A Different Point of View
I’m sure you can write from different points of view. Can you read your work from different points of view? Can you put yourself in a place where your work is a stranger, and you’re seeing it through a specific person’s eyes?
And I need to say upfront that when I use the word “read” below, I actually mean a combination of reading, writing, and editing, all put together.
First, I read it as me, as a woman. I imagine my lonelier moments, particularly when I was sick and lonely in my twenties, because I always hope my characters can be friends to those who are having a rough time of things.
Then I try to read it as someone who has zero attention span. This is also easy for me, as I have the shortest attention span in the universe. Okay, not the shortest. But it’s pretty bad. And anytime my attention wanders or I start skimming, I cut and edit and re-write.
Somewhere in there, I try to read it as a copyeditor. I think copyeditors are the coolest, so I invariably end up reading half of the Chicago Manual just for fun, just to double check nit-picky things. Even though I tend not to use the serial comma that it suggests.
I read as both my target readers and my fringe readers. Pseudonym gets mostly middle-aged women, but also quite a few in their twenties, with a sprinkling of men. I think of what they want to get out of my story, and I read to see if I’m giving them that. For my NaNo novel, I’m imagining teenagers to college-aged reading it.
And then I imagine someone who reads my first sentence and hates my voice. Passionately. In fact, even before they get to the first sentence, they are prejudiced against me. They don’t want to like my story. In fact, they can’t wait to hate it and point out all of its flaws. They approach my story with reluctance; my world-building with skepticism.
For them, it’s personal. They don’t like me. If I’m writing in first person, they hate first person on principle. In fact, for them, it’s a pet peeve.
That’s when I make sure hooks are planted, questions are unanswered, and suspense is willing the reader forward. I trim every sentence. I try to make it so that reader can’t help but keep reading.
When my imaginary readers fail me, I beg for real readers, LOL.
Lately, I’ve also been visualizing my story as a graphic novel. I don’t know why. But when I do that, it’s very clear when the pacing falls flat, when I’m thinking aloud too much.
So how do you read your story? Which “skins” do you put on when reading your story? Whose eyes do you read with? How do you edit? How do you decide what goes and what stays?
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Natasha Fondren is a writer traveling the U.S. in a camper with her four cats. She is currently enjoying the lizards and desert heat in Arizona.
“And then I imagine someone who reads my first sentence and hates my voice.”
Now there…this is the one I worry the most about…next to people who skim and don’t really read.
I try to consider the eyes you mention, but every now and then I have to remind myself that one can NOT please every reader ( polarized reactions to the most popular novels prove this) and that , after all, it is MY story, my idea.
That’s a good point, Bernita. I was just thinking last night, trying to figure out if the voice I’d used was too alienating or just original enough.
Still haven’t figured that one out.
Natasha, I just read as me and my internal editor. You are amazing to do all that. Do you read it over five different times? Or do you read it once through all those eyes?
Edie, the internal editor can be brutal enough, LOL! I have a really short memory, so I read from the beginning at least two-three times a week. When I’m working on a scene, I’ll probably read it ten or twenty times just that day as I’m writing and polishing and editing and tweaking it.
You make me feel really really lazy. I’m with Edie — I read as me and my internal editor. I try to read it as an outsider but have a hard time separating myself from my work.
I’m about to critique a friend’s MS so I’m hoping that after I do that, my skills will still be sharp and I can attack my own MS more objectively.
LOL, Melanie… look at it this way. I need to do all that extra work, while I’m pretty sure everyone else doesn’t need to.
I sort of have a reset button in my brain. I can read it ten times in one sitting, hit that reset button, and still read it like it’s the first time. I don’t know why or where I got it.
I read it from my perspective, and an editing perspective, but that’s about it. I’m sensing a problem here. . .
LOL, Robin! There’s no one right way.
And your book makes me laugh, so your way worked!
Great Post! I read my work alot. Like you, I read a scene multiple times when I’m working on it. And I read many, many drafts, all the way through on each revision. But you’ve just expanded my ideas on how to look at my writing. Besides the internal editor I usually just look at it from a teen reluctant reader perspective. Thanks! This might open some new doors in my revision process.
