2020: A Time to RE-focus

 

by Mindy Obenhaus

Take a trip with me back to January. Back when the Christmas decorations had finally been tucked away and you began filling in a brand-new calendar with your hopes and dreams for the year. 

At the beginning of 2020, everything was all about focus. For many, it was their one word for the year. We had no idea that the world as we knew it was about to change. But change it did.

By March, daily trips to the store for this or that had been replaced by the occasional stock-up run to replenish the pantry and freezer. Families settled down to home-cooked meals instead of hitting the drive-thru or going out to eat. Face to face connections happened via a computer screen and kitchens became home offices.

There was no rushing from school to sports or other activities. Churches were closed. People learned to cook, make sourdough bread and sew masks. Chores that had been a source of procrastination were finally completed as we wondered when or if life would get back to normal.

We started to look at life differently. And we realized that it might be time to refocus. To shift our attention from what we thought was important to what truly mattered. Faith, family, friends… Toilet paper!

Today, let’s chat about how 2020 has impacted you. Has it caused you to refocus? Are there things you’ll never take for granted again? Things you’ve learned you can live without? What has 2020 taught you?

And just for kicks, let’s do a giveaway. Leave a comment for a chance to win this fun Christmas ornament depicting some of the little things we all remember about 2020.

Award-winning author Mindy Obenhaus is passionate about touching readers with Biblical truths in an entertaining, and sometimes adventurous, manner. She lives on a ranch in Texas with her husband, two sassy pups, countless cattle, deer and the occasional coyote, mountain lion or snake. When she's not writing, she enjoys spending time with her grandchildren, cooking and watching copious amounts of the Hallmark Channel. Learn more at www.MindyObenhaus.com  

 

It's all about Perspective

Last summer I did two posts on writing-related words starting with the letter P.


Another "P" Word = Persistence posted back in August and A 15 letter word Not Equal to Lazy (Procrastination) in June.

One of my favorite quotes from the persistence post was this (referring to an article about why people don't meet their full potential) :

The trouble is that most people don’t seriously want what they say they want.

’I want’ means, ‘if I want it enough I will get it.’ Getting what you want means making the decisions you need to make to get what you want.”In other words, few of us are willing to do what it takes to achieve what we desire. 

So why do I bring these old posts up today????

Well, because THIS happened last week.

Despite my tendency to procrastinate, I persisted. I did the work and sold another book to Love Inspired Suspense. You can expect to see it on the shelf in January 2021.  

I'm celebrating and I couldn't think of anyplace I'd rather announce it than here!

But as anyone who has ever sold a book knows, contracts come with lovely revision notes from your acquiring editor. I've been lucky so far, because neither of my books have required extensive revisions. However, the note that came this time made me think of a new P word, one that has been on my mind recently.

I had an experience that made me focus on PERSPECTIVE and how it relates to writing.

I have lived in the same neighborhood for the past 33 years. Nearly every day of those 33 years, I have walked down the block that is half a block over from mine. Most days I walk it multiple times - to and from work, walking the dog, going food shopping. 

I live in a Brooklyn neighborhood that is known for it's Brownstones. Many of those houses have front stoops that end in pillars/pedestals. They look like some version of this.

That is what I have seen every day for 33 years!

But a few weeks ago as I was walking down that very same street, I noticed something. If I looked at the stoop from a different angle, it looked like this.

Do you see the face?  I had never noticed it before? I sent a photo to my daughters and neither of them had ever noticed it either.

So I got to really looking, and then I noticed that this was true on many blocks.

And most shocking of all - it was true of the pedestal at the bottom of the flight of stairs in my own house!

I had just never looked at it from that angle before.

So you may be asking, what is the connection to writing?

It goes back to that revision letter, and how sometimes, in order to see what our editor is seeing, we have to change our perspective. But that's not always an easy thing to do when you've been stuck in a rut thinking about something the same way for a long time.

