#tvd 3

(part of that choice can be blamed on this fic (Torchwood, Jack/John) which I read at an impressionable age and had the exact bleak, unsentimental, harsh atmosphere that I wanted - so I assume I sort of created a association between “gritty story telling” and “second person pov”)

Anyway. As I was writing, I was also learning about writing, and at one point I grew a bit insecure about the 2nd person POV - I knew it was pretty rare - and thought I’d go look up some stuff, advice, whatever. Turns out it wasn’t just rare, it was practically non-existent, and every single piece of writing advice concerning 2nd POV just said don’t.

So I panicked for a bit, and tried to rewrite the entire first chapter to 3rd. And it just... didn’t work. I don’t know if at that point I’d simply grown accustomed to 2nd, or that it genuinely was a different writing style, but I couldn’t write it. Even apart from anything else, I couldn’t even decide whether I should use Moran or Sebastian. So, I stuck with it.

(Mind you, every couple of weeks I panicked again and went all NO ONE IS EVER GOING TO READ THIS IT’S TOO WEIRD and then my beta had to calm me down. Rinse, repeat. I owe my beta a lot.)

But I’m really really glad I didn’t, er, succumb under peer pressure, so to speak, and stuck to my weird unusual POV. Quite a few people have said something about the immersion of it all, which is directly connected to the POV choice. Personally, I think it’s got something to do with filtering language (like he feels, he thinks). In 3rd you can get away with a fair amount of those, but in 2nd every you jumps out at the reader, so I had to try to do everything I could to avoid writing a you. Which leads to very direct use of language. The whole story is basically a live feed into Moran’s thoughts, feelings, perceptions, with about as little narrative distance as is possible. It definitely wasn’t intended that way, but as it grew and developed I fell in love with that style (and I still aim for immersive, direct writing today, even in 3rd person writing).

So I suppose the moral of that story is: if you feel certain about a style choice, understand why people advise against it, but still feel like you have enough reason to stick with it, screw ‘em and do your thing.

As for your second question... As far as I can remember, I didn’t intend a sequel at all while I was writing TVD. Jim was dead, and that was it, and I was aware that some people might want a fix-it fic where he wasn’t dead after all, but I thought I would be strong enough to resist that.

Then I actually finished the damn thing. I think it took me about three days before I started planning a sequel.

I do think part 2 and 3 were always a package deal, though - which will make sense once you actually get to read part 2 (especially the ending - if I actually ended the whole thing after tvd 2 it would be a level of depressing even I’m not okay with). The idea for the sequel changed a lot, went into stasis for a bit after S3 aired and most of the central issues were jossed, then got revived again simply because I wanted to write it (and because S3 disappointed me - for a while I’d thought S3 would give me exactly what I had in mind for my own sequel, but then they went into a completely different direction). But the essence of it, the main story and the things that happen in 2 versus 3, those were pretty solid from the start.

So yeah. Part 1 was supposed to be a standalone, but now I think it actually works better as a trilogy. Part 3 ends Sebastian’s character arc that started all the way in part 1, addresses a lot of things about Jim and Seb’s relationship that need to be said, and eventually ties everything up in a book-end that feels really satisfying to me.

(which also means: no part 4. Pretty damn sure about that one.)

As for the actual writing: I’m trying to focus on Part 2 right now, because I want to have it finished, but before that I spent about equal time on 2 and 3. Then again, I often jump between different projects, so that’s kinda my default writing style. Plus, writing part 3 taps into a whole different set of writing skills and emotional background than 2 does, so it was nice to balance those two out.