POV (headhopping vs. multiple)

wryttenwyrd asks:
My question to you is about headhopping, commonly found in romances. Switching from one character's head to the other's can be done fairly well sometimes, but I personally find that device loathsome. As an editor, do you find this pov treatment (that's my nice word for it) viable in any other type of writing?

Actually, in my experience, romance has tended far more lately towards single POV (single per scene-- with two protagonists, most romance novels have to use both in the book). I see very little headhopping except in new authors and the bestselling authors who can get away with that.

But if you're reading bestsellers, you could well be getting more headhopping than you like! They can rely on their facility at storytelling more than their craft. But most romance writers are single-POV advocates, in my experience, as are most romance editors.

And I would probably reject any manuscript that came to me with headhopping, as to me that signifies a lack of control of the narrative and a lack of understanding of the reader's experience. If it was a great story, I'd probably ask the writer to learn about POV and resubmit. (You do sometimes get great stories with headhopping, because often that's a result of a particularly creative writer who is so great with character, she can't settle on any one.) Headhopping is often the sign of a new writer or a young writer, and usually a good new writer just has to have that pointed out and explained, and once she gets it, she can transform her work. But it's very much a transformation of mindset. It's hard, I think, for those who are innate single-POVers to understand that, because it's so natural for us to park in one POV and see everything from inside that character. But it's pretty amazing how quickly former headhoppers change when they understand what POV is, and what shifting means.

By the way, I distinguish between headhopping (uncontrolled shifting of POV) and multiple POV, which is shifting for a purpose, and the POV always in some character's head. That, I suspect, is truly the POV of the 21st Century, as it is more cinematic. (Omniscient was the dominant POV mode of the 19th C, and single-POV of the 20th C, I'd say.) Multiple POV and omniscient are closely related, and single-third and first-person are closely related; that is, each pair use much the same narration techniques and focus.

For a good example of how to do multiple POV in romance (and it makes very good sense in romance, as there are two protagonists, and both are present in most scenes, and both have journeys), read Susan Elizabeth Phillips's novels. Ain't She Sweet is great for that, and so is Nobody's Baby but Mine. She usually has four POV characters (has two romances in most books), and POV is carefully controlled. But she uses multiple POV to show how differently the characters interpret events, and that's a great reason to use multiple POV.
Alicia

More about names and pronouns

I was thinking about when a descriptor other than the name or pronoun works for me, and I think it might be a POV issue (of course :). When we're in Joan's POV, how would she think of the other person? I don't mean the actual words necessarily, but the relationship of "me" to "her." That is, consciousness starts with our distinguishing ourselves from everyone else, so the first descriptor would be "other," that is, "not me." So that's why, I think, you frequently see in a passage that's in one character's POV a reference to "the other man" or "the other woman," meaning the non-POV character.

I suspect the reader will have no trouble distinguishing with a term like this, and will have no objection-- that is, if we're seated solidly and deeply in Joan's POV, the reader will go along no protest with a term that Joan would use to describe (consciously or no) the other person.

That's why, with Dave's example, both clg and I thought of describing Podgorny as "her opponent," because that's what she is right then in Sally's POV-- the opponent. If we were so deep in Sally's POV that we were in her voice as well as viewpoint, that term might be more, um, colorful. But the term would describe the relationship at that moment. If Sally and P would both survive the fight and shake hands and go out for a drink together (okay, five drinks) and share sad tales of fights that didn't work out so well, in the scene where they drunkenly stumble back to the barracks, warbling Sting songs in two-part harmony, it might be "Sally and her new friend," or "Sally and her one-time enemy," or "Sally and her drinking buddy." That is, the descriptor would change because the relationship has changed.

(This reminds me of my sons, who were both home this weekend so they're on my mind. When my younger boy-- and see, there I am, using a descriptor instead of his name-- was born, the older one wasn't yet two, and of course he regarded A as an intruder. Once he started talking, he referred to the baby only as "that other little guy." It wasn't until they actually started having a relationship that he started referring to A by name, and then "my little brother." And I noticed this weekend, now they're both theoretically grown, he refers to A just as "my brother." I pointed this out to A-- "He doesn't call you his little brother anymore," and A said gruffly, "He can always call me that. It's okay with me." :)

Anyway, in deep POV, it seems to me that the descriptor should always be something that reflects how the POV character would think of this Other. (Again, this is not necessarily the exact words, as long as we're not "in voice"-- that is, writing the narrative in the character's own voice.") So if Sally initially doesn't know her opponent's first name, the narration shouldn't refer to her as "Olga." But after their drinking time begins, and Podgorny says, "Oh, hell, call me Olga," the narration could start referring to her as "Olga."

