{"id":19014,"date":"2018-04-19T01:00:42","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/?p=19014"},"modified":"2018-04-18T22:21:51","modified_gmt":"2018-04-19T05:21:51","slug":"getting-the-author-off-the-page-by-alice-gaines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/19\/getting-the-author-off-the-page-by-alice-gaines\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting the Author Off the Page by Alice Gaines"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>“Getting the Author Off the Page” by Alice Gaines was originally published in Writing Romance: The Ultimate Guide on Craft, Creation and Industry Connections<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

There I was, about halfway through writing my first book.<\/p>\n

My heroine, Rory McDermott, was sitting in the coach\u2019s booth at a minor league professional football game. She\u2019d just suggested a play to the head coach. And, I wrote, “Down on the field, Sidewinder put on his helmet and ran into the game.”<\/p>\n

I stopped writing and stared at the sentence.<\/p>\n

I knew enough about writing to realize I was supposed to be showing the story through my main character\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t supposed to be reporting dry facts or, worse, telling Sidewinder\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

Still, that sentence worked. In fact, it worked far better than the alternative, “Rory watched Sidewinder put on his helmet and run into the game.”<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Over the years, the revelation I had that day came to fit in a category that I call \u201cgetting the author off the page.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others call it deep point of view<\/strong> and various other things.<\/p>\n

I love deep point of view<\/a> and practice it as best I can.<\/p>\n

Nothing else does more to make a reader love the characters or to allow her to share in the characters\u2019 emotions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve developed some guidelines for myself, and I\u2019ve shared them with contestants whose entries I\u2019ve judged in contests.<\/p>\n

They might help you, too.<\/p>\n

Please note that these are not rules.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rules accomplish little besides making writers uncomfortable, and we do that to ourselves without any help.<\/p>\n

In fact, I\u2019ll give examples of when you should violate my guidelines.<\/p>\n

\"Writing<\/a>If you spent your hard-earned money for this book<\/a>, you might want to let my ideas float around in your head and see if they make sense to you.<\/p>\n

There are three broad categories of verbs that remove us one or more steps from experiencing the character\u2019s life directly.<\/p>\n

They are sensing, thinking, and emoting verbs.<\/h2>\n