more time to spend on different tasks and challenges. Between now and then, I need to finalise the next step. I let life get in the way a bit too much, lately - life and procrastination - and I think it's about time I did something about it. I have a book to publish in the next couple of weeks, another I want to write - both novellas - and a third, a book on writing, that I need to get a start on, bit-by-bit for the next few weeks.

Everything is subject to change, and that's the challenge of trying to write for a living. But like anything that involves money, starting out is often the hardest part.

Wonderful Procrastination

On Valentine's Day, people began posting up pictures of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. This made me feel nostalgic for the original Final Fantasy XIII, a game which I abandoned some time ago when I felt like I wasn't doing anything in it any more. (Then my brother bought a new PS3 and my save data was erased forever. It's a long story.)

With all of this nostalgia kicking my ass, I started a new game.

And I haven't stopped playing since.

Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. I mean, I've attempted to maintain a social life since I started playing. And I've been writing and reading and watching Grimm (I got Season 1 for my birthday!) but other than that I've been returning to the game. It's been wonderful.

I forgot an awful lot about the game, and replaying it is giving me a chance to see why I loved it so much to begin with. I think I appreciate the battle system a little more, now, than I used to, too. I like the Paradigm Shift. I like the need for strategy and forward thinking and focusing on different skill-sets and techniques.

Most of all, I love the story. I love how complete the religion feels in the Final Fantasy games. I like how expansive the worlds are, and how everything fits together wonderfully. I like how much the characters are forced to grow, and how the dynamics of the game are affected by the relationships between characters.

Case in point: Eidolon battles. Each is based on the type of person the character is. I've done three so far, and what I can determine already is: Snow has a need to protect people, and so the Shiva Sisters needed him to be defensive; Lightning felt guilt about Serah and Hope, and so had to help Hope to beat Odin; and Sazh felt anger at Vanille, and so was required to help her while she helped him in the battle against Brynhildr. (Those make more sense when you play the game, but to avoid both spoilers and the need to explain how to play the game, let's just leave it at that. Essentially, what was happening in the story determined how to defeat the Eidolon.)

It's been wonderful, and I'm determined to play until the end, this time. I want to finish the game, and give XIII-2 a try, before moving on to Lightning Returns. To give people an idea of where I am in the game, I'm still on the Fifth Ark.

This isn't the first time I haven't completed a Final Fantasy game, of course. I gave up on Final Fantasy IX back in the day, because I couldn't figure out what to do. It was as simple as that. This was in the days before Internet access was common. (I also technically abandoned Final Fantasy VII, when I couldn't defeat the final boss. I also couldn't go back and train more, so I was essentially screwed, and returned the game to my older cousin who had given me a loan of it.)

Eventually I'll play it more regularly and less sporadically (you know, I'll play for an hour a day or something, not for several hours some days and not at all on others) but for now I'm just going to enjoy getting back into world that's been built up around the series. Sure, it means not doing other things, but getting to play a game I couldn't play a few years ago because of college is important to me, too. One of the few reasons I actually want to own a PS3 is for the Final Fantasy games. (And just for the record, I think I prefer them to the The Elder Scrolls games!)