In omniscient POV, probably any descriptor that the reader would associate with that character would work, but not more than a couple for each. The goal is to limit confusion, not spread it, and too many descriptors for each character could get confusing. ("Which one is the redhead again?") I'd also suspect that pairing descriptors could get annoyingly clunky ("the redheaded detective") though Homer used them (cf. Homeric epithet).

What about in multiple POV? Well, in multiple, you're always (or should be always) in someone's POV. You just shift within a scene to another POV as needed. So whatever character's POV you're in at that moment should dictate what descriptor is used, and yeah, that can mean "her opponent" or "the other woman" refer to different people at different times in the scene. I think as long as you are deep in a character's POV -before- that point, the reader will follow no problem.

What do you all think?
Alicia

Two "she," one scene

Dave offers this as an example of narrating the action/interaction of two women or two men in the same scene:
"She was about to pivot to face Podgorny squarely again when Podgorny attacked, swinging her right fist in a controlled strike at Sally's left kidney."

Hmm... using Podgorny's name twice shows how hard this is! Is there another way to do it? "She was about to pivot when ..."
That is, go with the motion but figure that the reader will understand why (to face the adversary squarely). But then we lose that sense of action/interaction.... How about starting with Sally, and then "her".... Sally was about to pivot to face her squarely again when Podgorny attacked..."
And then I can see ... "swinging her right fist in a controlled strike at the left kidney."

Not perfect at all, but I think we can figure that P is hitting Sally's kidney, not her own.

This NEVER gets easy! And Dave has the additional challenge that this is an action scene, high action, in fact, where both are moving simultaneously -- so it's not like he can put each's action in a separate paragraph.

Another issue is keeping the action sequential. I might suggest putting P first: "When Podgorny attacked, Sally was about..." But that puts Sally's aborted action (pivoting) after an action it really precedes-- that is, P's attacking is what stops Sally's action, so you want Sally's first.

So here would be my imperfect alternative:
Sally was about to pivot to face her squarely again when Podgorny attacked, swinging her right fist in a controlled strike at the left kidney.


Maybe "to face her opponent?"
But notice a slight POV issue arising with this version... this is Sally's POV, and yet, referring to P as "her" first in the sentence hints that it's P's POV. I think probably if the section starts clearly in Sally's POV, this won't be such a problem, but I did notice, re-reading it, that in Dave's version, I didn't have any doubt that it was Sally's POV, and in the alternative, I had a moment of confusion.

clg suggests identifying characters with alternate descriptors (like my "her opponent" above), and use those instead of the names or pronouns:
I've used that template in my own manuscript, which deals with military men. For example: Jeb Stuart in a scene with Robert E. Lee can be indentified as "Stuart," "Jeb," "Lee's young lieutenant general," "the young man," or "his cavalry leader." I may even employ Stuart's habit of tugging on his long beard when in thought, or his cheerful personality.


I tend to use just a few of these, because a friend of mine, Lynn Kerstan, wrote an article where she excerpted something she'd written as a young writer, where in one scene she referred to one male character as the duke, and the older man, and William, and Dartmer, and the silver-haired man, and finally she realized it sounded like there were 12 people in the room, and there were only the duke and his confidante. So ever since then, I remember that when I use a descriptor rather than a name or pronoun. However, I do use "the other man" and "the younger man," and neutral descriptors like those when necessary. And I'd probably use only one alternate, just to keep confusion at bay.

Anyway, I like the idea of identifying with something associated with that character. After all, we want the dialogue of a character to be recognizably hers, so that we don't need a "Sarah said" with each line. So maybe the same should be done with those minor actions. I think this would be most effective if these were established earlier, so we already know that Jenny has glasses and Sarah doesn't, so when we see "She shoved her glasses up on her nose and glared at the other woman," we know "she" is Jenny, and the other woman must be Sarah.


