got to do my writing

[jennickels]

But do I stick with trying to force out another chapter of my novel (since I lost the wonderful high I was on in the hospital that allowed me to push out over 2000 words that I actually liked and enjoyed writing or do I write this fantasy/hospital hate fic that's been rolling in my head since this morning that might be good therapy for me?

ETA: Realized that the 1300 words I put in were actually this morning at like 1am! So I did my writing for today. I'm so out of it.

I think I'm going to do some therapy writing.

Question: Adult fic--first person/present tense or 3rd person/past?
Which would you rather read.

I'm so into 1st/present because of my YA writing I'm not sure I can switch back and forth. I started the therapy story and it turned out 1st/present but I'm pretty sure I've heard most adults complain about that tense saying it's the sign of an immature author and other not-so-nice things.

Maybe I should try the 3rd person. Something different.

Comments

[xfirefly9x.livejournal.com]

No preference on tense or POV. If it's well-written, that's the important part.

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

Before I started reading YA I hated 1st person. 1st/present was even worse to me. I just didn't "get" it. But after reading over a hundred YA books it's grown on me and now it's how I automatically think when I start to write and books that are 3rd/past or even 1st/past sound really weird to me and I'm always editing in my head to make them a different tense or something (I do that a lot).

[xfirefly9x.livejournal.com]

True.. 1st person can come across as not that great. So can third, though. I stand by what I said. If it's well-written, it shouldn't matter.

Go with whatever feels most natural for the story you're writing. No point in trying for one POV or another if it's not going to fit what you're working on.

Also, the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher is 1st person, if I recall correctly, and it is amazing. So.

[bluewillowtree.livejournal.com]

I don't have much of a preference between past and present, but I've always preferred the third-person. I particularly like stories from multiple points of view, and third-person gives writers the room to do that. Mary Higgins Clark, whom I've been reading since I was a kid, has lately started writing in the first-person with some chapters from other PoVs in the third-person. I really don't think it works; it's kind of distracting.

I don't hate first-person or anything, just prefer third.

[jennickels.livejournal.com]

The novel I'm working on is 1st/present from 2 POVs. I've read several YA books like that and it can work IF you make the voices distinct. Not sure if I will succeed but it's the way the book speaks to me.

I read one YA book (forget which one) that had the female POV be 1st person and the male POV be third person which was really weird and jarring at first. It started from the girl's POV and in the next chapter switched and 2 paragraphs into that one I had to stop and look back to see if I imagined 1st person in the 1st chapter, lol.

By the end of the book I didn't notice any more and it kind of worked. Very strange.

[bluewillowtree.livejournal.com]

I think 1st person from two different POVs could work. As far as I remember, the only books I've read like that have been YA in journal form, but I thought that worked very well. It let the reader to see the differences between how each character perceived themselves and how the others perceived them, which was cool.