POVs and Trunking

Steamer trunk (for novels)I’ve been wrestling with getting my next novel started before getting a full-time, paying gig. And score is trunk novels: 5, Shlomi manuscripts: 0. It kept coming across lifeless, a narration of facts and events that even extensive external and internal dialog didn’t help. I’m a pantser, so I wasn’t worried about “where the book was going.” But the main character motivations, their plate tectonics… that I was winging.

So I went back and did what I’ve done in the past: write a preface. Only every time I wrote something, it was in the Q&A style of an interview. engaging, casual dialog, casual narrator… first person. I’ve done almost that with 3rd person limited. And 1st person with a fourth wall intact. I’ve stuck to a single person’s POV as well.

Meh. Who needs walls. If John Scalzi can do it, if William Goldman can do it with The Princess Bride, then I, unpublished unjeered at, can make a go of it.