There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. Or: You don't know about me without you have ...

[truepenny]

Thank you to everyone who responded to Friday's post! I've really enjoyed reading y'all's comments.

---

In an ideal world, which this is not, I would be able to put the ms of The Mirador away for a week, or two, or a month, so that when I went back for the next round of editing and revising (but please no rewriting--I love it, but it means something is seriously fubar, and, well, not now), I would feel ever so slightly less like I'd been trapped at a party with these people for three days and we all smell of second-hand smoke and we've already told all the jokes we know.

However, comma, my deadline is in a week. So there is, truly, no rest for the wicked. Yesterday, I started back through Chapter 1.

It is amazing, how much you learn in the course of a draft. At the beginning of TMv5.0, all I knew was that I had Mehitabel's voice wrong. (My default setting for fantasy narrative is a sort of poor woman's Jane Eyre. Hello to the unexamined genre assumptions!) Now, at the beginning of TMv5.5, I can look at what I wrote at the beginning of 5.0, where I was groping and flailing towards who she was and what she sounded like, and say, No, that's not quite right. It should go like this. Not with 100% reliability, but with a definite and very clear sense of what it is I'm reaching for.

I tell ya, 1st person narrative voices are all about contractions. Do they or don't they?

Booth doesn't. No contractions ever.

Felix does, but not very often.

Mildmay contracts everything he can.

(I realized after Mélusine came out that the way I should have been describing it to people is Jane Eyre meets Huckleberry Finn. With magic! Because if you think about that long enough, it explains almost everything.)

Felix is my default voice. I.e., everyone sounds like Felix until I figure out who they are. Mildmay sounded like Felix for the first several drafts of his existence. So a lot of the weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments over here the past several weeks has been about making Mehitabel not sound like Felix.

Note to self: no more multiple-1st-person narratives ... oh wait. ::facepalm::

Right. I have a week. Banzai.

Comments

[retrobabble.livejournal.com]

Note to self: no more multiple-1st-person narratives ... oh wait. ::facepalm::

*snicker*

to contract or not to contract...

[mallory-blog.livejournal.com]

My general rule is to contract when the character is in a casual space (particularly when speaking while casual) and I don't contract when the character is in a more formal space...

The other reason I might contract is during a section of increasing speed at which point the lack of contractions might feel clunky...

[clarentine]

(I realized after Mélusine came out that the way I should have been describing it to people is Jane Eyre meets Huckleberry Finn. With magic! Because if you think about that long enough, it explains almost everything.

Heh. Felix as Tom Sawyer. *g* Getting someone else to paint his fences for him.

I await the next instalment with great anticipation.

[cassandraterra.livejournal.com]

I've been telling lots of people that I love your books but been stuck on how to describe them. Now I can! Thanks! That's just brilliant. :)

[larryhammer]

Contemporary teenage first person narrators are all about teh abbreviations. I mean, OMG, have you like listened to how some kids talk? Such the emphasis on BTWs.

---L.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

The thing that struck me about the difference between Felix and Mehitabel (WRT language, anyway) in The Virtu was that Felix is invariably academic and formal in both grammar and vocabulary, unless he's losing it, while Mehitabel is academic and formal in her grammar but ranges more widely in her vocabulary, depending on the circumstances. In some ways, she reminds me of Gideon, who is also able to vary without it being the sign of breakdown it is for Felix. But then, neither one has the Issues he does.

Oh and that multi-narrator thingy? Even when you're through the fourth book, you won't be safe. Sooner or later, a new idea will come along, and there you'll be, sinking into the mire, because it's the Best Way to Do It.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

And I can't hear him clearly so I can't tell his story clearly

Yes. That. That is the lowest pit and abysm of this particular kind of hell.

And I'll be back there in Summerdown. That narrator's even worse than Mehitabel (who lies and dissembles and changes color like a chameleon to KEEP me from hearing her). This one won't even tell me his name.

So, well, at least we've got good company as we flounder and flail.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Good luck!!