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Blogs by Kristina Stanley
Rewriting: Getting Your Point Of View Right 1/22/2017 8:48:50 AM
at www.FeedbackForFiction.com Happy New Year!
Now that the holiday season is over, are you ready to get back to your manuscript and rewrite it into a great story? Perhaps you wrote your first draft during NaNoWriMo in November and are wondering what to do next.
To illustrate how the Feedback app will help with your rewrite, I’m going to work through an example with Point of View (POV), one of most important elements of fiction for character. Having control over your point of view choices will enable you to rewrite a better story.
Step 1 – Capture POV Information
After importing your manuscript, Feedback will identify your characters and ask for confirmation of POV on a scene by scene basis. Your manuscript will be displayed at the bottom of the screen for easy reference. Then you can update each element of fiction related to POV as required. Once that’s done, you’ll have access to many reports to help you evaluate your scenes.
Step 2 – Evaluate POV
Here are samples of two different reports generated for POV.
Number of Scenes For Each POV Character
Sometimes your characters have minds of their own and take over the story. You may be surprised by the scene count per POV character, and that’s okay. You have time to revise the novel.
How many POV characters are too many? That’s up to you as a writer, but if your readers are saying they have trouble keeping track of your characters or lose interest in the story because of a point of view change, then the report can help you figure out how to improve. With Feedback you can visualize the point of view layout for your entire novel.
Point Of View Balance
If you write from multiple points of view, it’s important to understand the number of scenes each POV character has and how that number relates to the number of scenes other POV characters have.
The genre you write in may influence how you balance point of view scenes. For example, in a romance novel, you might want to give the female and male protagonists (read love interests) alternating scenes.
Who is your protagonist? The POV Balance report will quickly tell you if your protagonist has the majority of the scenes. If he/she doesn’t, then evaluate whether this character should be your main protagonist. If the answer is yes, you can review scenes where the protagonist is not your POV and determine if you can rewrite the scene from his/her point of view.
Step 3 – Use The Feedback Rewrite Tips
If you’re not sure what POV is all about and how it should be considered in a rewrite, you can access the built-in rewrite tip for POV. The rewrite tip is first displayed in a summary format. If you still want more info, then you can access a complete explanation right when you need it!
Rewrite Faster
Rewriting a first or second or even a third draft is a lot of work. With Feedback your rewrites will become faster and more comprehensive as you are guided through the key elements of fiction for plot, character, and setting.
Sign up for early access to Feedback in the sidebar to the right, and I’ll soon be sending you rewrite tips that will be included in Feedback when we launch the app. You’ll also be one of the first to be notified of the app launch.
