Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic Characters and Effective Viewpoints (Write Great Fiction)

Every writer, at some point in crafting his/her work, struggles with developing characters, describing emotions of his/her characters, and describing the point of view he/she wants the reader to see.

Miss Kress has put together a book that will make it so much easier to face these problems head on, and find the right words to get their story flowing in a seemingly effortless stream.

I highly recommend this book to any writer.

Mike Phelps
Author of;
DAVID JANSSEN-MY FUGITIVE (1994)
THE EXECUTION OF JUSTICE (2008)
DELAYED JUSTICE (2008)

I find this book invaluable for the novel I am writing, I purchased about a dozen grammar, fiction writing books on Amazon. I am plugging other Author's books and my own coming novel. I hope to sell it here on Amazon.

My navel: THE ROCK OF NEREID by Vincent J. Arcuri

This book is a good resource for looking at how characters, the emotions they portray and in what viewpoint (first person, third person omniscient, third person limited, etc) to use, and it certainly complements the other books quite nicely. I have read all of the "WGF" books save for the one on revision and see them all as a great investment.

For this particular book, Nancy Kress does do a good job of exploring each element in detail. Like the other books, it is largely an overview of each concept, and, like the other books, she does hit on some similar aspects that the other books cover more extensively (how could she not? All aspects work together to create a work of fiction.)

My main problem with the book is that when she gets to the section where she delves deeply into first person, at one point at least she goes into a small rabbit trail about why some readers don't like and will never read first person. Apparently they're willing to read books but not willing to suspend their disbelief that the character narrating the work was an active participant. It makes absolutely no sense to me but I am not going to judge these people. My problem with this is that she goes a little bit longer talking about this than what the situation merits, spending at least a page or two on the subject, yet she says NOTHING of authors who write their books in the present tense, even though this style is easily as equally jarring and disengaging as first person, actually more so in my opinion. Why she ignores the pitfalls of writing in present tense yet shows the pitfalls of first person, second person, third person, first person plural, third person plural, multiple first person, multiple third person, hybrid, (and there's more but you get the point,) is beyond me.

All in all a good book and I would recommend it.

"Characters, Emotion and Viewpoint" is helping me understand the importance of viewpoint, of focusing on what the main characters are feeling and experiencing within a story's moment of action. As one working on becoming a writer, this book is essential in understanding the importance of point of view in your characters. It's certainly as important as how you paint the setting to readers.

Just as the title of the book says, "Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint," every book has them, and many of them. This book explains exactly how to create various characters, the different emotions that they may convey throughout your story, and the different viewpoints that may be utilized to make your writing more effective. This is a "must have" for anyone thinking of writing fiction, as are all of the books in this series. These books are worth every cent. I read all of them before I even started writing, and am glad I did, because now everything makes a lot more sense. Instead of being in a boat without a paddle, now at least I have a paddle.