Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Don't you hate it when...?

Sometimes a book takes over and bitch-slaps you and makes you do it the book's way.

Baptism for the Dead has always wanted to be in present tense. I tried to write it in past tense since that tends to be easier to sell, but the book is not giving any ground. When I allow myself a little deviation and go with present for a few paragraphs or a couple of chapters, some mighty delicious prose and a really fascinating plot just come ripping right out of me. When I rein it in and go back to past tense, I feel like I'm beating my head against a wall that has a whole bunch of outy-facey spikes on it.

I am just about to hit 20,000 words. I've been working on this book since May. I should be closer to 60,000 words by now. I think if I keep it in present, my productivity will increase dramatically.

Present tense it is. You got it, boss.

2 comments:

  1. I kind of like it when stuff like that happens...it's aggravating to fight it and usually a pain to revise enough to accommodate it, but it usually means SOMETHING about the story is good and strong. I worry when a story *doesn't* have something that pulls me that hard in one direction or another.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're right.

    And I'll only need to rewrite about 16,000 words of past tense...not too bad. Actually, a good chunk of that is the Adam stuff, which should stay in past tense.

    I guess I'll need to remove the parts where it seems like Lauren is writing in a journal or writing to a friend, though. Those should be in present and it'd be weird to imply that she is "presently" writing in a journal but writing in present tense.

    This is getting confusing!

    ReplyDelete