Poisoned!

[my_daroga]

Guys, I don't know if I can write first-person Erik without it coming out like Susan Kay. Despite not having read the novel in at least ten years. I think I've been permanently tainted.

I just don't know what to do.

Comments

[madrigalist]

Put everything out of your head and simply write. It takes about 4 book to find your voice in fiction. I would suggest writing as it natrually feels to you and not worry about who or what you sound like. Frankly--publishers and agents actually ask you "who do you sound like" or "whose voice is similar to yours" This gives them an idea of the market and audience for your book.

Have fun and write... worry about polish and stuff later when you edit. If you see strong similarities then you can work through them.

[my_daroga]

I should have been more specific. There's a Phantom novella that's been sitting on my hard drive for five years or so, and the editing of it has stymied me for that length of time. The problem is that I wrote it all first-person Erik, which of course was fun but I fear that in this fandom, first person Erik "belongs" to Kay. It's very difficult, in my opinion, to make Leroux's Erik make sense as a real person. Once you give him anything approaching consistent thought-patterns he's not Leroux anymore. So in this, though I think I do have a certain voice of my own, my Erik (snarky, self-aware yet somewhat deluded, clever) cannot help but come off Kayish

[madrigalist]

**It is my firm belief that Leroux's Erik was completely incapable of having anything like a relationship with another human being, so to some extent it's going to be OOC

[my_daroga]

Then isn't this your hook that makes your book stand out from Kay and all the rest?

Well, yes. In a sense. But... Whatever is intellectually true about Kay not owning Erik in any sense doesn't exactly mitigate the problems in presenting something that may turn people off if it reminds them of her. I just want to avoid that.

[kryss_labryn]

I understand what you're saying, but to be honest, "1st person Erik" isn't something that my mind leaps to as an identifying quality of Kay. "Completely inert Christine" and "haz a kitteh" stand out far more to me as uniquely Kay's. So it may be less of an issue than you fear. :-)

[my_daroga]

Possibly, though I just this morning got a review of one of my stories that I deliberately tried to make not-Kay and got a "too much Kay" criticism.

We'll see! At this point, I need to stop angsting about it and do something. And thank you.

[holyschist]

Kay owns nothing of Erik it is merely the fact that not many venture into first person writing. Women writers tend to write first person with a female dominated POV.

I'm not sure that's generally true outsides of some specific genres that are almost required to be in first person (chicklit and "urban fantasy" come to mind) and which are currently very popular with women (although male urban fantasy authors like Jim Butcher also tend to use first person because it's such a requirement of the genre...man, I would love to read an urban fantasy novel in the third person for ONCE). First person is pretty common in YA lit, too, probably because of assumptions about ease of reader identification. But in adult fantasy/science fiction, first person is pretty rare, whether the author is male or female. Historical fiction tends to be third person much of the time.