Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Can I just say how much of a pain it is to realize that I have to switch POV's on a story I've already written half of.

  My Archangel story is about half way written and now I realize that it will be better if it is written in 3rd person not 1st person from Marissa's POV. So I was looking at something I had written recently and trying to switch over the POV and just pulling my hair out trying to make sure I got it switched and it didn't sound weird or stupid.

  There are times where I'm going "Why do I need to switch POV at all?" and the answer is quite simple. I have four central characters who each have a different personality and way of looking at things that happen to them. Marissa can't know what everyone else is thinking. I could switch her power of telekentics with Z.J.'s power to read minds but I dont want to do that because I thought out each character's powers and matched them with their personality so Marissa needs to keep her power.

  So a part of my editing process that I am not looking forward to is switching POV for my story. I tried on this little blip and if anyone reads this they can tell me what they think.

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Once things settled back into a routine again Penny got better day by day. Everyone could all still see the sadness behind the smile more often then not but she was taking everything one day at a time. The most welcome change, in Marissa’s eyes at least, was the new attitude Penny had toward Lily, and vise versa. Marissa found it very nice to be able to watch them talk, or share a story without having to be the buffer between the two.
 
So things settled down a little. The group had their schedules that they stuck to during the week, while they treasured their weekends that were mostly spent at the club and Marissa’s house. Eli and Rico got closer to Penny and Z.J. by the day until the boys considered them as dear as family, just the way they did with Lily. Z.J. and Penny were invited to the wedding over the summer as was Lily, and they were all looking forward to it. One day Rissa realized that her brother and Rico hadn’t even met M.T. and if the group was going to avoid questions down the line it would be better to introduce him now. Eli had heard them talk about him so often that he finally wanted to meet the mysterious teacher who his sister and her friends spent so much time with. So, true to character, Marissa decided to throw a little dinner party at their house on campus and invited her brother, Rico and Mr. Voix. At first the four Demi-Angels were all nervous to see what would transpire between our guests, but M.T. charmed the two younger men quickly and the night went off without a hitch.
Rissa smiled to herself thinking about that night as she absentmindedly gazed at the clock, only a half hour till she was off of work, which meant that Penny was due to arrive any second. The groups work schedules fit together almost too perfectly. Penny was the first to get off work at the student union then she would come to the library and wait for Marissa to get off, then the two of them would head to the gym and get Lily who would come with us to the music and arts building where they would pick up Z.J. and then they would all walk across campus to the house together. Once home the group would eat dinner together, train, work on their homework and then go to bed so they could repeat the next day.
"Excuse me, could you tell me where I could find a book on heaven and hell?" a voice addressed Marissa.
As she looked up, Rissa opened her mouth to direct the person toward the books they were in search of but when she locked onto the prettiest pair of gray eyes she had ever seen, she stopped. The boy in front of her was one of the most attractive ones Marissa had encountered in a long time, and the girl hung around gay men on a daily basis. He was maybe a few inches shy of six feet, with very light brown hair, and a crooked but sweet smile that was being directed toward her as she stared at him. Marissa tore her eyes away and tried to recover.
"Fiction or Non-Fiction?" she asked.
"Non," he replied. "I’m writing a paper for my religion class and my teacher bases his grades only on tests and papers so this needs to be good."
"Mr. Voix?" Marissa asked, recognizing his standards.
"Yea, how did you know?" he smiled at her again.
"I have him for my religion 101 class and he teaches all his classes the same way. My friends and I have gotten pretty close to him this year."
The young man nodded. "I did my freshman year too, which is why I’m taking one of his more advanced classes as a junior. I understand, I liked having him as a teacher too Marissa."
She was about to ask how he knew her name when she remembered that she was wearing a name tag so Marissa stopped before she made herself look any more ridiculous then she already did.
"It’s nice to meet another student who likes M.T. as much as we do." the young women laughed a little, trying to recover.
"M.T.?" he looked a little confused.
As soon as he asked that Marissa realized her mistake.
"Mr. Toulouse," She smiled, poker face firmly in place. "Like I said we’ve gotten very close to him."
He just nodded and Rissa decided to cut her losses now or risk further putting her foot into her mouth.
"All of the books on Heaven and Hell are shelved together in the Religion section. Straight back against the far right-hand wall."
"Thanks Marissa," he smiled one last time and walked away, passing Penny as he went to find what he was looking for.
"Oh, he was hot," Penny whispered as she came right up to the desk. "Who was he?"
"I have no idea," Marissa was still staring longingly after him. "But he’s a junior in one of M.T.’s more advanced classes so I’ll have to ask him."
Penny smiled at her friend a little. "Rissa, you are so cute. Going all the way to M.T. to try and get what you want. I’ll find out his name and, if my record is any indication, maybe a little more then that."
As she walked away Marissa thought about protesting; claiming she had dibs, that she saw him first, or for her to ‘back all up off my man’....but even in the fantasy world Marissa lived in, up in her head, that sounded stupid. So Marissa just watched Penny closely trying to study her technique, how she made heads turn, how it was easy to tell that every guy wanted her. Riss watched her briefly chat with the mysterious man but he didn’t seem interested and before long Penny came stomping back to where the older girl was in a huff.
"Well clearly he’s gay," she threw her hands up a little.
"I don’t know Pen," Marissa tried not to be delighted at her best friends failure. "We hang around an awful lot of gay men and he seemed straight to me."
She gave Rissa a death glare and they both knew the subject was closed. "Come on Marissa, I just want to go home."
The two left the library quickly picking up Lily and Z.J. both in turn before making their way to the house which was clear across campus from where they were all working. As they walked Marissa had to hold her tongue as Penny recounted, a very blown out of proportion and slightly untrue, account of her mishap in the library.
"Well I guess that’s how we know Penny’s better," Lily rolled her eyes. "She’s back onto the first hot guy she sees again."
"Hey," she turned to Lily, her eyes starting to turn red in anger. "Just because I know what I want and go after it doesn’t mean a thing!"

