Thanks to MonaLisa Foster, I recently picked up a book on POV. It has some interesting bits of fine-tuning, some of which I knew instinctively from enough reading, but hadn’t been able to put into words, like “your choice of POV influences the theme of the book. First person implicitly carries a theme of how a person views themselves vs. how the world views them, while third person examines a person’s place in their society and the world around them.”
Which is true, and explains something about the left turn at Albaquirky my WIP has taken.
You see, the Cinderella story with the retired gunny as fairy god-something is not sticking to romance tropes of one or two points of view, but has added a third in – her boss, Mikey. In fact, I can even see where I’m missing a scene in that third viewpoint right after the ball. Yes, that thumping you heard was me hitting my head against the desk.
Because it’s also about the importance of oil to a modern society, and about how rival nations will often fund terror groups to carry on proxy wars, and about fitting in to a new group, and…
…
(Snippet removed to comply with Amazon rules about percentage of a work posted elsewhere. Now available as Blood, Oil, And Love )
Mad Genius Club 
Nothing will go wrong go wrong go wrong…. 👿
What, did you detect a bit of foreshadowing in that? Surely not!
You muse is a lunatic, and with my luck, hanging around here means mine is getting tips.
Do want to read, of course.
OTOH, some characters wouldn’t tell their stories, or would sound conceited telling them, or. . . .
I’m most comfortable with a close third person . . . at least I think that’s what I write. I was never good at the nomenclature. Apart from that, when do we get the whole thing, eh? Cinderella in camo sounds more interesting with every hint and snippet.
You get it when I’ve researched Rhodesian fireforces (blame LawDog and Peter), written the rest of it, sent it to military beta readers for the tactics, sent it to non-military betas for the character arcs, contacted the cover artist to start working on a cover idea, rewritten to feedback, sent it out for final check, copyedited. Copyedited again. Worked with cover artist on initial sketch feedback. Copyedited a third time, and then started the upload and possibly maybe hopefully print formatting (but probably not). Gotten the cover art, gotten keywords selected, and then, finally, after pressing publish, about 24-72 hours later when it’s up.
‘Cause I’m pantsing my way through, with breaks for research. Fortunately, I’d already researched magnetotellurics for a prior story that I didn’t finish, and I have researched the landscapes I’m going to throw readers by calling one name and importing from another, so I have a lot of the ecology already down. And the economics, well, some of that I already had worked out, so it’s not that difficult. If I can avoid having to research repairing diesel marine engines, that would be awesome, but we have to see if the pants take me where I think they will…
If you can send me a mailing address, I have a couple of duplicate books on marine diesel engine repair and maintenence.
John in Indy/ John Sage
Hmmm, not quite where I was expecting the story to go… but it sure looks interesting. As far as “not being so lucky” goes, it sounds like a case of speak tenderly, you never know when you’ll have to eat your words. 🙂
I remember quite liking Bright Lights, Big City back in the day, at first I thought in spite of, but now kind of think because of, the second person narrative. Just mentioning the “weird uncle” of narratives, since it is out there, and can occasionally be used to great effect. ‘Course the book itself was basically a novella as well. Probably over 80k words or so the novelty would have worn off at some point.