musesfool, posts by tag: writing: pov - LiveJournal

un. Happy birthday to innie_darling and tenaciousmetoo! ♥ I hope to have a story for you, um, soon? ish?

deux. If you've ever written Middleman fic, have you ever written from the POV of the Middleman? If so, HOW DO YOU DO THAT? Does he refer to himself in his head as "The Middleman"? If you're writing in tight 3rd person, do you use that or his name? (I can't bring myself to use his name!) I was going to write something and then was completely brought up short by these considerations. I suppose I could try 2nd person. Or, as angelgazing suggested, Ida's POV, but that would require more thought in regard to the story's structure. Hmm...

trois. gacked from hackthis:

Out of utter curiosity, if I was chained up in your attic (I prefer attics, basements are damp and cold, attics theoretically at least have windows), and I had to write you one story, what would you request? (demand?) Or alternatively, what's something you always hoped I'd write but know is never going to happen?

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You guys, I don't understand how badfic is bad in exactly the same ways in EVERY SINGLE FANDOM I'VE EVER READ. To wit:

= The other man, the older man, the taller man, the blonder man etc. - just how many people are in this story anyway? And why are they thinking of themselves/people they know in these terms?

Epithets! DO NOT WANT! Especially the ones that want to be Homeric but never make it: 'the green-eyed hunter,' 'the dark blonde transgenic' etc. are no 'swift-footed Achilles' or 'grey-eyed Athena,' I tell you what.

= emerald/sapphire/chocolate orbs - why do they have gemstones (or chocolate) in their eyes?

= lustrous obsidian/raven/fiery/burnished copper locks - *hands* IDEK

= screaming, shrieking, shrilling, gritting, keening, mewling, husking (dear god, if you are not shucking corn, please to not be using "husk" as a verb; this has rapidly moved up my list of pet peeves), purring, growling, etc. etc.

Occasional use of speaking words other than said/asked/replied/answered/responded is good. You want them to mean something in the narrative, though, you want them to stand out and tell the reader something. Having every speaking tag be something different is just... it renders them all meaningless and hilarious. (Not to mention that I never find screaming during sex erotic in stories - it makes it sound painful, and generally that's not what the writer is going for there. ALSO on the 'that sounds painful, not sexy' list: stripping someone's cock. Ouch! I don't even have one and it makes me cross my legs in sympathy. And the malapropism "lathed" for "laved" ["laved" is another word to use sparingly, if at all, but it is most definitely not the same thing as "lathed."])

I mean, okay, yes all fandoms have their own specific brands of badness (please tell me that surprise!songfic has never migrated beyond Dark Angel; it's horrifying enough there), but somehow badfic always has these things in common! I know I've committed some of them myself over the years, so I guess some of it is just newbie-writerness that never gets corrected.

The best explanation for why epithets are so irritating, from a technical standpoint, is that they're POV breaks. Dean wouldn't think of himself as "the green-eyed hunter" even if someone else might describe him that way; he certainly wouldn't think of Sam as "the other man" or "the taller man". If he wasn't using Sam's name, he'd refer to him as "my brother." I mean, okay, when I talk to my siblings, we sometimes identify ourselves that way, "Hey, it's your sister, call me back." [clearly we expect Dom to know which sister *snerk* and he usually does.] My brother-in-law refers to my sister as "My wife" in conversation all the time, but my sister rarely calls him "My husband" when she talks about him. Notice these things - they can be facets of characterization when used well, but for god's sake, your POV character is probably not going to talk about their chocolate orbs being filled with crystal tears [especially if your POV character is Max Guevara, for example].

*waves hands*

I know I'm just preaching to the choir here, but man, it never fails. Every fandom I've ever read in, these things pop up. It's irritating when it isn't ludicrously funny - it makes me sad and cranky whenever I see a story that could be really good otherwise falling prey to these things.

obdisclaimer: obviously this is all my opinion. if you like stories with epithets and/or gemstone eyes and/or POV breaks, your mileage obviously varies.


