Cat’s Voice & Deciding What Point of View to Use (Spiritwalker Monday 34)

I once flippantly said that I would never ever write a novel in first person.

As a narrative style, first person is heavily and primarily dependent on voice. The narrator is right there, talking to the reader directly, and it has always seemed to me that there must be something distinctive in the voice which necessitates it being told in first person rather than third. That distinctiveness is there in addition to whatever unique circumstances within the narrative make it a story best told in first person.

I interrupt this discussion to give a quick and simplistic definition of different types of point of view:

  • First person I walked down the street. When I turned around, I saw a tiger walking behind me.
  • Second person: You walk down the street and when you turn, you see the tiger walking behind you.
  • Third person limited point of view: She walked down the street. When she turned to look behind, she saw a tiger following her.
  • Third omniscient. She walked down the street and a tiger was walking behind her. (she hasn’t turned to see it yet, but the narrator can see it)

In first person, the “I” is the narrator. In second, the narrator is speaking to the “you.” In third person limited there is a (usually hidden) narrator but the story is being told solely through the eyes of the point of view character, who can only see and observe what she would naturally see and observe. In third omniscient, the narrator can see all.

When I wrote the very first pieces of narrative that would eventually become the Spiritwalker Trilogy, I had trouble finding a voice that worked. My first attempts, all in third person, didn’t catch; they did not feel right.

I finally tried first person. The voice flowed far more smoothly in first than it had in third.

Here is the original first page of the novel. This is from the earliest draft, unrevised and (you’ll note) a different opening point than the novel has now. Also, notably, I changed Bee’s name from Bianca to Beatrice.

Bee and I sat in the window-seat with a blanket tucked over us to keep off the chill and the heavy curtains closed over our backs to hide us from anyone who might wander into the sitting room.  Our breath made steam flowers on the windowpanes.  Winter’s cold had come early; it was still a week away from year’s end.  Outside, snow glittered in the square and on the crowns of trees, although the streets had been swept clean.

“What did he say?” Bee whispered.  By the light of the street lamps lining the square outside, I could see her bat her eyelashes in that truly obnoxious way she had, the one that never failed to demolish the objections and reproaches of any adult caught in the beat of those dark wings.  “Cat,” she added breathlessly, “you have to tell me.”

“I swore I wouldn’t tell.”

She punched me on the shoulder.  Though she might look like a dainty little thing, Bee was a bruiser, really mean when she got roused.

“Ouch!”

“You earned it!  I’ve been in love with him forever – ”

“Two weeks!”

“Two months!”  She pressed a hand to her ample bosom, which was heaving under her tightly-laced, high-collared dress.  “I kept the truth of my desperate feelings to myself for fear – ”

“For fear we’d wonder why you’d so suddenly left off being in love with and destined to wed Maester Lukas of the lovely dark curly hair and turned your stalwart heart to the beauty of Maester David of the handsome black eyes.”

“Which you yourself admit are handsome.”

“Yes, he’s almost as pretty as you are, and well aware of it.  He’s the vainest boy I’ve ever met.”

“How can you say so?  The story of how his family escaped from the assault on Sawili by murderous ghouls is heart-breaking.”

“If it’s true.  Anyone can say what they like when there are no witnesses.“

“You just have no heart, Cat.  You’re heartless.”

“Thank the Lady!  The family is well-to-do, that’s certain.  A point in his favor.”

“You’re going to tell me what he said because otherwise I will pour a handful of salt into your breakfast porridge for the next month – ”

“Hush.”

I have good hearing.  I could hear footsteps coming from a mile away, or at least from the landing.  Bee froze with the hand to her chest and face raised – she was still glowering at me – posed unmoving like one of the living re-creations of the honored ancestors in a tableaux at the New Year’s Festival.

“Bianca?  Catherine?”  The voice of Servestra Artistina rose in volume as she entered the room behind us.  We had carefully turned down all the lamps to make it gloomy.  “Darlings?  It’s time to leave for the lecture.”

Although first person felt like a better fit for the story, I nevertheless I worried that first person wouldn’t be effective, that I couldn’t keep it up for an entire novel much less a trilogy, that the “voice” would become tired. I hadn’t yet learned that Cat, in fact, never gets tired of talking.

So I rewrote the scene in third person limited past tense because all my novels until then had been in third person limited past and thus it is the point of view I’m most comfortable with.

