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Writing a novel from one unique perspective can be challenging enough for many writers, but writing a character’s story through multiple perspectives will multiply the challenges, but also the rewards. Adi Alsaid’s new novel, Let’s Get Lost (Harlequin Teen, 2014), is an excellent example of using multiple perspectives to effectively tell the story of one character’s road trip while also keeping the reader enticed and invested for the entire ride. Here, Alsaid offers five quick tips for authors who hope to do the same in their stories.

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I’ve always been drawn to multiple perspectives, both as a reader and as a writer. And as a person! I like getting into people’s heads. That’s what I love about fiction, the ease with which we can slip into someone else’s thoughts. So when I write, I like telling a story from as many perspectives as the narrative will allow. With Let’s Get Lost, I thought it would be really interesting to tell a road-trip tale through the eyes of characters who are stationary, who are going through their own issues, their own lives, when a mysterious girl comes crashing in. Here are my tips for writing in multiple perspectives.

• Differentiate the voices. The easiest way to fail at multiple perspective is to not actually have any. Don’t give characters the same sense of humor, the same vocabulary, the same sense of right and wrong. When in doubt, read the different perspectives aloud.
• Start small. Instead of trying to encompass an entire character’s persona, zoom in on a detail. A simple desire, one thought, a bite of pasta, even. It’s a lot less intimidating to start with a bite of pasta than with an entire backstory in mind. The rest will build from there, and will probably feel more authentic for it.
• Explore. If you’re writing from different perspectives, at least one of them is probably wholly different to your own. That’s not a challenge, it’s a chance to explore what it means to be someone else. A parking lot, for example, looks different to a woman walking alone in her twenties than to a woman trying to keep two toddlers from running out into traffic before she reaches the target. What would it be like to be a teenager living in a war-torn region? You probably don’t know for sure, but you have a chance to find out if you start with a small detail and then explore from there.
• Keep it personal. Just because the characters are not like you doesn’t mean they can’t have pieces of you in them. In some way, they should care about what you care about. Or maybe they have the exact opposite beliefs, or they have courage that you don’t. Whatever it is, consider the personal connection the character has with you as you move forward. If you don’t connect with the characters on a personal level, your readers probably won’t either.
• Connection. This one may not be for everybody. What I love most about books—reading or writing them—is the chance to connect to others, the idea that people have similar thoughts and experiences, even though they may not know it. Do this in your stories too. Make connections, subtle or otherwise. Make them pass by each other a minute or two apart. Have someone in common in their backstory without them being aware of it. It’s the beauty of multiple perspectives, you can explore human connection in ways that we may miss in real life.

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Adi Alsaid was born and raised in Mexico City. He attended college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. While in class, he mostly read fiction and continuously failed to fill out crossword puzzles, so it’s no surprise that after graduating he packed up his car and escaped to the California coastline to become a writer. He’s now back in his hometown, where he writes, coaches high school and elementary basketball, and has perfected the art of making every dish he eats or cooks as spicy as possible. In addition to Mexico, he has lived in Tel Aviv, Las Vegas and Monterey, California. A tingly feeling in his feet tells him that more places will eventually be added to the list. For more, visit www.somewhereoverthesun.com.

As poet and Pulitzer nominee Clifford Brooks states below, “…just as it is crucial that a writer creates his or her own voice, the way we edit is also a matter of self-discovery.” I couldn’t agree more. I’m a true believer in the idea that no two poets create or edit the same way, nor should they, but here Clifford Brooks explains why the process of editing is as vital as getting the words down in the first place.

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The process of editing poetry is a bare-knuckle brawl between good grammar and bad habits. Ham-fisting through my first book of verse (two volumes in one) The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics was a hard introduction into the relentless expectations of a poetic Fight Club. It was necessarily brutal, but like any art that requires intense, singular, obsessive attention to detail—be it heart surgery, classical guitar, a gun fight set dead-bang, or architecture—this is a process that gets into your DNA. The only other result is failure.

As I write my new book of poetry, Athena Departs, the process is less maddening. It’s still work—hard work—but where there were open wounds the first go-‘round, now it’s iron, intellectual musculature. I flex my whole self tense and then use my previous experience to write more deliberate, self-aware poetry.

