8 Days

Eight days, really nine into September and I am just now doing a blog entry. I've not been doing any writing lately-- just can't seem to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. I tried to revive a story I started about two years ago. I never knew what to call it, though the working title is "Just Friends" I never knew if it was a short story? a novella? a (gasp, dare I say?) Novel? or perhaps a screenplay? I actually have written a lot of bits and pieces, and put it into screenplay format figuring that the art director, the set designer, the director, Oh yeah and the actors, would fill in all the details. So basically I have a very flat story.

I think the story is still a good one... my main character is Randall, who lives in a small town somewhere in the south. He has been in love with Thelma since the 2nd grade. Never told her. She went off to college, stayed out in LA, met someone... Beatrice. So, Beatrice and Thelma decide they'd had enough of LA living, and as Thelma's mom passed away she inherited the family abode, so they come back to this town to live. Oh yeah, no one knows they're gay, but Randall sees them kiss and is devastated. So that's basically the situation. The story is where it gets more complicated. As in writing it.

My biggest problem is Point of View (POV). When I'm writing creative non-fiction / memoiresque personal essay, POV is quite straightforward. It's me. It's all about me and what I think and what I know and how I feel. With fiction, it's not that simple. Am I writing from an omniscient third person POV as narrator who knows what all the characters are thinking? Or is it limited third person, perhaps only inside one person's head? Or do I write as first person and really get into one character? Which character's story is this? Who do I identify with?

Anyway, I tried to take it out of screenplay format which is heavy on dialogue and light on things like narrative descriptions-- unless of course you have a soliloquey, which is not only hard to spell, but hard to get away with unless you are Shakespeare. So, I stripped out all the direction, and ended up with a lot of dialogue, in what now seems to me to be a gay themed Harlequin romance. bleckh. Not that there is anything wrong with that, the gay part that is, it's the Harlequin thing. bleckh. And the fact that there is no clear POV. Who's story is this anyway?

Maybe I'll just work on something else....