Blog Post #15

One down for today, five more to go!

The next exercise is on tenses and perspectives. It asks you to write a short scene in first person, third person, present tense, and past tense.

I cheated a little bit, in that I only wrote two scenes - first person and present tense, and third person and past tense. I plan to experiment with third person and present tense during NaNoWriMo too, however - if it doesn't work I'll just edit it out.

I have a confession to make about this exercise: I actually hate first person. That probably makes me a bit biased, but at least I gave it a go, right?

I think my hatred of first person comes from years of reading (and occasionally writing) fanfiction, where first person is frowned upon. I never quite figured out why this was the case, but the prejudice remains. Oddly enough, I don't have this prejudice when reading fiction - in fact, I quite like it, and find it quite easy to read. However, I've never really written anything in first person.

As a result, I'm not as good at first person as I am at third person. This meant the scene I wrote in first person wasn't as strong as the scene I wrote in third person. However, this just means I need more practice. I did enjoy the present tense part of the first person scene, however, so I'm definitely going to work more with that.

I also rewrote the same scene both times, which meant the scene I wrote second (the third person scene) was better simply because I was essentially re-writing the scene.

I'm actually really torn between which perspective and tense to use. I'm leaning towards third, simply because I like using people's name in the narrative, but first person may actually be easier for NaNoWriMo, because I find it quicker to write in (although I do also find it more casual, which could be a downside in a novel with a serious premise). It'll be a nightmare to rewrite it all if I decide to change perspectives halfway through, though.

I guess I'll make up my mind in five hours and three minutes when NaNoWriMo kicks off. Argh!