Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

80 k words into what will probably turn out to be a 120k book, I've decided to change from third-person to first person. Oh, just a couple of global find-and-replace, a bit of cleanup.... Four hours later, I'm half way through a very rough first go at cleaning up. All those she's and her's, to be changed if they refer to the main character. And changing the character's name to "I" in a global change means every other character refers to her as "I."
Also, you can say "said George," but if you say "said I" you sound like the ancient mariner or someone.
Worth doing, I think, but not a project to be undertaken lightly!

I did this same thing, twice now. The first time I actually rewrote everything, but this time around I'm changing what I've already got from first to third. As I read back, I'm still finding the stray I, me, and mys, like change in the sofa.

Yeah, I'm not sure if I'd have undertaken the process if I'd known how painful it was. Every single "they" has to be looked at to see if it ought to be a "we," and a lot of the "I said"s have to come out. In the conversion I've got 2200 "I"s, that all need examination. It's probably good, makes me take a fresh look at all the prose, but it'll take the best part of a week, I think.

Richard wrote: " It's probably good, makes me take a fresh look at all the prose, but it'll take the best part of a week, I think. "

I can imagine it will. I have never changed 3d-person to 1st, but I have changed 1st-person to 3rd. The pronouns were bad enough, but the real issue was passages that I thought sounded fine in 1st-person but didn't work nearly as well in 3rd-person.

Definitely not something to be undertaken lightly! I admire your perseverance.

Yeah, the subtle stuff is hard. Writing in 3rd-person, even if you're concentrated on the main character, you tend to be seeing her from the outside. It's going to be a wee while before I actually finish this story.

I have been thinking there is a pretty good connection between reading and using some of the latest virtual reality headsets.

If there is an abrupt change in the point of view of either one you can lose the users link to the material.

For multiple points of view is it possible that misunderstood wording could actually be causing a coordination malfunction, an actual physical change? What would a grammatical seat belt look like, besides the easy way out of having only one continuous point of view?

There's also a well-known phenomenon in the video-game world called VR sickness, resulting from physical motion ill-matched to visual motion. Perhaps we can write sickening books, too?

I changed from third to first in my first novel and it made a world of difference in my investment with the story. Writing first person requires you to really express what the main character is feeling and seeing. The only place I found it to be more difficult was in fleshing out my villains. Hard to do exposition on other characters if the first person protagonist can't know all the answers yet.

I was already writing in what I think is called "close third," where the narrator only tells the reader things that the proponent knows. So that aspect didn't need a lot of change. Descriptions of her physical movements, and er... things of an intimate nature... they'll need some revision.

Yeah, third pov limited is the closest one to first pov as the character only can talk about what they know and see themselves. It should make it easier to change. Although, it's still always tricky to do and will need many pair of eyes to double check. Good luck.

Not being insectoid in nature, I only have one pair. I guess I'll just have to use them several times :-)

LOL or maybe use a few beta readers.. you'll hit a few birds with one stone. :P

This is probably a prime example of where hearing the book read will help in editing better than reading it yourself.

I haven't done anything so drastic. I did have a very hard time writing/editing and old book where some of the characters were sentient robots which did not have genders. These characters in narration were always "it" (when not referred to by name) but you have no idea how hard that is to do that until you try it. "He" was always creeping into the narration.

Do sentient robots speak? What voice do they have? I'd be inclined to refer to them as per the sound of their voice, but yeah, it must be hard to do that. I've read a book recently where there is a kind of alien without gender and the author referred to them as It and it always felt funny to me (although I understood her reasons of course).

Micah wrote: "This is probably a prime example of where hearing the book read will help in editing better than reading it yourself.

I haven't done anything so drastic. I did have a very hard time writing/editin..."

Exactly. I trust my final edits to my kindle... Somewhat. I've actually found that while the pacing is more natural on my Fire, she tends to skip words and adds in some odd noise at times. The robotic drone on my old 3rd gen keyboard is cleaner.