Ian offers: He's hunting his father's killer, and in a roundabout way makes him responsible for almost every ill that has befallen him:

That's a REAL toughie, because there are actually three "he" possibles in there (the killer could be male or female, but the father is male :). I'd think about taking that "him" into a noun... like "makes that crime responsible..." But I think that might mess up the meaning, that the protagonist is making HIM, a person, responsible. Maybe "makes that man responsible..." except maybe the pro doesn't know for sure the killer is a man.
The last part I'd probably recast... for most ills since the murder. I'd probably look for a replacement for "ills," actually, as it sounds a bit prissy for the situation.
So often what I'd suggest might lose something essential in the meaning. Like...
He wants revenge, as he blames his father's killer for every problem that has occurred since the murder.
Well, that might well lose the meaning!


What do you all think?

Alicia

Tips for Noun Conversion

Last week we looked at some of the rationale behind my peculiar obsession with verbs and verb forms, and as usual, the comments gave us all a lot to think about and made me want to do a follow-up post. You commenters are a really bright bunch!

One of the things we looked at in last week's post was how relatively difficult it is to shift a noun into a verb or adjective slot. It’s not impossible, of course, but compared to the way verbs mutate with abandon, nouns are a bit trickier.

So here are some ideas on how to verb a noun in ways that won’t undercut your sentence. In this, as in all writing tricks, your number one goal is clarity.

Look For Strong Associations

Nouns as physical objects are frequently associated with particular actions or events that can more easily translate to verb usages. Think about how the noun is used. “Plate,” for example, is a physical object, a flat panel, usually circular, used to serve food. Because the association between the object (the panel) and the activity (serving food) is so strong, we can say, “I plated the roast,” and everyone will know exactly what activity is implied by the verb.

Or will they? Some nouns have multiple strong associations. I think if there’s one thing we learned from trying to verb the noun “finger” in last week’s post, it’s that finger has more than one possible verb usage. This is because the physical object, the noun finger, has strong associations to two separate actions, pointing and touching.

This leads us to our second tip.

One Word: Context

“Plate” as a noun can also mean a thin metal veneer, a thin sheet of metal or glass, home base, and who knows what else. The thin metal veneer definition is crucial for this discussion, because “plate” as a verb is probably more frequently associated with the act of affixing the veneer to the surface it covers: silver over nickel to create silverplate, for example.

This is why context is critical. We don’t normally apply metal coatings to cooked meats, so saying “I plated the roast” makes its meaning known by the direct object roast. If we had said, instead, “I plated the candelabra,” we might understand by the direct object candelabra that we’re not talking about serving dinner but about attaching a veneer.

Let me give you another example. Last week over on my knitting blog, I talked about trying to con my niece and nephews into manning my swift and ballwinder. (For the non-fiber-obsessed among you, a swift is a contraption for holding coiled hanks of yarn,and the ballwinder is a hand-cranked gizmo that converts the hanks into neat flat cakes.) In that context, I wrote this sentence: Why do the work myself when I can Tom Sawyer someone else into doing it?

Tom Sawyer, obviously, is a proper noun. Without the proper context of me a/k/a the lazy and devious auntie and my young relatives a/k/a those about to be conned into doing my work for me, that verbing wouldn’t make as much sense.

A Special Caution for Adjectival Nouns

A press release crossed my desk this morning for a new book called “The Penis Diet.” Penis, of course, is a noun. We can debate someday about whether we should properly consider it, in this usage, an adjective or an adjectival noun. Putting aside that debate for the moment, there’s a caution contained in the phrase.

What does “Penis Diet” mean? Multiple choice question here. Is it:
a) A diet to change the size of penises (such as “The Belly Diet”)
b) A diet of nothing but penises (a la “The Grapefruit Diet”)
c) Abstention from indulgence in penises (similar to “tv diets” or “shopping diets”)
d) A diet for people suffering from penis problems (a la “The Heart Diet”)
e) Something else altogether

Given the potential for confusion, it’s probably not a coincidence that the book in question is also subtitled. And that's the danger in adjectival nouns (or nouns used as adjectives, or multi-word or compound nouns -- take your pick). Some compounds are so inherently obviously in meaning that we grasp them instantly: cabbage patch, rose water, match point. Some, like penis diet, might not be quite as, er, graspable.

