I was having a lot of fun writing from the POV of a secondary character, and then I figured out that the novel stops when it's in her POV. Old me, who had to get everything right before moving on, would have freaked, but now I realize I was using those sections to figure out logistics and motifs and that I can go back and incorporate elements in the revision. It's actually making me more eager to get through the first draft.
I LOVE this! There was a method to your madness. In a similar vein, my early drafts often have a villain monologue scene or a police interview scene toward the end where the killer's explaining what they did and why and how. That heavy-handed scene inevitably got cut, but I realized that was me working out the whodunnit so I could more skillfully incorporate it in later drafts!
Oh, how I wish I lived near a beautiful cemetery... Wait, that sounded creepy. But despite being nice places to take a walk, cemeteries are great for finding character names!
There are so many good bits of advice in this piece Andrea. I took a few screenshots of your advice, so I can make them screensavers. I can relate to procrastinating. I’ve written the entire dual POV thing and have been told to switch an entire character’s POV from 1st to 3rd close. Ugh. I keep drifting into omniscient. I just can’t seem to get the mindset right to cling to that one character and silence The chatty, opinionated, smarty-pants narrator floating in the background - I can’t stop offering their input. But I’m going to use your advice, yes, I do the 20 minute thing too-I also do it with my kids- just do it for 20 minutes, always turns into much longer and much more productive! Keep writing.
I was having a lot of fun writing from the POV of a secondary character, and then I figured out that the novel stops when it's in her POV. Old me, who had to get everything right before moving on, would have freaked, but now I realize I was using those sections to figure out logistics and motifs and that I can go back and incorporate elements in the revision. It's actually making me more eager to get through the first draft.
I LOVE this! There was a method to your madness. In a similar vein, my early drafts often have a villain monologue scene or a police interview scene toward the end where the killer's explaining what they did and why and how. That heavy-handed scene inevitably got cut, but I realized that was me working out the whodunnit so I could more skillfully incorporate it in later drafts!
Oh, how I wish I lived near a beautiful cemetery... Wait, that sounded creepy. But despite being nice places to take a walk, cemeteries are great for finding character names!
There are so many good bits of advice in this piece Andrea. I took a few screenshots of your advice, so I can make them screensavers. I can relate to procrastinating. I’ve written the entire dual POV thing and have been told to switch an entire character’s POV from 1st to 3rd close. Ugh. I keep drifting into omniscient. I just can’t seem to get the mindset right to cling to that one character and silence The chatty, opinionated, smarty-pants narrator floating in the background - I can’t stop offering their input. But I’m going to use your advice, yes, I do the 20 minute thing too-I also do it with my kids- just do it for 20 minutes, always turns into much longer and much more productive! Keep writing.