Recent content by Mad Swede

I'm having trouble working out how to reply to this, but I'll give it a go. In many ways Omniscient Third Subjective is what good verbal story telling is all about. My grandmother could tell stories like this, especially folk tales, sagas and legends. It is a real art form, and one I've never...

Right, then you're NOT head hopping. What you are guilty of is not choosing a point of view style and then sticking to it. In your case, my advice is very simple. Choose a POV style: either omniscient or close third POV (what you call singular POV). Then re-write in that one style and stick to it.

Switching between points of view isn't in itself inherently bad. It's the way you do it as a writer which matters. Switching points of view gets criticised because it sometimes stops readers getting immersed in the story and the characters. Sudden changes in POV, or too many changes in POV, can...

Using an omniscient POV and "telling" doesn't inherently mean using less words. It depends how you write the story and what you're wanting to convey. As Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote, telling the reader about the scenery and weather does a great deal to increase the word count, if that is important...

When we're discussing prose from these periods we should remember that many authors were paid by the word, even for their novels. There was also not the competition we see today from games, films, video clips and TV programmes, so books (and radio shows) could be slower paced. As Edgar Rice...

I've written about this before here on Mythic Scribes, but I started writing whilst serving with UNIFIL in Lebanon. My unit tried to break up a particularly vicious firefight between Hizbollah and the South Lebabon Army. Both brought up heavy weaponry (read light artillery) and we took cover in...

I'd advise against that, because it risks becoming telling and not showing. If you want to write in the first person then the character has to deduce or be told things they didn't know. Alternatively, the reader has to be told without the character knowing, e.g. some newspaper headline or poster...

This depends on the agent. They'd be the ones to find you a publisher. I suspect you'll need to re-write the story either in all first person or in all third person. I'd suggest writing it in close third person because that let's you get almost as close to the main character as you would in...

I am very severely dyslexic, but I have never used any form of AI to edit or improve my writing. Using AI in the way that you have done will result in rejection from the publishers, as you have found. They do not accept it. What I do use is some specialised grammar and spell checking tools...

I think the use of planning scenes also varies with the way you write. If you're writing in close third person then a planning scene can become one persons view of a meeting, which allows for the use of interpretations of what the plan is intended to be. That makes it possible to vary how the...

This is something I don't describe in my stories. That's partly because in a setting where most people can't read or write (or have only limited reading skills) the idea of a calender isn't needed. People will keep a track of the seasons and maybe the number of days (and they might know what a...

No. That's partly because in the sorts of stories I write there isn't much deliberate plotting of that sort, certainly not in the short stories, and because in my experience those sorts of scenes just slow the action down.

To answer your question. No. It's not odd. The only time a character in a book should be an accurate reflection of you is if you write your autobiography. Otherwise the characters in the stories you write should be whatever you as the author want or need them to be. There's no right or wrong...

I guess the real message she is trying to convey is that to convey the theme (or themes) in a work they need to be developed and all sides or aspects about the point being made need to be presented without using strawman arguments. I think my only objection to this is that she is arguing from...

Well, I just (?) write my stories the way I was told stories by my mother and grandmother. Effectively I write my stories using a Swedish style and structure, without really thinking about it. I just tell the story. This is my advice to you, to do the same. Just tell the story the same way you...