First Person vs 3rd Person

On the Forum Y asks:

I’ve noticed that the writing and language of the edge series is more structured than the Kate series. Like the writing is more revised. The Kate series is more freestyle-ish. I wonder it that makes the edge novels a little harder to write.

(No, it’s not more revised .  Kate is harder to write but you’re right on language, more on that in a moment.)

CheeseBK answers:

I think the impression you get mostly comes from the difference in story-telling.
All Kate Daniels books are told by Kate. All we get is colored by her, her impressions, her personal opinion and her speech, her POV. That way it might feel more ‘freestyle’… because we practically are only along for the ride in her life. We only ever get to read what she suspect other people feel/think and so on.

Yes and no.

True, Kate books are told through Kate.  She is the compass that navigates the narrative.  Ideally, the reader plugs into her thought stream and rides along, passing judgment on the characters as seen through her eyes.  The reader may not agree with her assessments or actions but they probably understand why she acts this way or that.

But exactly the same thing happens in the 3rd person narrative.

The bigger difference here is in style.  Kate is written in a variation of noir, not Chandler noir but rather Mickey Spillane.

The guy was dead as hell. He lay on the floor in his pajamas with his brains scattered all over the rug and my gun was in his hand. I kept rubbing my face to wipe out the fuzz that clouded my mind but the cops wouldn’t let me. One would pull my hand away and shout a question at me that made my head ache even worse and another would slap me with a wet rag until I felt like I had been split wide open.

Vengeance is Mine

Nobody ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this. The rain was misty enough to be almost fog-like, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhatten by night was reduced to a few sleepy, yellow lights off in the distance.

Some place over there I had left my car and started walking, burying my head in the collar of my raincoat, with the night pulled in around me like a blanket. I walked and I smoked and I flipped the spent butts ahead of me and watched them arch to the pavement and fizzle out with one last wink. If there was life behind the windows of the buildings on either side of me, I didn’t notice it. The street was mine, all mine. They gave it to me gladly and wondered why I wanted it so nice and all alone.

There were others like me, sharing the dark and the solitude, but they were huddled in the recessions of the doorways not wanting to share the wet and the cold. I could feel their eyes follow me briefly before they turned inward to their thoughts again.

So I followed the hard concrete footpaths of the city through the towering canyons of the buildings and never noticed when the sheer cliffs of brick and masonry diminished and disappeared altogether, and the footpath led into a ramp then on to the spidery steel skeleton that was the bridge linking two states.

I climbed to the hump in the middle and stood there leaning on the handrail with a butt in my fingers, watching the red and green lights of the boats in the river below. They winked at me and called in low, throaty notes before disappearing into the night.

Like eyes and faces. And voices.

I buried my face in my hands until everything straightened itself out again, wondering what the judge would say if he could see me now. Maybe he’d laugh because I was supposed to be so damn tough, and here I was with hands that wouldn’t stand still and an empty feeling inside my chest.

One Lonely Night

Look at the style: short sentences, one sentence paragraphs, no wasted words.  If you were to throw these sentences against a wall, they would bounce off.  Vivid word choice helps to add an almost lyrical quality to the narrative, without sappy sentimentality or dilution of the character: we know this guy is dangerous, we know he would spring into violence without hesitation,a nd we’re completely okay with him comparing boats to some beasts hidden in the fog who call to him in throaty voices.  The hero is a closet poet with a gun and brass knuckles in his pocket.

The Edge books, on other hand, are written to imitate Regency era romances.

“Felicity,” Mrs. Featherington interrupted, “why don’t you tell Mr. Brdgerton about your watercolors?”

For the life of him, Colin couldn’t imagine a less interesting topic (except maybe for Phillipa’s watercolors), but he nonetheless turned to the youngest Featherington with a friendly smile and asked, “And how are your watercolors?”

But Felicity, bless her heart, gave him a rather friendly smile herself and said nothing but, “I imagine they’re fine, thank you.”"

— Julia Quinn (Romancing Mister Bridgerton)

For the fourth time, His Grace the Duke of Damerell lifted the knocker with his free hand and brought the tarnished brass crashing down on its mottled-green base. For the fourth time, the sound echoed on the other side of the oaken door, unanswered. Ransom Falconer’s mouth drew back in the faintest hint of a grimace.

He and his horse appeared to be the only civilized creatures within five square miles. Had he thought otherwise, he would never have allowed himself such a show of emotion. The overgrown Tudor walls rose above him, gray stone and neglect, an affront to the values of ten generations of Falconers. Admittedly, from where he stood on the threshold Ransom could see the romantic possibilities of the place: shaped gables and tall oriel windows and dark spreading trees, but at the very thought of such sentimentality those Falconer ghosts seemed to stare in haughty disapproval at his back. Without conscious intention, his own aristocratic features hardened into that hereditary expression of disdain.

Princes had been known to quail before such a look. There had been a few kings, too, and innumerable queens and duchesses and courtly ladies, all struck dumb and uneasy beneath the Falconer stare. Four centuries of power and politics had evolved and improved the expression, until by Ransom’s time it was a weapon of chilling efficiency. He himself had learned it early?at his grandfather’s elegant knee.

As it was, when at last the rusty lock creaked and crashed and the door opened on a complaining groan, the figure peering out from the gloom received the full force of His Grace’s pitiless mien. The young maid would have been forgiven by a host of knowledgeable Whigs if she’d turned tail and run in the instant before Ransom recalled himself and softened his expression. But she did not. She merely wiped her hands on a grimy white apron and lifted a pair of vaguely frowning gray eyes. “Yes?” she asked, in a voice which might have been testy had it not been so preoccupied. “What is it?”

Ransom held out his card in one immaculately gloved hand.

She took the card. Without even glancing at it, she stuck the engraved identification into one bulging pocket of her apron.

Ransom watched his calling card disappear, shocked to the core of his pedigreed soul at such poorly trained service.

Laura Kinsale, Midsummer Moon

There similarities: again we have short clear sentences and vivid language, but the sentence flow is slower, more measured.  There is an underlying sense of civility to the characters; they tend to be more introspective, more sardonic, and their humor is wry and understated as opposed to in-your-face one liner of noir.   Masters of Regency-style romances tend to subtly make fun of their protagonists, almost as if winking at the reader through the pages and saying, “Aren’t they silly?”

I wanted an aristocratic feel to the bluebloods and the subtle humor.  I also wanted intimacy with the heroine that is particular to well-written historicals.  If you break down ON THE EDGE,there are pages and pages that are spent completely in the heroine’s head.  Every nuance is explored.  If I were to do it in Kate books, I would get reviews howling in outrage at the slow narrative.  Not only that, but Kate is very much an action heroine: she makes snap-judgment decisions and acts on them, because if she doesn’t, she will die.  Rose worries and constructs strange theories in her head and then obsesses about them.

The challenge with the Edge books is keeping that Regency feel but with modern language an attitudes.

Styles can sometimes be used to a do all sorts of fun.  I had an email the other day from a reader who read Silent Blade and emailed me terribly excited.  She couldn’t figure out why the storyline seemed so familiar and then she got it: it’s a play on Harlequin Presents line.  (It’s meant to be, heh.)  All the tropes are there, but the style told her romantic SF, so it took her a little while to identify the core of the story.