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I'm Working On A Novel


McLeod

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I'm going to pass on some advice a teacher gave me in high school.

"Ahhh you're writing your biography Chris, you're a bit young but I suppose it's never too early to start", the teacher encouraged. Chris paused in thought for a moment, clearly puzzled by the teacher's statement. He hadn't been working on his biography, what lay before him were wondrous worlds of fiction. Worlds full of ghastly beasts, worlds in peril, and undoubtedly worlds of poor spelling and questionable punctuation. "Nah it's a story, I'm just making it up as I go" Chris corrected the enquiring fountain of knowledge whom made simple mistake.

The teacher reached for Chris' shoulder, wanting his full attention. Chris feeling the student-teacher physical boundaries collapsing all around him, turned over his shoulder to see the moderately paid, Government employed, surprisingly cheery teacher with a large smile on her face. Fear overcome him, he's fucked up, they must have meant to be writing a biography. The teacher broke her smile, the fountain of knowledge was about the burst it's banks. "If it's not a biography, why are you narrating in the first person? It's unnecessarily limiting from a storytelling perspective, you can only say what happened in presence of the narrator. What if you want to set up a villain? You'll have to change your entire storytelling structure mid-story, it doesn't work".

Chris' fear was realised, he had fucked up, he now had five pages to re-write.

That's very sound advice.

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I'm going to pass on some advice a teacher gave me in high school.

"Ahhh you're writing your biography Chris, you're a bit young but I suppose it's never too early to start", the teacher encouraged. Chris paused in thought for a moment, clearly puzzled by the teacher's statement. He hadn't been working on his biography, what lay before him were wondrous worlds of fiction. Worlds full of ghastly beasts, worlds in peril, and undoubtedly worlds of poor spelling and questionable punctuation. "Nah it's a story, I'm just making it up as I go" Chris corrected the enquiring fountain of knowledge whom made simple mistake.

The teacher reached for Chris' shoulder, wanting his full attention. Chris feeling the student-teacher physical boundaries collapsing all around him, turned over his shoulder to see the moderately paid, Government employed, surprisingly cheery teacher with a large smile on her face. Fear overcome him, he's fucked up, they must have meant to be writing a biography. The teacher broke her smile, the fountain of knowledge was about the burst it's banks. "If it's not a biography, why are you narrating in the first person? It's unnecessarily limiting from a storytelling perspective, you can only say what happened in presence of the narrator. What if you want to set up a villain? You'll have to change your entire storytelling structure mid-story, it doesn't work".

Chris' fear was realised, he had fucked up, he now had five pages to re-write.

 

What I said before I decided to change my mind, I will be rewriting the prologue and my draft of Chapter 1

Edited by McLeod
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