After my indecisions of yesterday I’ve managed to choose some goals for Merrilee’s Creativity Workshop. I need to select three goals and each one will be central to a group of short stories. I would love to hear your views on the ones I've chosen.
My first is setting:
I usually set my stories in the present day or in one case in the future and yet I have a history degree and used to teach history so I’m going to try placing my first group of stories into a historical setting. I don’t often read historical novels and I know a lot of you do so what do you think makes a really good historical novel?
My second is point of view:
I love writing first person present tense and have never written from the third person omniscient point of view. (I double-checked the meaning and it’s when you look down on your characters as if you’re a cloud floating above them.) This is what I will be trying to do with my second group of stories. Before I became a writer I was often unaware of the point of view used in a novel. Are you aware of which point of view your favourite novels are written in and does it make a difference to your enjoyment of them? Which do you prefer, first person, third person or omniscient?
My third is the Main Character:
I have an admission to make. I quite often don’t like my main characters. I rather suspect they’re based on my view of me and that this is linked with my preference for writing in the first person. I much prefer and give the best lines to their friends. I am going to work on creating strong main characters who aren’t totally lovely because that would be ‘gooey-yuk’ but I want to create main characters who the reader cares about. What sort of Main characters are heart-stoppers for you?
And now all I'll have to do is to write the stories.