Cat and Bee sat in the window-seat with a blanket tucked over their skirts to keep off the chill and the heavy curtains closed over their backs to hide them from anyone who might wander into the sitting room.  Cat’s breath made steam flowers on the windowpanes.  Winter’s cold had come early; it was still a week away from year’s end.  Outside, snow glittered in the square and on the crowns of trees, although the streets had been swept clean.

“What did he say?” Bee whispered.

By the light of the street lamps lining the square outside, Cat could see her cousin flutter her eyelashes in that truly obnoxious way she had, the one that never failed to demolish the objections and reproaches of any adult caught in the beat of those dark wings.  “Cat,” she added breathlessly, “you have to tell me.”

“I swore I wouldn’t tell.”

Bee punched Cat on the shoulder.

“Ouch!”

Though she might look like a dainty little thing, Bee was a bruiser, really mean when she got roused.  “You earned it!  I’ve been in love with him forever – ”

“Two weeks!”

“Two months!  Ever since I had that dream of walking with him through the golden palace undersea – ”  She pressed a hand to her ample bosom, which was heaving under her tightly-laced, high-collared dress.  “ – I have kept the truth of my desperate feelings to myself for fear – ”

“For fear we’d wonder why you’d so suddenly left off being in love with and destined to wed Maester Lukas of the lovely dark hair and turned your stalwart heart to the beauty of Maester David of the handsome black eyes.”

“Which you yourself admit are handsome.”

“Yes, he’s prettier than you are, and well aware of it.  He’s the vainest boy I ever met.”

“How can you say so?  The story of how his family escaped from the assault on Sawili by murderous ghouls is heart-breaking.”

“If it’s true.  Anyone can say what they like when there are no witnesses.“

“You just have no heart, Cat.  You’re heartless.”

“Thank the Lady!  The family is well-to-do, that’s certain.  And his sisters are known to be very clever and maybe touched with a breath of magery .  All points in his favor.”

“You’re going to tell me what he said because otherwise I will pour a handful of salt into your breakfast porridge every morning for the next month – ”

“Hush.”

Cat had good hearing.  She could hear footsteps coming from a mile away, or at least from the landing.  Bee froze with the hand to her chest and face raised – still glowering at Cat – posed unmoving like one of the living re-creations of the honored ancestors in a tableaux at the New Year’s Festival.

“Bianca?  Catherine?”  The voice of Servestra Artistina rose in volume as she entered the dark room. “Darlings?  It’s time to leave for the lecture.”

Two things jumped out at me when I switched point of view.

First, third person had no “pop.” For me, it read flat.

Second, and more importantly, my attempt to write in third person limited felt and read (to me) as if I was instead writing in third person omniscient. I couldn’t get the voice into third person limited because, as I realized, the story had a narrator who was speaking, and that narrator is Cat. So I had to switch back to first person and trust that I would be able to fully “get” her voice right and hold on to it for three volumes.

In the end, writing a trilogy in Cat’s voice proved easy, especially as I discovered the “sound” of her voice. The rhythm of her speech is distinctive, she observes and speaks with a flavor all her own, and she is funny, often on purpose and sometimes inadvertently. That she loves to talk matters to the plot. Better yet, I enjoyed the challenge of filtering the story through her eyes and her words while leaving a little space for the reader to maybe see some things and some characters a little differently than Cat does.

The other thing I learned? Never say never.

Cold Steel: The Good News and the Bad News (Spiritwalker Monday 35)

The good news: Cold Steel is finished, revised, and in production at my publisher, Orbit Books.

The reality: Production is a process that takes many months.

The book gets copy edited for grammatical, punctuation, and consistency errors, and then I have to go over the copy edits as well, at which time I can make any last line editing changes. For instance, I think I am going to have to cut the word “cocky” from one sentence. [Copy editing is good news, though, since a good copy-editing job makes the book better.]

More good news: After copy editing, the book gets “typeset”–that is, converted from double spaced manuscript format into the format seen in books. The interior of a book is designed, just as the exterior cover design is. Font, kerning, spacing and other graphic design elements are just as important for ease of reading and a positive aesthetic look even when it is just text. A beautifully designed text is a pleasure to read.

Several proofeading passes are made through the typeset pages to eradicate as many typos and errors as possible (although some will always slip through). The text must be converted into various ebook formats. A cover is designed, tweaked, printed. Marketing, orders, and distribution also have to be dealt with in the lead up to printing and the actual arrival on the shelves. And this accounting is just the quick, simplistic version of all the things the publisher does. (I haven’t even touched on how my editor helps me make this the best book possible, because that part of the process has already happened.)