I will not quote other writers, artists, or musicians concerning their editing wisdom. If you take this science of poetry seriously, you know all the famous quotes. I got into this turf war late in my 30’s and went without reading other Creators to make sure what I penned was mine without a shred of cross-contamination. In the event that you feel Art breathe through you as a force of spiritual frenzy as well as a financial means to an end, you are well aware the source of that blessing is beyond an academic map. Therefore, editing isn’t going to be found in a book or locked in some wordsmith with more mileage than you. No, just as it is crucial that a writer creates his or her own voice, the way we edit is also a matter of self-discovery.

Editing is essential for the obvious reasons: Yes, you need to get the spelling right. You need to ensure the verbs and nouns make nice. Are your references to historical events/people 100% accurate? If you use a foreign language in your poetry, is it essential, and more importantly, is it you? Be meticulous in your search to ensure that that you are in no conceivable way mimicking a hero. As Nietzsche said, go ahead and kill those bad boys. Heroes are only helpful in comic books. This is your time.

Yet, because we all know what we mean as we read our own work, getting another pair of eyes to give our verse a once-through to verify what we wrote is what we meant is brilliant. Pick someone who is not afraid to get down-and-dirty with us on content, but not be a jackass about it. Finding more than one of these scholars-and-gentlemen is an excellent move. Homonyms have snuck in on me, and punctuation goofs have slipped by me after obsessively compulsively combing over every line of my work. Writers are well known for being OCD about their paper-encased children; it’s worth the extra steps to make sure your infant puts its best foot forward.

After you get the mathematics in place, the next step may convince neighbors that you’re losing a few marbles: This is where I suggest you read and reread every syllable aloud to hear how the sounds marry symphony and the intended place-strong story. I have a neurosis about perfection, but it’s because I absolutely adore this art. I’ve had a lifelong fascination with the sounds I’m able to wring out of words if I get them in just the right order. It’s a game of perfect-pitch angels and sickeningly-flat devils to make sure lines are engineered to create a tangible cadence.

When I walked myself through this process and tore apart my book of poetry, The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics, it was the first time I’d ever gone so deep to delve out the truth in words that illuminated the most for a reader, and cut the deepest in me. This process seemed to skin my nerves from the inside out. I promised myself that I would tell the whole truth—all of it—without hiding behind murky imagery and/or cryptic metaphor. Because once we commit ourselves to paper, it’s the poet’s job to tell the truth whether we feel particularly jazzy about it or not. In my opinion, to squirm out of the responsibility of putting on your big boy britches when composing poetry is tantamount to cheating. Verse and song are cathartic. To deliver anything less is like selling snake oils to the suffering. That doesn’t mean it’s an easy job.

You see, I have peers who are more talented with poetry than I, and they were incredible help when I thought I’d pushed the harmonic threshold. When I tried to mask the shame or grief over some event to save face, they shoved me towards absolute disclosure. One editor of mine repeated the phrase, “Say it or don’t say it. If you’re not going to say it, pull the whole poem.” I live by that rule to this day and it has never failed me.

My first professional editor was Larry Fagin. He was a hardnosed mentor that set fire to the course of my career. He taught me that every word counts. Being too verbose, obvious, and long-winded are the earmarks of prose. Personally, I try not to repeat words more than absolutely necessary in one poem. I think it’s a novice mistake of being redundant, and proving a lack of an adequate vocabulary. Exploring vocabulary has brought me to a crystal clear final product that’s able to speak on several levels. For me it’s all about challenging yourself at every turn. Because of Fagin’s tutelage, I now experience more moments of euphoric creativity. I don’t try to stem the flow for few words, but spray the page with every mirage that crosses my mind.

Then, when the poems are on the page and the new process of chopping and slicing begins, I start by plucking out disjointed words, or whole lines, that may not fit the piece at hand. I extracted the melodrama aimed at myself for acts that didn’t need a soap opera to give the full picture. More important, perhaps, is when reading over the poetry I wrote years ago, I began to tear into emotional wounds I thought long dead. Personally, to write an honest poem about something that happened in the past, I mentally/emotionally needed to live there again. Through the process of editing I learned to build a tougher exterior to make sure the memories and events in my book Whirling Metaphysics were as equally accurate today as they were 15 years ago. Still editing this material was far more emotionally vicious that I expected. But I grew more as a poet and as a man in this time than any other before it, or since.

