The reasons for this blog: 1. To provide basic author information for students, teachers, librarians, etc. (Please see sidebar) 2. I think out loud a lot as I work through writing projects, and I'm trying to dump most of those thoughts here rather than on my friends.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Hmm, well. A couple of issues present themselves. One, is this going to skew too far into adult territory? Methinks I'll eventually have to keep an eye on the violence and death bits, the way I usually do for sex scenes. There is no room for gratuitous sex in YA, not like in adult lit where you just stick some titillating stuff in because it's, well, titillating. Every word must have a job to do in a YA sex scene, or out it must go. I will have to keep the same mindset for violence, probably.

This MC is so unreliable, I'm tossing around the idea of multiple narrators. Usually when I toss this multiple-narrator idea around, it ends up being dead ends, thingees, and prewriting, all of which eventually fold back into the original single narrator I started with. But we'll see.

This is why it takes so freakin' long to write a book.

But I sort of feel that if there were multiple narrators, the other two would be third person past. While the MC is first person present. The only book that comes directly to mind that has done something similar is--or are--Tales of the Otori. Huh, let me check. Lian Hearn used first person past for Takeo and third person past for everything else, mostly Kaede, I think. Maybe all Kaede. I remember the first time I read Across the Nightingale Floor, I had to stop each time the voice changed, and reorient myself. That's not good--but it was well worth it, in Lian Hearn's case. However, I am no Lian Hearn.

I also want to take another look at Silence of the Lambs. I know it switched to the killer's pov at some point, but I don't know how far in. And now that I think about it, how did Thomas Harris keep my interest up till then? It's been so long since I've read it, I can't remember.

I also had the terrible thought today that I might have to have a plot in this book. I'm looking at the pieces I have, and thinking that yes, an actual plot may be what is needed to pull it together. The only problem being that I still don't know how to plot. I am making baby steps into figuring it out, but only baby steps, and not very good baby steps at that.

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