Theresa

Naming names

I've been working on a scene with two women, and have been editing with an eye to clearing up the confusion of the pronoun. So here are a couple suggestions:

Situation-- two women interacting, talking together in a scene. So "she" could refer to either of the two women. And you're going to have sentences that involve both of them. ("She handed her the two-liter bottle.") So think about what problems this would cause for your narration, and how you'd handle that.

1) First, I'd try to make the names not start with the same letter. Sophisticated readers probably often "read" the shape of the word on the page or screen, rather than seeing the letters. Usually, they'll see that initial capital and associate it with one character another, and then quickly go onto the next word. This subconscious process is impeded when two character names start with the same first letter. So reconsider "Jane and Jackie"... but do it early, before the name becomes bonded to the character. You know how that happens. "But she IS Jane!! I can't make her Eve! I can't!"

2) Who's in viewpoint in this scene, or at this point in the scene? We tend not to think of ourselves as our names, but rather "I," and the equivalent of that in third-person is the personal pronoun he/she. So one way is to make she/her/hers always refer to the woman whose viewpoint we're in. (This only works with tightly controlled POV that stays clearly in one character a long time, preferably the entire scene.) But then you have to refer to the other character by name, even when you're using the possessive case. So "She watched Jackie comb Jackie's hair..." Nahhh. :) Some variation of the POV-character "she," however, seems to be what most of us end up with.

3) Use their names when there's any confusion at all. Clunky, yeah, but clunky is better than unclear. So "Eve watched Jackie comb her hair" works because we're going to assume the "her" refers back to the last name (Jackie). How would you do it if Jackie's a hairdresser and is combing Eve's hair, and Eve can watch it in the mirror? "Eve watched Jackie comb Eve's hair" is TOO clunky.

4) Recast whenever you can't make it work. Try putting one person in a dependent clause and the other in the main clause, maybe: "As Eve watched the process in the mirror, Jackie combed out her hair." Arrrgh. This is always hard. Two sentences might be necessary. Well, so what? Not like you're limited to a certain number of sentences.

Supply some examples of tough sentences with two "she" characters, and let's see what we can do to make them comprehensible and unclunky.
Alicia

Don’t Be This Guy

A friend of mine, a successful, multi-published writer, is being harassed on her blog by this guy who came out of nowhere. He posts nasty comments accusing her of all manner of literary crimes. He simultaneously complains about the poor quality of her books and brags about his refusal to read anything like what she writes. He’s trying to shame her by saying awful things about everything from her writing process to her commercial success. It’s ugly, and it’s the kind of thing that would make industry professionals vow never to work with this guy.

Now, he tries to position himself as a literary writer when he’s ranting in her comment zone. And he posts a link back to his own blog, which I checked just out of curiosity. Turns out, he’s not writing literary novels, but genre novels of a type and style that have a small but dedicated readership. So that’s an automatic strike against him. He either doesn’t even know what he’s writing, or he's being dishonest about where his work fits into the publishing spectrum. (I want to make clear that I have not, nor do I intend to, read this guy’s work. None of this is meant to be a comment on his writing talent, which may or may not exist.)

In any event, his rants betray a deeply flawed understanding of the way people buy books, the way this industry operates. He seems to blame her for the fact that his brilliant masterwork was summarily rejected without comment by dozens of industry professionals. No, not “seems to.” Outright accuses her of interfering with his publishing career. Apparently, her success led directly to his failure. He has theories about how this works, which I will not bother to relate simply because they are all 100% wrong.

One writer’s success never leads to another’s failure. Never. In fact, the reverse is true. One writer’s success can and will lead to enhanced sales for many writers, across genres and platforms. Or, as the brilliant Jenny Crusie says, “A rising tide raises all boats.”

You know how we sometimes lament our inability to accurately predicting a book’s performance in the marketplace? This isn’t because we’re all clueless dolts. This is because books don’t sell according to the same predictable models as other commodities. The rules are different.

