But I have to fire him.
Not that I actually hired him in the first place. And not that he knows he's working for me.
It's all about point of view. I am writing Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter, from Chrissie's point of view. Nothing happens that she doesn't know about, and everything that does we see from her POV. Most of the time. Almost.
Last night Tori was pointing out a couple of place in the first few chapters where the POV shifted to the classic omniscient narrator. The writing also took on a slightly different tone.
She told me, "When I read it, I hear Morgan Freeman narrating, like in the penguin movie."
Then she read a couple of passages. Something you should know about Tori is she's a great mimic, she can do some of our friends so well that if you weren't looking at her talking you'd swear they were in the room. And last night she was doing it with Morgan Freeman. I could hear him saying, "It was in that guise late one afternoon in September that she passed three young men launching a skiff. She paid them no mind until she heard a voice she recognized."
Or,
"In the years that followed that was the pattern of Chrissie's life ... Her father came and went, sailing into port, staying a few weeks or months and then shipping out again. Chrissie was always happy to see him when he arrived and sad when he left. She loved his swagger, the way his eyes lit up when he first saw her and exclaimed over how tall she’d grown. She loved listening to his stories, his voice filled with mystery and wonder."
It's a little too flowery, a little too narrated. And thanks to Tori it's a little too Morgan Freeman. So I'm going to have to let him go. Which means of course that I have to rework those passages so they’re Chrissie's POV. It'll work. And it'll make the stry wrk so much better.
But when someone decides to make a movie of the book? There's one character, Nathan, an old Caribbean fisherman, that Morgan's perfect for.
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