I've been working for the past few days on improving my draft of Notes from the Undead, a tale of a vampire who only thinks he is one. In the original draft, one chapter was written in the first person as an experiment. I had a hunch after I'd written it that the whole piece should have been written that way, but I was nearly through the draft, and I'd promised to only get one pass before my husband got his shot at the story, so I abstained.
Months later, I'm working on this thing again myself, and Oh My God, this shiznit is hard! Harder than some of my academic writing, and that's saying something. If you think it's a question of changing "He" to "I" a million times over, you'd be wrong. The whole voice of the piece--his word choices, syntax, the perception of his world, everything changes when shifting to first person perspective. To make matters worse, I am one of those rare breeds who hand writes, then types what I've written. So in addition to script that could almost literally fit on a grain of rice, nearly every line is being rewritten. By hand. At the cusp of mental explosion, I wondered how many of my fellow writers have similar horror stories, and whether you might share your trials and triumphs here with me.
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| A good approximation of what my protagonist's beloved looks like. Shame that she's dead. |
Good luck! Can't wait to read it!
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