Woo-hoo! Time to shove your rolly chair up to the computer and put those fingers to the keys, because this is the first Monday of the new year! It's back to work for me and bigillions of other sad saps across the globe. It will be hard to change lazy habits into productive ones, but here's a big HOLLA to those of you that have taken the first step.
As far as writing goes, I've been experimenting with a new possibility over the weekend: changing my main character. Gasp! I have a guy and a girl that are really close to my heart. My first draft wrote the story from Jason's point of view. I liked how the story went, but at some points I lost focus with his emotions. I'm not sure if that's because I didn't really know him yet, or ...what. The last couple days I wrote some paragraphs coming from Shiri's point of view, and I found it a lot of fun to write!
This is the main problem though: there are distinct scenes in the story where each character is alone or separated from the group. And later, I wanted to focus on a new relationship between Jason and a new girl that is added to their group.
What to do...
I believe my confusion still stems from wrapping my head around the difference between omniscient and limited viewpoints. It seems the discussion about defining each one is so broad and stretched out, that many writing styles could fit into either category. Is omniscient just an all-seeing narrator, or is it more than that?
Based on my gut feeling about third-person limited, it looks like I can successfully change character viewpoints at the end of a scene or chapter. If this is indeed true, then I could write the story using any main character! That would solve my problem!
It's still rather scary to be undecided on my style. Now that I'm officially starting my second draft, I wanted to have all the details of style and plot figured out. My first draft could mostly be summarized like this NaNo blog post.
But guess you can only discuss and think about it for so long. It's time to act! So here comes the start of another writing draft for my novel, this time with all the characters, more conflicts, and an actual ending.
Good luck to everyone out there in their drafting and editing of 2015 novels!!
hihi indeed, we started our blogposts the same way!!
ReplyDeleteAbout your draft, as you say "you can only think for so long". No matter how many books and articles you read on the subject, writing comes with practice. The more you think, the less natural your writings will feel! If you force yourself too much into a situation that didn't come to you naturally, chances are it will show to the reader...
So my advice to you is simple: write! :P
Stop thinking so much (six published novels and I still don't know what my style is!!) and don't try to fit into a category; make your own category! ^_^
You can do it!!! :D