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Clifford spoke at great length about the emotional and technical process and pitfalls, but what I included here is pretty spot-on for poets who are about to begin their own editing process. Aim for euphoria, strip away the needless words, and, most of all, “Say it or don’t say it,” because if your work doesn’t say it…what’s the point of writing it, right?

Feel free to post your own thoughts on editing poetry below!

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Clifford Brooks is a native of Athens, Georgia. Being a “Huck Finn” kind of boy in his early years, and not a fan of public school (or being indoors for that matter), he began to write as an escape. His passion for letters grew into short stories and the humorous non-fiction he became known for in smaller literary circles. Before turning teaching and creative writing into a means of financial survival, Clifford worked as a bookseller, juvenile probation officer, and social worker. His book, The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics, has been nominated for a Pulitzer in Poetry, two Pushcart Awards, and garnered him a nomination for Georgia Author of the Year. For more, visit www.cliffbrooks.com.

Once or twice a month I receive a letter or an email from a songwriter informing me that they have become the victim of a scam, and more often than not the stories are exactly the same: “I signed a contract too quickly, I paid a lot of money, the quality was awful, I can’t get in touch with them, etc.” It’s always awful to hear, and while I handle Songwriter’s Market and thus usually hear about the incidents involving songwriters, this same type of unfortunate story happens across all publishing mediums. Scam artists and shady companies are out there in droves and it’s important to see the telltale signs of a scam before you sign your name along the dotted line. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Paying Money Up-Front

This is the biggest tip-off in any market, medium, or genre of publishing. Anyone who requests large sums of money up-front in order to review or accept your work—be it a song, a short story, an album—is likely a scam artist.

A legitimate publisher will pay you for your songs or stories and will offer you money up-front and/or royalties. They will not request you pay them any sum of money in order to be included in an anthology or on a compilation CD. Remember, money should come IN, not go OUT.

Yes, there are a few literary magazines that request reading fees (I personally avoid them when possible) and there are legit contests that have fees in order to enter, often hovering around the $10 or $15 mark. Even then, you should be wary and conduct research to verify this is money well spent. You can find a lot about a legitimate magazine or publisher through a simple Google search. If you do find reliable information and you feel comfortable with paying a small fee for a clearly reputable contest, then you might be all right as long as the fee isn’t going to be a financial burden (and yes, I too have been in the situation where losing $15 is a financial burden). But if you can’t find much quality info about a publisher beyond their own website, then AVOID them!

Side Note: Self-publishing is a slightly different animal since that always requires some sort of financial investment on your part, but again, please make sure you are dealing with legitimate people who have a track record of quality products. The same tips provided here can apply to your dealings with self-publishing firms.

2. Contracts Can Sound Too Good to Be True

That’s because they are. Understand that once you sign a contract stating you will pay someone $100 for ten demo CDs or for the promise that they will send your demo to “major” record producers and radio stations, they could very well just produce those CDs as cheaply as possible and mail them off to whoever they wish, likely to people who will never even see the envelope much less listen to the CD. While there are reputable demo creation companies out there who can help novice songwriters, you need to take the process very slowly, no matter how much they might rush you or how much they promise, and discuss any contract with a lawyer and other experienced industry professionals. The same goes for writers, novelists, poets, screenwriters, etc. Before you sign ANY contract, have a legal representative review it with you.

If you don’t have a clue about how to find help with this, check in with the folks over at Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (www.vlany.org

3. Are Samples Available?  

Again, avoiding fees is rule number one, but if a publisher is asking for a few bucks to enter a contest, or a demo company is willing to record your song for a nominal fee, you may think, “Okay, that’s not a lot of money.” It still goes against the “Money in, not out” maxim, but they seem well regarded and you don’t find anything alarming in a Google search. Fine, but you MUST ask for a copy of a previous CD, a copy of a previous anthology, or a book from a previous winner before you agree to anything. This will likely end up being a digital copy, which is fine since they can’t mail out free print copies to just anyone who asks. A legit operation will have digital samples you can either preview online or download. If they won’t even offer you that much, move along. It’s not worth it.

Legitimate companies are proud of their work and always have samples ready for those interested. The companies who are trying to prey upon the uninformed will be dodgy about displaying past work to the general public. Be careful when you find these companies. And even if you get a sample, make sure you research the other artists who signed with the company or publisher. Be 100% sure you’re getting into something well respected and worthwhile.

