Welcome to Writers Talkback. If you are a new user, your account will have to be approved manually to prevent spam. Please bear with us in the meantime
A comment on another thread that I am busy changing the current WIP from third to first, having already changed it from first to third, prompted PBW to say she had done the same thing during her rewrites. I wondered if anyone else has done this, and coped with the consequent problems?
The biggest problem, apart from missing the occasional him or he or whatever, is the tenses! Could has to become can for the most part but not all the time, context is everything.
Anyone else had this headache, and if so, how did you deal with it, apart from line by line, word by word ...
Comments
Unfortunately I do it word by word! :D I think the hardest thing I found is that I have to make my protaganist work harder for the pay-offs! He has to find a piece of information, overhear information, or trick a piece of information out of someone. I can't show something happening off camera as it were.
His wife is going to be in a car accident, but he isn't at the scene. I'm still pondering how I'm going to do this . . .
Hopefully that means it's a better book. :D
I haven't decided which version to use yet...but it helped give my word count a boost! :)
Not sure I understand you about the tenses, Dorothy.
Looks like it stays at line by line, word by word, then. I am 37 pages out of 49 done, so far. He had better not change his mind again ... or the book is going to be dumped!!!!!
Anyone else had this headache, and if so, how did you deal with it, apart from line by line, word by word ...[/quote]
Answer to Point One: yes the tenses are a huge problem and even with my training as an English teacher I struggle.
Answer to Point Two: how to deal with it? As you say, line by line, word by word...in my experience there is no other way.
I had a similar scenario. I had the death of a major character by RTA, and she had been in first person, - no sorry I changed the preceding chapter from first POV to third to pull back the psychic distance before she died, but of course she couldn't describe her own death retrospectively (and I wasn't writing The Lovely Bones), (nor was it right for the author to do it) so I reported it as a witness statement (or you could have a reporter writing the report up for the local rag, or you could have another character read it out to the husband etc). Anyway that's how I did it, if it's any help.
Thanks for comments.
I started with a global change but it was more bother than it was worth - so many things to pick up and correct. Not just tenses but all kinds of other stuff too that didn't sound right (sorry, can't remember exactly what). I think painstakiingly, word by word is the only way to do it, though searches can help.
Good luck, Dorothy.
I do agree that you've got to go through it line by line as just changing 'he' for 'I' won't always be enough. There might well be whole scenes that have to be re-written because what works perfectly well in 3rd might not in 1st and vice versa.
Dorothy, I don't understand this one. Surely 'he was sure' will become 'I was sure'?
I know what you mean about it being more complicated than switching he to I and him to me, but I had to read right through the novel on screen when changing from 3rd to 1st. It was a useful reminder of everything. I'm not sure I understand the tenses problem that Red sees, either. For me it was past tense throughout, with straight tense for tense changes whenever it was a future, conditional, etc.
My current re-write is a more far-reaching affair. My POV character is on every page and has three companions with him from chapter 6 to chapter 26. Two of them must now go, and the remaining one and my protagonist are to undergo character changes, bringing up the romantic will-they-won't-they issue. I'm also making more of the intriguing moments, but the biggest change throughout will be a serious increase in the motivation-causality trail of clues and decisions. All this means a lot has to go, to be replaced by improved writing. Virtually the whole dialogue in the book will be new. Probably the work of two months.
Anyone know a quick way? ;)
Perhaps I can elaborate. Some writers attempt a whole novel in first person, but are sometimes tripped up by the verb tenses. With first person point of view, you can have first person present tense or first person past tense. Most first person stories are past tense. This means the narrator looks back and tells his or her story, however they have a tendency to mix both of these in the narrative, resulting in a bit of a car crash. Some well known authors do this a lot and it's very easy to slip up. That's what I mean about problems with tenses.
PM, there is no quick way ...
I really wanted this book done by Christmas and here we are, only half way through ... wanted it done because I am aware of a) the unfinished third book for 2012 and b) the ghost writing work coming.
I thought most of your work was ghost writing, Dorothy :)