When readers like a book, they will go back to find another book just like it. This is the “same but different” phenomenon that leads to hot trends and strong backlist sales. If a reader picks up, say, a terse noir paranormal-thriller hybrid with a strong dystopian setting, and loves the book, he will return to the bookstore for more. “More” will be defined by whichever element the reader appreciated (say, the thriller angle, or the dystopian setting, or the fact that the hero knows martial arts) which cannot be predicted until after the reader has read the book. Or, “more” will be defined as all other books written by the same author. Or, if the publisher or bookseller is able to draw parallels, “more” will be defined as a different book by a different author that may or may not contain obvious parallels to the original book.

Most other products are defined and marketed on the basis of product differentiation. We’re inundated with ads telling us why a particular product is different from all other products in its class. But in publishing, product differentiation doesn’t work. We need to tap into the reader’s desire for “more” in every way we can.

The other side effect of the “same but different” yen is that sometimes a reader driven by the quest for “more” ends up stepping outside the boundaries of their personal definitions of “more.” In other words, you might go into the bookstore looking for another dystopian thriller, and end up buying a cookbook. Or a literary debut. Or a sweeping historical romance. And that original desire for “more” will often be satisfied by these purchases just as if the reader had bought nothing but dystopian thrillers. Because sometimes, what starts out as “more dystopian thrillers” changes into, simply, “more reading material.” This means that a runaway bestseller like Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code can translate into increased sales for all kinds of books. A rising tide lifts all boats.

So your astonishingly inventive and original masterpiece is not doomed to failure by virtue of its originality. There may be other factors dooming it. (In this case, I suspect this guy’s sheer nastiness comes across in his proposals and makes industry professionals flee.) But originality and literary merit do not prevent a book from making it to the marketplace. They might make it harder to market with “same but different” approaches, and they might have a harder time finding an audience if its natural "more" links have failed to satisfy readers in the past. But we all know that when “more” means simply “more reading material,” almost any book in the bookstore can be sold to almost any reader. Readers read both within and across genres. Anyone who's been paying attention to my reading list on the sidebar will have seen evidence of that.

In fact, given that profits from commercial successes are often used to subsidize small literary efforts, literary writers ought to be delighted every time some commercial novel sells a bazillion copies. Those profits make it possible for publishers to take risks on books unlikely to demonstrate wide commercial appeal.

Here’s a fun fact I stumbled across recently. I can’t personally vouch for its accuracy, but I read from a reliable source that nominees for the NBCC award average sales of 800 copies per title. That’s over the life of the book. That *might* cover the expenses of producing the book. Just barely. If that. So how does a publisher manage to stay afloat after publishing a book that sells only 800 copies? By publishing a book that will sell 800,000 copies.

In other words, this guy, this nasty commenter, so busy deriding my friend for her commercial success, fails to grasp that a) his “literary” book might just sell a few extra copies to browsers who liked my friend’s books enough to return to the bookstore for more, and b) my friend’s success makes it possible for publishers to take risks on inventive books whose sales and critical success might be hard to predict under existing models.

I get a little tired of the constant division between writers of various genres. It’s not just a one-sided problem. It crops up everywhere. Even a recent issue of a literary and publishing review called erotic romance “trashy” in an article praising -- get this -- a set of graphic novels. Is that the level we’ve fallen to? Are we seriously contending now that a graphic novel is somehow less “trashy” than a graphic romance? This is absurd enough to be shocking, I think.

That’s not an invitation for you all to tell me why graphic novels are awesome. I’m sure they are, and more power to anyone writing them. My problem is in all these false distinctions of merit we assign to various slices of a single pie. All the slices have merit, each in its own way. Graphic novels have no more or less inherent value than spy novels, poetry volumes, or any other kind of book. And as soon as we start comparing all these different slices -- if we say that one genre is better or worse than the other -- then we have to do it within the context of the entire publishing pie, which, as we've seen, is absolutely not a zero-sum game.

This is also not an invitation to bash literary writers. The truth is that these folks are at the vanguard of new techniques which we can all adapt and profit by. Commercial writers can respect literary writers for this, and literary writers can respect commercial writers for getting readers into bookstores, and we can somehow find ways to muddle along together without all the sniping. Right?

A rising tide raises all boats. Or, in other words, celebrate the successes of all writers, because they might just make your own success more possible.

Theresa

On Bananas and Banana Peels

You may have gathered by now that I’m a bit obsessed with verbs, and I thought it might help you all tolerate this obsession if I talked a little about the theoretical basis for this obsession. To really understand this, let’s talk a little about nouns.

