Points of View
In very early drafts, SanClare Black was third-person omniscient. This was entirely an accident because I didn’t have a firm grasp on my POV options at the time and hadn’t thought about what would work best for the story. That all got sorted in subsequent drafts and it ended up very firmly third-person limited with only two POV characters.
And that was the initial plan for SanClare Scarlet, too, but after abortive first draft, I’ve realized I need more voices in this book. So it’ll still be 3rd/limited but there will be more characters doing the looking. So far, I’ve written three. I have at least two more in mind. The main character will still carry the bulk of the POV as he did in SanClare Black.
Anyway, it’s fun to sort these things out in advance this time around.
- 8 Oct 2007
- tagged: process,sanclare scarlet
- Author: Jenna
- { Comments } 2
DQ
Agreed that planning such things out is a good idea. And determining POV is sometimes harder than it seems… I’ve struggled a long time with one story idea I have about whether it should be 3rd person or 1st. It’s somewhat a detective-fantasy story, so I like the vaguely “noir” concept of sticking to 1st person, but 3rd person would make it easier to describe scenes and body language in such a way to help display other character motivations that may be important for the reader to pick up.
October 10, 2007 >> 6:50 am
Jenna
Intriguing! I love both genres. A lot of mysteries use 1st person even when it isn’t the investigator who’s narrating. Hillerman is the only one that comes immediately to mind who doesn’t and he does third-limited. Third is interesting for mysteries, though. Didn’t Christie write in third omniscient?
October 14, 2007 >> 9:20 pm