How to write a book series...

Writing with an Ego!

Here is one thing that most people find fairly annoying, and you want to avoid it in your writing. A friend comes up to you and starts telling you what happened to her this week. She speaks with animation and energy. She seems to think it is important, but the significance of what happened to her, every little detail, day-by-day, is just not coming through to anyone listening.

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You would think, if you were standing on the other side of a large room, that what she is saying is perhaps generating great interest and is fascinating. But you are not standing on the other side of the room.

No, you are the person who is so blessed to hear all about her week. Every little folded brown paper bag is being recounted, every child's hissy fit revisited, along with her frustration with the attendant at the gas station way back on Tuesday morning. There is a sound of importance in her voice. If you were to say, "Excuse me, but you are boring me to tears, and I have to leave now," she would never speak to you again, and you should never say such a thing anyway.

It is hard to understand how certain individuals come to believe that because it happened to them it must be worth sharing. These people seldom ever seriously ask another person about their week or their experiences.

So you stand there and you think, "Dear Great Spirit of forgiveness and wisdom, please do not let me ever insist upon retelling the nondescript and ordinary details of my life to another human being who is liable to be bored out of their mind with me." And you smile and nod your head, keeping up with every detail of what amounts to a tempest in a teapot.

Every one of her statements begins with "I." The whole story revolves around her. Every statement ends with the way she feels about whatever it may be. There is not a place in her monologue where another speaker can enter and shift the attention away from the Self that is doing all the talking.

This is why so many readers and editors of nonfiction simply refuse to read a manuscript in the First Person Point of View, to avoid reading how many flakes of oatmeal fell into the bowl every morning at breakfast.

Here's a fact: the actual nature of the oatmeal flakes falling holds little interest to the woman who is telling her weekly details and travails. Only when she has the opportunity to suck some major oxygen out of the room, in the telling and hogging of the sound waves, does the event become worth anything to her.

Many times you will be instructed to write the way you talk, and to write in the language in which you think. You should also be rather selective as you build a narrative in your writing. Remember that the really fascinating writing, especially in First Person Singular, addresses the questions Why and How certain things happened.

You should consider at one point in the writing process asking yourself exactly what is worth telling. Ask yourself, "Does this detail truly enrich and advance the story I am telling?"

Does anybody really need to know that your mother's hairdresser's cat eats only soft catfood?

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