Posts Tagged "Chris Belden"

ABC’s of Fiction Writing: P is for Persona

Posted by editors on Mar 17, 2015 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Writing involves a series of choices, many of them made before the first word is written. Will this story be told by in first, second or third person? Past or present tense? Do I start at the beginning or in the middle? For the experienced author these decisions are consciously made; for the novice, they may be accidental (“It just came out that way”). But there’s one decision that both beginners and veterans sometimes overlook: how close will I—the writer—come to the red-hot emotional core of the story I’m telling? A story (or poem, or essay) is like the solar system. At its center should be a heat-giving sun—that is, a deep feeling. It might be fear, or...