Friday, December 11, 2009

I'm doing it...I'm changing the POV of my ENTIRE 93,000 word novel.

Yep......I decided it was a must. The entire thing is written in 1st person and sicne it's romance, I decided it would be in my best interest to change it to 3rd. I am keeping the original though.

So here I go. At first I was going to edit the entire thing first..again...go through...look for all the adverbs, work on taking out all those no no words...really change the spots that tell instead of show. THEN I would start the POV switch. But I decided it would be a much better idea to do the POV switch first.

So has anyone done this before....any advice???? So far it seems pretty simple....just a matter of going though each line and changing I to her, she, character's name, etc...

I will also be adding in some of the hero's perspective too...which I never could do before...so this will be interesting.

I have a deadline in mind here for the POV change and the rest of the editing. I am attending a conference the end of March and I hope to pitch this book then. Do you think I can accomplish this all in, oh, just over 3 months time??? I think it's doable!

9 comments:

  1. Wow, that's a major undertaking! I've never tried changing the POV of an entire book! Only a chapter here and there, and even that drove me nuts. Good luck!

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  2. My head hurts just thinking about that undertaking. I've tried writing in 1st person and it just doesn't work for me- 3rd just flows.

    I have had a couple scenes I've rewritten from different POV's and it took forever, but was well-worth it. Good luck!

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  3. First person came natural to me when I first started writing...I'd been used to writing in a diary for practically my entire life. But now that I know more about novel writing, 3rd seems like a much better option, especially for romance. It is un undertaking but it is not as horrible as I thought :)

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  4. wow, good luck with it! I think you can do it in three months. I've never done anything like that before. I normally write in 3rd person and I've done two stories on my blog in a different POV than third to try it out. I think I'll stick with 3rd it comes more naturally. Let us know how it goes!

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  5. I did that exact thing on my 60K Young Adult Novel. It was tricky for me until I figured out how to differentiate between two "she's" when they were talking to each other without using my MCs name every other sentence. (Apparently I'm a slow learner). Now I find it difficult to read books written in 1st POV. I thought about doing the search and replace thing, but that definitely didn't work. And manually replacing it helped me see where my descriptions and dialogue tags needed to be beefed up.

    Good Luck!

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  6. Yes Joyce, a line by line is the only way to do it!!

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  7. Don't forget chocolate for fortification...

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  8. I did with my young adult,from third to first. What an undertaking. One critique partner told me I had to dig deeper. I dug myself to no writer's land, writers' block, but I'm happier with the results. Do what you gut tells you to do. Good luck Stephanie.

    Bella

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