A defiant update: I am 7,650 words into writing the second book in my crime series as I await fresh edits on the first book. It’s going well after a little convo with one of my weapons experts. It’s a love story, a suspense story, a funny story and a tragic story that’s all told in the second-person, present tense. Yes, yes, I know. That’s usually only reserved for experimental fiction.
Tonight as I went for my story-thinking walk and listened to my Kindle babble at me in that text-to-speech voice best used for listening to A Brief History of Time (geek joke), I just heard advice that, again, said, “DON’T DO THAT!” And so, of course I am compelled to do it. I do not wear a collar and I am on no one’s leash. What’s the point of freedom if you don’t air it out and let it run?
The one piece of writing advice that trumps all others is, “If it works, it works.” This works.
Filed under: publishing, indie, point of view, POV, present tense, second-person, writing
It’s such a common voice in human exchange. I will be interested to see an entire novel in it and see what it brings to the story. We’re each hear to attend to our own life – the only life we really can. Rules are for the fearful.
Great idea! And a real challenge! I’ve seen Jennifer Egan pull it off very nicely in her Goon Squad but it wasn’t the whole novel, just one chapter. It really did work but I don’t know whether a whole novel would. It will be interesting to see whether you can pull it off – takes guts to try, bravo!
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