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spnroundtable is having a discussion about POV, and whether one finds it easier to write from Sam's POV or Dean's, and I feel like currently, Dean's is definitely easier, but I was pretty sure my stories were fairly evenly split between them, so I did a little counting, and this is what I came up with (approximately):

Dean POV: 63
Sam POV: 52 (including 8 girl!Sam POV stories)
Other: 16 (including a bunch of crossovers, as well as Ellen, Jo, Jess, and Mary POV)

Not as close as I'd thought, but part of that is definitely my inability to get into Sam's head so far this season and also, I had had this idea (possibly false) that most of the casefiles I'd written were in Sam's POV, so I wanted to write a couple from Dean's POV, so there's that. And also, I bet some of those eleven more Dean POV stories are the Dean-het stuff, whereas I am not that interested in writing about Sam having sex with people who aren't Jess or Dean (or Buffy, which, I must admit, I find an adorable combination).

I think lately because I have started more with "Wouldn't it be cool if..." rather than "I wonder how Dean or Sam feels about..." it's been harder for me to pin down POV. I mean, most of the time, the POV comes with the story when it appears - "Beer and the Highway" and "The Sea Will Open in Your Veins" both had to be Sam's POV, but "I've never been too good with names" and "A Proportional Response" had to be Dean's. Something like "If the Shoe Fits," though, that could have been either, and I only went with Dean's because of the always-writing-casefiles-from-Sam's-POV thing I mentioned up there. And also because it's a funny story, and Dean is just better for comedy. He gets so indignant.

Because most of my stories boil down to "Sam learns/thinks Dean is awesome!" sometimes I do write from Sam's POV just to show how much he loves Dean, or so he can learn some new awesome thing about Dean (knitting, kite-flying). And if it's porn, since I don't really find Sam attractive myself, it's easier to write from his POV if it's about attraction to Dean. Though since I don't really write Wincest PWPs where Sam is not a girl, that hasn't really been an issue. Heh.

I guess it really does come down to whatever story I'm working on, which POV I think will work best. Sometimes I'm wrong and I have to go back and rewrite from the other POV, and then it clicks. Usually that's when a story is about something other than what I think it's about. Which happens more often than I'd like anyway. *snerk*

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We are not the only ones talking about SPN 4.14. ( Collapse )

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Can it be home times now?

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1.

Okay, here is a thing I want you to do. I want you to think about your hair. What comes to mind? No, no, don't tell me, just think about it.

...

Okay, right there, stop.

You are not thinking of your lustrous locks of red-gold hair, or shimmering yet artfully disheveled ravens-wing tresses. I guaran-damn-tee it. Unless you are, like, Gilderoy Lockhart or something.

I'm gonna take a wild guess and think it goes something like this: huh, it's kinda frizzy, stupid humidity. or The ends are split. I need a hot oil treatment and a haircut. or It's too long and unmanageable; I should get it cut. or I just got it cut, and it looks really nice. or I just got it cut and I hate it! or These bangs look really stupid. Who thought that was a good idea? or I should let it grow out or Crap, will this stupid awkward length ever grow out? or I like/don't like the way this new shampoo/conditioner/gel smells/feels or My roots need touching up. or This color is too red/makes me look washed out/is just right. What the hell was it again?

Okay, I've just given you any number of statements that people (me, for one, at any point in the last 30 years) have actually thought about their own hair.

Characters are (fictional) people. Generally, they do not think in finely wrought literary phrases, let alone tired cliches like "the lustrous locks of her ravens-wing hair swung gently as she climbed down the stairs to answer the door." She - your narrator - might worry that whoever it is will see her with bedhead, with unwashed hair, with hair that is an unfortunate shade of green because she's dyed it too often. She might worry that whoever is at the door will judge her for any of those things, or hope they won't, or any endless number of things that work a thousand times better to limn character and forward your story than ridiculous descriptions. Especially in fanfic, where we all know what the characters look like already, so there's no need to describe them in minute detail. You say Dean Winchester, I know what he looks like.

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2.

