Comments on: A Question of Personality

By: Carrie V.

Carrie V. — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:06:23 +0000

We’ll see if this posts…

I just finished revisions on Kitty #4, where a lot of hugely emotional things happen to Kitty (I can give you spoiler details if you want them). My editors comments included, “Kitty is very angsty in this book. Can we tone it down?”

So I think it’s a legitimate concern. Spending too much time with that kind of emotion in first person, you run the risk of slipping into teen angst poetry territory. Or at least, I did.

Carrie

By: Melinda

Melinda — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:16:42 +0000

Daniel is taking the opposite stand. We talked this morning, and he said “you’re not going to spend twenty pages on psychic pain. You have a story to tell.” But I worry that I will get bogged down in the interior life.

George thought changing styles between books in a series would be very odd.

Daniel countered that by saying that hampering myself by not writing at my best to honor a style didn’t make much sense to him. He quoted Swanwick. “Consider the possibility of greatness.”

Basically I’m really confused and I’m messing about with the blog because I don’t want to start writing. So that has to stop now, and I have to go write.

P.S. I’m really looking forward to the next Kitty book.

By: Tracy Taylor

Tracy Taylor — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:30:03 +0000

For what it’s worth, I tend to agree with Carrie about the danger of too much angst - a little is good, but a lot becomes boring and detracts from the plot.

Plus, without knowing more about the protagonist, I would think his internal conflicts and heightened insecurity would have to taint the way the way he sees reality. By using him as the pov, the action becomes skewed slightly as the narrator is at the very least somewhat unreliable. If this is what you are going for then great, I would say go for first person pov, particularly, as Daniel says, you sound like you are extremely good at it. However, if you want to relay events and highlight the main character’s emotional state and arc, then it might be better done as a contrast with a more objective narration, ie. third person.

I hope this makes sense.

By: Peter Hentges

Peter Hentges — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 20:58:13 +0000

I think that writing in the head of such a character would make the process more difficult for you. For every insecurity expressed on the page, I’d imagine a hundred more that would take up the character’s thoughts. That sounds to me like it’d infect your thoughts as well and could then affect your writing process. That is, it sounds like this would be a more challenging task than writing the book in third person. (Which may be a warning or an encouragement!)

As a reader, I think that the character would have to be significantly more interesting if I’m going to have to put up with his whining to get through the story. So, yes, I’ll read along with such a character but he’d better have a hell of a lot of redeeming attributes (either in his person or in his actions) to make it worth my while.

By: Steve Stirling

Steve Stirling — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:52:11 +0000

Also, “beautiful young man suffering emotional trauma” is a specialized taste. One either goes “ahhhhhhh” or “oh, get a life!”… 8-). Particularly if he’s not only feeling things, but thinking about himself feeling things — the Sorrows of Young Werther and all that.

I think Walter does have a point, though. First person narrative _does_ accentuate the emotional temperature, which suited that particular protagonist.

OTOH, it was so _good_.

Hard to say — I’d judge that you have to try a chunk to see how it works.

By: Melinda

Melinda — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 03:05:38 +0000

I think I’ll rewrite the first chapter and see what I and others in Critical Mass think. I’m not happy with this second book because I ended up with six view point characters, and I just think that’s too many. Whether I can actually do away with all but my main character is questionable, and then I’m left with alternating first and third sections, and I have yet to see that work well.

Or maybe I just need to do a big rewrite and try to drop one or two of the view points.

Sorry for all this public agonizing, but sometimes thinking out loud helps.

By: George R.R. Martin

George R.R. Martin — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 04:07:43 +0000

I am not sure the personality of the character need be a crucial factor in deciding between first and third person. I used third person for both Popinjay and the Turtle in my WILD CARDS stories, and they’re different people. I could have used first person for both just as easily, I suspect. Of course, I use a very “tight” third person, deep inside the character’s head, which gives almost the same effect as first person.

Mixing one first person POV into a book with five third person viewpoints, however… I don’t know. I mean, yes, in a sense that’s what we’re doing with BUSTED FLUSH, where your own first person interstitial segments will be woven through seven third person narratives, but somehow that seems different. Maybe if the EDGE book is structured the same way… treat the first person segments almost as an interstitial…

By: Melinda

Melinda — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 15:32:06 +0000

Now _that_ is a really interesting take, George. The idea that the hero is the linking thread between the other characters perceptions of the situation. It’s been almost a year since I delivered this book (don’t you just love publishing), and I’m thinking I might be able to cast certain scenes in different points of view, and reduce the total number.

I’ll also be able to look at the book with fresh eyes. I was writing it during the hell of building the house so my choices might not have been of the best. Since I’m going to be stuck in scenic Farmington for a few days I can just start rereading the beast.