Writing the first draft of my first novel has been a piece of cake so far. We'll see about the rest of the process. But... writing short stories came easy. Once I had the tools, polishing them came easy, too.
But in the process of writing a novel it has dawned on me how relentlessly singular the POV is in some of my favorite novels (and series). It's a bit easier with a first person story such as The Hunger Games (although that has its own set of challenges).
In a story told in the third person-- primarily from the POV of one person-- it's not uncommon to play narrator. That's fair game. But jumping to other peoples' POVs is less common... and trickier.
Lewis did this somewhat in the Narnia books, but as they were childrens' stories this is perfectly acceptable. In fact it's sometimes necessary. Tolkein did it, but he generally stayed within the POVs of his team, whether that was thirteen dwarves, a hobbit and a wizard, or the Nine Walkers in the LOTR. Rowling had it a bit easier; the magical world in which Harry found himself had various ways to vicariously see what others saw-- through Harry's eyes.
Fortunately I spent a lot of time working on playing within the rules years ago, then a lot of time experimenting, intentionally breaking each one to see what it was like (for instance, writing a story in the second person-- nobody does that).
The timing in which this struck me was odd. I hadn't read anything by anoyone else since I started the novel, but as I was editing (for typos and grammar only at this stage) it leapt off the page at me. For a day or so I was nervous, but then I recalled the time mentioned earlier, playing by the rules, then experimenting. I remembered how happy I was with some of the results.
And I remembered that there is no box.
No comments:
Post a Comment