The rewrite still progresses
I continue on my rewrite of The Sleep of Reason, taking far more time at this pass through than I had expected I would. I have only four chapters left to go. I’m trying to consider each sentence and even each word to make sure it is the best that it can be for the work it has to do. Ironically, I’m giving this careful attention to a draft I pretty much intend to abandon once I am through it.
After this, I will begin the complete rewrite using a third person narrator. This is why, I suspect, I’m moving so slowly through this penultimate rewrite. I’m afraid to begin the third person version.
It’s going to be hard work to re-imagine a work that I have spent nearly the last two years imagining with a protagonist narrator. It took me until nearly the end of writing the first draft before I saw that the first person narrator approach was not going to work, and it was only after that, that I saw the deeper story within the story that a third person narrator would allow. Of course it would have been better to see from the start the kind of narrator I needed, but I didn’t, and I don’t think I could have. I simply had to struggle and earn this revelation. Now it is nearly time to roll up my sleeves and begin the hard work ahead.
I haven’t settled upon who this third person narrator will be. Omniscient, yes, but he will only get us inside of the protagonist’s mind. He’s not a character in the story himself, but he clearly will know every detail about it. Will he respect my protagonist or find him a fool? Is he a gentleman or a demon? Will he be telling the story over drinks at the club or around a campfire? Whose voice will I hear in my head when I have him telling the tale?
None of this will be shown in his narration, but it will color his narration. His attitude toward his subject, the words that he uses, even his sentence structure will be the result of who he is, even though he is not an active character in the story. And I still have to figure out this part.
November 1, 2009 at 5:38 am
Just don’t change your mind when you get to the end and decide it was better the way it was