Tag: Write-POV

Writing Exercise: B is for Bleed

Erin Penn 3 Comments

   

Photo by Alexandre Boucey on Unsplash // Art of letter B from the 2025 A-to-Z Blogging Challenge website provided to participants

Me on Facebook: “Writing is open-heart surgery on yourself.”

One of my friend’s replied: “Just open a vein and bleed on a page.”

Another one added: “If you can’t make yourself cry, you are doing something wrong.”

You know when they say “Write what you know,” they don’t mean dragons and wizards, or blasters and spaceships, or murder and police procedures. The of-so-rarely-helpful-but-always-critical-they mean emotions.

YOUR emotions.

If you aren’t hurting, the reader/listener won’t feel it.

WRITING EXERCISE: Write a conversation between two people, three at max. You know the drill, make it short – a single scene, about 100 words, no more than five hundred (this is an exercise, not a novel). See if you can capture an emotion – laughter, anger, tears, hunger, pride … try to capture the moment to the point you feel the emotions welling within you. Cut and paste it below or drop a link to where people can find it.

My attempt: Negative One is a Value (9/15/24) was never meant to be a cry-fest [I do have other stories for that like the Ymir’s Songs duology Fifteen Minutes (10/09/22) and  Song for Rosalynn (11/26/23)], but Neg-One was meant to capture an emotion … a group of emotions … a moment of emotion? Anyway, frustration, the bone-deep hurt only family can inflict, the deep caring of trying just once to get through. A flash of anger. Rage … against everything. Never, ever being good enough. When you read it, do these emotions come through?

Other Cool Blogs: The Conversation 7/30/2020

Erin Penn
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I have voices inside my head. A lot of them.

Some of them are having ethical discussions, others are reading me stories, some are arguing who gets written first. There are parent-isms, and teacher notes. Cool manuscripts. Task lists I should be doing right now. Someone nearly always turns up music during the day.

It’s not so much about writing the characters so much as trying to get them to shut up so I can concentrate.

All of this independence within the head gives my characters agency when I write. 

But how can “it’s all in my head” have so many variations? Authors write millions of words, and yet the characters put on paper live and breathe and go about their own lives. How other people be created from just a single person?

John Foxwell goes into some (very light scientific) explanations about how and why “Many writers say they can actually hear the voices of their characters – here’s why” in a The Conversation blog post 7/30/2020. Again – https://theconversation.com/many-writers-say-they-can-actually-hear-the-voices-of-their-characters-heres-why-139170

Writing Exercise: The Switch

Erin Penn

2895626 © Kaja Maideen Rh | Dreamstime.com

Every society contains gender roles. In some cases, like Spanish, genders are assigned to everything including inanimate objects. Today, the writing exercise is focused on the two traditional genders of American society.

WRITING EXERCISE PART ONE: Write a flash where traditional gender roles are strongly displayed through some medium: romantic, job division, clothing, etc. Aim for about 50 to 100 words, don’t go overboard. Have two characters; they can be the same or different genders.

WRITING EXERCISE PART TWO: Switch the gender role assignments – he to she; she to he. Do not change the characters appearance or actions, except for gender-related appearance (breasts to pecs). How does your story read now? Does it still work? What makes it feel different to you? Comment below.

 

My Attempt (Flash Title: Tongue)

Towering over her, David lifted her chin until Kendra stood on tiptoes, her mouth drying at his dominance. She ran the tip of her tongue over her red-stained lips, watching his brown eyes darken in response. He lowered his head, twisting it sideways until his lips hovered just above hers.

“Open,” he growled.

Kendra exhaled, her lips parting with the breath.

He smiled, dropping the last inch between them, his alien tongue entering her mouth and sweeping down. (words 78, first published 3/23/2022)

***
Towering over him, Kendra lifted his chin until David stood on tiptoes, his mouth drying at her dominance. He ran the tip of his tongue over his red-stained lips, watching her brown eyes darken in response. She lowered her head, twisting it sideways until her lips hovered just above his.

“Open,” she growled.

David exhaled, his lips parting with the breath.

She smiled, dropping the last inch between them, her alien tongue entering his mouth and sweeping down. (words 78, first published 3/23/2022)

***
One interesting aspect of the gender switch for my flash is the “red-stained lips.” On a female, lipstick is assumed. On the male, you don’t know why they are stained … but blood does come to mind.

Other Cool Blogs: Nathan Bransford 8/24/2020

Erin Penn

Photo by Gemma Chua-Tran on Unsplash

“Third person omniscient vs. limited vs. headjumping” by Nathan Bransford, April 24, 2020.

I’ve talked a lot about POV – point of view.

Much of my writing is from first person POV, at least in the Flash arena, simply because it concentrates the “camera” for the close work of very short fiction. I sometimes alternate between first person and close (or limited) third person, especially with romances. Both first person and limited third person allows good head crawling to explore feelings and help readers identify with the characters.

Omniscient third person takes a step back. Often found in fantasy and epic soap opera science fiction, omniscient grants the author opportunity to explore the universe through a variety of characters.

Headhopping, by modern standards, is a no-go. Nathan Bransford explains why in his post.

“Perspective is the frame an author uses to situate a read’s consciousness within a novel.”

When I’m editing, I often say “whiplash” when headhopping. The reader doesn’t get settled in a head before going somewhere else. The rapid change and incomplete settling-in prevents sympathy building and the reader will not identify with the characters.

Mr. Bransford goes on to include several tips to prevent headhopping.

Again the link is: https://nathanbransford.com/blog/2020/08/third-person-omniscient-vs-limited-vs-head-jumping

WRITING EXERCISE: The Power of Point of View Part 3

Erin Penn

Photo from Unsplash.com

This is the third part in a four-part series. Each part can explored as a stand-alone exercise.

Two months ago we explored different point of views (POVs) in a scene and last month we concentrated on the “shoes” of an individual. This month we are going to look into the “world”. How people see the world and the world sees them changes the plot. The world in this case in genre – the prism of the action.

Boy meets girl seems to be a standard story. But what if the story isn’t a romance, but a horror? How about a YA coming-of-age? Or set in a science fiction?

Each genre creates a structure to the story. Just like the POVs do. As I mentioned in Part 1 of the Power of Point of View series, different genres have different focal point POVs. An Urban Fantasy – whose DNA borrows from thrillers, detective stories, romances, superheroes, and young adults (YAs) – runs into first person a lot with often an emotional focus or mental problem-solving. Science Fiction and Fantasy grew up together, focus more on exploring exciting new worlds, and therefore run to third person.

WRITING EXERCISE: Remember that scene with three different POVs you wrote two months ago and rewrote in first-person last month? This month change up the genre – if the focus was mystery, make it urban fantasy, or science fiction, or romance, etc. For the new genre, choose the best POV style to use (first, close-third, multi-third) and character(s). Word count should be between one hundred and three thousand.