In my last post, I talked about the way my writing style was affected by the character through whose eyes I was writing. Having more or less reconciled the Fugitive’s style with that of the first book, however, I found myself faced with a different dilemma: the portrayal of the Beachwalker.

As I noted in the first post in this series, I’d originally conceived the story through the eyes of the female protagonist. I knew her pretty well; her motives, style of speech, and personality were fairly well-formed. But since the entirety of My Fugitive was written through her eyes, I never had to stop and think about how she would look to her patient.

Would she be as much of a mystery to him as he was to her, powerful, daunting and unknowable?

Or would he see through her easily, maybe even viewing her as a naive child whose iron will would take her where her experience couldn’t guide her and her abilities couldn’t protect her, and who was biting off more than she could chew?

​Both were equally plausible, and in some ways, equally true.

To a large degree, I’ve found that it depends on the scene I’m writing. Her pride, strength and self-sacrifice are familiar elements to him, as he bears all of them himself, and he respects them in her even though they cause him to worry for her. But after so much time spent alone among his enemies, it’s her gentleness that disturbs and confuses him.

Sometimes, I also have to remind myself that not everyone who reads Voice will have read My Fugitive. So even though the Beachwalker’s backstory feels familiar and self-explanatory to me, I have to bear in mind that it’s a complete mystery to her patient. In some ways, though, that’s a good thing; the process of him figuring her out gives me a way to show his intelligence, which was difficult to do when his mind was seen only from the outside.

Another aspect that has been a challenge to translate from one book to the other is the strong thematic elements that were present in My Fugitive. But this post is getting long, so I’ll write about that next time.

Last time I posted, I was talking about how different Voice of a Silent Fugitive is from My Fugitive, despite being essentially the same story. I mentioned that I was torn between making the Fugitive’s writing style match the Beachwalker’s, or letting him use his own, more concise way of ‘speaking’.

In the end, I found myself doing both. For the first draft, I wrote it the way he would – succinct, factual, almost military. There was still a bit of the poetic element from My Fugitive, though even that felt forced while writing that initial draft.

That mismatch of styles made it kind of uncomfortable to write, like putting on a pair of pants that didn’t quite fit. In a way, though, it actually worked out better to do a more concise version first; it made it easier to keep the facts straight from one book to the other.

Now, in the editing stage, I’m taking the bare framework I created with the first draft and fleshing it out. Some scenes are staying more or less the same, butith others, I’m slowing down, digging deep, and instead of skimming over the scene, I’m exploring further into the turmoil and emotion that run beneath the Fugitive’s stoic surface.

For example, in the initial draft, I covered the Beachwalker’s second inspection of the Fugitive’s injuries in just a couple of brief, unemotional sentences. While editing that scene, however, I realized that having those injuries examined a second time, after the agony he’d suffered when the Beachwalker first cleaned his wounds, would be a deeply painful and frightening experience for him.

So instead of skimming over it, I lingered, diving deep into a moment I’d mentioned only briefly in My Fugitive. It swiftly turned into a tense and apprehensive ordeal, in which the Fugitive’s mind was drawn painfully back to the torment he experienced when other, less gentle hands created the injuries the Beachwalker was examining. It added a whole new layer of suspense and emotion to a formerly trivial scene.

So, to answer the question that inspired this series of posts: will the writing styles match between books?

​To a certain degree, yes. I’ll still be using the same poetic, first-person, present-tense style you enjoyed while reading My Fugitive. But there will still be some differences, some subtle, others less so. Next time, I’ll talk a bit about the differences in the ways the two protagonists perceive each other, and how the order in which I wrote the books has affected that so far.

In the meantime, I'm curious to hear what you think. Which is more important - for the writing style to remain consistent throughout a series, regardless of which character is telling it? Or to give each character a unique voice?

Personally, I'm doing my best to strike a balance, but it's an interesting topic, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Have you ever tried to take a pencil and write something backward?

In some ways, that’s how I’ve felt through the process of writing and editing Voice of a Silent Fugitive. I know what I’m writing, but the process of doing it feels unfamiliar. Even though it’s the same story, it’s told through such a different voice that sometimes working with it feels like looking at the world through somebody else’s glasses.

It’s strange; even though, when I began writing this book, the story, setting and characters were already taken care of, in some ways it’s been more difficult than writing My Fugitive was.

In My Fugitive, the Beachwalker was the POV character. She was the one I identified with the most, so even though I sometimes struggled with what to write next, I felt comfortable in her skin. And the Fugitive, who was conceived as an inherently unknowable object of mingled compassion and fear, was easier to write when his thoughts and motives were seen but not heard.

Now, through the process of portraying the world through his eyes, I’m forced to dive deep into that once-unknowable mind. And I’m running into obstacles. It’s interesting how characters can take on traits that can go unnoticed even by their creator, but are present to the point where they’re as real and unchangeable as those of a living human.

The one that’s really making itself noticeable, as I edit this book and flesh it out, is the fact that the Fugitive is a very detached, utilitarian person – at least on the surface. Despite their similarities, he’s almost the opposite of the Beachwalker that way; she has a poetic, dramatic mind with a cool, logical core, whereas he has a gentle heart that is usually – and deliberately – veiled by a layer of calmly analytical neutrality.

It makes sense, considering his past, but it also makes it difficult to push past his deliberately emotionless defenses to reach the heart inside that carefully constructed wall.

​While writing the first draft through his eyes, I found myself portraying things in much simpler, more factual terms than I did while writing as the Beachwalker. I also noticed that, even though I wanted to keep the writing style consistent between books, my efforts to maintain the flowing poetry that came so easily with her fell kind of flat when I tried to channel it through him.

I found myself torn: should I just let him tell his story in a way that suits him? Or should I try to forge deeper, to bring out the emotion hidden behind that practical facade, and make him sound more like the Beachwalker?

This post is getting long, so I’ll talk about the conclusion I came to in the next entry. Keep an eye on my Facebook or Twitter account to get the rest of the story.