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This 29 message thread spans 2 pages:  < <   1  2 > >  
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by Account Closed at 17:39 on 23 July 2008
    Not completely, you muppet!!! Interesting idea, though!

    No, i read a piece that said to go through your work circling all the 'I's and try and get rid of as many as poss because they really jump out at the reader- which i agree with. I said isn't as invisible, for example, as he said.

    There are lots of ways to get rid of the 'I's i'm finding.

    eg - crap examples.

    I struggled to hold up my umbrella in the wind and rain

    becomes

    The wind and rain buffetted my umbrella



    I could feel sweat trickle down my cheek

    becomes

    A trickle of sweat made it's way down my cheek.

    You get the picture

    x
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by SteveB at 17:52 on 23 July 2008

    I think you can be successful with what you are trying...

    For what it is worth (half a stick of twix on a good day) I would go for -

    I looked down at the notebook. My eyes crinkled.

    and -

    I felt the grin slip from my face.

    'I don't think there's much wrong with that' said the unpublished, unrepresented author-wannabee ...

    Steve

  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by EmmaD at 17:53 on 23 July 2008
    Dunno about being so mechanical about removing the 'I's, but if your style tends to be too many straightforward subject-verb-object sentences, which can seem terribly plodding, it could be a useful way of focussing on how you could recast some of them in ways which are more rhythmically and conceptually varied.

    Emma

    <Added>

    "I felt the grin slip from my face."

    I think this could be very effective because it's rooted in the actual physical sensation - that really is how the muscles feel, and you're keying the reader into recognising that feeling in themselves.

    Which is why I get cross with doctrinaire how-to books which say not to use 'I think' and 'I feel' but go straight for the verb. The narrator is the reader's representative in the story, and this kind of construction makes us aware of the connection, of the sense of them as narrator telling us, as well as them as character in the story. I suspect that IS why chick-lit and YA fiction so often has a first-person character-narrator: our sense of them as narrator, saying in effect, 'Hey, listen, let me tell you what happened to me...' draws us in.

    Whereas 'My eyes crinkled' works slightly less well, I think. I'm not so sure I know how the crinkle FEELS, whereas in the third-person version I did know exactly how it looked. But in first person, of course, we're not looking from outside, we're feeling from inside: personally, I'd go for something like 'My eyes scrunched', but it's a very fine distinction.
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by SteveB at 18:08 on 23 July 2008
    I have to say I wasn't actually sure what was meant by

    her eyes crinkled


    But thought I would try and use the same description in a first-person sort of way.

    I would probably have used something like 'I squinted at my notebook' or 'the skin around my eyes wrinkled as I looked down at the notebook'

    Steve
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by Account Closed at 18:30 on 23 July 2008
    Yeh, i hope i'm not being overly mechanical about removing the 'I's, Emma, and certainly you need them in lots of places - but at the same time it is an interesting exercise in learning to vary sentence structure and i must say i wince at too many 'I's in first person writing, they really stand out within the text to me.

    It is all a very fine line indeed. One person's crinkled is another's scrunched or another's wrinkled, Steve.

    It's an exciting learning curve, though, i can only think (hope) my writing as a whole is going to benefit from this.

    Can i swap half a twix for half a kitkat, btw
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by SteveB at 18:41 on 23 July 2008
    Casey - My box of chocolate bars is open to all - sadly they are virtual... half a kit-kat coming through cyberspace now...

    Steve
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by rogernmorris at 19:02 on 23 July 2008
    This reminds me of a story I heard about Michael Winner, who was writing a regular column for the Sunday Times, I think. He had to supply 500 words, but every week his column fell short of the allotted space leaving the subs or whoever with a problem. They would ring him and say, "Mr Winner, your piece is short again." And he would say, "No it bloody well isn't. 500 words - exactly what you asked for, as always." The mystery was finally solved when somebody analysed his 500 words and discovered that the incidence of the single letter word "I" was significantly more frequent in his articles than in those of any other contributor. They had to ask him to deliver 600 words in future to make up the shortfall.

