UF Author Louis Corsair: The different ways a writer of fiction can screw up First Person POV? + giveaway

And here I am again! I liked my last post on I Smell Sheep so much that I decided to do another.

Hooray!

That wasn’t a true statement. I don’t think the people who run this blog would have me on just for the hell of it. But, it was a nice fantasy, wasn’t it?

***This is I Smell Sheep...we would love to have you anytime you want to visit! You're out kind of crazy ;)***

So, what is today’s flavor? Hmmm. It has been a while since I’ve shared my (cough) wisdom about writing. The last post I wrote for my blog, which was about the myth of Show-don’t-tell, went pretty well.

I don’t want to revisit that topic.

It’s long and dull. Except to writers. They’re easily amused. True story!

How about…the different ways a writer of fiction can screw up First Person POV?

That sounds great to me (since I’m writing it). And it’s short. I’m limiting these ‘errors’ to just ten. Or maybe five. Yeah. My hand’s arthritic joints are liking five better.

FIRST-PERSON POV:
I am using First Person POV right now. You do have to wonder: Who is speaking? Who is this “I” persona? Is it the author whose name appears on the blog post or is it a stage persona?

Typically, most often, most stories, usually, the “I” in the story is the main character. And, if you use the First Person POV, you typically, most often, usually, stick with that person’s thoughts and observations.

This makes sense because, let’s face it, we can’t read minds and we can’t project ourselves to other places and observe what’s going on there.

So, how do writers “screw” this up?

1) The “I” persona is actually the Third Person narrator, who acts like a character—and sometimes he/she is a character.

It’s the ultimate sleight of hand.

The “I” persona knows it all and sees it all. They are the all-seeing “I.” A Third Person Omniscient narrator.

Except they’re not content to simply describe. They will often pause to give you their two cents about what they’re describing.

Third Person POV with attitude!

It’s two stories for the price of one. Lucky you.

1 Example: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2) The “I” persona can read minds; they accurately tell the reader what other characters are thinking. This mostly happens in literary books where it’s cool if you do this.

Just to be clear: This type of “I” persona isn’t supposed to be all-knowing, like the narrator of The Book Thief; they somehow know the thoughts of others.

The novel starts out with a character telling you about some event that changed his/her life forever. They start narrating the events of the story and oops!

They tell you what some other person is thinking. And they keep doing it throughout.

Writers like to include these Professor X clones in stories where a Third Person narrator would have been adequate, but not as fun.

2 Examples: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie; Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

PRO TIP: One way to get a big literary prize, like a Pulitzer, is to write First Person POV this way.

3) The “I” persona can describes events they couldn’t possibly have witnessed—and they do it like they were there. Well, shit, if you’re going to have a character that can read minds, why not break the laws of physics?

It happens like this: The narrator starts to tell you about his/her life and what’s going on in it. Suddenly, they break from the Present and go back in Time to tell you about a family member.

And they don’t just summarize the event. They describe it in great detail, including the thoughts of the characters.

Again, the main culprits of this type booboo are literary authors. Those bastards get away with everything!

3 Examples: Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo; The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne; Moby Dick by Herman Melville

4) The “I” persona disappears and secretly starts to narrate in the Third Person.

This usually happens in genre books with lots of action. One minute, you have the narrator telling you his/her innermost thoughts and then a fight breaks out.

It is remarkable that the “I” narrator tells you how his/her fight is going and in the following paragraph, how his/her mates are doing and what cool things they said.

During a fight, you want to focus on what your opponent is doing. Not. Not. Not. Not on the fighting style of the other people in your group.

If you suddenly look away while you’re kicking ass (to check out the way your pals are kicking ass too), you will likely get your ass kicked. Rightly so, for being a dumb ass.

4 Authors who do this: Jim Butcher (Dresden Files); Simon R. Green (The Nightside); Kim Harrison (The Hollows); Louis Corsair (The Elohim Trilogy)

5) The “I” persona can recall events in astonishingly clear detail.

