Hi Patches. You write...
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If I can kick things off with discussion about narrative voice(s). What I’m working on now is first person; very different from anything I’ve tried before. It’s great fun, but also a challenge. Any thoughts from learned Kitten scribes?
It's an interesting question and one I recently played with. I tend to avoid first-person like the plague. But I also want to grow and mature as a writer, and I think that part of that is challenging myself to use techniques or voices that I might not be comfortable with. With my long works: Turned, Y'all, Paths, etc. I don't tend to play around. But in my episodic stuff (mainly Please), I use the opportunity to do just that. I will say to myself, "this one is about experimenting with first-person voice" or "this one is about embedding a story within another story."
When I experimented with first-person, one of the things that I noticed is that for me, it came out all present tense. I didn't want to be writing a journal entry: “School was so boring today…” Tara wrote. I wanted to tell the story as it was happening. When using third person, that seemed much easier to me than using first-person which by definition seemed to be in present tense, as if W/T were thinking into a recorder that was taking down my words and putting them on the paper/screen right then. At the same time, I felt that it was much more raw and powerful. It was as if I, as the writer, didn’t have the space to mute their reactions. It was W/T’s passion and emotion at 100% rather than the third-person narrator’s interpretation of their passion and emotion.
I always wonder about this as I read a work in first-person. Am I supposed to be reading it and thinking that it is a journal entry? Is it someone’s memories of the story? How did I, the reader, get into the story? While I enjoyed the experiment, I couldn’t imagine writing a long work in first person. I feel like I would have such a hard time justifying the voice.
And first-person definitely has pros and cons. In using third person, the writer can choose which doors to reveal and which to keep closed. The writer can reveal the thoughts of one character, more than one, or none at all (although I would find that pretty boring). But with first person, we have only the narrator’s thoughts. But that makes it easier to “play tricks” or put surprises on our characters.
I guess the most important thing to me is that you keep challenging yourself to grow in your writing style. If you’re not comfortable with first-person, try it. Keep making exercises to try. I remember when I was reading Michael Chabon’s
Mysteries of Pittsburg: people kept asking me if I liked it and I kept saying, “I have the feeling he’s trying to learn how to write.” When I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay, I told the same people: “he did.”
I’ve been reading Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and am starting her Wild Mind. I highly recommend her work. To summarize (not a reasonable thing to do and I beg her forgiveness), she compares writing practice to meditation or exercise or pursuing any other practice. She wants the writer to write every day for a committed amount of time. Just get the hand moving. It’s a very simple and yet overwhelming thought and commitment and one which, I have to admit, I have not made.
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"Your little will can't do anything. It takes Great Determination. Great Determination doesn't mean just you making an effort. It means the whole universe is behind you and with you - the birds, trees, sky, moon, and ten directions." - Katagiri Roshi
