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. :)
I can sympathize with a lot of what you're talking about here. While I have a hard time not writing at least one snarky character into each of my stories, they're at their best when they are the ones doing all the talking (i.e. in first person).
ReplyDeleteI also sympathize with the difficulty of conveying character voice in third person; it's something I'm struggling with in my current WIP as well. Unlike his best friend, my POV character isn't constantly snarking at other characters; he's much more kindly and reserved, and I worry that he ends up coming across as comparatively boring as a result. If it were first-person, it would be so much easier to convey his character through his thoughts, but for some reason third person makes it a heck of a lot trickier for me.
Sorry, didn't mean to ramble at you. At any rate, I hope your edits are going well (or went well, seeing as this is an old post)!