david_wendelken
Active Member
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2023
- Messages
- 933
I've been fighting thru the current chapter I'm editing for several days now. I'm finally hitting my stride on it.
It was originally written as an "interview" with the main character, in which she told a story but also made somewhat frequent interjections and digressions to her interviewer. The interjections and digressions allowed me to show a side of her character the more plot-based scenes in the book had not, plus slip in a dash of exposition/world-building in under cover of humour or earnest attempts to bridge the cultural differences between Men and Elves. Since she was telling stories about past events, it was written in the normal 1st person past-ish tenses.
I decided it needed to be changed to excerpts from her diary. She's a bard and had a head injury when she was young (for an elf) and lost 100% of her memories and knowledge, even body movement skills. The long healing process caused her muscles to atrophy. She has a deep and abiding fear of losing her memories again (which she hides from everyone), so she keeps a diary. Since she spends her professional life learning other people's stories, if she ever needed to re-learn her prior life after a 2nd brain injury, she doesn't want the diary to read like "someone else's life story." So, she writes her diary entries in 1st person present tense, i.e, as if the events are happening as she writes them.
The technical switch from 1st person past-ish to 1st person present-ish is pretty simple.
But there are two more problems.
The first is that one would tend to summarise events more when recounting events in the distant past (because you know what's going to become important and what isn't.) So, I'm adding more details to the story to give it a more in-person, as-its-happening kind feel. That's more challenging but not overly so.
The big problem is her interjections to her interviewer. Obviously, there's no interviewer in the new format. Some of the interjections can just be tossed, they aren't crucial. A few can't. I've figured out how to switch two interjections conversation from the interviewer to a character in the scene. I think that will work out very well, maybe better. One will work as an introspective diary entry as she thinks thru the implications of an event.
Two, however, and they are crucial -- well, I'm not sure yet. In one, the interviewer asked her how she could make such a risky decision to trust someone. She gave a reasonable answer. A few story beats later, she says something that seems a logical contradiction to her prior answer, so the interviewer calls her on it. She has a reasonable answer. I'm hoping a couple more introspective diary entries will help.
One is a character "weakness" reveal. She explains an internal mental process she has difficulty with. Still working on ideas for this.
PS - Hope the above isn't too boring. It really helps to write it down and explain it to you all.
It was originally written as an "interview" with the main character, in which she told a story but also made somewhat frequent interjections and digressions to her interviewer. The interjections and digressions allowed me to show a side of her character the more plot-based scenes in the book had not, plus slip in a dash of exposition/world-building in under cover of humour or earnest attempts to bridge the cultural differences between Men and Elves. Since she was telling stories about past events, it was written in the normal 1st person past-ish tenses.
I decided it needed to be changed to excerpts from her diary. She's a bard and had a head injury when she was young (for an elf) and lost 100% of her memories and knowledge, even body movement skills. The long healing process caused her muscles to atrophy. She has a deep and abiding fear of losing her memories again (which she hides from everyone), so she keeps a diary. Since she spends her professional life learning other people's stories, if she ever needed to re-learn her prior life after a 2nd brain injury, she doesn't want the diary to read like "someone else's life story." So, she writes her diary entries in 1st person present tense, i.e, as if the events are happening as she writes them.
The technical switch from 1st person past-ish to 1st person present-ish is pretty simple.
But there are two more problems.
The first is that one would tend to summarise events more when recounting events in the distant past (because you know what's going to become important and what isn't.) So, I'm adding more details to the story to give it a more in-person, as-its-happening kind feel. That's more challenging but not overly so.
The big problem is her interjections to her interviewer. Obviously, there's no interviewer in the new format. Some of the interjections can just be tossed, they aren't crucial. A few can't. I've figured out how to switch two interjections conversation from the interviewer to a character in the scene. I think that will work out very well, maybe better. One will work as an introspective diary entry as she thinks thru the implications of an event.
Two, however, and they are crucial -- well, I'm not sure yet. In one, the interviewer asked her how she could make such a risky decision to trust someone. She gave a reasonable answer. A few story beats later, she says something that seems a logical contradiction to her prior answer, so the interviewer calls her on it. She has a reasonable answer. I'm hoping a couple more introspective diary entries will help.
One is a character "weakness" reveal. She explains an internal mental process she has difficulty with. Still working on ideas for this.
PS - Hope the above isn't too boring. It really helps to write it down and explain it to you all.