Me too, Paul. I think, for me, I don’t have an internal editor, so I consult my fake readers, LOL.
I’m starting to feel like I have a split personality, LOL!
I always wish there was an amnesiac to take when I’m ready to read my work. Not that I have a good memory, because I don’t. But, it’d be really cool if there was a pill for writers to swallow which would wipe out all memory pertaining to their WIP. Or, in your case, a pill that would create several personalities while at the same time, wiping out all memory.
I think that’s why some writers drop acid, lol.
Kath, somedays, that reset button is SOOOOOOOO hard to push. A pill would certainly help, LOL!
I had a friend drop acid once, for real. Watching him recover in the three days following convinced me that I never wanted to try, LOL. (I know you were joking, it just reminded me of that. And you know me, no filter, so I wrote what I was thinking.
)
I try to read it like myself, like my agent, and like my audience, and like my husband (who is so far from my audience, lol). I also recognize I can’t please everyone, so I’m mainly gearing to audience and my own vision.
Colby, that sounds perfect! You’ve got all your bases covered.
I’ll put my miniscule attention span up against yours any day. What was I saying…? Oh yes, John Fowles once said something in an interview (I wish I could find it) about HIS “wandering mind,” something to the effect that, for a novelist, this is a good thing, because serendipity produces exactly the kind of creativity you need to imagine all the random details of a made-up world.
This is a great post.
LOL, Bill. They do say ADD leads to greater creativity. I hope they’re right, Bill!
Wow. Interesting post. Very impressive. I am sure that is a great approach to writing but I have a hard time getting “outside” my stuff at all, to see it with any objective set of eyes, or any variety. Basically what I keep asking myself is whether what I’m writing is interesting, and I am convinced that things get boring fast so it is best to be concise and keep moving. I have a short attention span myself. Of course, when I am asking whether what I am saying is interesting I am asking myself and what interests me probably doesn’t interest everyone but I have, at least, come to understand that just because they are my own golden words doesn’t mean they are necessarily interesting and some people never even get to that point.
Eric, you know, I guess I think so much of the readers that it’s second nature to me. I was operating under the illusion that I was normal, LOL.
Ah well. This writing thing. So difficult.
Wow, you do put on many hats in your re-reading! I read it as myself, and as my editor, and I do read multiple times while I’m writing each draft. I do notice more now than I used to, and I can pick out when I’m using words that are mine, rather than my characters’ – actually, Erica Orloff has been instrumental in pointing that out to me. (Love my blogging writing friends!)
The other thing I notice is that I catch more with a little time and space away. Fresh eyes catch waaaay more.
Oh cool, Merry! That is a lot of shoes to slip into… characters, readers, editors…
I usually don’t have the benefit of time and space, unfortunately. But I’m gradually improving the skill, given my limitations!
I read as myself as I’m writing. During editing reads I try to read my manuscripts through other eyes. My husband and son were excellent 1st & 2nd readers. (I divorced the husband and not because of his critiques, & the son is in DC and has more important things to do. Besides, I haven’t touched a manuscript in 12 or 24 months or more or less and then some.) Beyond the hubs and son, I tried to select readers who quailfied as my target audience – that only made sense to me.
Reenie, ya’ know, I don’t think I include myself in it, really. Weird.
Wow, it’s great to have such good readers so handy, LOL!
[...] one so many of us have trouble with. It’s by writer, blogger–and NaNoWriMo winner– Natasha Fondren, for whom the secret of revision is a special skill you might call multiple-personality [...]
I pretend I am a reader like myself, picking up a book to test out a new world according to somebody else. So it is exciting to me when, a few chapters in, I think hey, I want to know what happens – in my own manuscript.
That happened to me recently, unearthing my first novel and being thrilled that it read complete. Not perfect, but it felt like a “real” book.
Oh isn’t that something, Jewel? I’m always so shocked when one of my stories feels like a real story. It’s really surreal. I never get over it.