Every fiction writer has on occasion watched their pages increase at steroidal speed, while for some reason, their story itself is taking forever to get to first base. This can happen whether you’re writing a short story or novel.
One of the most common causes is using a first person main-character voice to narrate a story dense with action, settings, and events. What to do, what to do? Try a switch to 3rd person. John Irving (who, um, writes awfully long) has obviously grappled with the length problem, and talks about it very nicely here, on the Daily Show (along with some intriguing things to say about Kurt Vonnegut at Iowa, sex at 11, and trying to “Heimlich” a six-foot, five-inch man (Vonnegut) when you’re only five-seven (Irving).
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
With regard to switching between 1st and 3rd person. I’ve done it twice with little problem. In both cases the story came to me or needed to get out of me in 1st person, but then once I was finished, I decided the story would work better from the 3rd person pov.
I didn’t find the process difficult and in the process, of course, some things were dropped and others had to be added.
And I can’t tell you exactly what it was that made me decide it would be better in 3rd person — just knew that I had to re-write it that way.
I haven’t written a novel, but I have noticed that when I write in the first person it takes me a long time to get things going. Sometimes I just think I’m producing a lot of blah blah blah, and there’s no story yet, so I quit.