Writing Guide: Full Stops and Point of Views

Subject: Writing Guide: Full Stops and Point of Views Thu Apr 04, 2013 11:37 am

Full Stops
Full stops are your periods. They end the sentence, after all. When you shouldn't use a full stop is during dialogue, if you have a dialogue tag. I'll show you an example of how you should and shouldn't writing out dialogue with the dialogue tag added with it.

Correct Use: "No one said he could go to the park this late," Anne said.
---> Because you have the dialogue tag "Anne said" after the statement you do not use a period after "late," instead you would use a comma.

Incorrect Use: "They were pretty big, actually." Bill noted.
---> Notice how there is a period between "actually" and the quotation? That would be incorrect due to the dialogue tag "Bill said" being used to designate who spoke. Change the period to a comma and it will be correct.

Point of Views

Point of views are very popular - especially within fanfiction. The thing is you have several options from not only the standard three (first person, second person or third person) but there's also the characters you can choose from to be the focus of a chapter or the entirety of the story.

Writing Guide: Full Stops and Point of Views 15

Writing Guide: Full Stops and Point of Views 15

1st Person POV This is definitely one of the most difficult POVs to work with. Being as its from the narrator's head, what s/he sees, hears, feels and thinks that is what you must describe through narration. You can't have omniscient narrator and you can't have the narrator character know for sure just what the other people around them are feeling or thinking because, just like in real life, you can't know for sure what other people feel or think.

Even better this writing style, while difficult, can let you get away with a little more. Because people frequently think in fragments the use of them every so often can work to your advantage. You can insert your narrator character's thoughts onto the page without it breaking too far from the story because it's from his/her head but you can't insert other characters thoughts in the narration for that same reason (barring things where the narrator character has mind reading powers, e.g.).

The way your narrator character talks should also be used within the narration. Does your character use bigger words? If so then put them in the narration. Is your character a street kid and would speak with a lot of slang and simpler words? Then make your narration reflect that!

Writing Guide: Full Stops and Point of Views 10

Writing Guide: Full Stops and Point of Views 10

2nd Person POV When writing this is actually not a recommended POV to write form. Yes, you're inserting your read but that's an easy way to lose readers as well. Because you've now made the main character the reader you're forcing thoughts, actions and any habits and actions from the character onto them. It can have negative repercussions and make readers stop reading solely from that.

Writing Guide: Full Stops and Point of Views 14

Writing Guide: Full Stops and Point of Views 14

3rd Person POV Like with 1st Person it is vital to make the narration match with whatever character the narration is focusing on. For instance, if you were writing a Devil May Cry fanfiction and one chapter had its focus on Dante and the other on Vergil, what would the differences in your narration be? For Dante, considering he's a happy-go-lucky but lazy sort of guy the narration should be rather crude and not use many adjectives, that's not how Dante speaks or acts so the narration needs to show that so that when you swap the narration's focus to another character your readers can tell who they're following. If it swapped to Vergil it should be noticeably different; the narration should be more flowery, using more intelligent wording and sounding more formal to contrast to Dante's narration parts/chapter.

Like with 1st person, the focus of the narration should focus on one character at a time i.e. their thoughts, feelings, what they notice, etc. etc. Unlike 1st person you can't get away with things like fragments in your narration because you are no longer writing as if it's a stream of consciousness from the narrator character.

Ah, I needed to see this. I've always had issues with Full Stops, I almost always forget about that. Thank you!

Knight Amaterasu wrote:: Ah, I needed to see this. I've always had issues with Full Stops, I almost always forget about that. Thank you!

I'm glad it helped. I used to have a lot issues with them myself. That and the difference between then and than.

» Writing Guide: The Difference Between...
» Writing PKMN Fanfiction; How To
» Writing, writing, writing, (:
» Writing Updates~
» What is a Mary-Sue? How do I know I'm Writing One?