When you are next with a group of your friends, co-workers, or family members, look at them. When you do so, pay attention to how you think of and identify them. Right now, I am looking at D., R., and J. Collectively, I might think of them as "men," since they all are, or I might, in a business capacity, think of them as the "[blank] unit" which is how they might be referred to in our organizational chart, but mostly, I think of them and refer to them in conversation as D., R. and J. or via the pronoun "he." (Unless I am speaking to them, and then I use their name(s) or the pronoun "you".)

They are never "the taller man," "the older man," "the younger man," or "the dark-haired man."

And you know why that is? Because I know their names, and have for a while now. I certainly do not think of or refer to myself as the short, dark-haired, thirty-something woman when I tell a story about interacting with them.

There is no good reason your characters should refer to themselves or to the people they know like that. *holds hand palm out* No. Slash pronoun confusion is not a good reason.

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3.

Contemplate your eyes.

No, no, we already talked about description. Think about the physicality of your eyes. They don't drop to the floor, or trail over someone else's body, because that would be really gross and painful. Eyes don't cling to each other. They don't lock in combat. (we will leave the awful dueling tongues out of this discussion, because that is just never a good idea. Unless you are going for parody.).

You roll your eyes, sure. You narrow them in anger and widen them in surprise (or to look innocent). You can eye someone suggestively, or give them a long appraising stare, or give them a quick once-over, but you shouldn't go around running your eyes up and down someone else's body. You don't know where that body's been! And your eyes are very delicate! You shouldn't be rubbing them up against someone while they're open.

You can leer or glare or gaze or stare - there are lots of great words for looking - or not looking - at someone. And yes, I realize that to a lot of people, phrasing like "she dropped her eyes to the floor" is generally acceptable, but I do not like it (or the imagery it conjures up), and I think there are better ways of saying it.

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4.

I guess my point, and I do have one, is that you (generic) should think about the words you're using. Most importantly, think about whether the characters you're writing would use the words you're putting into their mouths - especially the character from whose point of view you are writing. If you really think Dean Winchester ever thinks of his brother as "the other man" or "the taller man" or "the dark-haired man," then I can't help you and I will probably find your stories grating. But if you don't, think about why you are ascribing those terms to him, and how to say what you want to say in a way that sounds more like Dean and less like someone who has never met Sam before in his life.

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Here endeth the lesson.

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I'm having a bit of a day. To give you an example, I opened a cabinet a little while ago and was attacked by flying plastic cutlery. So I might be a little cranky.

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Okay, hit me with your tips for writing a third person omniscient narrator. I have never successfully managed it for a whole story.

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bits and bobs and bullet points

• I was poking around in s2expressive and I found the bit of CSS to increase the font size on journal entries, and also how to make visited links a different color, but now I am not sure I want the latter. I dunno. On some things I like having the visited links a different color, but on other things I don't.


• I also found, via minervacat's del.icio.us (and geez, they removed the periods after I finally got used to typing it that way), this script that makes the links bold and visited links purple. There I like that the visited links are a different color. I am not sure why it's different in my own LJ.


• I am only mildly spoiled for S4 of SPN (please don't share anything because you don't know what I already know, and I don't want to be spoiled beyond the level I already am), but I really like what I am hearing so far. I have a lot of thoughts about negotiating SPN fandom and my feelings about it (both the fandom and the show, separately and together), but those are muddled and probably best left unposted atm. I also have thoughts about being in fandom in general, and what happens when you are the odd woman out in the place where you thought you would always fit in, and stuff. because I think most of us feel that way at one time or another, whether it's regarding a specific thing in canon, a story or character or pairing that everyone loves (or hates) and you don't, or whatever, and sometimes it comes as a real shocker, especially if you've never been on that side of it before. I am still thinking about that


• In the comments to my post last night (and who are all the people who picked "says"? You are all WRONG!), deirdre_c linked to this vid to "Two Tribes," and it makes me want to rewatch all of SPN ASAP and makes me want September to be here NOW.


