After years of letting it simmer on the back burner, I've finally taken The Dolphin-singer back out. It's an expansion of the short story "Spiral Horn, Spiral Tusk" (published in Sherwood Smith's anthology Beyond the Farthest Star), and I'd originally started it way back in 2000, when it became increasingly clear that the story of Rissa and Admiral Shayell simply did not lend itself to a series of linked short stories. It's set during the Isolation, perhaps a century or so before Codyland Reunion, although there is almost no overlap in the characters, so it can certainly be left ambiguous until I actually need to fix the relative chronology.
As I'm outlining Chapter 2, I'm realizing increasingly that the intricate web of misunderstandings that are so critical to the story really need access to the heads of both Admiral Shayell and Lord Benton. It's just as important to see what each man meant as what they misunderstand the other as saying and doing. However, to try to do it in tight third-person POV would mean a whole series of tiny scenes, switching back and forth.
However, I'm not sure to what degree I can get away with switching to omniscient POV, particularly given that omniscient is severely out of favor right now. An established author can do it -- viz. Sherwood Smith's recent novel Inda, which uses omniscient to great effect in several scenes. But a first novel already faces a major hurdle just getting past the "read to reject" first readers, and burdening it with an unpopular POV choice could be just one too many issues.
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