In Harmony

There are times when a writer wants to confuse her readers, but invariably confusing numbers, point of view, and time really just annoys the reader.


If you are talking about ONE item or ONE individual then don’t substitute plural nouns or pronouns. “A bride might find her wedding day to be stressful” and NOT “a bride might find their wedding day to be stressful”. Or “Their shoes were scattered everywhere” and NOT “”their shoes was scattered everywhere”. The number of your subject should also agree with the verb you use; “Everybody has a reason to be here” or “All of the people have a reason to be here”.


Be careful when you use a phrase like “a pair …” as the subject (shoes, pants, scissors is descriptive) and is singular. “A pair of shoes was thrown over the fence” is correct. “He put a pair of pants on” refers to ONE item of clothing. There are experts will argue that “a pair” can be plural – an easy test is to see if you can substitute a number such as “a pair of students” can read “Two students”, etc.


Head-hopping is when you jump back and forth between viewpoints. If you begin a narrative using the pronoun “I” then you represent YOUR viewpoint and YOUR perspective – this is literally the way YOU see things. If the narrative is in third person, he, she or they, then the view is not personal and not YOURS. “I” is first person; “You” is second person; and “He, she, they” is third person.


While a narrator may guess at someone else’s thoughts or moods, they cannot be in every character’s head. If you are telling a story from your hero’s perspective, he does not KNOW what a stranger is thinking. Instead if you want your hero or other character to seem intuitive, then make sure he notices the frowns, door slamming, reticent looks and anything else that would show NOT TELL a character’s mood.


Keep your tenses straight. There are only three times that action can happen – in the past, in the present , and in the future. Make sure that if you are talking about one of these time periods you keep your tenses straight. In the present, I eat; in the past I ate; in the future I will eat. Notice that both the present and the past can be signified by just the subject and the verb, but when it comes to the future tense, the subject WILL be doing the verb.


Don’t bounce around in time. Keep your story consistent – if an event already happened then there are no choices to be made as the event cannot be changed. There is no waiting to see what WILL happen. This is not to say you can’t have more than one time period in a paragraph but remember to be clearly defined who/what the subject is. “He waited behind the door while he watch to see what she would do.” He is the subject and it was what he was doing at the time.




Writing Exercise: You are sitting comfortably on your favorite family room chair with your laptop in your lap. Suddenly a big spider settles down right in front of you (maybe on the laptop keyboard?) – you can’t move, maybe you are terrified or maybe you are simply fascinated. You are stuck with that big hairy spider staring at you. Write one to three paragraphs describing the next five to ten minutes of your life.



Writing Prompt: In just a few words, describe the room you are in the way you see it. Now describe the room, without moving, as if you were seeing it from the opposite corner.