# Journal Entries



## Boom22 (May 22, 2010)

I have trouble telling stories from first person which is what journal entries are, any pointers about style, grammar, and 'getting into character'?


----------



## Lou Grant (May 26, 2010)

Boom22 said:


> I have trouble telling stories from first person which is what journal entries are, any pointers about style, grammar, and 'getting into character'?



Its probably a little trickier to pull off writing in first person simply because you are limited since the narrator either has to be involved in or have knowledge of everything going on. It may help to outline the story first to make sure you are not writing yourself into a corner. 

As far as getting into character it would just be a matter of understanding how the person telling the story feels about what is happening in the story and getting that across in the narration. Otherwise you might be just as well off writing in third person.


----------



## Mac5689 (May 26, 2010)

I wrote a first person point of view story, but i feel that its kinda flat, partly because i wrote it like five years ago when i first started writing weight gain stories. Its on my Deviantart Page, which you can use the link underneath my post to get to, or i can give a link straight to it if you want to see it.

I also tried to write a story like it was a persons journal, around the same time as the before mention story, but that was never finished and as i like to call it is DOA.


----------



## coolag12345 (May 29, 2010)

First person stories are definitely tricky. The biggest tip I could give (though it may seem a bit obvious) would be to get a firm grasp of how your narrator speaks; this is where it is absolutely vital to have a good ear for dialogue, as any kind of first person passage (especially a journal entry) needs to sound authentic to the character. Each of these entries could be thought of as one long passage of dialogue, where it reads very much like a solioquy or monologue or what have you by that character.

Hope that little tip helped.


----------



## Forgotten_Futures (Jun 28, 2010)

While you do have to modify train of thought for the character you're currently writing (unless, of course, you are the basis for said character = P) I find it helps to first see the situation through my own eyes and thought processes. Once I have a grasp of what my character is experiencing, then I can get an idea of how they're experiencing it - and reacting to that experience. For instance, I am generally analytical, observant, and calculating. Most of my characters are as well, to some extent at least. Some aren't so much, though.

Practical example: Today at work we had issues with multiple large, black insects which I believed to be hornets or wasps (the effectiveness of a chemical substance designed to kill that insect subgroup reinforces that belief). At one point, one was within striking distance, but rather than simply attack, I spent some time studying it, trying to decide the best way and time to try and one-shot the insect (it was in a part of the building we could not spray the aforementioned chemical substance). Another coworker, however, simply entered into combat with the beast... and proceeded to miss/barely hit repeatedly before finally crushing it. Same situation, two radically different points of view and courses of action.


----------



## Lardibutts (Jul 15, 2010)

coolag12345 said:


> The biggest tip I could give (though it may seem a bit obvious) would be to get a firm grasp of how your narrator speaks; this is where it is absolutely vital to have a good ear for dialogue, as any kind of first person passage (especially a journal entry) needs to sound authentic to the character.



*That is a really great piece of advice to give you.* 

I recommend you check out Office Boy which is a very cleverly written first person journal. I like the way the guy is always too naïve to realise what they are all up to. 

Reading this thread made me realise that the majority of my contributions to Dims have been written in the first person. The reason for this must be that most of my stuff starts out as me fantasising - like for example: Il pistone and Conference Pears  where I am same gender and Exploding Maids and Countersplurge, where I am grossly female. In Slow Food and its sequel Big Sisters  I am a really horrible toad of a guy. 
Day dreaming about totally bizarre things happening to me has always made me get hot (and the more hassle I get about heart disease and being overweight, the more I tend to escape).
I reckon my best first person character was the swaggering heroine of Life in the Round where I got excited imagining myself to be a really hot lippy Essex Girl slag (Im proud to be from Essex myself which in UK means being confidently trailer-trash vulgar). I really enjoyed getting into that character.

:doh: Weird or What?


----------

