sand & stone

I suddenly had an epiphany about my disastrous tangle of a third novel last night. I mean, it should JUST be about my MC, right? It's basically her story, that's why I'm writing it. So... I should make it more about her, because out of 7K so far written, less than a hundred have included her. Which is probably rubbish. Look at something like American Gods, where Shadow is always present except in the out-takes to the gods themselves. Or 1984 when, again, Winston is always present. Those novels still operate on grand stages, they still highlight vividly new realities and bring forward important ideas, but they don't suffer this chaotic mix of changing views. Similarly, some of the less-good novels I've ever read, such as Darwin's Radio (Sorry Mr. Bear, but it wasn't one of your best), where a huge theme gets lost and entangled between perpetually changing views. Brave New World did the perspective shift quite well, but it was a comparatively short novel. Stranger in a Strange Land did have different perspectives, but they all revolved around the different characters interpreting the MC. LOTR obviously had lots of different characters, lots of different viewpoints (which I think is what I was aiming for), but Tolkien was a genius and knew every life story, every place, every blade of grass in middle-earth. I can hardly even remember my characters names. So:

It's just about one world. It's just about one girl in one world: how she got there, what she's feeling, where she wants to go. All the side-stories were dark and gorgeous and I LOVED them. But they don't really need to exist, so I must be brutal, and consign them to the septic tank of my imagination. If I tie them up in bin-bags, and give them airholes and let them float, I might be able to resurrect them in other stories, at other times. It's most important to get this one finished.

As I keep saying: learning curve