Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.
Don’t forget to click the purple button to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.
Do you have advice for changing perspective? For example, switching from writing exclusivly in third person and switching to first person? Or do you have a reason for staying with the perspective you do?
This is one of those prompts where I stare at the blank page for a while, bereft of meaningful things to say. Despite everything I’ve written, I’m not one of those people who know all about the best way to tell a story, whether it’s best told in first or third person or whatever.
In fact, as I’ve said many times before, I don’t consider that I create the story. I have no meaningful input into what appears on the pages. I just type, putting into words the images I’m shown in my head. I certainly don’t consciously think the stories up and I have no control over how they’re told to me.
They don’t always appear in the same way, sometimes I see the action through the eyes of one of the characters, almost as if it was happening to me. Sometimes I watch events from afar.
Not every story is shown in the same way. This tells me that whoever is sending me this stuff clearly thinks that the way I see it is important to the narrative.
Strangely, it even varies in stories involving the same people, in the first Balcom book, Ribbonworld, I saw what happened through the eyes of Miles Goram. When it came to the sequel, Jungle Green, I watched events unfold as an impartial observer.
In another novel, Survive, the perspective shifted about as the story crossed the Galaxy, with flashbacks as well as live action from multiple points of view.
Looking back on what I’ve produced, it seems to me that there are some stories that are best told in one way and others that require a different approach. Once the narration and typing have finished and I’m able to read the whole thing, I can see that it wouldn’t have been possible to write most of them in any other way.
Right from the start, I decided that it would be so much easier if I just left it to the voices in my head. It was their story, they could decide how they wanted to present it. Doing it that way meant I saved all my energy for typing it out and preparing it for publication.
And my advice for you? Just start to tell the story, as you see it. You will soon know how it needs to be told.
Until next time.
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Samantha J Bryant
I feel that way sometimes, too. The story comes as it comes, and I follow and try to keep it on track. But there have been times when I tried telling it from different stances and decided which one served this story best.
Richard Dee
Never upset the voices in your head, that way lies insanity 🙂
P.J. MacLayne
I agree. The stories have a way of shaping themselves.
Richard Dee
It’s best to leave it to flow, I’ve tried to impose my will on the narrative, it never ends well.
Stevie Turner
You’re lucky that you have voices in your head telling you what to write. I have to think up a plot myself!
Richard Dee
You might think so. It’s alright if you can get them to agree on who’s speaking next, and that there will be times when I want them all to shut up.
Daryl Devore
I completely agree – Once the narration and typing have finished and I’m able to read the whole thing, I can see that it wouldn’t have been possible to write most of them in any other way.
Exactly – if I’ve written it in 3rd – I can’t imagine it being in 1st person.
Tweeted.
Richard Dee
I’ve given up on trying to influence how it happens, it just does and I rely on the voices knowing what they’re doing.
Lela Markham
I also have the characters in my head telling me their stories and I’m mostly just writing down what they tell me. I always thought I didn’t have control of POV (which was always 3rd person), but then I had a short story submission that was WAY too long and someone suggested 1st person present would clean up a lot of problems and shorten the story. So I tried it and it did and now I use the 1st person POV a lot and I could see writing future books in series so-far written in 3rd person in 1st person, but I don’t want to throw off established readers. But maybe I’ll give it a try on the next book in the series since it offers a break in the narrative anyway.
Richard Dee
That’s interesting. I can see how that would work. I like to keep the P.O.V in a series constant, but ultimately, I get little choice. If I’m shown it in first (or whatever), that’s how it’s written.