4. Research, Research, Research

I’ve brought it up again and again because research is your most valuable weapon against scam artists. If you don’t properly research a publisher or record company and sign a bad contract and send in your money, there is very little that even the savviest of lawyers can do for you without you having to incur legal fees. Make sure you verify all companies before you sign anything! For songwriters, check with the ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, or SOCAN. For writers researching agents, check with the Association of Author Representatives. There are also numerous scam reporting websites online, such as www.pred-ed.com

If you do find a scam artist or have fallen victim to one, let us know via snail mail so we can update our listings accordingly.

For Songwriters: Songwriter’s Market, F+W Media, 4^th Floor, 38 E 29^th Street, New York, NY 10016

For Writers: Writer’s Market, F+W Media, 10151 Carver Road, Ste. 200, Cincinnati, OH, 45242

Be sure to include a complete description of the situation and samples of the publication or CD/demo provided by the publisher, but please know we cannot “investigate” claims, confront publishers on your behalf, or help in the way a lawyer might be able to, but we can adjust our own listings to keep scammers from reaching as many people as they might otherwise. Every little bit helps. Good luck out there!

October marks the time of year when I go out of my way to read something scary, and not in a “Why did any publisher support this hot mess of a novel?” way, but in a “When am I ever going to sleep without the lights on again?” kind of way. I haven’t selected this year’s addition to that annual bookshelf, but if I had to choose the scariest book I ever read, I’d pick Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror.

I know it’s now generally accepted that Amityville is a fake “true story,” but that didn’t make it any easier to descend into the basement after reading the book in the 9th grade. We had an old garage door opener on the wall down there with two red dots that glowed like the eyes of an evil doll, spirit, demon, the Devil, or what have you. The book—absurd as it was in spots—combined with those lights and a creeping dread that my mother’s house might contain a secret red room created a cacophony of horror in my brain, and the side effects manifested in equally absurd habits of safety and precaution for months afterward.

Since that first sample of terror, I became a fan of thrills, chills, and things that go bump in the night—be it eerie fiction, true crime, or the paranormal unknown—and when deciding what book to tackle this October, I grew curious about what other authors and editors I know would select as the scariest book they ever read, and so I asked…

What was the scariest book you’ve ever read, and how did it affect your writing and/or your life after you put the book back on the shelf?  

“Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi. When I was a kid, my best friend didn’t read fiction, and I rarely read nonfiction, so we made a pact to exchange books we each thought the other would like. I gave him IT. He gave me Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi’s account of the Manson Family murders. No offense to Stephen King, but Helter Skelter messed me up in ways IT never could. Both books deal with the madness that lurks beneath the thin veneer of modern society—but while King wrote of monsters, Bugliosi convinced me that the monsters were us.”

– Chris F. Holm

“It was the right book at the right time—1968: I was 22, doing my student teaching, and my supervising teacher lent me I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Utter claustrophobic terror—zombie-vampires—some of whom might happen to be your friends, loved ones, etc., back from the dead to get you. I’d read and loved Matheson’s collections of short horror stories, but this short novel built the nightmare and sustained it and sustained it until you were saying, “I want out of this” even as you knew you’d stick with it to the bitter yet triumphant end. Once I knew that a “modern writer” could do it without ghosts or ghoulies or an English moor and Gothic trappings, I was there. It was an epiphany, and strengthened the desire I’d had to write horror, which began in grade school with “The Pit and Pendulum” and “Tell Tale Heart.”

– Mort Castle

“The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood horrified me. The scariest part is that it becomes more and more evident that Atwood may have been forecasting the future of the North American female experience. The thing I take with me after I set it down is always the same: I should keep writing my experience, and never let the bastards shut me up.”

– Dena Rash Guzman

“Aside from the user’s manual for the first printer I got, I’d say the scariest book I ever read was James Dickey’s Deliverance. I was really too young when I first read it (about 14). My mom, a high school English teacher, had brought it home and told me not to read it, so of course I grabbed it and read it in secret as soon as I could. The impact on me was: the world is a much more dangerous place than I’d thought. Since then, as an author, I’ve remembered it and tried to write as well and as frankly as Dickey. And to not shy away from uncomfortable scenes and topics!”

– Elizabeth Sims

“Horror’s like Erotica—imagination is key. Don’t rob it by giving every last grisly detail. Exercise some subtlety and restraint. As a writer, I learned this and more from Henry James’ truly haunting The Turn of the Screw.”