(Fortunately, despite how it feels at times, I have NOT been working on this book for 33 years!)

In order to make the one change my editor requested, I had to change my perspective on why the heroine was acting the way she was. I did a lot of thinking about it, but then I did what I often do, I studied up on craft.

I read several articles on writing in an attempt to reconsider the changes I had to make. That's when I came across this video.

For those of you who don't have the patience to watch (though I highly recommend that you do), this short film called The Ten Meter Tower, this is the YouTube blurb:

A 10-meter diving tower. People who have never been up there before have to choose whether to jump or climb down. The situation in itself highlights a dilemma: to weigh the instinctive fear of taking the step out against the humiliation of having to climb down.

Most of the video is a closeup shot of people on the diving platform as they agonize whether or not to jump. It's by turns amusing, excruciating, and painful to watch.  (warning:  once or twice there is a curse word).

The viewer is left feeling SO curious about what the jump looks like. Eventually they pull away and show a long shot. I was going to post a photo of that, but I didn't want to violate copyright, so just imagine a long view of a pool (or go to 6:07 in the video).

The thing is, it didn't look so terrifying.

But then they showed a different view - the potential diver's view.

OH!  Big difference!!!

Suddenly you could understand why people were having such a difficult time deciding what to do.

And that spoke to the writer in me. We have to create that tension with our words. Switching the cameral angle proved just how critical that perspective can be. Sometimes, when we're deep into a scene, we don't remember to look at it from other angles. But doing that may make a huge difference!

In my case, it meant rearranging some chapters.

What does it mean for you? Have you ever needed to change your perspective on anything? Think about the scene you are writing today? Would changing your perspective improve it?

While I was waiting for my editor's letter, I did some cleaning up in my office and discovered a box that had copies of Christmas in Hiding. I'd like to give away a copy in celebration of my sale. Let me know in the comments if you'd like to be in the drawing!

It's All About Perspective

Hi everyone, Winnie Griggs here. Today I'd like to discuss Perspective from three different angles.

A lot of folks think of POV and Perspective as inter-changeable, but while they are related there are some key differences. POV refers to the type of narrator you’ve chosen to tell your story, the vantage point from which your reader will experience your story.  It’s a technical choice you make based on whether you want to tell an up close and personal first-hand account, an omniscient narrative or something in between. 

Perspective, on the other hand, is about how your characters view, process and filter the actions, environment and sensory details they encounter. It takes into account your character’s education, experience, upbringing, beliefs, attitudes and goals. Because the sum of a person’s experiences and beliefs will inform how they view the world and react to whatever they are faced with.

There’s a quote I like from Dr. Wayne Dyer, who was an author and speaker in the field of self-development. You may have heard before:
If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Of course, Dr. Dyer, was referring to one individual adjusting their focus to see things in a different light. But it can apply equally well to the writer who wants to present either a deeper characterization of an individual character or slant a scene or description a certain way.

CHARACTER PERSPECTIVE

To nail your character’s perspective, you first need to make certain you understand their backstory, the events, environment, occupation, relationships, experiences and ambitions that shaped him into who he is in the today of your story.

Let me try to illustrate.

If a young child, a woman who just learned her cancer is in remission, and a CEO who’s late for a meeting all got caught in a rainstorm, their reactions and observations would all be different. The child might gleefully seek out puddles to splash in, the woman might smile and view it as a blessed sign of renewal, and the CEO would likely grumble at the inconvenience.

But it goes even deeper than that. Perspective should play a role in word choice, in what details are mentioned and which are ignored, and it will determine the attitude with which those details are viewed. 

