Now I’ve had some time to stew on the question of ‘tense’ and its relation to narrative voice, I’ve come to an unexpected conclusion: ‘Tense’ isn’t a part of narrative voice, unless you deliberately mess with it.’ I was struck by the number of books I’ve read recently in which the tense changes. ‘The Goldfinch’,Continue reading “A Question of Tense – part 2”
Tag Archives: debate
A Question of Tense
OK, now getting close to the end of Week One of the book edit. I’ve hit all the 6 a.m. mornings, so feeling quite proud of myself. However, the problem of voice and style, and in particular tense have been troubling me much. I have four narrators and they refuse to stick to one timeContinue reading “A Question of Tense”
What Decides Genre – Part Two
So, following on from my previous post of a week or so back ( https://forgedtruth.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/what-decides-literary-genre/), last night I heard someone reading a piece of prose that sounded to me exactly like poetry. In my defence, the reader hadn’t tried to label the piece herself, so I felt free to rush in and make a judgement (itContinue reading “What Decides Genre – Part Two”
What Decides Literary Genre?
This week, I heard someone reading a poem that sounded to me exactly like prose. Now, I’ve always been bad at understanding or passing any meaningful comment on poetry (it’s my blind spot) but the more I listened the more I realised I was responding to the poem exactly as if it were a shortContinue reading “What Decides Literary Genre?”
What to Write Next – the Author’s dilemma
So here I am, sitting at a desk, wondering in which direction I should let my mind wander. Here’s my problem: I recently finished a first draft; it’s out there sloshing from slush pile to slush pile, no doubt so wet by now that the ink has smudged and it’s hard to read the words.Continue reading “What to Write Next – the Author’s dilemma”
