POV dorkistry
Feb. 19th, 2010 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonI've been steadfastly dividing the narrative of my WIP between two characters, but I've reached an impasse where the next series of scenes I need to write can't logically be told from either of those POVs. I hate it (hate it hate it) when a novel is cruising along in one or two POVs for most of its length, then a new one is thrown in for only one or two scenes. If there have been a number of narrators throughout, that's one thing. I think you can get away with new POVs late in the book. But I've been writing in fairly tight third person.
I've been thinking for a week and can't find a way around this dilemma. I'm considering, for the sake of completing this damned draft, of succumbing and writing this new POV, then figuring a way to clean it up in later drafts. Because it's definitely holding me up, and having come to the brink of these scenes with no resolution, I'm wondering if that's what's been holding me up for some time now. The hind part of my brain has been anticipating these scenes, maybe, and putting the brakes on. Outlining the end helped get me over some of this, but the story is refusing to take that next step.
At times, my writing psyche is like a jump-shy horse. If it doesn't know how to solve a particular problem, it's been known to shut down a project altogether. It does no good to try to force the jump. It just won't go. For the most part, I've been used to not worrying about these things in my writing. I'll head off in the direction of home without knowing exactly what route I'll take, and almost always by the time I get to the quadruple fork in the road that's been worrying me for the whole journey, my backbrain will have come up with something and I'll know which path to follow.
Except sometimes.
It's hopeless asking my forebrain to try figuring it out. Forebrain just wants to put its fingers in its ears and start singing, "La la la la la, I can't hear you!"
So I've been working on stories in the interim, hoping that will jar something loose. It hasn't. Maybe I've reached the natural limits of my bag of backbrain tricks. Maybe this one will permanently stump me. It makes me all fidgety. It makes me feel all un-disciplined and dilletantish and failurish…
New POV, here I come…
I've been thinking for a week and can't find a way around this dilemma. I'm considering, for the sake of completing this damned draft, of succumbing and writing this new POV, then figuring a way to clean it up in later drafts. Because it's definitely holding me up, and having come to the brink of these scenes with no resolution, I'm wondering if that's what's been holding me up for some time now. The hind part of my brain has been anticipating these scenes, maybe, and putting the brakes on. Outlining the end helped get me over some of this, but the story is refusing to take that next step.
At times, my writing psyche is like a jump-shy horse. If it doesn't know how to solve a particular problem, it's been known to shut down a project altogether. It does no good to try to force the jump. It just won't go. For the most part, I've been used to not worrying about these things in my writing. I'll head off in the direction of home without knowing exactly what route I'll take, and almost always by the time I get to the quadruple fork in the road that's been worrying me for the whole journey, my backbrain will have come up with something and I'll know which path to follow.
Except sometimes.
It's hopeless asking my forebrain to try figuring it out. Forebrain just wants to put its fingers in its ears and start singing, "La la la la la, I can't hear you!"
So I've been working on stories in the interim, hoping that will jar something loose. It hasn't. Maybe I've reached the natural limits of my bag of backbrain tricks. Maybe this one will permanently stump me. It makes me all fidgety. It makes me feel all un-disciplined and dilletantish and failurish…
New POV, here I come…
no subject
Date: 2010-02-20 09:17 pm (UTC)