Let’s discuss a few examples to illustrate what I mean

In the area of word choice:
Let’s say you have a seamstress who suddenly comes upon something that frightens her. She might think in terms of fear stitching its way up her spine or about her nerves unraveling. But if you put a sailor in the same situation, he might think in terms of being pulled under, drowning or swimming in shark infested waters.
Or suppose we have a young child and an adult both describing a puppy. The adult would probably use words like rambunctious, house-trained (or not!), kid-friendly, purebred, rescue. But your child wouldn’t be thinking in those terms – or at least he shouldn’t be. Instead he would use words such as wiggly, furry, or say the puppy like to gives wet kisses.
If in both of these instances you use generic terms for the emotion of fear or the description of the puppy, you are not only missing the opportunity to add color to your story, but also failing to deepen your characterization

In the area of details:
Let’s say you have a group of friends walking into a museum lobby – we’ll call them Tim, Sue and Leo. Tim has been there a number of times so he doesn’t look around or pay attention to any of the teaser exhibits. Instead he goes right to the ticket counter to pay the entry fee. What he notices is how talkative the ticket agent is, what the discount options are, what flyers are on the counter.
Sue, on the other hand, has never been to this museum before and what she notices when she walks in are the elegant architecture of the lobby, the plush benches and beautiful tapestries and the stunning patterns in the tile floor.
Then we come to Leo who hasn’t been here before either, but he was dragged along and doesn’t really want to be there. What he notices are the long lines and the high price of the tickets.

In the area of attitude and values:
Going back to our example of the three friends at the museum. Let’s say Tim is an artist in his own right and has a deep appreciation for art in all its forms and is eager to share that appreciation with others. If we are viewing the museum through his eyes we will get a very positive, immersive impression.  

As for Sue, she really only has a surface appreciation for art, doesn’t understand any pieces that aren’t literal and really just wants to impress Tim, who’s her boyfriend. If we are viewing the exhibits through her eyes we’ll get a very different impression, one of vague confusion and eagerness to see the beauty that’s just beyond her understanding. 
And of course, there’s our reluctant friend Leo. He grudgingly trails behind his two friends.  He considers the exhibits lame and he’s on to Sue’s pretense so what we’ll get from him is a very cynical view of his surroundings.

Hopefully you can see how, by digging deep into who your characters are you’ve enriched your story and added layers of texture for your reader to enjoy.

In the end, you want to highlight the variety in your individual characters. You need to get out of their way and allow them to reveal themselves through word and thought in a way that is true to who they are.

AUTHOR PERSPECTIVE

There is another kind of perspective that impacts your writing and it’s based on what slips into our stories based on the author’s perspective.  Because your own values, beliefs, experiences can’t help but color your work to some degree. It’ll show up in the subtext, in the way we dive deep into or avoid certain topics - your ideas of justice and morality and spirituality all influence how we portray our characters in our stories.

We’ve all read ‘agenda stories’, stories where the author had a point they are trying make and they are using the story as a vehicle to deliver the agenda. It is like being preached at and if it is very heavy handed it will quickly cause the reader to put the book aside in favor of another, more entertaining read.

But even if we don’t have an agenda or want to hammer home a social, political or moral issue of some kind, author perception can still creep into our work.  As writers we need to be conscious of this and try to minimize this author intrusion in your work so that we can be true to our characters and the story we are trying to tell.

READER PERSPECTIVE

And there is yet another level of perception that impacts your story, and this is one you as the writer have absolutely no control of – that of reader perceptions. Each reader will bring the sum of his or her own experiences into the reading experience. If your story contains elements of violence, abuse, injustice, infidelity, etc., you are going to be touching on sensitive areas for your readers who have experienced some of those things. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go there, just that you need to be aware it will have that impact.

But even something you thought of as quite innocuous when you wrote it might very well strike a nerve with some of your readers. Something as simple as a scene set at an outing to the circus could set off alarm bells in your reader simply because she had a very frightening experience at a circus when she was a child.

As I said you really have no control over this, but it is just something for you to be aware of.

So what do you think? Have you ever looked at perspective from all its various angles in either your writing or reading? Is there something I've left out here or that you disagree with? Let's discuss!