Comments on: Surprised, Pleased and Stunned

By: Gabriele Campbell

Gabriele Campbell — Thu, 24 May 2007 22:16:19 +0000

My short stories (seldom as I write them) often come in first person present tense. It just feels right.

But for my novels I use third past tense omniscient. I know omni is frowned upon, but it works best for me. It’s strange since I’m not an avid moviegoer, but I see my writing from a camera angle - zoom in, zoom out to get an overview, zoom into a character’s head ….

Maybe I could write screenplays for historical action movies.

By: Steve Stirling

Steve Stirling — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:53:28 +0000

In fact, it was so good I didn’t recognize it at first — I just read it.

By: Ty

Ty — Sat, 26 May 2007 04:36:46 +0000

It really was good writing Melinda.

It made me want to bring my first person present tense story to the group, so you can see what it looks like when someone not as good as you does it.

By: parris

parris — Sun, 27 May 2007 21:41:13 +0000

Melinda, I haven’t read either of the books yet, but knowing you and the quality of peer crit a writer gets at Critical Mass, I would strongly urge you to do a rewrite ‘tryout’ of a couple of chapters of Book Two and if those fly, then you have to call Patrick and tell him you’re rewriting Book Two.

Let’s face it, you’ve got a strong streak of perfectionism - hell, you perform dressage - and if you don’t at least try the rewrite to see if it works better than the ms. currently does, it will niggle at you until the end of days.

Bruce Springsteen threw out whole albums of music in the 70’s and 80’s before releasing such masterpieces as The River and Born in the USA. It made me crazy, waiting for his next work, but I had to trust his judgement.

You should trust your own.

adorations,
Parris

By: Melinda

Melinda — Mon, 28 May 2007 15:42:05 +0000

Thanks, Parris, for the encouragement. Sometimes (maybe a lot of the time) being a creator is knowing when to throw something in the garbage and start over again. But damn it’s scary.