Robnonymous wrote:I'm most certainly really enjoying these (still), but I also felt the need to nitpick. Mostly it's just that the story is told from Lilly's "perspective," but there are some moments when she's visiting Hisao where there are visual descriptors. I assume they're from Hisao's point of view anyway, but I wanted to point that out just in case it was unintentional.
I figured this would come up eventually so I may as well address it. My style of writing is sort of odd. I prefer short, distinct dialogue, but long, descriptive paragraphs when necessary. I like narrative omniscience, but I'm not very good at keeping straight when writing about it.
The problem with that is that this part of the story, being what it is and about who it's about, doesn't allow me to do that. I want to portray the element of Lilly's blindness without the story actually being from Lilly's point of view, if that makes sense. Thus, I have to have all of the descriptors appear to come from Hisao, who is, of course, sick in bed. Writing a story following Lilly is much more challenging than writing one following Hanako, because I can't use Lilly to accurately describe visual things. Thus, I'm forced to use Lilly's other senses as much as possible, while sneaking in visual things where they are necessary. For example, we didn't know Hisao was laying in bed until I, the narrator, mentioned that's where he was. Lilly, the character, only assumed he was there because that's where his voice had come from.
However, I can't outright say that, because, like I said, the story isn't from Lilly's point of view, it's from her perspective. In fact, I'm trying to keep Lilly's blindness in the background in favor of her as a personality, as she does in KS itself. One of the only reasons she was so comfortable in Hanako's room on the first and second day was because she couldn't see it was spattered with gore, hence, she could tell herself nothing was wrong. When she sits down on Hanako's bed to chat with her, I'm going to have to introduce several new things about the room, the characters, anything that Hanako
wouldn't be focused on. to keep the story interesting. We haven't gotten to that point from Lilly's perspective yet, but when we do, I'm going to have to describe everything again without using the same descriptors I used for Hanako's side. This is where the element of perspective and POV comes into play. Everything has to be different because Lilly is a different character. She perceives the events around her differently. One of the reasons for my hesitance to keep going was because I'm pretty inept at describing the same thing from multiple perspectives, which is what a lot of Lilly's chapters are going to be.
But where does that leave me? I honestly couldn't tell you. I'm going to try my hardest to avoid describing things visually as they pertain to Lilly, but from other interpolating characters, I'll have no choice. I know it doesn't make much sense, because it really shouldn't be that hard, but for some reason I find it that way. I'm chipping away at it, though, while writing another, completely different fanfiction every time I get stuck.
Brogurt wrote:I suppose part of the reason I misinterpreted that line was what immediately came after it. I think that tears being shed would be a given during a breakdown, and mentioning "a lot" of them made it seem like there was more than one reason behind it. I had originally doubted myself, but after reading the tears comment, I was almost certain that you were speaking of the sexings. Whatever; at least it's cleared up now.
But I'll tell you that it certainly would be more jarring, to every party involved (this includes us readers as well as the characters), if something like that had happened.
It'd certainly be more emotionally effective, but despite what Lilly's first chapter is telling us as readers, I'm trying as hard as I can
not to make Hisao out to be a dividing fault between the two friends. He's the impartial party. He doesn't really even know he's at the center of the issue until the most recent Hanako chapter I've posted, but again, Lilly spends more time with him, and he's therefore going to turn out to be more critical to her storyline. We'll just have to see where it takes us.