In my new project, code named “New Project” I have begun to put electrons to screen. I have a story, characters, twists and turns. I’m ready to go. I have a vocabulary and a sense of how it’s all done after writing so many, but every time I complete a chapter I stop and say “Wait. Now what? Who’s going on next?”
You see I’m trying to write a thriller. It begins as a mystery, conventional and gritty and then moves into horror, hopefully with the grace and finality of on oiled blade through a football jersey. See I really have the structure, even the act breaks, the intermissions and the blade, but I’m hung up on the structure of POV’s.
POV’s for the uninitiated means “Point Of Views” or narrative mode. My favorite method of story telling is first person, either omniscient looking over the protagonist’s shoulder kind of thing like in ELEANOR, or directly first person narration where the protagonist is actually telling the story in his own words, like in THE FINGER TRAP.
I used shifting first-person omniscient in BEATRYSEL to great effect and this is what I feel I should use in “New Project,” but I don’t have the stable of characters to do it. As much as I want to, I can’t. My characters are not interacting in a way that will allow it. There are moments I know when I can do, when I have done it already, but it’s a sporadic departure from the main narrative structure. Is that kosher?
I hope so. It’s what I got. But I can’t stop second-guessing myself.
It was only my last draft that I removed the switches from third person to first between chapters. Feedback from an agent: couldn't get with the prose style. So I gave in and made it all third. Made for more comfortable reading (which is what I needed).
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