This one is difficult to notice. You open a book and expect the narrator to describe events clearly. As a reader, you want the author to walk you through the story, to keep you engaged. This doesn’t change just because the narrator is describing events in the First Person.

But damn, they have good memory! If you asked me to tell you about my day, I might do it in a summarized fashion.

I woke up and my foot hurt. I went to visit a friend in San Pedro and we watched a movie and had some beers. I think I nodded off during the movie, but I’m not sure about that.

Talk about an unreliable narrator.

Just imagine reading a book like that! No Bueno.

Okay, okay…this is only a “screw up” because it’s impossible for humans to recall events clearly, especially all the events that go into a novel. It is part of the convention of the First Person POV.

But it is one of those necessary evils we writers have to put up with.

Examples? Try every writer who uses First Person POV. Ha!

TO SUMMARIZE:
These aren’t really mistakes. I hope you got that.

I know…

I know…

Sometimes it’s difficult to read the sarcasm in the words.

Anywho…

We writers like to experiment. And that usually leads to breaking conventions—I won’t call them rules.

It’s not really a new phenomenon. Look at novels from the 17th century. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes). Tristram Shandy (Laurence Sterne). Those are some of the first novels. Their authors didn’t hold anything back.

I guess you can say that for writers, breaking established conventions is an established convention.

Ha. Haha.

LC

Absolution: Redux (Elohim Trilogy, #1)
by Louis Corsair
September 15th 2020
Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy
At the end of the original Absolution, the Executor traveled back in Time and altered Reality. But by doing so, he set in motion a plan to end his existence and collapse Creation. Because of his actions, there is Absolution: REDUX…

In 1947, a gangster murders private investigator Raymond Adams. In 2011, he’s brought back to life for 24 hours to solve the supernatural murder of a Hollywood Adult film star.

When the son of a Pit Lord is murdered in Hollywood, the celestial beings in charge of the Realms ask Raymond Adams to figure who did it and find the victim’s missing soul. Without memories of his life, he accepts the case to gain eternal peace. But the job is daunting:

24 hours to nab a killer…
24 hours to find a missing soul…
24 hours to unravel the victim’s exotic private life…
24 hours to stop a plot to send the universe into chaos…

With only the help of a possessed cop and a medium, Adams must trek through a Hollywood underground filled with pornography, prostitutes, and sadists, along with supernatural monsters. But can he solve the case when his own haunting memories keep surfacing, telling him exactly what kind of man he was in life?

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About the Author:

website-Goodreads
Louis Corsair is an eight-year veteran of the United States Army. Currently living in Los Angeles, California, he spends his time reading books, going on walks, writing, and enjoying the occasional visit to the beach—while trying to earn an honest buck. As a Los Angeles writer, he feels the weight of famous Los Angeles novelists, like Raymond Chandler, John Fante, Nina Revoyr, among others.

In 2021, he hopes to finish the Elohim Trilogy and its connected novels, including The Wizards Collide, and Apotheosis: Book Three of the Elohim Trilogy.

Giveaway:

Tour-wide giveaway (INT)

A digital copy of the five books so far published in this series

a Rafflecopter giveaway

WTF-ery with Urban Fantasy Author Louis Corsair + giveaway

If you can dream it up, Louis Corsair, we will post it! We love all 31 flavors of crazy.

I keep picturing Baskin-Robbins. That’s where we get that reference. Except today, there won’t be ice cream.

Unless you buy me some.

Okay. No ice-cream. When the folks at I Smell Sheep told me that, I took it to mean I could do something odd, a little weird, revealing, embarrassing. About. Me.

Yes! But, 31 is really long, so I’ll flip it around.

So, here’s 13, very quick, very odd flavors of Louis Corsair! Only one is a lie.

-I once held enough explosives in my hands to kill me and the people around me. Spoiler alert: I didn’t die.

