Progress Update, Writing

Writing progress update: Salandrine

Worldbuilding & POV choice

Salandrine is my main writing project since 2017. It’s a high fantasy novel with rich worldbuilding, includes technology and science in combination with magic, and a character cast with diverse identities and backgrounds. It has been an absolute thrill to write despite the many challenges it’s given me, and has gone through several draft versions already. Our main protagonist Salandrine has gotten a personality makeover early on, I’ve dropped characters, added supporting casts, gone from arranged marriage-esque romance subplot towards two people finding love in an unexpected moment, in time turning more into a friends to lovers slow-burn, gone through switches in antagonists, and greatly more fleshed out worldbuilding.

But there were still things I felt were missing (and so did some of my critique partners). Elements that I didn’t know how to add through Salandrine’s POV, and so I finally asked the question I’d not dared to ask since my previous try (and massive FAIL).

Do I need to write Salandrine with multiple point of views (POVs)?

I’d already thought about changing it to first person earlier and after giving it a try with my newest first chapter (not the one on my website), I’d decided in the end to leave it written in third person (limited) POV.

With this question however, I’ve been thinking about what scenes to add or change, which characters to write through, and if this would even benefit the story as much as I hoped compared to just keeping it single POV.

I asked on Twitter what people liked to read and/or write the best concerning (high) fantasy to see what others thought. Here’s the result:

https://twitter.com/winthernovels/status/1034394498548355073

Seems according to this that adding at least one POV character isn’t such a bad idea at all. And if you really think about it, multiple third person narratives (limited as well as omniscient) do seem to support complex worldbuilding the best. Though I’ve got a feeling that going closer and telling a high fantasy through a first person POV could really tell a powerful story on a more personal level. I might explore that some more and experiment with it myself to see if it might be a good fit for me as a writer as well. Good thing to try different things, right?

As for what I need from those new scenes, I’ll hint to that they’ll add some more political dimensions towards the book and its setting, show a wider variety of the society (adding poorer and middle class segments), and of course some more character development for several characters. And while were at it, I’ll apologize in advance for the new characters that’ll be introduced through these scenes >.> … I’ll try to keep it at a minimum xD

I’ve already got some ideas, but am curious towards my betas thoughts and hopes to this regard. For anyone who’s familiar with the book, who would you like to see their world written through? Who’s point of view would you look forward to reading? Or, what character absolutely not?

 

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