"Both of you stop," Marissa insisted. "I thought we were past all this!"
"Oh come on Marissa," Z.J. looked at me. "The day these two fully give up going after each other is the day that nothing is wrong with the world."
The group passed into silence and continued to walk towards home. Knowing that the subject of men, flirting, and romance had soured any good mood the four of them had been in. Each of them knew how the other Demi-Angels felt about falling in love, and it was a subject none of them would ever agree on. Lily refused to even get close to liking someone enough to justify a relationship, or feelings. She knew the complications that existed in our lives were because our mothers fell in love, and our fathers had a human moment while on earth. The few times she had sex were one night stands with no strings, or sometimes even hook ups with guy friends she knew didn’t want anything else from her. Lily had never seen anything good come of falling in love, and in fact she didn’t think the Demi-Angels should be allowed to love at all, at least romantically.
Penny was just a gigantic flirt when it came to men. She dangled just enough of her feelings out there for them and when things got too close she broke it off. She toyed with men almost as a game to avoid getting hurt, or hurting someone. Most of the men she enticed fit into her plan well, they were college boys usually sophomores, but sometimes the occasional freshmen, or even a junior when she was feeling daring. She stayed away from any and all seniors for fear that one of them would be looking for a more substantial relationship and her aloof approach would do her no good. At least if she did leave a scar on a man it was shallow and easily healed and that was the way Penny liked it.
Z.J. was a source of constant frustration for Lily and Penny because neither of them could figure him out. Despite almost daily hounding from at least one of the two Z.J. refused to tell us if he even liked women...or men for that matter. Marissa knew that when he wanted to, he would tell them, but even she was rather curious to find out why he hid his preference so well. Penny was sure he was gay, Lily thought he might be asexual, and Rissa just tried to keep the two of them at bay when it came to bugging the only male member of their group. Marissa often silenced the girls with "If he wasn’t gay before, hanging out with this much estrogen has probably turned him." She knew that wasn’t a possibility but it kept them quiet nonetheless. Z.J. was just very glad he was the one with the power to read someone else’s mind otherwise none of his secrets would be safe.
Then there was Marissa...she was the hopeless romantic of the group. She had actually seen a functioning relationship growing up between Eli and Rico and Marissa envied that. Even the childhood sweetheart love she had felt for Nathan had only made her want to really fall in love. Rissa had spent most of her life believing that it would never happen to her; she wasn’t the type of girl boys wanted. One of Eli’s employees at the club, a straight man among gay ones trying to prove he was a macho, had even gone so far as to call her Un-datable, for which he was promptly fired by my brother as the rest of the staff jumped to her defense. Marissa had received some bad genes that Trista West claimed came from Marissa’s grandfather and had skipped her generation. Rissa’s grandfather had passed away when she was still young and she didn’t remember much about him except he was a fat, not very tall man who was none the less imposing and scared the crap out of the little girl.
Marissa had always been a girl with curves, too many for her own liking or, so it seemed, anyone else’s, but she had never wanted to be as twig thin as Penny was. Rissa liked having tits and an ass but she did wish both were smaller, along with almost ever other part of her body. In the few months since our trainers had begun to show up however she had started to slim down. Instead of putting on the freshmen fifteen like most of the people around them, the Demi-Angels were toning up or in Marissa’s case shrinking little by little. She had begun to fit into clothes that hadn’t fit for a few years and it made her happier than she would express to anyone except maybe Z.J. Penny wouldn’t understand and Lily always looked at her like she was crazy for caring what everyone else thought of her looks. Marissa’s confidence was only going up which meant that maybe one day soon she could be the women she had always appeared to be; strong from the inside out.

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Leave me a comment to let me know how it was.

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