Authors Electric

An author friend and I have been writing stories together for years, and our collaborations are usually seamless. We agree on so much, but there is one thing we don't agree on.  I’m all for having a different point of view, but what if we have a different point of view about … point of view, also known as PoV?  Establishing point of view for a story isn’t easy since there are many to choose from: first person, second person, third person limited, and third person omniscient.  Point of view filters everything in a story. There are pros and cons for each choice. Where I differ from my friend is in the use of third person omniscient.   He likes it, and I don’t. Simple as that.  We’ve managed to write some fabulous stories together, so this difference may be a matter of personal preference and nothing more. Regardless, I thought it'd be interesting to explore the omniscient PoV more closely.  First of all, what is it?  An omniscient narrator is one tha...

At the age of eight I was discovered curled up in a chair reading my Dad's battered old Penguin edition of The Iliad . I'd like to claim I was a child prodigy, but it really would be a blatant lie: when the book was gently prised out of my fingers and replaced with a version more accessible to my tender years, I found it much easier going. The Iliad was followed in quick succession with The Odyssey which I liked even better: I still have the copy, bought by my Mum, back in the days when hardbacks were Expensive. And that was followed by a collection of Greek and Roman myths, by Roger Lancelyn-Green - and I liked his Robin Hood much better than some of the others I also read. It was this with this discovery of multiple versions of Robin Hood that it slowly dawned on me that Not All Stories were Original. (See? Told you - definitely not a Child Prodigy.) Sometimes it was a re-telling of a story which someone else had written. Sometimes the writer did a brilliant job, a...