January 27, 2006
As regular readers of this blog know, I've been struggling with the point of view of the novel I'm working on. Originally I wrote it as single third-person point of view, entirely from the main character, Joanna Dancing's point of view. Then I decided that didn't quite work, so I expanded the povs. It's working much better.

Yesterday, I started on a chapter. I knew that Joanna had just put together a very important piece of the puzzle, and it relates to someone who is now in a position of power, a senator, but she has a past with him. She's seriously pissed off at him for how he fits into the puzzle, but she also has to watch her back because people are trying to kill her and her client. She doesn't know if she can trust the Senator.

My original idea was to tell how she makes him chase around from point A to B to C so she can figure out if anybody's tailing him from her point of view. And almost instantly, I realized it will be better from the Senator's point of view. Why? Well, simply because it's the most entertaining and it makes the story less predictable.

This is how it starts, and please remember this is a first draft. I need to smooth it out:

Senator Thomas Nichols was in the conference room of his offices in the Hart Senate Office Building on Constitution Avenue. Nichols was forty-nine years old, lean, fit, black hair cut in a conservative cut, just the right amount of gray coming in at the temples. There were severe lines cut into his face that made him seem older; crow’s feet around his eyes, deep folds on either side of his mouth. He leaned back in his chair at the head of the table and slipped on a pair of reading glasses. He glanced at the sheaf of papers in his hand, an outline of proposed oversight for the intelligence agencies.

“Mary, are you coordinating with the budget on this? Because I don’t see—“

The door opened and Senator Nichols’ office manager stepped into the room. Lynette Showers was a grouchy sixty-year-old in a dark pantsuit that did nothing to hide the fact that she was built like a broom with a clothes hanger for shoulders. She seemed flustered. “Sir, I… a moment in private, sir?”

Nichols raised his eyebrows and shrugged. He rose out of the chair and stepped out of the conference room. “What is it?”

“Do you know of a woman by the name of Joanna Dancing?”

Nichols visibly flinched. “Yes. Why?”

“She just called.”

“Is she still on the line? Where is she?”

“She left a message. I didn’t know whether to give it to you or not. You do know her?”

“Yes. What’s the message?”

“I mean, sir, she was sort of … I thought she might be a crank, but she told me you’d recognize her name.”

Nichols was barely able to keep from reaching out and strangling the woman. “What was the message?”

Lynette glanced at the slip in her hand. “She said, and I’m quoting, sir: ‘Tell Tommy to meet me at Bullfeathers at 4:15 or I’m blowing his shit out of the water.’”



See?

Best,
Mark Terry