• I am contemplating the Bones/SPN crossover, and I kind of know what I want the plot to be (though the details are yet to be worked out *sigh*), but I feel like it probably needs to be from the POV of a Bones character, and I am totally not comfortable with that. I mean, it's true that the first story I write in a fandom is sometimes a crossover, but I usually try to stick with the POV I'm more comfortable with, i.e., one I have written before. (the first SPN story I wrote was a crossover, but from Sam's POV. Of course, the other character in that story is someone I'd never written before either, so it was a tossup, and it needed to be in Sam's POV to work.) But for this to work, I think it almost has to be a Bones character as the POV person. Unless I bring Henriksen in, and he can straddle both worlds, and I could write from his POV? Hmmm...


• Speaking of Bones crossovers, I still want that Bones/XF crossover, and I think that might have to be from Booth's POV. There, I haven't written in either fandom, and my grasp of XF canon is tenuous at best, but based on viewing the movie last week, I could probably manage Scully. Hmm...


• Still speaking of Bones, I discovered the names of a couple of the songs used on the show that I liked, but they don't appear to be available from iTunes. I am specifically thinking of "Bring on the Wonder" by Susan Enan f. Sarah McLachlan. I can't remember which song it was in the pilot I liked, so I might have to rewatch. Possibly it was the one at the end. Anyone got a Bones soundtrack they can share? It's funny how this show is totally my happy place right now, without any fannish baggage attached. Even the season 3 finale didn't mess that up. I love the characters, but I am not actively fannish about it, though obviously I am not opposed to seeing those characters meet other characters I love, nor am I opposed to reading good Bones/Booth fic.


• My box from LUSH came today. Sigh. The whole retro-LUSH thing killed me. I mean, I had a gift certificate or two, so I didn't spend too much, but more than I expected to. But! Slammer! Back for Breakfast! How could I resist? Plus I got another bottle of Olive Branch, which I adore. I foresee a lot of showers in my future. I'd forgotten Red Rooster smells like red hots. Also, the free sample of godmother soap smells LIKE HEAVEN like candy. I can't quite pin it down - strawberry laces, maybe? Happy childhood? Something like that.

***

I had two goals for this weekend (1. finish my spn_summergen story and 2. catch up with Mad Men in time for the s2 premiere) and I achieved neither of them. Sigh.

However, my spn_summergen story is well on its way to being done now. I had a huge crisis about how to get what needs to happen to actually happen, but I flailed at laurificus and angelgazing and figured out how to make a virtue of necessity, and now I think the story is on track. I have to write the big climactic scene and then the wrap-up, but I think it all works and makes sense now. I hope.

I have a feeling I will want to talk a lot about this story, and why I had such trouble writing it, after the names are revealed, whenever that will be.

I was reading this post about writing by flambeau and this really jumped out at me: don't be afraid to reconceptualize.

I think this happens to a lot of us, a lot of the time - we get an idea and we start writing (and okay, possibly I mean "me" when I say "we") and the slam right up into a wall. There are ways around the wall - up-and-over, down-and-under, around, and, of course, straight on through - but sometimes simply turning and following the wall along for a while, or retreating from it and heading in a different direction, is really what the story needs to work.

I have a lot of trouble with restructuring, with ripping things out that don't work and starting over. I tend to get attached, as if what I've written is CARVED IN STONE OMG and can't be changed. As if the story isn't fluid. And in some ways, to me, it isn't. This is one reason I don't like writing down fantasies and calling them stories - once I've given them a narrative shape, they can't be changed at whim. Once they're written down, I can no longer use them as fantasies, because they're locked into a series of events now, and this is how it happened (probably).

But yeah, changing tense, changing POV, changing the order in which things happen (not just in which they are told), can make a story work better.

This is all obvious stuff that I sometimes completely forget, until I run into a wall with a story and have to be reminded. Maybe the original idea is still sound, but it needs a few tweaks. Maybe it's not really very good on its own merits, but it leads somewhere awesome.