– David Comfort

As you can see from the answers above, there are all kinds of ways we can scare ourselves—everything from hack-and-slash stories to tales that make us see the horror in our ourselves and in our potential futures. Tell us what you think in the comments below…did we select your favorite frightful tome? Is nonfiction scarier than fiction? Is there a book we should consider reading that will keep us awake in the dead of night?

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James Duncan is a content editor for Writer’s Digest. He is also the author of The Cards We Keep: Ten Stories

No matter what genre of fiction you write, be it horror like King or Lovecraft, crime like Patterson or Spillane, or more literary fare like Sontag, Roth, or Updike, there’s one very basic thing all fiction writers have in common—we love coming up with perfect place and character names, and we all (assuming you’re a fellow fiction writer) pull them from various sources.

I know some writers who seem to pull names of people, towns, rivers, roads, and ranches out of thin air, as if these fictional locales have always existed in the recesses of their minds. I can’t do that, and maybe you can’t either, so here are some ways I go about gathering names for the characters and places in my own books and stories.

The Book of Names

First of all, I suggest all writers get a fancy schmancy leather-bound notebook with a golden “The Book of Names” title written on the cover or spine. Something to make people who walk into your office and see it think it’s some sort of magical tome that predicts the fate of each and every creature who walks the earth, because in a sense, it is. Mine isn’t as fancy, just a beat-up spiral pad with the above title written in sharpie on the cover. Awe inspiring it is not, yet powerful it remains.

Road Trippin’

When I go on road trips, I take a pad and pen along, just like every other writer who has ever existed. I love the names of small towns, of valleys, and historical regions, and they all go into my Book of Names. The first time I did this as a young teenager, I felt as if I had stumbled upon a mine filled with diamonds. Just look at the place names I picked up on a drive from San Antonio to Corpus Christie, Texas: Castle Hills, Braunig Park, Poteet, Jim Brite Road, Whitsett, Choke Canyon, Three Rivers, Mathis, Beeville, Nueces Bay, and Mustang Island. To my ears, that’s a novel waiting to happen. It’s landscape poetry.

Spin the Globe!

Maybe not literally, as a globe doesn’t get too specific, but I am a map lover, and I love to open an oversized atlas to a random page and start scouring the landscape. There are always interesting little towns, rivers, lakes, and roads that no one outside of the 26 residents of page 65, grid section G-2 have ever heard of. For example, a little slice of the British Columbia, Canada reveals: Tom Thumb Mountain, Paddy Peak, Jack Peak, Klondike Highway, and Maude Lake. Not bad for the “middle of nowhere.”

Rest Your Name In Peace

Some may find this a little creepy, but I know for a personal fact that I’m not the only writer who does this. Visiting old cemeteries—especially those from the era and in the region of the story you are writing—can deliver perfect names for your pre-Revolutionary settlers, Depression-era farmers, or turn-of-the-century robber barons. I still recall the first time I saw the name Otis Havermayer on a tombstone. Now that guy sounds interesting. You can do the same thing without leaving home by reading the obituary pages in local newspapers. Or if you prefer to let the honorable departed take their names with them to the other side, old phone books in your local library are another trove of names, and they’re already in alphabetical order. How convenient!

Places as People/People as Places

Just as many people are named after months, seasons, holidays, and various flora and fauna, places are often named after people. So if you find a name that you like, you can use it for either. For example, I published a short story called “The Cards We Keep” about hobos traveling along the California coast in the 1940s, but I named the characters directly or partially after place names from where I grew up—the Hudson Valley region in New York, places such as Ghent, Wilbur Flat, Oriole Mills, Claverack, Chatham, and Whitlock. Not all of those characters made it into the final version, but as character names, don’t they give those hobos a delightful vagabond quality? I think so, and you can use the same trick with your own people and places.

And of course, you can always look up popular baby names online, but putting yourself to work to find the right name for the right character is often half the fun. The next time your plotting a novel chock full of characters and places, instead of firing up Google, hop in your car and drive down an unknown road, or head to the library with pen and notepad in hand, or take your red marker to a newspaper and start circling names. You never know where you’re going to find your own personal Otis Havermeyer!

Do you have a unique tip for finding the perfect character and place names? Share your thoughts below!

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James Duncan is a content editor for Writer’s Digest. He is also the founding editor of Hobo Camp Review, poetry & prose from the road

Link: James Duncan's site

Link: James Duncan's site