I think I’ve just liberated myself. Stuck in the mud with getting the right tone for the book, I think that could be it for the First Person, at least in this one. For LBIH it worked, but now, since this one is going to epic in scope, I’m going to need a narrator. Is the author enough to be this or is there a need for a separate character to tell the story?
Everything is pointing towards the need for their to be an epic. Even the ball game on the TV is in the bottom of the 20th inning – I wish it would go on forever so I could keep up this strain of thought. Perhaps the Mets inability to hit the long ball will help get this out. Russian Literature has been creeping in, but I find it hard to read – I have always done so much in the digital format – I wonder if now, I can bring the epic scope of a larger novel to the mindset of people who need to read quickly.
It’s too early on to be thinking of audience. Right now I have my main character in a train yard in Ulaanbaatar with his friends talking about where the revolution actually started. This is no good because time-wise, even when he is telling the story now, he would be too young to really have a lifetime perspective. It should be someone else. An elder telling the story. But not in the “I” format. The person can be revealed in the end. It might help. There should be no “I” there. There might be the freedom to move around.
The trick would be how to keep things moving along and still keep the epic scope. The form of it all is maddening. The story is there but the form must come at first. Plot as well with the size of this thing. What I don’t want to happen is to get stuck in the middle and have to break through a wall to get to the other side. I have no time for these things right now.
The map is in back of me though and I have to have names. I will put in some phone calls to Mongolia and start on that.
Herz Words 