 |
| Image from Scotland.org |
I'm posting while the dinner is in the oven - on a timer ;)
Between visits to Mum who is recovering from her 14 day stay in hospital with heart problems and my Babe writing her car off on a motorway (she and all other road users walked - or drove - on unscathed) I've been a little too busy to blog. Soz ;)
Welcome! Some new followers arrived while I was having my haitus - I'm suffering with guilt to top off my regular feelings of anxiety ;)
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day - it is also our wedding anniversary. See that piece of forward planning? I like to think of it as building success into the process: How often do you think my other half has forgotten our wedding anniversary? See? He is a natural-made romantic ;)
Sir says:
Third person limited is limiting.
Why did you think it was best form for this novel? The one you're writing using two contrasting POV?
Have you considered re-writing the novel in 1st Person?
AAARRGH!!! I need this ready to enter in the KELPIES COMPETITION by 29th February.
THE HIGH ROAD
CHAPTER 1
BEFORE
When the road skirting the edge of the loch twisted up the side of the mountain, I leaned and slid around every turn. I swung my legs over the rail that kept my mattress on the shelf in the top of the van. Hysterical, I couldn't stop laughing. Maybe it wasn’t that funny but we were nearly there and sliding around on my bunk bed seemed like the funniest thing I’d found to do in ages.
“Fion!” Mum turned in her seat. She pushed at the cardboard box of cooking utensils. They’d skidded around too.
Great-Grandpa was still alive. That was stunning. Our family was small. We were three and that seemed plenty to me. The newspaper photograph told us we were three with an ancient number four. Duck – my Dad – had driven us up the world following the overland route. We’d travelled through India, then turned east and went through China before we drove the total length of Europe. Slowly. Travelling in a van filled with half of everything we owned, the journey was never going to be fast. During our weeks of travelling, I found the world was enormous, and all the same: endless days of nature and groups of people huddled together.
Every minute brought us closer.
Duck concentrated on the road and the idiot in the sports car who kept trying to overtake. According to the Homecoming Plan, Mum was down to drive most evenings. Duck wanted to drive the final stretch – the last few miles from Dunblane to the house his Grandpa had grown-up in. We’d no idea how the old man was going to react. We were going there to find out.
We were almost there.
I'm working to a deadline. Work!
And missing my Bloggy friends and Twitter. WORK!
Gone already.
ARE YOU WORKING HARD TO MEET YOUR DEADLINES?
I liked it better in 3rd person - I read your Feb 7 post). In this version, I never knew she was a girl, and the action and description is limited to only what Fion can see, hear, feel.
ReplyDeleteThe third person limited is like 1st in it only allows the pov character's thoughts and senses, but the narrative description can encompass more than exactly what she sees. In the original version, I got a better sense of the windy road, and the parents reactions to the impending accident. I really loved the voice and pacing in the other.
......dhole
Dearest Elaine,
ReplyDeleteplease convey my kindest regards to Sir, and ask him if he has all his teacups in his cupboard. For the most part, many writing teachers want their pupils to write in the first-person-singular because they want to illustrate what "head-hopping" is all about. "Head-hopping" if this phrase is new to you or Sir, refers to the transition of text which goes: "And then she thought this..." in one paragraph, and in the next "And he thought that..." Classical is in a beginner's romance novel where both characters start to think inside their heads after making love, and the author switch from head to head, like a light switch; hence head-hopping.
Personally, I prefer 3rd person singular/plural because the first-person smacks so much of "Dear Diary..." or "Last summer when I was on holiday, my family and I went..." - you know! - stuff we did when we were in 4th grade.
The trick is - if you like the third person is to write it from one single character's point of view, and not move from this character's thoughts for the whole chapter. If you can pull this trick off, then SIR cannot protest at all.
Kindest regards,
C. Neumann aka Weissdorn
First person is one option. Third person represents several, depending on what you decide to do with it. There are fashions in these things. Omniscient third is rather out of fashion, but a very close third, sticking to a given character, seems to be reasonably popular. Or just whack an unreliable and possibly lying narrator on the whole thing if you want to make it really complicated.
ReplyDeleteOh, and in answer to your question, I'm working hard on lots of novels (by which I mean five including my own one).
ReplyDeleteGood start! Keep working, me? Um... might turn off the internet now and get back to it :)
ReplyDeleteWagging Tales
Hi Donna
ReplyDeleteIt is frustrating. My Betas were happy with 3rd person. However, both agents who read it said the same thing - they found it hard to really identify with the characters with the 3rd person narration creating an unnecessary distance.
Hi Weissdorn - C Neumann ;)
You would not be the only person who has ever taken careful inventory of Sir's Cup cupboard :D However, on the matter of 3rd person verses 1st, Sir was just the final straw.
I have Head-hopping under control - 90% of the time.
And as this is a book written for children in the 4th Grade I'm taking your words as a compliment. ;)
Hi Stu
I'm writing for younger readers so I keep my narrator firmly under control. I do have a smarmy, devilish Mage who would make a very unreliable narrator - I wonder if I can let him loose on the next wip ;)
Hi Charmaine
Thank you :D I have been horribly hard on myself recently, in a bid to get more actual writing done.
Thanks for posting this! I feel like I'm half-hooked, I'm intrigued by the situation, and the voice, but on the other hand, I'm still not sure what to expect. I hardly know anything about the main character, what's important to (her?) and what might happen to the family when they reach Great-grandfather's.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with your deadline. I'm hoping to send my sample chapters into the CSSF Novel Writer's workshop around the same time, so hopefully we'll both have good luck!
I have always written in 3rd person alternating. Why? Because it is part of historical romance genre. I never questioned it. I recently wrote something in 1st person and it flowed so naturally that it left me wondering if I'm the best writer I can be while bending to guidelines.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with your deadline. Trust your gut. :)
BTW, don't know if this was your Hook, Line, and Sinker entry, but I would keep reading. I could picture the adventure of the move from the child's perspective (versus the parents total stress out).
ReplyDeleteHi Kel
ReplyDeleteHalf hooked is better than not hooked at all. ;) You don't get a lot more about her Grandpa- it isn't that important from Fion's pov. Thanks for the feed-back, I have re-written the section to make her fears more clear.
Hi Erin
Thank you x 2 :D I am enjoying the switch to 1st person. As you say - Trust your gut - you may need to stay with this format too.
This is the Hook - I felt almost too embarrassed to shout that it was the entry for the Blogfest. I didn't get around as many of the hooks as I would have liked. I feel bad about that.