Sunday, July 3, 2011

Order and Perspective

I began writing the next draft of the story I've been working on forever. One of the biggest issues I was having with it was what order to put the chapters in. For the longest time, the story was out of sequence, but it seemed to make my story choppy. I told myself that the readers didn't need to know everything and they'd be able to figure out the connections. But it left my story with a lot of holes. So early last week, I decided to just put the darn thing in chronological order and fill in the gaps. This means (probably) that the books won't have a solid beginning (well, the first one will), middle and end; rather, it will be more saga-like. If I change my mind after I finish writing it this way and want to make it out-of-sequence again, at least the sequences will be more solid.
Another reason why I was going to do the story out-of-sequence is that each chapter is from a different character's perspective. I was planning on having each book only be from a couple character perspectives at a time, so the readers wouldn't get overwhelmed (yes, I was a fan of "Lost"). But now that I intend to do the story in chronological order, I had to decide whether to keep the chapters I'd already written in their original perspectives, or rewrite many of them into a single perspective. I decided on the former, as there are some parts of the story I simply wouldn't be able to tell, otherwise. So I'll just have to remember that people are smart, and write well enough so that my story isn't confusing.  

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