I need to be less afraid of making those kinds of changes - for me, they're always the last resort rather than an immediate option, because I am lazy, and if I've already written a thousand words in one direction, I really don't want to have to rip that out and start over. Especially not when I've got a deadline.

The other thing in torch's post that I found interesting was the section on POV, because I have been thinking a lot about POV lately. It used to be I simply "heard" the character narrating the story to me in my head, and that's when I would start writing. Nowadays, that happens to me a lot less; more and more lately, I start with ideas instead of opening lines, and the question of whose POV the story is in plagues me. It means I have to do a lot more thinking about what the story is about - not just plot-wise, but thematically, and why it would better to use Y's POV instead of X's.

Because I like single-POV stories. I really, really love tight third person POV, and one of the reasons for me - the main reason for me, I guess - is that it maintains narrative tension. In a romance, a lot of people choose to show both parties' points of view - I did it a lot myself when I first started writing - because of course we want to know what both parties are thinking!

But the thing is, for me, that leaches away a lot of the delicious tension of a romance. I mean, obviously, going into 99.44% of romance stories - pro or fan written - I am pretty sure Character A and Character B are going to wind up together (and when that surety is betrayed, I tend to not like the story; for a pro example, see Libby's London Merchant by Carla Kelly, in which the guy you think is the romantic hero turns out... not to be. I found that a very unsatisfying romance novel experience). In fanfic, mostly that worry is assuaged by pairing labels (not always, but mostly).

So the thing for me is, I already kinda know A and B are in love, or are going to be by the end of the story; that's why I'm reading the story in the first place. What I like is the uncertainty of the narrator, the "he doesn't love me, he could never love me, hey, wow, do you think he wants me the way I want him?" progression, and I feel like that awesome pining/realization template is completely undercut when you have character B going, "yes, yes, I love him so much, I am trying to win him over! Why isn't it working? Does he not love me?" or whatever. You would think that would double the pining enjoyment, but it doesn't, because instead of immersing myself completely in Character A's uncertainty, I'm getting Character B's refutation of it, and that switching keeps me aware of the story, puts up a distance between me and the characters that makes me less emotionally involved.

I realize this is totally a me-thing, how I read, but I much prefer staying with one character because I think it enhances the reading experience by keeping me immersed in the world of the story.

What I like in stories, and what I attempt to do (not always successfully), is to show, even from A's POV, how B really feels. So A is totally not getting that B is into him, but as a reader, you can see it, even if it takes A few thousand words to get there. That's not as easy to do as having a section from B's POV where B lays it all out for the reader, if not for A, but it's my preference, and it's fun and challenging (for values of fun and challenging that often include horrifyingly painful and hard) to write stories that way, and as a reader, for me, the emotional payoff is generally greater when I read stories written that way.

Obviously, there are stories that require dual or multiple points of view, and for me, those usually involve Action! or Adventure! or Mystery! Typically, a more casefilish story, or an action/adventure story, or a thriller or a mystery, can benefit from multiple narrators, especially if Our Heroes are separated and Events Are Happening in Many Locations. This keeps me as a reader up to speed without bringing the story to a screeching halt for long exposition dumps about What Happened to A in Prague while B was in Monte Carlo when Our Heroes Reunite on the rope bridge over the gorge in Borneo. Um. I don't know where that came from, but you know what I mean.

Since I tend to not write location-spanning thrillers so much as I write romances or casefiles or plotless character rambles, I generally stick to stories told from a single narrator's POV.

Obviously, mileage varies.

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technology hates me, round 4039482813027:

My cable is out, since at least 8pm this evening, which is when I noticed it. Which means no TV and no internet. I am on dialup. DIALUP, people! WTF?

Oh, Time Warner Cable, why must you torment me so?

