Good ol' Jenny Crusie. Again, perfect timing with a blog entry that addresses something we've just discussed, but she gets into much greater depth in the mechanics of the technique.
I am not one to argue with a gift horse and this time the gift horse is yours.
Read this great examination of the difference between first and third person, and why you can't write in one pov and just change pronouns to the other (from "I" to "she" as an example) and have it work well.
"Lots of commenters on the previous post said, “Write it in third and
then change it back to first.” That doesn’t work for me (I’ve tried),
which doesn’t mean it won’t work for you. But for me, it’s two
different languages. It’s like saying, “Write it in English, and then
translate it into German, and then translate that back into English.”
If you’re talking about a page full of dialogue, it doesn’t matter much,
but for anything else, I lose a lot in the translation both ways. Here’s a piece from Maybe This Time..."
And she goes on to give the same paragraph in third person, then change to first, then rewrite to first... and it keeps going from there. If you want to see the mechanics played out before your eyes, check out her post!
No comments:
Post a Comment