First of all, please note off to the right that I'd added a Twitter widget that shows the two latest posts from Solitude. The "reboot" is really more of a "resumption." The prologue especially will refer to events and ideas from the original story. If you want to catch up, you can click here to see the twitter page. If you want to make sure you don't miss anything, you can sign up to follow solitude_story! You won't be sorry you did!
Secondly, I've been a little less involved in Flashy and other blogs the past couple of days because of straight job issues. These should be short term things, and I will hopefully not fall too far behind, but right now they're ~16 hour days which leaves little time for extra stuff.
And now the main point: my latest WIP crisis. I'm still chewing through the same basic struggle as I was when I last posted about Real Stakes. I've done some things that had made the first two plus chapters more character-centric and less plot-driven. That's been a step.
I did realize through a thread exchange with Scott F. G. Bailey, in response to his excellent blog post yesterday, that part of my challenge is that I'm not in my native person. My old writings that convinced me I was suited for writing psychological suspense were all a very intimate third person or else first person. When I started practicing at the form and developing my style and voice in the genre, it was all first person. With Real Stakes, I'm trying a pretty intimate third person -- but spread out over multiple characters.
That's not working as well for me. I've toyed around with trying it as a first person, but I don't want to lose the stories of the other characters if I can help it, and they are very much characters who are tied into the same story, but only converge at specific moments, so if I go 1st, my options are (1) each chapter a new 1st person, or (2) losing the real impact of two of three characters. If I don't do either of those and I continue as is, I'm running the risk of never being fully satisfied with the feel of it.
It's a headache. Anyone have any suggestions? Any good tips for first-ifying the third? (Whatever that means.)
.Nevets.
This is not the easiest suggestion, but I'd say to try all of your options and then pick the one you like the best. My novel has changed points of view a lot, including going into multiple first person. In the end, I ended up back where I started, omniscient, but I feel much more confident in my decision. I've always been better at 1st person, but I WANT this book in 3rd, so I'm sticking with it. Good luck. I know this is hard.
ReplyDeleteHere's why I hate your comment Davin: I was sort of thinking the same idea and had managed to keep talking myself out of it. Now that you say it too it's harder to deny it sounds like a good idea.
ReplyDeleteI sense some alternate drafts coming on...