When I conceived the idea for my young adult series, Mythikas Island , I knew it would be four girl protagonists and four books. The story uses a Road Trip skeleton with a mythical adventure twist set in ancient Greece. The destination isn’t as important as the survival exercise and how it changes the characters. I settled on one character first person point of view for each book and decided each girl would come to terms with an event from the past. Diana, the Archer, begins the tale. She resents not winning the position of team leader. However, Diana has never been a good team player. The challenge teaches her what it means to lead and how to follow when needed. Along the way, Diana comes to terms with the murder of her mother. Persephone, the Healer, picks up the tale in the second book. She would prefer to remain at home on Helios and practice healing instead of babysitting teammates she despises. She not only learns to care for her contentious cousins, she comes to terms...

This post was first published here on September 12, 2008. ~~~~~~~ 1. Mark repetitive words and phrases for rewrites or substitutions. As is a particularly overused phrase beginning. 2. Mark all lazy verbs such as were, was, had, and substitute active verbs or restructure sentence. In most cases take out just, now, very, only. There is no now in the past tense except within the dialogue or thoughts of the character. An editor once told me that tiny is the most overused word in manuscripts. 3. Once those basic mistakes are corrected, read aloud and listen for: A. Hard to read passages that make you stumble. Fix them. B. If you stop to breathe in the middle of a sentence, it’s probably too long. C. Unpleasant cadence, too many sentences with the same rhythm, too many long or too many short sentences within a scene. As a general rule, short sentences are used for fast paced action, longer are to calm down a scene. D. Sibilance (repetition of S or SH sounds) or iteration (r...

When’s the best time to shift point of view (POV) in a story? There is no hard and fast rule to this, but writers need to think about how POV shifts affect the readers’ immersion into the story and characters. Some writers think shifting POV at the beginning of chapters is the smartest move. Others are fine with shifting POV at the beginning of scenes. Some people are even OK with shifting POV at the start of a new paragraph. What about shifting POV within the same  paragraph, nearly the same sentence? Do writers run the risk of jarring readers out of a story? Although shifting POV can be a pet peeve , cause a manuscript to be rejected , and disconcert readers if handled improperly; writers still shift point of view. What say you about when to shift point of view? ~~~~~~~~~~ Shon Bacon is an author, doctoral candidate, editor, and educator. She has published both creatively and academically. Shon also interviews women writers on her popular blog ChickLitGurrl: high on LA...