perspective

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

No, I don’t really believe that.

There are times, though—like this week—when it feels like there’s some truth to it.

Earlier this week, a woman was shot and killed, allegedly by her adopted teenage son. I knew this woman because she was also the foster mom of a boy I taught for several years, who’s now attending college.

I didn’t know this woman well. I saw her and her husband and talked to them maybe half a dozen times during the years I taught that boy. They made a strong impression, though. Loving people with some cowboy flavor who opened their home to several boys, such as my student.

They even kept him on until he graduated from high school, by which time he was nineteen years old. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have to. But they did.

This woman wasn’t perfect, I’m sure. Who is? But I often marveled at my student’s character, despite some hard circumstances throughout his life. His work ethic, and his positive outlook. If you looked at his history on paper, you probably wouldn’t expect him to be the kind of person he is.

Much of the credit goes to the young man himself, but I think he’d agree his foster parents’ influence played a role. And I know he’s heartbroken by what happened this week.

Maybe it’s true that no good deed goes unpunished. If it is, maybe it doesn’t matter.

We’ll keep doing them anyway.

Speak up:

2 comments

A Tense Matter of Perspective

When I started writing my very first novel, it was in third person. A couple pages in, it was feeling awkward. I went back and re-did it in first person, and never looked back.

From then on, the decision of whether to go first or third (and if first, present or past tense) has been a combination of gut instinct and thinking about what the story needed. In one, I chose third person because I needed that tiny bit of distance from the main character so she could keep some secrets from the reader in an organic (not just convenient for me) way. In another, I chose present tense because it only made sense to be in the moment rather than looking back.

I’ve even braved the “alternating first person” POV … just for a novelette I wrote on a whim, but I still did it. (One POV I haven’t tried is second person, and I don’t see myself trying anytime soon.)

My latest Shiny New Idea has been less forthcoming about what it wanted to be. Or maybe it’s just less demanding and could work whatever way I chose, as long as I applied the perspective and tense in an effective way. For the scene-and-a-half I’ve written so far, I went with first-person/past. Feels good so far, so hopefully it’ll work.

On a separate but related note, there’s something I don’t get. I’ve seen a lot of people say they hate reading first-person narratives. Maybe it’s just a matter of personal preference, like the way I’m not crazy about peas unless they’re raw.

I used to feel kind of the same way about novels in present tense. The first time I read one, it felt funny and jarred me for a while. But I figured out I just wasn’t used to it. Now that I’ve read several, it doesn’t bother me most of the time. In fact, when I notice the tense and think, “Ugh, this present tense is bugging me,” I suspect it’s a sign that either the writer didn’t handle the tense well, or it was just an inappropriate choice for that story.

But first person in general? Is it possible to not be used to that? (Weren’t all the Babysitters’ Club books in first from the POV of whichever girl had her name in the title? Maybe I’m remembering wrong.) Is there some other reason I acclimated and adapted to whatever it is about this perspective that bothers some readers?

Or is one person’s grilled zucchini another person’s boiled peas? (I may have taken the metaphor too far there.)

Just curious. Any of you first-person haters want to share?

Speak up:

3 comments

Decisions, Decisions!

I’m starting a new novel, and I’m back at the old crossroads.

First or third person?

If first, present or past?

When I started Fingerprints, I actually wrote several pages in third person before it started screaming at me that it wasn’t working. Go back to the beginning, change it all to first person … ah, that’s better. It never occurred to me that present tense was an option. It was my first novel—what did I know?—and I’d hardly read any novels written in present tense up to that point.

Three manuscripts later, I began my Recently Finished New Novel. I’d learned a lot in-between, read a ton of current YA work, and felt like I almost had a coherent idea of what I was doing. The RFNN (uh-huh, that’s what I’m gonna refer to it as) is in third person. There was never any question about it, partly because I needed my MC to withhold quite a bit of information in the early parts of the story. I knew from first person, it would’ve been really obnoxious. Also, I briefly considered telling the story from several POVs, but never from my MC’s POV. I quickly decided I wasn’t that crazy brave, and I think it worked out pretty well. (We’ll see.)

Now, I’m about to embark on a Shiny New Novel (SNN … yeah). For the first time, I went through this active, conscious, stressful thought process. I could see pros and cons for doing it any of the three ways (third person, first past, or first present). For about ten minutes, it felt like choosing what college to go to: This decision will impact the rest of my life!

Well, okay, not quite. Making the “wrong” choice would just mean major rewriting once I decided it was, in fact, wrong. And depending on how long it took for me to make that decision, the rewriting could be a right pain.

Worse things have happened.

In this case, I started thinking about my MC. Her personality, what it would mean to be right up in her head, or have a little distance. Then I thought about the general plot as it’s formed so far (in my head)—what things might happen outside my MC’s presence, how to deliver those things if I’m in first person, etc. Settled on trying first person, then thought about whether the plot warrants the kind of immediacy I always associate with present tense. In combination with certain personality quirks of the MC, I think present might fit.

So my decision is to get in there and start drafting. If I get a page or a chapter (or five) in and realize it’s not flying … back to the drawing board.

That’s how we learn, right?

How do you guys make these types of decisions? How do you know whether the story will be best with one POV character, or two … or more? I’m still a newbie (in some ways), so I want all the learnin’ I can get.

Speak up:

7 comments

Differing Views: Not Black & White

Hooray! For once I have a clever link between my title and my post, just like Mindy McGinnis nearly always does. One of my greatest friends is both a science teacher and an artist, and she once noted something I found very interesting. Consider the following:

To a physicist, ‘white’ is the presence of all colors, such as white light broken into a rainbow by a prism.

To an artist, ‘white’ is the absence of color, a complete lack of pigment.

Their views are about as diametrically opposed as you can get. Who’s right, and who’s wrong?

That’s the wrong question.

Try this one on for size:

Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? From a scientific standpoint, it’s definitely a fruit. From a culinary perspective, I’d call it a vegetable, because that’s how it’s used.

There are some things in life that can be worked out to ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ but plenty of others that depend on your perspective and the circumstances. I’m all for being opinionated (and I am … oh, I definitely am), but if you’re so entrenched in your opinion that you can’t even entertain a differing view, you’re going to miss out on a lot. If nothing else, it can be a fun mental exercise to try to understand why the other person has the opinion they do. I may still disagree, but that’s not the point.

Then there’s writing—I wonder if it’s possible to be a truly great writer without that ability. How can characters come alive and feel authentic if the author can’t shift their perspective? (This presumes all the characters aren’t thinly veiled carbon copies of the author … because how boring would that be?)

And yet I’ve seen many a mud-slinging fight among writers that came down to one or both sides being unable to acknowledge that a certain topic may not have a right or wrong—just different angles.

If I ever fall into that trap, someone do me a favor and give me a nice Gibbs-style head-slap, okay?

Speak up:

4 comments