The other thing the publisher does is schedule books a year or even farther in advance. While there are exceptions of faster turn around times, a novel that is part of an ongoing series is often published (on the shelves) about a year after the manuscript is turned in (sometimes a year after it is turned in with all final revisions). Even if a publisher is trying to hold open a slot, if the book comes in too late, they will then have to move the book to a later open slot because they need the time for production, and sometimes an even later slot because they have already scheduled books that have been turned in.

That’s what happened with Cold Steel.

Let me explain: I started writing Cold Steel in late February or early March 2011. My wonderful brother in law (my sister’s husband) was at this time dying of brain cancer (he died in June 2011). His death hit hard, and combined with some other life stressors (nothing life threatening) to make writing the book slow going. Meanwhile writing the last volume in a trilogy is always challenging because it is important to tie everything together in a way that fits with what came before as well as fulfilling–as far as humanly possible–the promise of the opening. For instance, at one point I wrote 150 pages of material I ended up cutting (for branching down the wrong story tributary) as I tried to figure out what approach to take to the story.

Note: Cold Steel is 227,000 words in final draft. The first draft was more like 270,000 words, but I cut about 50,000 words before I even turned it in to my editor. That doesn’t take into account the aforementioned 150 pages I had cut while in the process of writing the first draft. Naturally, my editor wanted more cuts, and she wanted revisions as well. So, all in all, I expect I wrote about 325,000 total words (give or take ten thousand or more) for a final revised draft of 227K.

Meanwhile Orbit was holding open a January 2013 slot, but when I could not make the March 1, 2012, turn-in date they had to move the book. The next available slot — and remember that meanwhile they have other books by other authors being turned in and scheduled — was June 2013.

So that’s the bad news: Cold Steel will be published on June 25, 2013.

As it happened, I finished a draft in mid April, revised it and turned in a preliminary draft to my editor in May, got revision requests in June, and turned in a final draft in late August.

However, the EXCELLENT news remains that the novel is complete, is proceeding through production, and is (I can safely say) the very best book I could write (with the aid of the always crucial comments from my various beta readers and the firm hand of my evil dedicated and mild-mannered editor Devi Pillai).

Cold Steel completes the Spiritwalker trilogy.

The other excellent news is that I have the best, most perspicacious, and remarkably patient readers, and I appreciate each and every one of you.

Therefore, from now until publication, I hereby commit to making a post a week (in countdown format) specifically about the Spiritwalker books and/or the Spiritwalker universe that may include answers to your questions, my comments about the writing process or the characters or the world, biographical vignettes, and (I hope) a few short stories. It will be tagged “Spiritwalker Monday” and will, I hope, mostly appear on Mondays. I’m also going to try to continue with more regularity my long-promised semi-regular world building posts, but I’m trying to not be too ambitious here.

That makes this post Spiritwalker Monday 35 (next week will be 34, etc).

Again, my thanks for your patience.

If you have any questions or a subject you would like to see addressed over the next 7 months, please let me know here or via email or on Tumblr, Twitter, or Facebook.

I will post the final cover as soon as I have it. Now I have to get back to work on my next project.

Spiders on Mars, Sex Work in Igboland, & a Fashion TL of Vietnamese Clothing

Three really interesting links today;

Mysterious seasonal black flecks on Mars. If you haven’t read this, do. It’s fascinating, and the photos are stunning.

 

Sex work in pre colonial Nigeria (Igboland):

Sex work as we know it today, in modern Africa, is a vestige of colonialism. As Luise White, who wrote about sex work in colonial Nairobi put it “sex work as a full-time form of labour was invented during the colonial period”. This is not to say that there was no sex work in the pre-colonial period, only that it was entirely different from how we know it today.

Sex work existed in Africa in the pre-colonial era. Back in the day, the female sex worker worked out of the house she was born in. She was a single woman, a woman who was never going to marry, and her clients were usually men who wanted to have affairs (as in most communities, and all but a few situations, it was taboo for a man to have sex with a married woman).

 

Finally, this illustrated time line of Vietnamese Clothing (women’s).

She’s also done Hats and Hair Fashion History of Vietnam.

Which reminds me I need to collate my photo-essay Hairstyles of Angkor Wat from my trip of oh so long ago.

If anyone has links/references to historical clothing timelines and/or just good links for historical clothing, please feel free to share. I can really never get enough illustrations of clothing in an historical perspective and just in a general sense.