🛑 - CLOSED until 2021.
***If you're interested in my critiques, you might want to check out my weekly newsletter for opportunities to get a personalized critique. https://paula.substack.com/p/coming-soon
Does your work stand out in an overly-crowde...
So, finally! I've been able to distill some of the top takeaway lessons learned from this year's contest. These are issues that I saw in multiple works from the Top Twenty contestants -- issues that come up in all of our work in one way or another, but are particularly critical when seen in your first chapter. I talk a bit about why this is an issue - Issue #3 -- below.
Now, if I'm seeing these issues in the Top Twenty, you can bet they were even more prevalent in stories I had to pass on -- not every submission -- but enough of them to highlight the issues for all of our benefit. So, think about how, perhaps, you can apply some of these little nuggets to your own work. I know I will. ;-)
And also, please forgive any grammatical or formatting errors or weirdness in this wrap-up. I really wanted to get this out to you all today and don't have time to get it absolutely pitch perfect. I try to be good about these things, but you know...life.
Lastly, for the Final Five, I'll be digging into your second chapters, hopefully, in the next few weeks. I'll just add notes to your initial review doc.
Wait? What? You didn't see the announcement of the Final Five? See them below and check out the reading list, containing all five works on my profile.
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As promised, below are the top three issues I spotted in the Top Twenty contestant reviews that I did. The range in scores went from a 10 to a 14.5 on a scale of 15, but some of these issues were apparent, even in the high-scorers. I'm aggregating them here for us to get a chance to see what sorts of things we can all work on to improve our stories.
1. Not Enough Deep POV - Deep POV is a third-person subjective point of view that goes deeper into the thoughts and feelings of the POV character, but not in a way that necessarily sets it apart from the narrative prose. So, while I would stay away from using a lot of internal monologues, set off with italics, other forms of getting into your characters' heads can be a very effective use of Deep POV. Before we look at how to do this, let's look at why.
Why is Deep POV such a useful tool in a writer's toolbox? This narrative technique helps to eliminate the distance between the reader and the POV character by utilizing a close subjective framework. It encourages readers to experience the story through that one particular character's perspective, that one lens, making the events of the story more personal and gripping to the reader. If you choose to write in Deep POV, you not so much writing about your point-of-view character, you're writing as them, but still from a third-person POV.
Here's an example: She bumped into the metal table and a pain, like she'd never felt before, ripped through her thigh. Crap! That was going to hurt in the morning.
There are other ways to incorporate Deep POV. Here are some other examples that came up in the feedback that some Standout contestants (those from the Top 20) received.
❶ Don't overuse a character's name when writing in third POV. Once you've established their POV, use he, she, and they pronouns, as appropriate. The more you use the character's name, the more formal the prose sounds and the less personal it feels.
