I am lucky to be surrounded by such a large network of writers groups, workshops, seminars, etc. here in North Carolina. There is also a huge group of writers on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Goodreads, Amazon and more websites for writers that you could ever possibly find.
All of this can leave a person overwhelmed. Where does one start? Probably by narrowing down to your particular genre. There is no reason for a thriller writer to join a romance group. Being a Christian based fiction writer, I have tried to really narrow down to those areas and have been pleasantly surprised with the number of options I have.
I recently attended a writer's workshop and attended two sessions. The first one was "What not to do to get published" and found out that I did do a number of the things mentioned but was still lucky enough to get my first book published.
The second session was on POV. I took a lot of notes. With my first book, two editors worked through it with me and I did realize that I switched points of view several times within various scenes. I learned to keep to a single point of view within scenes. It was good practise for me and I understand the reasoning for it.
The instructor really pushed for writers to get into deep POV. She also stressed show - don't tell. We were told that the deeper a writer can get into point of view, the clearer the character becomes and the reader will form a strong attachment/knowledge of the character. I seemed to walk away from this session with the understanding that adjectives are not great and to keep dialogue to a minimum and to really only have one main character. Another point was to only have one POV within a scene. Understood.
However, people talk to each other and have their POV. So dialogue is needed within stories. I get it that a writer needs to only present one person's POV within a scene. But why can't the writer then go to a scene and show another character's POV? I do not want to write stories from only one character's perspective. I want readers to get to know two or three or more of my characters. I want readers to be able to relate to more than the main character.
I will be attending more workshops in the near future. I do want to improve my writing skills and the only way I can do that is to continue writing and listening. I need to write with what works best for me. I suppose listening to other's opinions is good. What one expert advises is good for some but not for everyone.
