Scott Bailey<\/b><\/a> mentioned in the comments on his blog post about outlining, it’s not so much because I’m trying to keep it secret as that I don’t feel comfortable jinxing it before I have a draft. So, for now, it’s still the secret novel.<\/p>\nThat said, I’ll still discuss a problem in general terms, if I may. That’s choosing a character who can see deeply.<\/p>\n
I have several characters already chosen for me, as it were, by the nature of the novel. I know who my four main pov characters must be, at least in broad strokes. I still have to make sure, however, that the personality of these characters is not only sympathetic enough to justify being a protagonist, but profound enough to have insights into their own situations.<\/p>\n
This is tricky.<\/p>\n
I don’t want the characters to be a mere mouthpiece for me the author. On the other hand, there are certain philosophical observations I would like my characters to be in a position to explore. I have to make certain I don’t make them all dingbats. At the same time, their pov is going to be necessarily limited by where they are and what they are allowed to see, so I mustn’t give in to the temptation to make them all knowing, either.<\/p>\n
Unless I bypass my characters and write in omniscient.<\/p>\n
I didn’t realize how tempting that would be.<\/p>\n
Or… here is a strange idea. I could introduce an omniscient narrator who is actually revealed to be a character at the end of the book. This voice over could philosophize along the way.<\/p>\n
Hm. Probably I should just avoid the temptation to philosophize altogether.<\/p>\n
Is it important to you to have a character who sees deeply, who is intelligent and observant, or do you prefer to work with “naive” characters, who, while themselves innocent of what is really going on around them, allow the reader to see past them, into the real situatoin?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I really want to reveal the nature of my secret novel, before I make it so mysterious that it becomes a let down when I finally do reveal it. That said, I’m not ready to talk details yet. As Scott Bailey mentioned in the comments on his blog post about outlining, it’s not so much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[454],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-secret-novel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}