This is one of those times where I feel slightly ashamed for simply accepting a thing without examining it (though, now that I look through my memories, this was a slightly less blameworthy case of encountering this problem much earlier and with much less experience, filing it away as "something I cannot resolve now" and my brain taking that as the same thing as being resolved. Ah, brains). So what comes out of my head is going to be raw and anecdotal, but I agree there is something to contend with here, and something that, with the little bit of information I have is going to be extremely important to what I know of your story and how I perceive the way you write.
And now it's going to be more of a factor in the way I write, too, which is, I think, for the best, having just gotten a story in first person returned to me (for many reasons).
Anyway, passing by the really obvious things, one of the questions I would really want to answer is how the narrator organizes her thoughts, what goes where, what goes when, what groups together, what gets divided out... That suddenly sounds very daunting, even though it's something we do naturally (it kind of reminds me of the panic attacks when I am very tired when I suddenly start believing that breathing requires my concentration to accomplish. Ah, brains.).
I see a couple of things upthread that resonate to me. nihilistic_kid makes a point I want to echo. We organize our thoughts the way we're taught to organize them.
Of course, then there is the trope of the surprisingly literary interauthor for a non-literary character, and that one... I can only follow you into the woods, I think you see them better than I do.
The only potentially useful bit I might have is that artists of various types have very different narrative priorities depending on their art. And the usefulness of that, even if it lives up to its potential is...
You've given me a lot to think about. If something useful to me occurs, I'll share it.
no subject
And now it's going to be more of a factor in the way I write, too, which is, I think, for the best, having just gotten a story in first person returned to me (for many reasons).
Anyway, passing by the really obvious things, one of the questions I would really want to answer is how the narrator organizes her thoughts, what goes where, what goes when, what groups together, what gets divided out... That suddenly sounds very daunting, even though it's something we do naturally (it kind of reminds me of the panic attacks when I am very tired when I suddenly start believing that breathing requires my concentration to accomplish. Ah, brains.).
I see a couple of things upthread that resonate to me.
Of course, then there is the trope of the surprisingly literary interauthor for a non-literary character, and that one... I can only follow you into the woods, I think you see them better than I do.
The only potentially useful bit I might have is that artists of various types have very different narrative priorities depending on their art. And the usefulness of that, even if it lives up to its potential is...
You've given me a lot to think about. If something useful to me occurs, I'll share it.