pov query writing

Today I started to write one of the key scenes of my longfic. And I am dithering as to pov! Someone rahaeli, if I remember rightly) told me that she decides who is getting the most out of a scene, for whom it is a pivotal thing, and then she gives the pov to that person.

Now to my mind, yes, it is person B who is shocked by the revelations of this exchange and forced to face inner demons. So I started writing this in person B's pov but I was thinking that person B's pov is perhaps actually too raw. There is no chance at narrative distance. And maybe it would be more interesting, from a narrative and from the reader's point of view, to write this precisely in person A's pov. So that the reader has to intuit and guess person B's reaction. Sort of like cutting to a long shot in a film when an emotional secret (that the audience knows about already) is revealed and you don't see faces, just an arm lifted or the back of a head.

How do you decide what pov to use? Do you ever write a scene in both povs?

It doesn't help me that person B's pov in this fic is second-person singular, a notorious pov. And the 'you' itself makes this pov very close to the bone, almost claustrophobic. Which is why I'm thinking that in a particularly charged situation, I might have to leave this person's head.

( who persons A and B are, and what they are talking about in my Harry Potter opus )

post or fic?

So how do you stop yourself from reading and posting on LJ when what you wanted to be doing was writing fic? How do you do that??

Some nice words from my Oxford:

catalysis = doesn't change itself but aids a chemical change in other substances

cataplexy, cataplectic = sudden temporary paralysis due to fright

porraceous = leek-green

anacoluthon = lacking grammatical sequence (badfic!!!!)


He turned porraceous with cataplexy. The anacoluthon had totally catalysed him!

*

"Ana, can you hear me?"

"Don't call me Ana. You know my name is Anakin."

"I'll stop calling you Ana if you stop calling me Col."

"Oh, all right, Coluthon. And now, take off your robes."

*rustle, rustle*

"On second thoughts, put them back on again. You aliens are so... weird. I didn't, um, expect a porraceous..."

"It's not what colour it is, Ana, it's what you do with it!"

"And stop calling me Ana, I'm not a girl!"

"On my planet, you are. With that thing."

an ode to julad

While getting sidetracked from writing HP, I came upon julad's essay on her own journey through fanfic writing, and it is fantastic! I love it so much, and needed this so much at just this time. Julad is such a wonderful generous, humble and good-humoured person. The essay is absolutely fascinating and full of links and recs. Lovely.

Then I got buried in one of her linkrecs, tips from the screenwriters of Shrek and POTC, and that is fascinating, too.

So now I am hungry because, apparently, I forgot to eat. But tonight I just really didn't mind getting sidetracked, tonight I really love LJ.

Several things from Julad's essay that struck a chord with me: That two years not posting a fic is nothing if you can be around in fandom for decades. That it's just as important to read and analyse others' fics as it is to write one's own. That no fic is the nec plus ultra and final one but each one is part of a process and a blip on a learning curve. That it's good to be humble once in a while and remember that own angst is not centre of world, *g*.

Now I must go and eat a rye bread with camembert. Then to bed with Everything You Need In One Convenient Location which I've never read (Sentinel).