lyorn: (Default)
lyorn ([personal profile] lyorn) wrote2012-01-15 07:56 pm
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Writing meme, day 3

3. Explain your PoV and Style of writing used

Diary style: First person, mostly past tense but mixing in present, future and stream of consciousness depending on the narrator's writing situation, her mental state and the stylistic choices I make her make. (Does that make sense?)

Why? Because I always wrote this story arc that way. When I started writing it, I picked up a sheet of old code listing that had come from a matrix printer, and wrote on the backside: "1988. Terrania! What a city!" and then proceeded to create the character of Solveig, her station in life, her history, and they way she fitted into canon in her own words: rambling, associative, summarising major plot points and dramatising utterly irrelevant ones, as one might do in one's diary when attempting to gain a better idea of who one has become while one wasn't looking.

The character developed in this format, and so did the world details, and finally the story.

Another reason to do it that way is the same reason why the titles of the stories are years. In Perry Rhodan canon, knowing "when" is as important as it is in Babylon 5. The world of the, e.g. "Masters of the Island" cycle is different, noticably different in every paragraph than the world of the "Third Power" cycle. Years matter. Time matters. And I had planned from the very beginning to have stories where I would follow canon closely, day by day, to create a shift away from the perspective of the canon characters into that of a bridge character who lives in canon but might be closer in background and outlook to the reader (or, in this case, writer) than the canon characters are. (I do this in "2040". And the best way to organize a fic like that, and to have the narrator tell the story without knowing how it will all end, is a diary.

Also, a diary is a useful style for character exploration. I have fun with Solveig's writing style as much as with her limitations of perspective. I've gone so far, back in the days of handwriting, to chose the right writing utensil and the right handwriting for her, and the first layouts for her stories on my webpage were an eye-watering old computer terminal green-on-black fixed width font. (If you followed one of the above links, you'll have seen it. I had an even "better" one, with frames which showed the terminal the text apperared on. Pity I lost it when my old laptop died.)

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