“What’s Your Story?”: Epistolary Fiction

I wanted to conclude my series on using POV effectively by looking at one of my favorite genres–epistolary fiction.

Epistolary fiction is a story told via letters or other documents. Over the years, authors can and have used everything from diaries to text messages to emails for this genre.

My introduction to epistolary fiction was probably the horror classic Dracula. The story is told through a series of diary entries, letters, newspaper entries, and other documents (including a shipping log). When I was in grad school, I took a class on Gothic novels and their adaptations and ended up spending a few months researching Dracula spinoff/sequel books and how they attempted to establish credibility with readers.

Continue reading

“What’s Your Story?”: George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire

I know any mention of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, its author George R. R. Martin, or its TV adaptation Game of Thrones can lead to some, ahem, passionate debate. And truthfully I’m not particularly interested in most of those debates. I’ve read the books a couple of times and enjoyed them, have my own theories on whether or not Martin will ever finish them, and liked the TV series well enough while also still having my own critiques. What I want to talk about here, though, is Martin’s use of POV, which I find quite well done for the most part. You don’t have to be a fantasy writer to learn some excellent lessons on what to do and what not to do with juggling multiple POVs from these books.

Continue reading

What’s Your Story?: Ambrose Bierce’s “Chickamauga”

Most people have encountered Ambrose Bierce’s spooky Civil War-set “The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” likely as part of a short story reading assignment in either high school or college. I certainly read it more than once as an English major, and it is a story that I do enjoy.

It wasn’t until after I graduated that I started reading more of Bierce’s work beyond “Occurrence” and his deliciously snarky Devil’s Dictionary. Bierce ended up writing a lot of fiction about the Civil War (and a fair amount of nonfiction), which makes sense given he’s the only 19th century American writer of note to have served in combat during the war.

Continue reading

What’s Your Story?: Jeff Guinn’s Road to Jonestown and Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star

Often, point of view (POV) in writing is discussed solely in terms of fiction, implying it’s not relevant for nonfiction writers. That’s simply not true, though. If you’re writing narrative nonfiction, you can use POV to tell the story more effectively. You can generate compelling tension, amplify your themes, and more through artful use of POV in nonfiction. This is particularly true with true crime, history, or historical true crime.

When I was in college, I took a grammar class with Elise Bishop that really changed the way I viewed writing. One particular week of the course looked at how Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood uses a change in verb tense to signal the confession scene.

Continue reading

What’s Your Story?: When Your POV Problem Isn’t A POV Problem

It’s not uncommon for me to work with authors on point-of-view (POV) problems. There’s a lot of advice out there in writing communities about how to handle POV—how many to have and when and how to switch POV—and some of it is dictated more by personal preference than what actually works for the story.

I’m a big believer in using the POV that is most effective for the story rather than following arbitrary rules on the subject. Still, it’s not uncommon for manuscripts to struggle with how to juggle between POV effectively or to know which POV to use when, which can be a turn-off for readers.

More often than not, when I identify issues with POV in a story, it’s symptomatic of a much more systemic issue of focus that also needs to be addressed. The POV isn’t working because it conflicts with what the story is trying to achieve with its plot, themes, and characters.

Continue reading