-The peacock in this photo would come by my job and harass me.

-Moments after I took this cat’s photo, we got into a fight and he nearly took out my eye; he missed by a centimeter. (his name is Rasputin)

-I once helped Emilia Clark evade a cloud of paparazzi waiting for her outside LAX. She didn’t think I could do it, but I know a few secret ways around security! (she’s also very short)

-While out on a blind date, the Jägermeister people approached us and asked to take a photo of us drinking a shot of the stuff so they could use it in an ad; I won’t show the photo here, but it was a bad blind date (and you can see it in the look of sheer horror on my face).

-For a period of six months, I lived in my car. That wasn’t so bad, since it was a brand new Pontiac Firebird! I also drove said Firebird over 130 miles an hour down a desert road that was known for the many fatal accidents that occurred in it.

-I spent a month in the former Yugoslavia, living in a tent, without showering; we had to take a sh** in a communal toilet and at the end of the day, I had to burn the sh** with fuel. God, I wish this wasn’t true!

-I got my first French kiss when I was six years old, and my second one moments after, and the same with my third, fourth, etc. She was older and wanted to practice.

-Me and the guy in this photo used to swim on luggage for the fuck of it. Ha! Hahaha!

-I had a ten-minute phone conversation with a prison inmate who wanted me to help him get access to his bank account; his bank card wasn’t working and he was trying to get a new one; I hung up after I figured out that what I was doing was probably illegal.

-I have received more than one chain letter in my life (the physical kind). They said god-awful things would happen to me and those I cared about if I didn’t mail them out to others. I thought they were hilarious and started collecting them. I don’t know what happened to them.

-The first vehicle I ever drove was a military one, which had no tires or a steering wheel; my supervisor lied about me having a driver’s license too because he didn’t want to drive.

-On that note, the place where I learned to drive that military vehicle had roads that were riddled with landmines. Despite being an inexperienced driver, I stayed within the paved parts of the road! I didn’t really have a choice…

That’s all folks! And you know what? I forgot which one of those was a lie. Ah, well. It’s hard to believe all that nonsense happened to me anyhow.

I’m glad you stuck by until the end. Now, I can honestly say I smell sheep too.

Har!

LC
Blogger: Louiscorsair.blogspot.com

The Quantum of the Past: Redux! (An Elohim Trilogy Novel)
by Louis Corsair
December 2020
 Genre: Urban Fantasy / Dark Fantasy

549 pages
ISBN: B08J5BGHV4
ASIN: B00IQX0WXI
Number of pages: 633
Word Count: 166,000 words
Cover Artist: Ravven Kitsune
A mentally unstable army war veteran, Miles Trevor, seeks to redeem himself by helping a Sprite return to her magical home world and fulfill her destiny.

The Past that haunts Miles Trevor is relentless, with even its most fundamental fragment...

Iraq war veteran, Miles Trevor, has survivor's guilt after living through an insurgent attack that killed the rest of his platoon, but left him unharmed. Now, he wants nothing more than to return to the military and be a part of the mission once again. Yet, his mind is crumbling; he sometimes hallucinates, seeing the soldiers who died that day. With madness looming in the shadows, the army will never grant him his wish.

So, when the supernatural--in the form of a teen Sprite named Kendra--offers him a chance for redemption, he takes it. All the girl wants is to go home to a magical city called Lusphera to fulfill her holy destiny, and find out why her father wants to stop her.

But with Miles losing his grip on sanity, he may not be the best man for this task. In fact, he may be her biggest threat...

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Excerpt
THE BATTLE OF THE RAVEN MOUNTAINS
As the questers and the nomads drew their weapons, the roars of the mountain lion clansmen stopped. And they could hear hushed movement everywhere, concealed by the darkness. This chilled Miles’ bones more than the night cold ever did.

And then the mountain lion clan dove out of the darkness and attacked and the wild men and questers fought them with apprehension, for they still thought them allies. And in the thick confusion, the puma-men in the host betrayed them; they leaped onto their former comrades and murdered anyone they attacked.

