Tags
creativity, first person, points of view, second draft, WIP, YA
It has been a very long time since I posted anything. Lots has changed. Mostly my second draft is well and truly shaping up into something.
Something, that is going to need more editing. But that is for later – like a few months from today later.
I have been thinking about point of view a lot recently. My WIP is in third person, primarily following the main character. At some point during the last six months I added a journal to the chapters – in first person by another of the characters. Even though I keep weaving those journal entries into the story, I have my doubts about using multiple points of view.
Yes, there are stories that do it very well. The Game of Thrones books – have a bazillion points of view. And this is where I admit that I gave up on the books because I couldn’t keep the story lines straight in my head.
A lot of YA is written in first person (Divergent, Hunger Games, Half Bad trilogy) and I sometimes find it hard to fully immerse myself in the story. I feel like there is something missing – which is strange because Hunger Games was one of my favorite series.
I am currently reading The 5th wave by Rick Yancey and just realized that this book has two narrators. For the first three pages of the second narrator I couldn’t tell that it was another narrator. I actually had to flip back and reread because all of a sudden the location of the character didn’t make sense given everything that had happened in the first section of the book. The words out of my mouth when I realized there was a second narrator were not complimentary.
So if multiple points of view confuse and irritate me when I am reading – why on earth am I writing in multiple points of view?! I keep telling myself that the journal entries are to help set up the second book. Yes, I realized that the WIP is 1 of 2 books. I am going to finish this draft using the multiple points of view, but the more books I read with multiple narrators the less convinced I am.
Does anyone have any thoughts of multiple points of view or writing in the first person?