***

So I am writing this story, and I like it, and I was trying to think of how the ending is going to go - I mean, I know it in generalities, but I was working out the specifics, and suddenly I have a whole new story to write. And the end of this one is now slightly different from the original plan. I suppose if I wanted to completely rework the first story, I could combine them, and have the originally planned ending, but that would require splitting the POV, and I am loath to do that. I mean, for certain stories it's necessary - the harlequin story might have dual POVs, and maybe the sekrit incest baby story will (well, the original sekrit incest baby story; I am probably writing a second one, and oh god, shut up! I can hear you laughing from here, laurificus), because Sam and Dean would be separated for large parts of those stories.

But generally speaking, the kinds of stories I write tend to benefit from being in a single POV, and I tend to like writing that way better.

***

Sigh. At least I have chocolate.

So without Heroes to make me turn on the TV last night, it didn't even occur to me to watch The Black Donnellys, so I guess I know where I stand on that. I just wish I'd remembered about The Riches, because that did look fun, and it sounds from people on my flist like it was worth watching. Ah, well, the last thing I need is another show. Even if it is about a family of con artists, which sounds like it would hit many of my bulletproof kinks.

I've been thinking about this last episode of Rome, and I think while the new Octavian is quite good, and believable as an older extrapolation of the younger Octavian, Max Pirkis had something about him that made the character not only palatable, but sympathetic, which this new guy lacks. He's so very severe looking, which, okay, yes, given who Octavian is and who he becomes, but I *liked* Maxtavian, even knowing that. This guy? Not so much.

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lunabee34 wrote about POV, and this is one of those writing subjects I can talk about for hours. And I did in her comments. *g* I had to whittle it down slightly to fit in one comment box, so this is the unexpurgated version, with all the YMMV left in, because a vague disclaimer is nobody's friend:

Oh, man, POV. My most troubling issue lately is whose to write from. Most of my stories come with POV and tense attached - I "hear" the story in Dean's voice, or know it *has* to be in River's POV, or what have you - but sometimes I just have the *idea* and I can think of two or three different ways to tell it, and then it becomes a matter of trying it out and seeing which fits, or stalling out before I even start because I can't decide.

I do find breaks in POV jarring, if only because my default reading and writing setting is third limited, and over the years, I've had it beaten into me by betas not to change POV in the middle of a scene, because it gets confusing, and it also breaks the intimacy and flow.

While reading, I will let one or two instances slip, but if it happens consistently in a story, or is a certain type of break (the really horrid kind where the person is describing themselves - "Dean's lambent green eyes glistened with a jewel-like sheen of tears as he watched Sam walk away and realized he might never see his brother again." or "Eowyn's hair glinted like molten gold in the moonlight as she waited for Faramir to come to her." - those are usually clear signs of a newbie writer) I'll likely back out of it in annoyance.

Third omniscient is hard, and I find it off-putting except in the hands of a really good author - too often it slips into multiple third limited without any delineation of who is actually telling the story, which is problematic for me, because then I spend time going, "but how did Y *know* what X was thinking?" And then it's a question of narrative tone, and if you're doing pastiche, that can be fun, but in fanfic, I don't really like it.

I have written in first person on rare occasion, but I really dislike it in fanfic. 1. it almost never sounds like the character as I hear him or her; 2. it becomes a crutch for the author, especially if they always write in first person from the same character's POV; and 3. it tends to sound more like the author than the character. Mileage obviously varies, and I include my own first person stories in with this - I tried, say, to make Molly Weasley sound like Molly Weasley, but I fear when I was doing first person for Rogue, she sounded more like me than like herself.

Second person is... I've written successfully from second person POV once or twice, and I've seen it said that it's meant to foster intimacy, putting the reader right there in the character's shoes, but I feel it's a *distancing* technique on the part of the character - I think of it as a character telling a story, and saying "you" instead of "me" (that's very much how I wrote "The Language of Goodbye" - in my head, that's Logan telling the story to someone in a bar somewhere, saying, "So you meet a girl and you fall in love" because it's too hard for him to say, "I met a girl, and I fell in love," because of how badly it ended) - so I think it only works with certain characters - Remus and Snape come to mind, or Bruce Wayne, if I wrote him - men who are very good at compartmentalizing, at cutting intimacy off or only allowing it in very rare circumstances - or certain situations that might be too traumatic for the character to relate in first or close third - River, perhaps, or maybe Veronica talking about the aftermath of Lilly's death, or the rape, or her feelings about the possibility of her parentage.

