So I’m on my fifth rewrite of my first novel.  It started out in first person as I’m sure a lot of first novels do.  Somehow easier to connect with the “I”, more lively, moves along well.  But then of course you have to deal with the other characters.  And yes, that can be interesting if they are only seen from the protagonist’s point of view.  That often requires the reader to question the reliability of narration, which can be engaging or too much trouble for a reader who just wants to be entertained.  But all the same, it can be quite difficult to get all the necessary information in to move the plot along. 

Rewrites are always necessary, in any case, and always painful.  So changing from first to third person gives you as an author something to do when you are paralyzed by the intricacies of plot, continuity, momentum and character development.  A writer’s “busy work” if you will.

So early on, I changed to third person omniscient. I felt productive, cleaned some things up, but had to admit, now it seemed pretty stagnant, dare I say boring.  And it didn’t even add that many pages, which is another thing I struggle with.

I went back to the first person and thought when I needed a different point of view I would use italics.  I know, I know, groundbreaking. But I did manage to add a few more pages.  Upon rereading, I found it was just confusing, and realized I needed to do something else, something more. So in this current rewrite I am changing up a lot of things.

Back to third person, but for the protagonist, third person present, and may’ve not omniscient (still working on that) which creates a sense of immediacy of course, but with it urgency.  Urgent is good. But this time, the rewrite is not just about the busy-work I mentioned before.  Now I am changing the order of how I tell the story.  I am also attempting to organically add backstory to the characters. Their backstories existed but in my head and not necessary in the novel.  I knew why they did what they did, but how could I make the reader start to understand without being too obvious?  And if the reader did understand, did s/he care

I have never worked on such a big manuscript before and it is not yet as long as it needs to be.  It is hard and frustrating and I am the only one who can do it.  Which is why today finds me not working on the novel but on this little blog post instead.  At least I am writing.