2008-10-18
The following stories have been removed from the "rache" index:
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Forty-Seven
Reasons Until After
Stage Daddy
Talis
TS Neighbors
Ts Wife
The above to be reposted under the pen name "T.S. Severe" as time permits.
Loren - To be reposted under the pen name "Kylie X." when I get around to it.
This is just being done as part of my SCP (Spring Cleaning Project) and there's no real cause to panic. I've been meaning to reorganize for awhile now and I'm always forgetting. Well...Today I remembered! Except I don't have the files with me, blah blah blah
In the meantime...
You Lied!
Characters lie all the time and I was talking about this in an email and so I figured I'd mention it here. Some people, some readers, look at a story and assume that because the words are written down they must invariably be 100% accurate.
What I mean is that they think that the narrator would never, ever lie, cheat, steal, exaggerate, falsify, marginalize, blaspheme, or otherwise tell an untruth to the reader.
That's often true in a story that is (a) written in third person/omni; and (b) written by someone else.
In my stories, especially in first person narratives, the narrator is a character. The person telling the story is someone who usually wants to be liked, as any of us do. He or She wants your sympathy (most times) and craves your understanding and good opinion as she relates her adventure. What the narrator reports to you is (usually) taken from a perspective of rememberence. The character is retelling events from memory and so we can safely assume that they are filtered through the lens of time, if nothing else.
Sometimes I play with that deliberately, but most often I do try and keep the narrator honest. Still, there are times when I do make it a point to lie in the interest of develioping either character or plot, or both. I use it as a tool to avoid details when I'm not in a mood to provide them. I like the ready excuse first person allows me to be vague and obscure at times, if it benefits the story. It offers varying opportunities to enter a sub-textual dialogue with readers and provide information through what is hidden or revealed.
None of it is ever obvious (I hope) and such devices should pass largely unnoticed if it's working. But, being the author, I am conscious of what I say and how I say it and I just wanted to confess. In those few stories I have where the opportunity to tell a story from two different points of view exists, like one of the chapters in "Daddy's Little Whore" for example, I tried to exemplify two different memories of the same event. Dialogue is different. Some of the events are remembered differently, and it should emulate real life that way. Reading the two versions shouldn't be confusing, but neither should one be considered correct over the other. They're both correct in essence and complimentary.
In other stories, where only a single point of view is revealed, then we have to remember that the narrator is a character and telling the story is part of the story...see? Simple.
els
