It's an interesting thread: thanks for raising the point, Deb. It's definitely an issue I recognise in my own work sometimes.

Dee, Kate and Emma, thanks so much for your supportive suggestions of how to get around this problem. Your example is very interesting, Kate - and I'm so glad your schoolfriend recovered! And Emma, I agree completely about the tranquillity which comes once the events have been fully digested and accepted, and that it's usually necessary to reach that point before emotion can be effectively turned into poetry/fiction/art.

Dee, I have often wondered whether to write it from her husband's POV and I think that might have worked well, except that the other plotline has a husband as the vp character and his wife has post-natal depression, so I wanted this plotline to be very distinct from that. Writing it from the husband's POV might make it seem too similar.

I've been thinking about this hard all day, and I've come to the conclusion that I don't really want to change the overall plot, so I need to find a way to write this character. Instead of moving away from her, which seems a sensible way to gain perspective on her (but has the problem described above) I am going to bite the bullet and instead move closer to her by trying to write her in first person. It may be a terrible idea, but it might just work, so it's worth a try. I have wondered before about trying it for this character.

This would mean I had two 3rd person viewpoint characters and one 1st person viewpoint character in the novel. I think (during a discussion here) we decided there was no problem with having some vp characters in 3rd and some in 1st.

Thank you all so much - everyone who commented - for discussing this with me. It has really helped me progress, and has also given me a nice warm feeling that there are people here who are so willing to give helpful advice!

Deb

Deb, you're welcome.

I think it would be fine to have one thread in first person, but you may find that if you write some of her like that, it's enough to get into her properly, and you can then go back to third, but keeping this new closeness. I've sometimes done that kind of thing purely as an exercise, to discover how far I am and am not inside someone's head, and whether I want it to be different.

Best of luck, anyway - that's a brave decision.

Emma

Thanks Emma, that's a really good idea. I will play around a bit and see what happens.



Deb

I'm playing around with two ideas: Dee's suggestion (I think others suggested it too, but Dee championed the idea) to write it from the partner's POV instead, and writing it from her POV in 1st person.

It feels like a waste cos I'm trying to write both to see which works best, but I know it's just hard work I'm going to have to do to work out which approach works better.

I've seen lots of people on WW have crises of confidence occasionally and had been feeling lucky not to have experienced that, but I seem to be atm. I thought I had this bit of it sown up and to realise that instead of tweaking what I've already written to improve it I need to write it completely afresh is depressing me a bit. But you have all been so helpful and at least I am now attacking it from two new angles, so something is bound to work eventually.

And as someone said to me elsewhere, it will probably come to me if I let my subconscious work on it.

Thanks folks.

Deb

Deb, it isn't a waste: think of it as a first draft, where you sorted out all sorts of practical stuff, and now you can concentrate on the subtler but all-important things...

Emma

Thanks Emma... It helps so much to hear such positive and encouraging comments when the writing's had a bit of a setback.

At least I'm starting to visualise it in some new ways. It'll come, I think.

Deb