A Little Perspective Please

I have become slightly obsessed with the idea that I need to practice writing fiction as an exercise to increase my skill as a writer.  While I would be mortified to share any of what I'm working on, it brings up questions I want to ask you, readers of fiction out there, a couple of questions.  Having been a voracious reader for all my life up until I quit smoking a few years ago, I should be able to satisfy myself on these points, but I find I want to hear from others.  Consider this a literary discussion, if you will, in which we discuss point of view.

I have always heard it said that a writer's first novel is generally written in first person and that it takes a second book, in second or third person, to determine a writer's true skill.  I have always been of two minds about this.  I cannot deny that writing in the first person is most natural to me, that climbing inside of a character's head to spill what lives in it onto the public page is much easier to master than writing a story about someone and having to describe what's in their head from the outside.  Yet, I have read plenty of first person stories that were complete crap because they never really got into the corners or shaped the person's character, so I think a first person narrative can easily become a lame crutch.

What do you think?  What narrative perspective is your favorite to read in fiction?  What do you think of stories where the perspective alternates? 

A personal favorite of mine is when the author writes in the omniscient and then makes it personal, where the author is the person behind the curtain and lets you see the smallest glimpses such as William Makepeace Thackeray does in "Vanity Fair".  It is surprising and delightful to me that he shows us his own enjoyment of the predicaments his characters get tangled up in.

I also like a mix of irreverence with serious.  I suppose that's obvious and doesn't need saying.  I don't like a dark tragedy that is brought to me with no ray of hope or relief.  I don't like a book that is all silly with no meat to it either, no weight, or truth to it.  I like it all mixed together because life is like that.  It feels genuine.  Though you all know I prefer my endings to be sweet because life isn't like that and when I'm reading I want to sustain the hope that things could end up well.  Give me that scrap at least!

What do you want in a book?  What style of book do you prefer and gravitate to?

I have always thought it ironic that I'm a person who loves a happy ending yet I write the darkest crap imaginable.  Especially when writing fiction!  Why I can't write the kind of story I love to read is a mystery I may never unfold. 

That's what I'm trying to do right now.  I've been working on it at night when I'm done with my paying job.  I'm not a great one for agonizing over the smallest details when writing here because my blog is supposed to come fresh from the head to you with as little interference as possible.  However, when trying to convey a specific scene, create a specific mood on purpose, it takes a much greater skill than I have at the present moment.  I have spent three nights rewriting the same scene in a laundromat.  Each time I come back to it, it still sounds clumsy and stiff.  This is new for me.  Re-editing over and over to get a scene right.

Though I don't believe I was meant to be a fiction writer, I think developing the skills of one is a great exercise for every type of writer, even for someone who writes "news"* like a journalist.  How do you make a character come to life?  How do you move them from one spot to the next without making them sound like creepy wooden puppets?  Fiction has always been difficult for me because there are a million possibilities for every story, a million names, a thousand different angles you could pursue and it terrifies me to have to decide, to settle on just one or two.  It seems impossible to know where to start.  My mind has always thought more in shorthand, like poetry before it becomes organized and worked over.  I don't think creatively in full sentences.  I don't even fully know how to describe what I write when I'm writing exactly as my brain is experiencing thought and mood.  It's like poetic prose, but often not pretty.

I wish I could talk to some of my favorite authors about these things.  I wish I could climb inside their heads and pick them apart until I understood what I'm missing.  I want to take their knowledge, know their process, and try again.

I am determined.  So now I find myself thinking of this laundromat scene I'm trying to write all day long.  I can't keep my brain from it.  Puzzling how to make my characters' physical appearance known without making the reader feel like they are getting a laundry list of physical characteristics.  Damn hard work in case you didn't already know it. 

I wish one of you would set me on an exercise.  Tell me the bones of a little story or vignette with the names and brief description of what is going on and set me the task of filling it out and supplying dialog.  Would one of you please do this?  It would be like a writing class where I have to flesh out a story well that is not of my own choosing. 

At the very least, please share your thoughts on these questions and issues.  I know that even those of you who don't write (and quite a few of you are writers too!) have opinions about books because many of you are great readers. 

Much obliged!

Now that I've spent my morning folding laundry, doing dishes, and obsessing over a little tiny scrap of writing that no one is ever going to read, it is time to prepare to start my paying gig.  Afterwords I will turn again to my little piece of work and try to make it not suck.  I hope you are all having a productive and happy Thursday.  Don't let it bother you that I'm sitting here in an agony of impatience to hear what you have to say.  Really, it's only a minor agony and won't cause me any lasting harm. 


*So much news is no better than fiction.  I felt obligated to put that in quotes.