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There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. Or: You don't know about me without you have ...
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.
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.
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*snicker*
to contract or not to contract...
The other reason I might contract is during a section of increasing speed at which point the lack of contractions might feel clunky...
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Heh. Felix as Tom Sawyer. *g* Getting someone else to paint his fences for him.
I await the next instalment with great anticipation.
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---L.
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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.
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