This is so great, Toby. I have downloaded it! I'm currently writing in third person present tense. It takes a lot of editing for me, to get enough distance and as I mentioned before, so the characters are not being moved about like in some polly pocket game etc. Second to that, I've been reading novels where third person, present with occasional looking back, is done successfully. I don't know. present, looks back and then present POV has its challenges. I wonder if it works better to look back when in first person. I'll keep looking for more to read where the writer has done well with that. It must be more common than I think, how else to gather background than make a POV/ narrative shift to past tense? And yet how clunky it can feel. How not to sound as if "and now I'm telling you these details to explain ... " And to sustain a consistent sense of what the voice and tone are. Also I may be hung up about it because I once heard a writing tip that said, don't go backwards and forwards more than once, it can make the reader feel 'seasick.' And yet that is how many stories are told, I think?
A Writer's Diary: Come for the POV, stay for the faberge eggs and ghost-tickling.
Thank you so much for this! It’s excellent
This is so great, Toby. I have downloaded it! I'm currently writing in third person present tense. It takes a lot of editing for me, to get enough distance and as I mentioned before, so the characters are not being moved about like in some polly pocket game etc. Second to that, I've been reading novels where third person, present with occasional looking back, is done successfully. I don't know. present, looks back and then present POV has its challenges. I wonder if it works better to look back when in first person. I'll keep looking for more to read where the writer has done well with that. It must be more common than I think, how else to gather background than make a POV/ narrative shift to past tense? And yet how clunky it can feel. How not to sound as if "and now I'm telling you these details to explain ... " And to sustain a consistent sense of what the voice and tone are. Also I may be hung up about it because I once heard a writing tip that said, don't go backwards and forwards more than once, it can make the reader feel 'seasick.' And yet that is how many stories are told, I think?