First day, first person

[thewhitelily]

It's the most unmitigated, unforgivable crap I've ever written. It's stilted, it's completely unpaced, and it's flying towards the earth at 9.8 meters per second per second, without even bothering to insert actual story along the way, let alone any descriptions of anything. I thought it was just because nothing had happened yet. But now something's happened, and... it's even worse, because something's happening, and it's even worse.

And I've just worked out why.

It wants to be in first person.

I don't want it to be in first person. I hate reading first person, and I've already done a major first-person work, solely because it made it easier to distinguish two POVs. And I hate reading first person. It feels like lazy third person limited to me.

But okay, Mr. Novel, sir. You want to be in first person - you can be in first person.

Damn you.

1095 words and counting.

Edit: and straight up to 1607 in 20 minutes, of course. Seeing it took me over two hours for 1000 words, making 1st person triple the speed for actual possibly not completely totally rubbish stuff... I think I know which I'll be chosing. :D But now my inner editor's totally desperate to fix the first 1000 words. *twitches*

Edit 2: Final word count for today: 2,503. Most respectable. And by 11:30pm, too!

Comments

[jampaladin.livejournal.com]

Don't worry. Mine is in First Person Present tense. It HAS to be. Third person would completely ruin the tone, and if I do present tense, when my character inevitably dies at the end, it doesn't make any sense how he's telling this. Of course, it's the most awkward, unwieldy writing style availble, meaning I need to keep going back and rewording sentances so they sound any good at all.

Anyway, be more worried about a week's time when it wants to be third person again. And your characters start refusing to do what you want them to.

You sound almost exactly like my friend Tess. She'll hand me one of the great works of literature for me to read, and then tell me it's the worst thing in the world and be entirely critical.

[thewhitelily]

*grin* Well, fortunately, 1st person's certainly not the most unwieldy writing style I've ever written in, so I can count my blessings there. And I've got a bit of practice in it, writing a character who's a bit similar in tone to this one, so... hopefully that'll give me a head start. :) And at least I'm in the past tense!

I'd be more worried if this story was making me write like The Mother of Invention, which was a short story I wrote in 2nd and 1st person omniscient. That is, it's mainly told from the 2nd person perspective, but there's also a 1st person present for some of it as well, and that 1st person knows everything inside both character's heads. :/ It's... totally mindscrewy. (But wouldn't make a lick of sense to anyone outside the Artemis Fowl Fandom, so I won't bother linking.) And I totally sympathise with your present tense situtation - it's so hard doing flashbacks and so on, because it's just... not the natural way your brain thinks.

And *grin* I'll claim a lot of the stuff I write as good, and I'm exceedingly proud of it. I'm really an editor at heart, though, more than I'm a writer. I love to write, but... I obsess over polishing, to an extent that many people find it hard to believe. I'll never be even mildly pleased with something unpolished, because it's not... me. *shrug* Still, I'm trying to approach this from the standpoint of "exuberant imperfection", as Chris Baty puts it. I can be proud of this as a draft precisely for its *lack* of polish. Or I can try, anyway. :)

And I'm procrastinating going to bed, so I can get up early and write some more tomorrow... *thwacks self*