Sarcasm, First Person, and Big Edits

So the title of this blog may be a little confusing. How, you ask, can all those things go together? Well, they don't, necessarily, unless your me. And the big edits doesn't really go at all, but I wanted three subjects for my title, so there you go. :)

As for how sarcasm and first person go together, at least for me, let me explain. It's something I've been noticing more and more about my writing. When it comes to writing a story in the third person perspective, I find it infinitely more difficult for my characters to be sarcastic than it is for them to be sarcastic in the stories that are in first person. I haven't totally figured out why that is, but I have a theory. When I'm writing in third person, I find I'm not really writing in the character's voice so much. There is a voice there, and it's always limited to what's going on with the character that's the focus of that particular scene or story, but their thoughts (sarcastic or otherwise) tend to get left in their heads, or only seen through physical action. And for me it's very hard to be sarcastic in physical action without doing the same thing over and over. I'm still learning different ways to show my sarcastic side, physically speaking. I raise an eyebrow, smirk, roll my eyes, and I'm sure many other things, but it's always the same. And being the sarcastic person I am, those actions happen over and over again throughout the day. If I were to do this in writing, it would get really monotonous really fast, don't you think?

This, however, is not as much of a factor when I'm writing in first person, mostly because I'm inside my character's head. That means I can be sarcastic in the way they think as much as in the way they talk. They don't have to say their witty remarks out loud. They can just think them, and since they are narrating, can tell the audience them, without those remarks having to be heard by the other characters. Thus my 1stP characters tend to be far snarkier (that's a word right?) than my 3rdP characters. And I kind of like that. But that's just me.

As for big edits, I still haven't started mine yet. Almost there, but there's still work to do polishing the latest draft of the novel. I will, of course, keep you updated.

Now I'm off to do some work at my day job. The research is never done. :)

Plot and Major Changes to Mine

I have discovered that I may have a serious plot problem. This kind of sucks.

What, you may ask, could that problem be? It is that I think I have major events happening in the wrong order and too close together. This equals massive reworking of the whole middle section of my novel. That, understandably, scares the crap out of me.

Why? Well mostly cause I'm not the best with change. I kind of try to avoid it. Like the plague. And here as I'm trying to work out the plot for a completely different story I discover possible major issues the book I thought I was almost finished with. I almost wanted to cry when I came to this conclusion.

See I love my book kind of the way it is. It's taken years to get it to this point, to where it's feeling close to being finished finally. And then I start reading about plot, and I realize, maybe I do need to reorder those two major scenes in the middle. And the idea of having to take those two scenes and swap them after rewriting them to work in their new place and rewriting all the transitions between the scenes, is a daunting idea. So daunting I haven't been able to look at my WIP in a couple of days.

So what am I going to do, you ask. Well I could be a wuss and say nothing, but we both know that's a cop-out. So instead I'm going to do the hard thing. I'm going to finish this draft (Numero 6) including the big chunks I haven't worked on yet. Then, once that's finished, I'm going to give it to my friend who's read two of the other drafts along with the new crit partner I hope to be finding soon (thanks to Natalie Whipple and her fantastic Crit Partner Classifieds), then begin the massive rewrite for draft number 7 while they read it. Once that's done, I'll have them read #7 and see which is the better layout for the story.

It's a seriously frightening prospect, especially because I may do all that work for nothing. But after thinking over it for a couple of days, it's feeling more and more like what I need to do. So I'm going to do it.

So that's my thought for the day. Now I'm off to write or something.

Lost, Edits, and Snow

It's been a while. It's February, and my edits are still unfinished. But that's okay. I've decided that it's okay if I don't get my edits done in time for the conference. I tend to push myself too hard then get frustrated when I balk and don't meet my goals. I'm great at meeting goals for other people, but when it comes to personal stuff, I find it hard to keep pushing myself.

That being said, I am going to be done with this edit by the end of the month at the latest. I want to be able to show it to a crit partner (assuming I can find one) starting in March. Then more edits. Maybe this summer I'll start the query process, but I don't want to commit to too much, so that's still a maybe. I really want to, but I'm not going to send the manuscript out before it's ready.

Meanwhile, I've been watching Lost for some inexplicable reason. I started it last week and can't seem to stop watching it. I can't say that I like the show, but I don't hate it either. It's mostly just that I can't stop watching, like an accident or something. So I keep watching, trying to figure out why I can't stop and why I want to know what happens next.

Oh yeah, and we in St. Louis have been hit with a massive winter storm. So I'm stuck at home. My car is frozen with a 1/2 inch of ice and I've been working from home for two days. I probably will continue to do so for at least one day, if not two.

So I'm off to do more edits, watch some more lost, and do some more work.