Weirdly enough

[anthimeria]

Worked on The Novel today.  It's been a while.  I keep thinking it's finished and then find new things to tweak.

However, this new thing did not come from me!  It came from a friend.  Yup, someone else finally read the whole dang thing!  I've sent the manuscript to seven people, and one dropped out for life reasons (justified!), three have gotten a few chapters in and stalled for reasons unrelated to the manuscript itself, and three I never heard back from about it at all.*  What's a girl gotta do to get a decent editor?

She's not a fellow writer, so she didn't have writerly suggestions, but she did give me at least one bit to revise, which I spent the day implementing.

Now that the rd of Skywatch is finished, I'm off on another project: werewolf book!  This one's the first adult fiction I've attempted (adult as opposed to YA, get your head out of the gutter).  It's urban fantasy with werewolves.  Lots of werewolves.  Almost exclusively werewolves.  I'm calling it Sanctuary (or at least, that's the working title or series name or something).  If you start getting it and Skywatch confused, remember Sanctuary=werewolves, Skywatch=gliders.

Sanctuary seems to be shaping up to be brain fluff with seriousness thrown in, a sort of tonal cross between Skywatch and The Novel (Skywatch is a little bit brain fluff, The Novel is social commentary with a unicorn).  I've been working on the characters, since this is going to be an ensemble book.  I have a good idea about the plot, but I'm doing my best not to repeat mistakes I made in plotting The Novel that came back to bite me in the editing process.

Also, the POV is driving me nuts.  There's a niggling hint that it wants to be written in first person.  I've read a lot of good books lately written in first person (Feed!), and a lot of urban fantasy seems to be written in first person, as well (Kitty Norville, Mercy Thompson, Anita Blake, Jo Walker).  I'm resistant because 1) I don't actually like writing in first person, 2) I don't yet know my main character well enough to be sure I want to live that deep in her head,  and 3) it's an ensemble book!  For as much as I love Buffy, I don't know that I want to write an ensemble book in first person.  It seems condescending to the other characters.


*If you did the math there, you noticed that I didn't leave one of the seven to be the friend who read it.  That's 'cause I didn't send her the manuscript--she got it from one of the seven I had sent it to.  The world is weird.

Comments

[elenagleason.com]

Urban fantasy does tend to be first person. I hadn't considered it, but now I'm having a hard time imagining an urban fantasy in third omniscient. I kind of dislike third omniscient--I always feel very distant from the main characters when the book can just swan off to bug someone else for a while. So I would vote for first person. But that's just me and my reading/writing quirks.

[anthimeria]

Well, I wouldn't be writing it in third omniscient (though I can see where my post would've led to that conclusion). I dislike the distance of third omniscient as well. I'd write it in third limited, with the occasional "swan" to another character if/when I need their POV, but I'd stick mostly with my main character.

I'm not sure I can think of ANY examples of third in urban fantasy, and is that just random or does it have something to do with the genre? Or something else? I dunno--what are your thoughts on third limited versus first for urban fantasy?