Well… It Could Have Been Worse.

In my last post, Adding Flesh to Bone , I talked about two of the storylines I have been working on mapping and fleshing out the bare bones of the skeleton of the outlines I have. I’ve been working on one of the stories, a love story based on a school trip to Rome by a group of college film majors. It’s also working in an over-arching nod to the film Roman Holiday.

Matthew is the first voice you hear in the story in the airport as he’s talking into his camera for a video diary he keeps. He first came to me in third person point of view and I’ve put down about 3000 words of his story so far.

I wanted to get his story started, see how it was flowing, before more fully fleshing out the arc of the story and imagine my surprise when the other character who is going to be a main voice, Jonah, started going off in first person point of view.

Really boys? You couldn’t have maybe discussed this before you started talking in my brain?

Jonah has pretty much insisted the second half of the story is told by him. He’s willing to give the first half to Matthew’s voice, but once Matthew reaches his hand out to meet Jonah’s, he’s put a line there and at this point I have no choice but to let him speak.

Now I have to go back an rewrite 3000 words in first person for Matthew. It could have been worse though. I could have gotten to that hand-off point and realized I’d written an entire half of a story in the wrong point of view. That would have sucked.

In a somewhat related note, I was watching Oprah’s Master Class on Friday and pulled up a recorded one that I had on my satellite box on Maya Angelou. I was very much captured by how she sees words as both a person and a writer. I think maybe the universe was using this program to soften the blow of the change in POV in my story.

Here is what she said about words. For a woman who is over 80 and still incredibly sharp and eloquent, all I can say is that I want to be like that when I grow up.

“Words are things, I’m convinced.

You must be careful of the words you use or the words that you allow to be used in your house.

Words are things, you must be careful. Careful about calling people out of their names. Using racial pejoritives and sexual pejoritives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that.

Someday we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls, they get in your wallpaper, they get in your rugs, in your upholstery, in your clothes and finally into you.”

– Maya Angelou