I guess I should explain the subtitle of this blog. In May 2014, I bought an e-book on Amazon which was, erm, less than stellar. It was, in fact, the kind of book that gives self-pubs their bad reputation. About 30 pages into it, I realized it wasn’t getting better, and I was not going to be able to finish it.

I said something to the effect of, “I could write better than this. In fact, I will!” It’s an attitude, by the way, that’s responsible for a lot of the house renovation designs in Coquitlam 🙂 .

So, three months later, I had a novel written. Then I spent four months actually getting it ready for publication. It’s surprising how much of the craft of writing doesn’t actually involve, you know, writing.

Time will tell if I become a popular author, but one thing’s for sure– I’ve got the bug.

Point of View is a Big Deal ™ when writing fiction. First person, second person (yeah, that’s a thing), third person; present tense, past tense; Omni, limited; on and on, oy.

POV is also one of the harder ideas to get a handle on– the hardest, in my opinion, being “show don’t tell”. POV breaks and head hops are very common issues with new authors and a huge red flag for agents reading submissions.

But aside from all the writing problems, choice of POV is an important decision when you are starting a new WIP. I wrote my first novel, Outland, in 3rd person. Most of the chapters are limited, but a couple are Omni.

When I started a different project (working title ‘Legion’), I naturally used 3rd limited again. After all, it’s what I know. But about 30k words in, I realized it was far too distant– the reader wouldn’t be engaged. The problem is that the protagonist is solitary for large stretches of the story, which means long sections with little or no dialog. In 3rd person, it begins to look like a long tell.

So, after thinking about it for a bit, I went through and changed the whole thing to 1st person. And whaddaya know, it works better. I can make the narrator voice more chatty, and describing small nuances of emotion feels more natural.

The takeaway for me is: be willing to try alternatives. Inertia is not your friend.

Hello. My name is Dennis Taylor (thus the name on the blog). I’ve been an inveterate reader for <mumble> years– mostly science fiction, with occasional forays into horror, suspense, and even the occasional detective novel like the Rizzoli and Isles series.

So, now I’m an author. Yippee. Oh, and a blog-writer. To be honest, I don’t really expect much–if any–readership. This is as much a diary as anything else; a way to organize my thoughts and keep track of my journey.

Having said that, I also have a snowboarding blog going, which I started with exactly the same motivations. And that thing actually has followers. Some of my posts got linked to, and got hits numbering in the thousands. Go figger.

So, let the journey begin!