The story and the characters for the novel I’m beginning to write are solid in my mind. The plot is amorphous but like a blessing-river, has clearly-defined banks. That river is flowing and is like a living thing.
I know this story because it is a symbol and, like all true symbols, those which accurately reflect God’s realities and point of view, it has an outcome and that outcome is justice.
The people are real to me. I could close my eyes and reach out and touch their collars and feel the grain of the fabric. That real.
The setting is an actual place, the time a point of history that was documented by many observers.
It is as if the whole thing trembles with the vibrancy of a creation, and the brilliance of rain-soaked color.
The problem is me.
I cannot decide. Do I stand in the place of God—for that is what an omniscient narrator does, right?—and tell the story?
Do I let the characters tell the story, in their own words, with their own blinders?
Do I let one character tell the story?
And in all these cases, do I relay the information in present or past tense?
How does one make such decisions when the story does not demand any one of these choices?