Another burst of mountain lion warriors attacked from the slopes above and from those below. They were in tight packs and tore apart anyone unfortunate enough to meet them alone, even the bear warriors. But the questers and the nomads caught on and began a hasty defense that mutated into a counter-attack.

Kendra flew high above them and summoned a ball of light as bright as a small sun and as large as her body. This allowed Zan and Draxel to use their power. The two Shadow Walkers were like gophers popping in and out of shadows, slashing the traitors to pieces.

And although Raza was of their same race, he fought unlike them. This warrior leaped from place to place, his agility equal to the puma and mountain lion men, piercing some with the spear, some with the pearl-handled knife; his every move economical, his every strike precise. And sometimes, when a difficult party faced him, he sank into the shadows with them and emerged later, but alone. How like a dancer he was then, the ancient Symphony of Conflict guiding his steps. He was a glory to behold--proud Achilles would fear this man!

The light helped the others as well. Trinath, son of Holgoth, held the Staff of the Waterborne over his head and it glowed like a star, which caused Kendra’s light to fire glowing spears that neutralized many enemies.

And the Tsörs unleashed their weapons. Through the air flew a Hrät here and there and they always caught some cat lunging and they kept their Hrüms in hand for any who dared come within arm’s length of them and the sickening tunks and chunks of sharpened metal on flesh and bone made these weapons red, red with death.

And Polk used the claymore for its edge and weight, chopping and piercing. Next to him, Lord Pharos used the advantage he had in the air and Thunderbolt whistled with calculated and nobler assaults that were no less deadly.

And the wolf-men howled with passion and created their own packs and they met puma and mountain lion clansmen and their ferocious battles were gory displays of tooth and claw as friendships and alliances were forgotten and survival of the fittest reigned.

Miles, Lord Pharos, and Hyman created a triple wall around Kendra when she descended. The captain shouted off more orders and the elk and deer men formed a circle around them with bears intermixed and it alarmed them to see how few were left. Fortunately, the holy sword released wall after wall of electricity that augmented the crack and thunder of Hyman’s pistol shots.

Together they held back wave after wave of the traitors. And then, as suddenly as the battle had begun, there came a hush.

“They won’t attack now,” said Hyman, his pistol in one hand and the silver saber in the other. “We destroyed their only advantage, surprise. But methinks it best if we leave this place.”

“The trees!” said Tsör Florentina. “We can retreat to the Woods of Uzra Doren.”

“Problem is we gotta reach dem,” said Polk, his claymore red and his makeshift armor showing off fresh dents and claw marks.

They started back down cautiously, in a giant circle of strength. The furious sounds of their footsteps were the only talk between them and their eyes were ever-vigilant, using what remained of Kendra’s light. And many wondered where the teeth and claws would come from and if they would be fast enough to stop them.

The most maddening aspect of this retreat was that the mountain lion and puma men began to feast on the fallen and on those too injured to move with the retreating army; the desperate pleas of the victims would become high pitched and then stop all at once. And the traitors were not shy about the sounds they made as they ate or about launching stripped bones onto the trail--this new carnage made some of the elk and deer men nervous and a few trembled and gave out calls of alarm.

About the Author:

website-Goodreads
Louis Corsair is an eight-year veteran of the United States Army. Currently living in Los Angeles, California, he spends his time reading books, going on walks, writing, and enjoying the occasional visit to the beach—while trying to earn an honest buck. As a Los Angeles writer, he feels the weight of famous Los Angeles novelists, like Raymond Chandler, John Fante, Nina Revoyr, among others.

In 2021, he hopes to finish the Elohim Trilogy and its connected novels, including The Wizards Collide, and Apotheosis: Book Three of the Elohim Trilogy.

Tour Giveaway

1 digital set of all the ebooks in this series

a Rafflecopter giveaway