It is nearly August, and I am a disappointment to my Fitbit, and an embarrassment to my revision. Exactly what have I been doing with my time? Heck if I know.
Turning the character who dies into an actual, on-screen character instead of someone who’s just referred to by others. Contemplating whether the whole thing shouldn’t be in second person future perfect. Envisioning the whole thing as a big budget movie, and thinking of things that could happen to make the attractive people’s clothes should fall off, while leaving the underage and the unattractive fully clothed.
And then, the Viking longboat EXPLODED, ripping the clothes right off Sven, whose seven foot, 300 pound frame almost guaranteed that he would be caught in the first impact of the mach stem, whereas Elgar (who presented a much lower profile to the blast wave) was spared this horrible indignity.
We’ll put writing for Hollywood right next to writing for children on the list of things I shouldn’t do. (Hey! I wonder what an exploding longboat would do to a particularly yippy parrot.) No. Nevermind. That would be WRONG.
So, I have moved the convicted murderer on screen. That’s where I’m at. He’s a dandy creature. Really, he is… but that’s a change in POV. And it’s the kind of thing that might be worth stopping to think about before I do 500 pages of revision.
Later on, I kill off a different character, and there’s really, truly no way for that to happen without a shift in POV. ‘Cause, reasons.
What I have is in first person. I have a few qualms about that. Always did. But it seemed to work, until I started revising.
The real question is whether I’d like to change the entire thing so that it will match, or if I just want to add a number of scenes from other POVs. Either way, it’s going to be a big change.
And now is the time to decide. Not later, not after I’ve already done the revision.
So, there I am. A few dozen pages in, and trying to make up my mind.
Amy Keeley
Karen
A.S. Akkalon
Karen
A.S. Akkalon
Lita
Janet Crum