2004-05-30

Problems of the Second

I'm in the middle of my second.

It's different from my first -- mainly in point-of-view. Despite dire warnings that novels shouldn't have too many viewpoints (preferably no more than two or three, and the point-of-view should not change within a chapter), I was inspired by the supremely accomplished multiple viewpoints demonstrated in the only three novels of a relatively new novelist. I therefore decided to write my first novel from more than a few viewpoints, not necessarily staying with just one for the duration of a chapter.

It was fun, satisfying, useful (in that it allowed transparent exposition at the same time as characterisation), and very freeing.

My second, I decided would be more structured. With two main characters, this was to be a novel of alternating viewpoints, strictly chapter-by-chapter. Once set up, this is reassuring for the reader, I believe. But there are problems. For a start, the reader experiences only those events that occur to one or the other protagonist (yes, in this novel the two viewpoint characters are both protagonists, not one protagonist and one antagonist).

The other problem -- one that I'm finding harder to resolve -- is that of timing. The chapters are of approximately equal length (about 3,500 words), and if lots of stuff is happening to one character and not much to the other, what goes on in the chapter assigned to the less active character? Maybe the more active character's chapter can be split into two, the chapter lengths massaged a bit (though not too much), and some other action can be introduced for the less active character. But it mustn't seem like padding.

I've no doubt that I will resolve it. After all, nothing's set in stone. The novel's structure is my decision, and I can do it how I please. But it needs to be self-consistent. If the beginning sets up things in a particular way, readers will expect the structure to carry through to the end.

There are also minor problems relating to the novel's place in the greater scheme of things. My second is not a sequel to my first, though it could be a prequel to my third novel in the series. (The third will be a sequel to the first -- the second takes place elsewhere, some generations before the events in the first. Confused? You will be.) While relating the events in my second, I don't want to pre-empt (or spoil) the third. This one (the second) is supposed to be essentially stand-alone.

I have a good reason for not going ahead with a sequel to my first novel (not yet, anyway). The first novel is still in search of a publisher. There's no point in writing a sequel to a novel that possibly no-one's interested in. A stand-alone novel set in another region of the same milieu could, however, be looked at in isolation.

That's my story (in more ways than two), and I'm sticking to it.

And those three novels by a relatively new writer that I found so inspiring? The Trickster, Furnace, and The Ancient, by Muriel Gray.

1 Comments:

At 11:50 am, Blogger J. said...

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