Work goes on

Now that Alba is Mine is finito and published on Kindle at 107,033 words - that's about 40,000 words less than the original - talk about paring down! I'm moving on to the next item.

I'm still toying with the idea of using Createspace again for Alba, but first I want to deal with the other story that suddenly found itself without a home due to the publisher retiring. I'm changing this storyline in this one quite a lot, so it will have a new title and a new cover. The working title is Eilidh and the Vikings, but that may change.

So once again I'm asking myself -

Have I begun the story in the best place? 

Have I made motivation clear? 

Have I shown their loves, their hates, their faults? 

Have I shown Why Things Happen? (Do I need to do this? should it not be clear without that?)

Does each scene make a point? 

Does something important change? If not, should I cut the scene?

Have I conveyed necessary info in narration?

Can I lose secondary characters?
Are my characters compelling? Do I know them?

Right now I'm thinking of writing Eilidh in the first person. I did that with the Matfen Affair and it came to me very easily. Such a good way to get closer to my heroine and get her feelings onto the page.

NB It was -4 degrees this morning when Tim and I ventured out for our first walk, so I thought a suitably frosty picture was appropriate. My eyes have been dry all day, presumably because of the cold. I was uncomfortable shopping in M&S later because my eyes felt "scratchy."

Deep Third

On Friday I got into a discussion with a couple of writer friends over Point of View, and we wondered why Deep Third had suddenly become so popular. I ventured the opinion it might have something to do with television, where sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, we are made privy with every detail of the protagonist’s life. A new series has begun with Rufus Sewell as Aurelio Zen and slowly, week by week, we are picking up on his past life and how he thinks. Not that he tells us; but television has many techniques at its disposal: dialogue, pictures, flashbacks, gossip and dreams to name but a few.

Is it like writing ‘I said, I ran, I thought’ all the time? asked one writer. Well, yes, it is - and no, its not. It’s a mixture of the two. Third and First Person are written in a way that requires dialogue tags and verbs such as see, notice, understand, feel, realize and think. All of these words come under the dreaded term “Telling” as opposed to “Showing.”

Compare the following passages. a) I ran across the bridge thinking I could hear footsteps behind me, and regretted wearing my wonderful new high heels. I hadn’t gone far when my heel jammed in the pavement.

b)Jane turned onto the bridge. Footsteps followed her. Imagination? Possibly, but that nasty-looking teenager at the corner might have followed her. She walked faster. Damn this tight skirt. And these heels were killing her already. If only she’d waited for David instead of flouncing off in a huff. She snatched a swift glance over her shoulder, and caught her heel in a crack in the pavement. Her heart leapt to her throat. Oh, Lord. The shoe was stuck fast.

Deep Third might take more words, but the effect should grab the readers’ attention by making them feel they are one with Jane, stuck with one expensive shoe rammed into the pavement and a possible stalker approaching. Deep Third is not unlike acting. The writer must imagine themselves into Jane’s position, become her and then describe what she sees and feels. Some might say it's vicarious pleasure, fright, adventure.

But at least in this world, it is safe!

(And the pic is the hotel at the top of the Gornergrat railway, 10,000 feet up in the mountains)

Dick Francis and POV

I've noticed that Dick Francis writes in the first person, too. He doesn't use the I word very much but it is definitely First Person. Here's the opening lines of Under Orders:

"Sadly, death at the races is not uncommon.

However, three in a single afternoon was sufficiently unusual to raise more than an eyebrow. That only one of the deaths was of a horse was more than enough to bring the local constabulary hotfoot to the track."

He's good on first paragraphs, isn't he? It is only in the middle of the second paragraph that the I word comes into play. Now that I think back over the titles I've read over the years, I think most of them have been First Person - and yet I never really clocked it.

It's raining today, but I've been out on my bike anyway. I have to get fitter somehow, and it always seems that I do about a week of walking or cycling and then the good weather vanishes and I find myself staying indoors, lounging around, and by the time the good weather reappears, I've lost that little bit of fitness and have to start again. Stupid really. I've also done the grocery shopping and so can sit down to do some work feeling virtuous.

An old favourite

I've been wallowing in edits for a month, but the job is done now, so now I can breathe more freely, look around me and see what has been happening. True to form, I immediately plunged back into another story that needs work. At the same time I started reading Writing Romance by Vanessa Grant for the second time this month and made copious notes.
Reading it has sparked off so many ideas that I now need to begin a third edit of this unfortunate book! Now I'm investigating Document Maps and Templates on my laptop and debating buying a book on Word - if only I could remember which version of Word I have. Ms Grant tells me that it is so much easier to keep a character template alongside the ms and I believe her. I've never attempted it previously because I was always half-way through something when the idea occurred. Starting afresh, this could be the time for Templates!

I now have definitions for all those Viewpoint terms and if I become fuzzy on them sometime in the future, I shall look up Third Person Multiple and know exactly what it is. I read on Anita's blog (look on the side-bar) today that she wants to try a story in First Person POV. It seems tempting in spite of the general concensus that First Person is not liked by agents/publishers. Speaking personally, FP always seems old-fashioned, and I get very tired of seeing "I" on the page. So easy to become repetitious, and difficult to get around what is happening to other characters.
And yet, I returned The Persian Boy to the library yesterday and suddenly stopped as I write to consider that surely Bagoas told the story in the FP, and I never really noticed?

Here is the first para:
"Lest anyone should suppose I am the son of nobody, sold off by some peasant father in a drought year, I may say our line is an old one, though it ends with me. My father was Artembares son of Araxis, of the Pasargadai, Kyros' old tribe. Three of our family fought for him, when he set the Persians over the Medes. We held our land for eight generations, in the hills west above Susa. I was ten years old, and learning a warrior's skills, when I was taken away."

That's first person, all right. But then Mary Renault was a first rate author. I picked the book up with some misgivings, wondering how it would stand the test of time. It was written 37 years ago, but I need not have worried. I enjoyed it all over again, and enjoyed her style, so subtly and enjoyably different to the Dan Brown's of this modern world. (And the three enjoyables in that sentence must stand as testament to how well,... enjoyable it was!)
Now I shall look out for her other titles to be re-issued.