Are You Writing Serious Fantasy?

[Saxony Tarn]

Welcome to Aragorn's Heir -- |_|) <-- here's your official AYWSF pint. Drink up!

Great things to share here (you too Starbreeze, with poetry breaks in your tales!) let's keep this topic going…

…unless you'll allow me to sidetrack it off on a POV question:

owing to the nature of my fanfic, i'm telling it from what should best be considered "Third-Person Limited Omniscient" in that the reader has a wiretap only on the internal thoughts of one character and hears the other's speech and "thoughts" only when they are expressed in a manner that at least one other character can intuit (thus a telepathic exchange between, say, Rhigellan and Iârangol counts as "conversation" even though it is not vocalized (and thus put in quotes, as my rule is if it's in quotes, then it was said out loud) since it's set apart from the standard text in some way to mark it as 'non-private thought', but what they personally think of, for example, the other members of the party, unless one of them says anything explicitly, the reader doesn't know (whereas the reader knows more of what main character's opinions of things than said character is comfortable having the reader know, thanks to those wiretaps in his head)

i've dealt well with 3P-God's-Eye-View perspectives before by focusing on one character's thoughts at a time, pulling the camera back before getting into another character's head so as not to disorient the reader too much (as i am fond of putting a story away for a year, then picking it up and reading it afresh -- best way to edit if you have that luxury!)

The sticker in the current project, given the premise and the way it's set up, comes in when the particular character whose skull has been metaphorically wired with the listening bugs engages in internal debate with himself, at which point two other perspectives emerge (Conscience uses 2PV, addressing him as "you", Ego responds in 1PV) Internal monologue is one standard of 1PV narration, but Internal Dialogue?

Don't misunderstand me -- as the writer, i'm completely comfortable with this, but my question is how other readers would find it. i, being used to such shifts, find it natural and engaging (as if i'm eavesdropping on this Freudian conundrum that he finds himself in) but i'm wondering if others find such devices confusing.

(probably it's a good thing that this is not intended for the paying market -- as the psychological aspect of this tale is something that's best pulled off amazingly well or not at all! B) )

s.t.

|_|) <-- raise your glass!