Okay, SO. For two years now I have been working on the same story - researching, starting, researching, restarting, again and again. I can't quite find the way I want to do this! First, I'll tell you some about it:
Two and a half years ago I met this woman. Her mother was in a nursing home, angry at her daughter for putting her there, and her daughter wanted someone for her to talk to. She asked me if I would volunteer to spend some time with her. Long story short, the experience was extremely life changing. She told me all of these crazy, amazing stories about her life ranging from 1925 to 2012! I got permission from her daughter to write a book about them/her! Unfortunately, however, the woman I visited passed away and we never got to finish the stories.
So, for the past two years I've been filling in the blanks, taking what she told me and developing it, adding in events here and there that, due to her location and age at the time, she should have been a part of/known about. So the book is based of a true story, with a little bit of fiction here and there.
MY DILEMMA is that I can't decide how to write it. I have what I'm writing, I have all the stories, and I know what I'm putting where. BUT I cannot for THE LIFE OF ME decide whether I should:
A) have her as the narrator of the story in present tense as if the events are currently happening, OR
B) have her as the narrator of the story in past tense as if she is telling the reader/me/secondary character (like how she actually told me her stories) everything, kind of Interview with a Vampire style, OR
C) have a secondary character, who would be me in the situation, as the narrator with the woman telling me all the stories, intermediately shifting out of the past/stories to reveal bits of what the woman is like now and the funny things that happened while I was visiting her besides her stories...so it would sort of be like a mirror/comparison for the reader to see the differences and changes that affected her.......(does this one make sense? It was a little hard to word.)
SO, which do you think I should do? I keep doing one and then changing my mind and then changing my mind again. PLEAAAASE give me your opinion/advice, this is the only thing holding me back!! THANK YOU in advance!
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