I'm confused here. Kindle has a text-to-speech feature? I was unaware. I should see if the PC version has one.

Apparently, it's only on the Kindle Fire HD. That's a shame.

It would be interesting if there was a program to convert a book to an audio file, perhaps with some manual clean-up features.

Richard wrote: "I'm confused here. Kindle has a text-to-speech feature? I was unaware. I should see if the PC version has one...

...It would be interesting if there was a program to convert a book to an audio file, perhaps with some manual clean-up features."

You can, of course, simply start the book reader playing and record the output.

The kindle voice is pretty good! Like Christina, I use it to help proofread my work, but it occasionally drops words, or mispronounces them.

The voice inflexions and tone are quite the most natural that I have heard, but I wouldn't use it to male an audio book. It remains unmistakably a robot.

Likewise, I wouldn't trust Google translate to convert my book to French.

If you can get your hands on a 3rd gen kindle, the ine with the keyboard, they have text to speech as well. Seeing as mine os now five yeatsvold and works like a champ, a cheap used one might be possible.

I've tried rewriting my blurb (I know, not supposed to do that until you've finished the book, but guidelines Shmidelines) using character voice instead of my own. I find it very easy to write, and it seems interesting. Is there any mileage on the idea of writing blurbs in a fictional voice? Will the sky fall on my head?

_____________________________________________________
My name is Corinne Hansen, and I'm an engineer. If you live on Earth, you think that's a desk job, designing things with computers for a robot to build, a thousand miles away. But I live in space. We do design things, but then we build them and when they break, we fix them. The things we make aren't meant to be pretty, or to make money. If I make something wrong, a pipe or a valve, a ship or a station, it can kill me. Kill everyone I love. So I'm careful. But if I make everything right, and we're lucky, we travel to a new place nobody has ever been before. And we make a new life together. We're going to live on the moons of Mars. Our kids will go to the asteroid belt. Humanity will go to the stars.

This is the story of the first crewed ship to mine an asteroid. If you live in space or on the Moon, you know the story already, but I'll tell how it felt for me, a new graduate in 2035, giving up a comfortable business on the Moon to go out on a ship with eighty people I'd never met. Most of those people, the bosses at least, were from Earth, had never lived in space. We did not always agree on how things should be done, and it was an open question whether I would even get to go. Our motto, then as now, is "if you can't fix it, don't take it." Just about everything we did take, did break, from design faults, wear and tear, or later from enemy action. This is the story of how we fixed it.

I think you could use more info about the story and less about the person. Or make the info about Corinne more interesting. The last line might sound more exciting if it said and from enemy action, instead of or later from.

Richard wrote: "I've tried rewriting my blurb (I know, not supposed to do that until you've finished the book, but guidelines Shmidelines) using character voice instead of my own. I find it very easy to write, and..."

If you are writing a 1st-person narrative, I think writing the blurb in the character's voice is a very good idea. I think the blurb should always reflect the voice in the story, as much as possible.

Thanks, Owen. It certainly felt natural to write. I take your point, Robert, about making it a bit more plot-focused. My writing is mostly about the situation and the characters, and less concerned with plot, but there is some in there to talk about!

I agree with Robert. Your blurb looks good but it also leaves me with a feel of documentary rather than a story. Maybe if you would replace some of the details with who the enemies are, it would make it more enthralling. Aside from that, I love the voice.

Not exactly the same, but I changed all the past tenses for one character's POV into the present tense for one book (Race the Red Horizon, excuse the plug).
It was a nightmare to do, and my global replace - which I reckoned I had thought through - threw up all kinds of things I hadn't considered.
In my view, it was worth it. It gave that character's perspective an immediacy which fitted with who/what he is (a Pteronaut, since you ask).
But I would've saved myself some hassle if I'd thought of it to start with...

Yes, M, I thought I knew all the issues with global replace, having used it in my code for ages. But using it on fiction opens up a whole new raft of issues. My 'Corinne' to 'I' changes turned up more exceptions than I thought possible.