Guest Blog Post - "Writing From Within" by Dr Bob Rich

Writing from within

Here are two ways of writing about a person:

Outside view
Horrified, Geordie watched the rope snake past him, down, down… until the weight of it tugged on his harness. He looked like a tiny spider hanging onto the cliff face. His fingers were like the claws of an anchor as they desperately grasped tiny crevices in the rock. Beads of sweat were visible on his brow, and his legs trembled.

Inside view
Horrified, Geordie watched the rope snake past him, down, down… until the weight of it tugged on his harness. He felt like a tiny spider hanging onto the cliff face. His fingers were so rigid they hurt as he desperately grasped tiny crevices in the rock. Sweating, trembling with tension, he asked himself, Why did that rope come loose?

What’s the difference?

The first version is clearly from the point of view (POV) of someone watching Geordie. The only indication of his inner reality is the first word. The rest is a description of what he looks like.

The second version is what Geordie experiences. Here, you are invited into his reality, to BE the person on the rock face with the rope now tugging him down instead of holding him up.



Does it matter?

As you read a story in the outside view, you are continuously given subliminal messages that this is only a story, something someone is telling you. You are given information to allow you to see the character from the outside, as in a movie or play.

In the inside view, you are given the tools to go far beyond that. A book in words can be very much more compelling than a movie, because the potential is there for receiving information that camera and microphone cannot capture: bodily sensations, smells, tastes, thoughts, emotions.

In fiction writing, the author’s job is to specify a reality, a cast of characters, and a progression of events. The reader needs to be supplied with enough information to imagine that all this is real. Ideally, the writer is the director. The reader is the audience, but also the character whose point of view is currently being used, and the creator of the reality of the story. That’s right. The author doesn’t do the act of creation. The reader does. This is why no two readers ever receive the same story. This is why seeing a movie of a book you enjoyed is almost invariably disappointing — someone else has done the creating, and will have done it differently from your version.

Reading something written in the inside view allows you to live the experience of the story.

Is there a place for the outside view?

Yes, it has two uses.

First, the journalist, the historian, the biographer necessarily tell their story from the author’s POV. Reporters cannot read minds, so can only state their own thoughts, insofar as these are relevant. For the rest, they need to state the words and actions of the people they write about.

Second, in any scene, there will be the person whose POV we are using, for example Geordie in the snippet I started with. While that person should be presented from the inside view, any other people cannot. Geordie can’t read minds either. When he looks up and sees Sam looking down with an evil leer and waving a knife, he doesn’t know Sam’s thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, motives. He automatically deduces some of them from Sam’s words and actions. In this, he may be right, or completely mistaken.

So, if we make Sam the current witness, then the outside view example is just right — as long as we delete the first word. Sam cannot tell that Geordie is horrified, although he may hope so.

A good author will deliberately use inside view for the witness to the scene, whose POV we are in, and outside view for all other people. I hope you’ll now be aware of this in your reading, and more important, in your writing.


Link
This is from my newsletter, Bobbing Around. The specific link is https://bobrich18.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/bobbing-around-volume-14-number-5/#within


Bio
Dr Bob Rich is an Australian storyteller with 15 published books, 5 of them award-winners, and a freelance editor. However, his most important activity is as a professional grandfather. You can check out what this means at https://bobrich18.wordpress.com

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Guest Post - "Freedom Is For The Birds" by Author, JM Sutherland

Great Mystery Publishing - Publisher's Note: We have been informed that $1 from every sale of "Freedom Is For The Birds" will be donated to wildlife facilities to help with the medical expenses and food for injured and orphaned wildlife.



FREEDOM IS FOR THE BIRDS by J.M. Sutherland

The main reason behind writing this work of animal fiction was the empathy I felt about the injustices inflicted upon animals. The opening of the book about the hawks losing their nesting site and territory is absolutely true. I witnessed it and felt powerless and angry, but nowhere near as much as I imagined the hawks felt, when they showed up from their migration north.

Also, in all the news stories I have heard from around the world, I found a few constant themes.
1) Animals have needs, answers and voices that humans refuse to acknowledge.

2) There is a constant de-evolution happening to humans as a species, when we think that abusing and torturing animals is fun, entertaining, and profitable, and we do nothing to stop it.

3) Humans are not thinking about the “big picture” or the state the world is in, when we constantly destroy habitat and species that are vital to all of the ecosystems around the world.

4) There are so many examples of animals that cross-species bond to comfort and help each other in times of need. While humans have rapists, serial killers, racism, genocide, terrorism, and war, and prove we do not even like our own species let alone any others on the planet.

After witnessing and hearing about so much needless tragedy, I actually started dreaming the story and could not stop dreaming about it for years, until I started writing it. I felt compelled to write a book to give the animals of the world a voice, while also somehow giving humanity a much needed lesson in morals, manners and compassion. Little by little the story evolved, and little by little pieces of the dream disappeared.

Every year non-profit, wildlife facilities are taking on more and more cases as the number of human and animal encounters constantly increases, and always to the detriment of the animal. These facilities are not government funded, and wild animals do not come with bank accounts or medical insurance. I am donating a portion of the proceeds to help these essential wildlife facilities, because their services are ever-increasingly in demand and they rely solely on donated money to operate.

It is a book of animal fiction, but in the world today, there are too many real examples of humans’ hate towards animals. I use the word hate, because everything we are jealous of or afraid of we hate, and anything we hate we destroy. Irrefutable examples of this in today’s society are: constant rhino, elephant, tiger, and pangolin poaching to the point of extinction; animals like Arturo the polar bear, Nosey the elephant, Tilikum and Lolita the killer whales, and all of the animals in zoos, aquariums, circuses and roadside attractions, who suffer needlessly in man-made environments; the atrocious dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan that is happening right now; the Yulin dog meat festival in China that inhumanly slaughters thousands of dogs every year; all fur farms and leather manufacturers where the animals suffer because they are skinned alive; all animals that are tortured for experiments and research; the unnecessary torture of birds for the production of foiegras; and etc, etc, etc. The list is endless and every example is an animal forced, against its will, to endure torture which humans would find so cruel they would outlaw it if it occurred to any human. It is this ridiculous and insane belief that animals are not sentient beings and do not matter at all, which drives the unethical treatment of all animals around the world.

JM Sutherland

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Author - J.M. Sutherland

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"Pigs are an intelligent creature, they know what is going on, they know everything, they able to recognise your face. However, we would like to thank everyone who appreciate our effort."


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