Friday, January 7, 2011

Tense is making me tense

So last night I stayed up a little later than usual because I was in the thick of really getting to know my characters and locations. I have pictures of houses, pictures of their beautiful faces, and I know enough about Dissociative amnesia to write a high school term paper. But with all of that out of the way I'm stuck on what tense to use.

In anything I've ever written, I've always used "first person". I'm thinking that maybe that won't work for this story so I'm leaning a little to "third". I'm scared because as much as I need voices to drift in and out from person to person, it's that goal exactly that scares the crap out of me. What if it doesn't flow right? What if it looks like I'm too jumpy? I'm tense from all this tense talk.

If I wrote the story in first person I would most likely have to do alternating POV's and in this case, that's just not going to happen. Third seems to be the best bet. So why am I still hesitant on it? Is it because I'm drifting from my normal way of speaking through characters?

When this is all said and done, I think a well deserved massage will be in order.

Holly

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