The Subjective Point of View and Narrative Distance

I came across two amazing posts this week that were too good not to share. These are must-reads for the writers out there, and I highly recommend following these women (I mean following their blogs, not following them--that would be creepy) .


Juliette Wade of the Talk To YoUniverse blog wrote an amazing post about expressing a character's judgment using evidential adverbs and modal verbs. When I wrote the first draft of my first YA, I was guilty of using a lot of the "she saw" or "she felt" descriptors. This post breaks in down in a simple and understandable way.

Janice Hardy from The Other Side of the Story discusses narrative distance in your POV, and the pitfalls of using distant and close POV's. I learned a lot of this through trial and error writing my first two novels--one in a much more distant POV  than the other. I think narrative distance is partly a matter of personal preference, but I'm much happier with my new novel which is written in a close POV.   

COOL CONTEST ALERT:
Also, totally unrelated, but too awesome a contest not to mention: the uber-amazing Nathan Bransford is hosting a first paragraph contest of epic proportions. The winner will get a partial critique by his equally amazing agent, Catherine Drayton of Inkwell Management AND a signed advance copy of Nathan's book, JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW. (NOTE: There are already approximately one bazillion entries, but someone has to win, so give it a shot!)