06.18.19
dear friends,
first off, thank you @dysanic for my beautiful cover.
as you may guess, i get asked this question a lot. yes, my story a thousand words is written out of a guy's point of view! what the hell was i thinking?? why did i do that?? more importantly: how did i do that??
lol. okay. let's backtrack.
i wrote a thousand words when i was around 15-16 year's old. i'm now 20 years old (crazy! go teenage me).
a thousand words was inspired by the disney movie "meet the robinsons." i remember my little heart strings being pulled by lewis's story in the orphanage and his whole backstory. it got the gears turning to questions like: what if it was a girl in the orphanage? what if there was a guy trying to find out more about it? and hey, what if it the story was told through his pov instead?
so there fifteen year old jess went. you all can be the judge about if i did that well enough or not, but since it has been ~4 years since its completion, a lot of you say that i've done a pretty decent job. and to be honest, i'm a little lost on how i did it?? i'm still anxious i didn't do it well?? but that's for future jess re-writing the story to worry about. here's the answer i've concluded to your question:
what i found through telling the story through reece's pov is that it's more about KNOWING your CHARACTER rather than the gender.
listen, when i figured out that i loved writing, i just wrote with no research on how to do anything writing related. i just wrote and i wrote (and improved my grammar during freshman year of high school. thank you, mr. pollock), and was able to discover my own writing style. so i didn't look up how to write a story through a guy's pov, i just wrote it. and as i continued to write and develop the story, i began to understand reece as a character and as a person. i understood his vocabulary, his moods, his mannerisms, the way he handled/thought about people and situations, etc. i understood reece so thoroughly that i would sink into his mindset to write each chapter. you're probably like, duh, jess – but if you're writing through first person, your character is telling the story. so it's so important that you understand them. it's their voice telling the story.
when i was around 6-8 chapters in (can't remember), i went back and read the first couple chapters. i actually remember lying in bed really late at night, reading, then sitting up and shaking my head, thinking "this doesn't sound like reece at all!" so i re-wrote all those chapters. isn't that crazy? i had understood reece by that point in the story that i understood what the story was supposed to sound like. those first couple chapters didn't sound like him because i didn't know reece that well. i find that's my struggle when i first begin writing a story.
but i'm no professional!!! i was literally sixteen years old when i wrote it! so i'm sure there's a lot more information you can look up about this topic, but knowing reece as a character and getting into his mindset is really what drove me to write a whole story through a guy's point of view. i'm sorry if it's not groundbreaking or helpful, but this is just my personal experience and my personal tip. really trying to understand your character (vocab, mannerisms, thoughts, feelings, mindset, etc.) is, i think, really important – no matter what gender. i understood reece's mindset, found his voice, and he told the story. there were times where i would have one thing planned, and he would change that.
again, i'm no professional. ever since i started writing on this site, i've just been writing my little heart out for fun, not knowing if i'm dong this whole "writer thing" right. i was driven by passion and little films in my head that needed an outlet to get out – that's what writing is to me.
if you have any tips/advice/questions for how to write in a guy's pov or any general first person pov, talk about it in the comments below! help each other out. share your writer tips and advice. ask/answer questions. i'll see you down there as well.
also, if there's anything you want me to talk about, please do let me know <3
see you soon!
love,
jess xx
