Characters
Outline
I’ll be writing from one main POV through the story. This will be the cop, named Derrek Kane (for now). I will write the POV from a third-person limited omniscient perspective. So I’ll be able to give thoughts written in italics to the reader. I thought a lot about going full first person for full immersion but I still want to have some things happen outside of his head; scares or creepy bits only the reader can know about. Also in those events, I want to keep the POV locked by location (chapter, see next bit what I mean by that), no sudden jumps to different locations or time.
I am reserving rare occasions to break the POV into someone else, probably an antagonist.
A chapter is a promise from a writer to a reader: The writer is presenting a scene and promises to take a set amount of time to conclude that scene before starting another one, giving the reader the opportunity to take breaks in between. Having a book vary a lot in chapter length can present a challenging read. No one wants to close their book in the middle of a chapter.
But this kind of predictability is contrasting with the suspense genre. I want to keep the reader on the edge of their seat, not knowing when they are safe next. Like in a video game, where you have to push through a potentially dangerous part before you can save your game.
I want to achieve that feeling, maybe not to extreme suspense, but I don’t want the chapters to become predictable in this way. So I plan to split chapters by locations or rooms. This way, chapter names are no spoilers for events to come. They aren’t even unique, and a chapter can differ in length depending on the time the POV spends in each location, which can result in both very long or extremely short chapters.
An example: When the POV enters the kitchen to investigate, he could take 7 pages riffling through everything, taking pictures for evidence, eating a sandwich,... But when he sees someone flee down the hall, he could enter a chase going through chapters Hall, Living room, Front porch, Fields in a rapid-fire succession of tiny chapters.
Time will progress linear, progressing chapters will progress time forward. With the story following the POV very close, this will almost be real-time.
Point of View (POV)
I’ll be writing from one main POV through the story. This will be the cop, named Derrek Kane (for now). I will write the POV from a third-person limited omniscient perspective. So I’ll be able to give thoughts written in italics to the reader. I thought a lot about going full first person for full immersion but I still want to have some things happen outside of his head; scares or creepy bits only the reader can know about. Also in those events, I want to keep the POV locked by location (chapter, see next bit what I mean by that), no sudden jumps to different locations or time.
I am reserving rare occasions to break the POV into someone else, probably an antagonist.
Chapters
A chapter is a promise from a writer to a reader: The writer is presenting a scene and promises to take a set amount of time to conclude that scene before starting another one, giving the reader the opportunity to take breaks in between. Having a book vary a lot in chapter length can present a challenging read. No one wants to close their book in the middle of a chapter.
But this kind of predictability is contrasting with the suspense genre. I want to keep the reader on the edge of their seat, not knowing when they are safe next. Like in a video game, where you have to push through a potentially dangerous part before you can save your game.
I want to achieve that feeling, maybe not to extreme suspense, but I don’t want the chapters to become predictable in this way. So I plan to split chapters by locations or rooms. This way, chapter names are no spoilers for events to come. They aren’t even unique, and a chapter can differ in length depending on the time the POV spends in each location, which can result in both very long or extremely short chapters.
An example: When the POV enters the kitchen to investigate, he could take 7 pages riffling through everything, taking pictures for evidence, eating a sandwich,... But when he sees someone flee down the hall, he could enter a chase going through chapters Hall, Living room, Front porch, Fields in a rapid-fire succession of tiny chapters.
Time progress
Time will progress linear, progressing chapters will progress time forward. With the story following the POV very close, this will almost be real-time.
Any feedback?
Part of the Creation process
How are POV's split, what defines a chapter and how will time progress.
V1 - alpha