Most of the time, to me, badly written second person reads like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story, and that's just not what I'm looking for. And sometimes it just feels like the author is saying, "Hey look at me! Look how clever I am!" Which also happens sometimes with other stylistic experiments which in the end don't feel necessary to the telling of the story. Again, in my opinion. Mileage varies.

I think I manage a good, tight, in character third person POV most of the time - most especially from Mal's POV for some reason - I don't know why it's so easy for me to slip into his head, but it is, and I can write for days in his voice without slipping. I have a harder time with characters who are less prone to the sort of constant questioning - I hesitate to call what Mal does navel-gazing, but I do think he's prone to overthinking, and characters like that - Remus, Sam Winchester, etc. - are the best kinds to use as narrators. Writing from the POV of Zoe, for whom action follows thought like breathing - not that she's not thoughtful, but that she's not going to analyse herself into paralysis, like Mal might - or Dean, who is going to avoid thinking about a lot of stuff if he can possibly help it, or Danny Ocean, who is always running a con on multiple layers, even inside his own head - those are the characters from whose POVs I find it difficult to write, because your opportunities for rumination and emotional exposition are nearly nil, and you have to express all that stuff in action, especially with someone like Dean or Danny, who is going to consistently conceal his actual feelings when speaking, unless pushed by circumstances or great emotional stress to reveal. A lot of that stuff is great in visual media, where you can see the clench of a jaw or fist, the slumped shoulders straightening in preparation, the quick, furtive glance away before the not-quite meeting of someone else's gaze, but those are harder for me to convey in writing.

Hmm...

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Speaking of wordy characters who overanalyze their own actions, and everyone else's, I really am going to start my sportsbackinsn story today. I spent a bit of last night rereading stuff about the Carmelo Anthony incident, and while I don't think the story is actually going to be about that (though I'm sure I could write 750 words of Dan and Casey pontificating on the ramifications of Carmelo Anthony throwing a punch like that and then running like a scaredy-cat), though I suppose I could work in the Chris Simon thing, now. Hmm... Or I could just write some Dan/Dana porn.

Decisions, decisions...

***

OMG logistics of community management on LJ! Who knew it was so complex!? I've been reduced to using the interrobang to communicate my feelings of utter WTF, LJ?! Why you gotta make things so hard!? at learning all sorts of things I've learned this afternoon.

And that's not even going into the meeting I attended for work about the office move we're doing this month - a meeting to which I was not actually invited but which, shockingly enough, I am glad I attended, because now I know exactly what's ahead of me in the next two weeks, and it's not pretty. But at least I know. [Fill in your preferred cliche here.]

So let's talk about writing instead. In particular, let's talk about POV. I started a story this morning, a story I'd had an idea (and a title!) for for a few weeks, with a bit of an IM conversation pasted into a Word doc to remind me, and this morning I found myself with the actual beginning of the story in my head, so I started writing, and then I reached the end of the first section, and wanted to switch POV.

Which is something that, the longer I write, the less often I do. I believe I've mentioned before about how I am really attached to single-POV stories these days, that I feel they hold the reader closer and allow a much tighter emotional focus.

I'm still sitting here, hours (and meetings, and many remix comments) later with two sentences written in a second POV, unable to decide if that's really *necessary* to tell this story. I mean, I could write it, get a few more sentences in, and realize it is (or it's not), or it could take a lot longer to realize it's not working, and I should have just stuck to the original POV character. And as I sometimes do when faced with too many intriguing choices, I'm kind of paralyzed and can't choose.

Keep in mind, this isn't a particularly plotty story that would require multiple POVs because characters are in different places or know different things or anything like that. It's a pretty bog-standard angsty character piece, so having the second POV feels off to me, even though it's where my gut apparently wanted to go with this story.

I'm over-thinking again, aren't I? I need to stop doing that.

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