A New Perspective Goes a Long Way

How exploring different perspectives in the drafting phase story's unique angle.

- MEG EDEN KUYATT

More than once, a switch in point of view has helped me find clarity in my manuscripts. When I started my debut novel, Post-High School Reality Quest, I had characters but no real plot. The story comprised mainly of a bunch of characters awkwardly hanging out in someone's basement. I let the draft sit in a drawer for a few years until a friend suggested writing a novel in the form of a text adventure game: an old computer game genre where the game is narrated to you in the second person (e.g., "You are in a cabin. There is a fishing pole."). One day when I was sick, I started playing with that second-person, text adventure narration in relation to these characters, and I got hooked. There was an energy to that second-person narration, and in telling the story from the game's perspective, it created a second character, giving my main character (Buffy) instructions. I realized if I was Buffy, I wouldn't want to follow the instructions given to me. That instantly created a sense of tension and conflict-what my old draft was missing. It became a framework for generating material, and playing with characters I liked but didn't know what to do with.