I posted Chapter One earlier today before getting the feedback from my critique group, and let’s just say they had some issues with it. Mostly, they didn’t think my change of point of view (or really, the supposed lack of it) worked. In the first draft, when I switch from Mike and Chris in the restaurant, where it’s clearly first person from Chris’s perspective, to Mike driving home, they didn’t buy that it was still Chris telling the story. Here’s what that transition looked like in the first version.
“And I think what you’re pissed about is that you know I’m not going skiing in Aspen or clubbing in LA with my dumpy jazzman-wannabe childhood friend.”
I sat back, my mouth open in shock.
Mike stood up, smoothed the wrinkles out of his designer suit. “You know what? You’re right. I’ve got better places to be. This place has my card on file, so everything’s paid for. Sit there and enjoy it. I’ll see you around.”
Without giving me a chance to respond, Mike turned on his heel and left.
*
Mike handed his ticket to the valet and huddled under the awning for protection from the summer thunderstorm passing through Denver.
What an asshole, he thought. He’d thought he could have a nice evening just hanging with me like we used to, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. Mike had seen his fair share of envy in the past year, people that wanted to hang on to his success any way they could, but that…
He couldn’t believe that was the same Chris Biggs that used to support him no matter what. He’d never realized how much not only did success change people, but lack of success changed people.
I can see their point. The stuff after the break doesn’t read like it’s still first person, and the clues that it is– “He’d thought he could have a nice evening just hanging with me like we used to…”– read like mistakes rather than a narrative choice. So at their urging and after much discussion on the best way to approach this, I did two things. I merged both the first person scenes with Chris, that originally bookended Mike’s crash, into one scene, and then I handled the transition like this:
I thought about calling him, continuing the discussion whether he wanted to or not. But the more I thought about it, the more I looked at my expensive surroundings, the more I thought, no, he needs to fall on his own. Fate will eventually take him down a peg, and then if he comes back to me with the appropriate humility, I might take him in. But until then, he was a prick and I had better things to do.
Screw him, I thought. I didn’t care if I never saw Mike Carlton again.
*
While I sat in the restaurant and stewed, Mike handed his ticket to the valet and huddled under the awning for protection from the summer thunderstorm passing through Denver.
What an asshole, Mike thought. He’d thought he could have a nice evening just hanging with me like we used to, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. Mike had seen his fair share of envy in the past year, people that wanted to hang on to his success any way they could, but he’d expected better of me.
He couldn’t believe that I was the same Chris Biggs that used to support him no matter what. He’d never realized how much not only did success change people, but lack of success changed people.
I think the transition works a lot better in the second version, and we still see that it’s Chris telling the story, even if he’s relating something he wasn’t there to witness personally. What do you think? Does it work?
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