Thank you, first of all, for all the excellent work you’ve done in organizing this exchange, and also for encouraging me not to change my decision to participate this time, after I had enjoyed reading and commenting last year and wished that I’d dared to face a prompt and a deadline, for once. The fic and art posted so far as well as the overall atmosphere have even exceeded my expectations. Yes, exceeded at least the hopes I had for my contribution.
In the end I didn’t need commiserating, whereas I have to admit that ishonn held my hand, when I doubted I could write anything that would fit in. I did succeed in building up another piece of my Remus’s story, and the reception by readers (many of whom have most probably not seen other parts of my fanfic) in this community has been overwhelming.
It’s lovely that you, too, think I’ve somehow succeeded here. Thank you for reading and for posting such a positive comment.
However, I can’t help being a bit sad to hear that you felt like an intruder. While I don’t like talking about the writer’s intentions, I can say that I’ve hoped that my writing would take the readers to share the viewpoint character’s experience – that it would build up such an illusion of truly sharing his experience that the reader would not see with her (an outsider’s) eyes. I’ve hoped the reader would no longer look in but be right there inside the first-person narrator. Perhaps some readers sense my attempts and find them too uncomfortable (perhaps especially when the viewpoint character is experiencing something uncomfortable and a lot worse than that – something painful).
I suppose my way of using the present tense is far from the cinematic writing you describe in your journal. It would be interesting to know what you see in your mind when reading a text like this – whether you see Remus or what he sees.
Don’t you think it’s fair that by using both the first person and present tense I at least warn (as early as in the opening line) that I’ll (try to) take the readers to share someone’s experience intimately? Myself I feel a lot more uncomfortably like an intruder when I’m reading something in past tense and with an omniscient third-person narrator and end up watching private interaction between characters. I also wonder if fewer readers had given a chance to this piece, if I’d done my warning – as I often do – also by writing the summary in the first person and by revealing the first-person and present-tense technique in the title and the lj-cut text, too.
Now I must apologize for babbling, although you can hardly be surprised. This challenge has been an important experience for me. Thank you once again!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-12-13 07:50 pm (UTC)In the end I didn’t need commiserating, whereas I have to admit that
It’s lovely that you, too, think I’ve somehow succeeded here. Thank you for reading and for posting such a positive comment.
However, I can’t help being a bit sad to hear that you felt like an intruder. While I don’t like talking about the writer’s intentions, I can say that I’ve hoped that my writing would take the readers to share the viewpoint character’s experience – that it would build up such an illusion of truly sharing his experience that the reader would not see with her (an outsider’s) eyes. I’ve hoped the reader would no longer look in but be right there inside the first-person narrator. Perhaps some readers sense my attempts and find them too uncomfortable (perhaps especially when the viewpoint character is experiencing something uncomfortable and a lot worse than that – something painful).
I suppose my way of using the present tense is far from the cinematic writing you describe in your journal. It would be interesting to know what you see in your mind when reading a text like this – whether you see Remus or what he sees.
Don’t you think it’s fair that by using both the first person and present tense I at least warn (as early as in the opening line) that I’ll (try to) take the readers to share someone’s experience intimately? Myself I feel a lot more uncomfortably like an intruder when I’m reading something in past tense and with an omniscient third-person narrator and end up watching private interaction between characters. I also wonder if fewer readers had given a chance to this piece, if I’d done my warning – as I often do – also by writing the summary in the first person and by revealing the first-person and present-tense technique in the title and the lj-cut text, too.
Now I must apologize for babbling, although you can hardly be surprised. This challenge has been an important experience for me. Thank you once again!