    You're probably not going to like me saying this Casey, but I don't think you can just change the person in the way you are describing, if I understand you right. I really do think that if you want to switch from third to first, or vice versa, you do have to write the thing up from scratch. The main reason being, you have to get the voice right, I think. In first person, the voice is everything. And I can't help thinking the voice would be fundamentally different.
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by Account Closed at 19:11 on 23 July 2008
    Thanks, Steve

    Hmm, i think i agree, Roger. It certainly isn't a matter of simply changing the words, i am at the least finding i have to rewrite a paragraph at a time as i go through.

    I can't face writing the first 3 chaps from scratch at the mo, though. What i am going to do is jig them and then wait and see how the following chapters turn out. I was thinking this afternoon that they were probably going to 'sound' a bit different from the first three and that's a problem i will redress on the first rewrite.

    It's not that i'm lazy, it's just that it's taken me a while to get excited about this book and i don't want to do anything that i feel will set me back... like having to totally rewrite the beginning.

    Very valid point though, Rog.
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by MF at 23:09 on 23 July 2008
    I don't think you can just change the person in the way you are describing, if I understand you right. I really do think that if you want to switch from third to first, or vice versa, you do have to write the thing up from scratch. The main reason being, you have to get the voice right, I think.


    This is definitely my instinct. Sorry, Casey - I know it's not exactly what you'd like to hear! - but finding the right voice is so terribly important, not just in setting up the opening chapters but in determining where the book will go from there. I wouldn't think of it as a setback at all, given that you've already decided to embark on a thorough rewrite - if you're struggling to get excited about it at this stage, then it will be much more difficult to fix later on!
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by EmmaD at 23:19 on 23 July 2008
    I think ultimately that's true: you will end up re-writing just about every word, and you may do that better by putting that first draft aside completely and basically starting again. But, having said that, with a huge but technical change like that (like switching tenses, say, or PoVs) I think to try rewriting a section in the new style pronoun by pronoun, verb by verb, can be a really good way of finding out what's possible, what doesn't work, and how much work would be involved. But it's a matter of seeing this process as an exercise, a way of pinning the implications (mixed metaphor?) and thinking about where the novel will go if you do rewrite along these new lines. That technical working-over isn't going to be all it takes.

    Emma
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by EmmaD at 19:31 on 24 July 2008
    At the commercial end of things I guess you might find more first-person narratives in some genres than in others, but it's much, much more important that a novel is in the voice it needs to be in. You're much more likely to sell a book that you've written how it needs to be, than one you've forced into a mould based on some idea of fashion.

    Emma
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by helen black at 19:55 on 24 July 2008
    It's very 'current' to write thrillers in first person at the mo. And it does lend itself to that breathless 'oh my god, they're after me' scenario.
    I'd love to give it a go but my series MC has been third person so far and I don't think I can switch her. Somehow that would clunk.
    HB x
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by Account Closed at 10:59 on 25 July 2008
    Sunrise, it should only be changed if your gut instinct tells you to. As i've said, i've felt pulled towards the first person for a year or two, but have ignored the calling because it meant taking myself out of my comfort zone.
  • Re: Writing in the first person and POV
    by KisaOBrien at 20:10 on 15 November 2008
    I wrote most of a draft of my first novel in third person, then went back and changed it to first person, just to see. Let both versions fester for a while, then went back and reread. First person worked *so* much better than third. Third person made my MC too cute, too vanilla, made some passages too awkward. First person gave her a spunky edge. The writing just came alive. I do have to say that it was always from her POV, which is probably why first person worked much better. (NB: this one's still a work in progress, but the change of narrative mode happened years ago, hence the past tense, as though the book has long since left the nest. I wish ;-).)

    My children's / YA novel, on the other hand, is in third person and I can't imagine writing it in first. In this case, there seem to be two main characters, and when I think about it, POV switches between them. (I say "seem to be" because (a) I'm early in the first draft, and (b) my stories seem to write me rather than me writing them, if you can relate).

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