Remember the Schoolhouse Rock song about nouns?

Well every person you can know,
And every place that you can go,
And any thing that you can show,
You know they're nouns.
A noun's a special kind of word,
It's any name you ever heard.
I find it quite interesting,
A noun is a person, place or thing.

Our Madlibbish Exercise

Step One.
List five common nouns. Any common nouns will do. Look around your environment if you need ideas. I’ll choose banana, glass, corkboard, calendar and finger.

Step Two.

Insert each noun into the verb slot in the following sentence.“If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to ___________ you.”

So I get,
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to banana you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to glass you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to corkboard you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to calendar you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to finger you.

Only one of my five makes sense, and it’s the one where the noun (finger) has such a strong connotation of action (to point) that the action associated with the noun works in the verb slot. “Finger” becomes a synonym for “point.”

What were yours? Did any of them make sense, or were they mostly nonsense? For the ones that made sense, is there a strong link between the object and its usage that makes the verb form easy to comprehend?

English is Noun-Dependent

Some languages are noun-dependent and some are verb-dependent. English is noun-dependent. The sentence structures are built around solid nouns. A noun is a noun is a noun, and though they *can* shift into other parts of speech, it’s not all that common.

Verbs, by comparison, are slipperly little eels. Verbs mutate. One minute they’re active and healthy main verbs in an independent clause. The next, they’ve shifted form and turned into adjectives (past and present participles) or nouns (gerunds and nominalizations).

Another exercise might clarify this. Take your list of five nouns from above and add an -ing to them and insert them into the following sentence:

_________-ing her friend was a good idea.

I get:

Bananaing her friend was a good idea.
Glassing her friend was a good idea.
Corkboarding her friend was a good idea.
Calendering her friend was a good idea.
Fingering her friend was a good idea.

That’s what happens when you try to turn a common noun into a verb, and the resulting verb into a gerund. It doesn’t work unless the noun already has a strong enough association with a particular action to be synonymous with a verb for that action.

Or take the same -ing form and try it as a present participle:

_____________-ing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.

Bananaing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Glassing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Corkboarding very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Calendering very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Fingering very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.

Look at what happens to “fingering” when we use it in a way that breaks the association to the act of pointing. It stops making sense.

Can we use nouns as simple adjectives, without the participial form but in their native form? Let’s try.

On Saturday, we attended a very __________ party.

On Saturday, we attended a very banana party.
On Saturday, we attended a very glass party.
On Saturday, we attended a very corkboard party.
On Saturday, we attended a very calendar party.
On Saturday, we attended a very finger party.

Nope. Doesn’t work.

But wait, you say. What about this: “We attended a banana party.” It could be a party to celebrate bananas,right? Well, okay, it could be, but that doesn’t convert banana to an adjective in this usage. What it does is convert “banana party” to a compound noun, two nouns which, when used together, mean something different than either noun standing alone.

My point is this. We quibble about things like participle usage and verb choice because verbs are the slippery banana peels in English sentences. One false step, and your sentence skids out of control. Nouns are solid and sturdy -- ever have an argument about nouns that was rooted in grammar rather than in semantics? -- and comparing them like this might help you all understand why I’m such a nut about verbs. Your nouns will almost always function as nouns. Your verbs? Total free-for-all.

Theresa

Names

Oh, and I wanted to pose a few questions. How would you handle these situations?

1) Judy is undercover and pretending her name is Paula. What name would you use for her under what circumstances?
2) We're in Chapter 4. We the readers know that this guy is named Rich (because there has been a scene in his POV), but the heroine doesn't know him or his name. Again, how would you handle this?
3) Annie is Annie to her friends, Anne to her mother, and Mom to her son. She thinks of herself (when she thinks of herself by name) as her maiden name, Jones. What would you call her in the narrative?
Alicia

eventually....

I am doing taxes this week... mine, ours, the kids. And I am thoroughly wrong for this role, just righter than anyone else in the family. And everything is so disorganized (everything thrown haphazardly in a box) that I can't take it to a tax preparer. Groan. Remind me that I want to talk about (I always talk about dull things :) names and pronouns and what to do if you have two "hes" or "shes" in the same scene. No big insights here, but boy, is it a pain, or what?
Alicia