Notes on "Lyra's Human - Chapter 3"

I'm going to start writing some of my thoughts about my writing attached as postscripts to each chapter. You should read up to the chapter in question first before these. Here's chapter 3.

While working on this fic, I gave myself little assignments, or “etudes” as I thought of them, to try to improve my writing. One thing I wanted to do was write a whole conversation in which every line of dialogue was followed by the protagonist’s thoughts. I’ve liked this style ever since I read Simon Travaglia’s “Bastard Operator from Hell” stories and wanted to try my hand at it. When I went back and read it, it sounded horrible, and I think that my problem was that the protagonist shouldn’t have to respond to his or her own thoughts, not unless he or she is being duplicitous as in the BOFH stories. Also I was still writing too close to the other Lyra-meets-human fics, so I threw that part of the chapter out and started over. In doing so, I also changed the pacing of the story. This is the slice-of-life stuff, which I wanted to dip slightly into and then get to the dramatic climax, after which I could use more slice-of-life as denouement. Instead, the climax is getting pushed back and if I want more denouement I’m going to have to come up with more vignettes.

The second half of this chapter is the flip side of the first etude, writing a conversation with no inner thoughts displayed. All of the non-dialogue lines in the music and language discussion are action lines. I hope that the transition from one to the other isn’t too jarring, or that the reader misses out on the characterization because of it.

I’ve also worked hard to try to distinguish the two leads, since I’m so used to writing in my own voice only. I think I’ve done this superficially, since I’ve made Lyra more peppy and given her the verbal tic of starting many sentences with the word “Oh,” while having the protagonist be more melancholy and introspective. But deeper I don’t know if I’ve really achieved separation. On the other hand, they’re supposed to be friends and amenable to each other. It’s a difficult balance.

I’m also quite proud of having written a protagonist that I can disagree with. Before I started I said to myself, “This should not be self-insertion. Self-indulgent, fine, but not self-insertion.” If the first-person persona seems too flawless and Mary Sue-ish, at least it’s not myself I’m lauding.