RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
//Spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Oppenheimer – I’m talking story structure, breaking the gridlock of chronology (which both of these do), the difference between backstory and flashbacks, and how a climactic beat CAN happen in a flashback!
//For lovers of The Mark of the Tala, I’m asking a question. Otherwise I’m talking about POV choices, how to decide, and rewriting from different POVs. Also, I’m teaching a Worldbuilding class in Portland August 4!
//Happy to report that my training program to increase creative flow and word count is working! Also, additional thoughts on the ethics of using AI-generated work and how money factors into that for some people.
//
Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: Pinch Points or small turning points. We’re asking each other if we plan them, use them as foreshadowing, or just let the story flow?
So, I read KAK’s excellent post from yesterday explaining WTF “Pinch Points” are and how she uses them. Spoiler: yes, she plans them out.
Cannot possibly be a spoiler for anyone who knows anything about me: No, I plan them, I might use them?
YES, I LET THE STORY FLOW.
I swear, I need to start adding topics like “when you’re intuitively letting the story flow, how do you…. ” Except then I get stuck because there’s just not a whole hell of a lot to say about writing intuitively. Yep, here I am, letting things flow. Still flowing. How will it end? I have no idea!
LOL.
Amusingly enough, however, what KAK explained in her detailed analytical post is pretty much the exact scene I wrote yesterday in my current manuscript: ONEIRA.
(If you haven’t been following the podcast, ONEIRA is a Totally New Thing – new world, new magic system, unrelated to anything I’ve written so far. I’ve been calling it the book I’m not supposed to be writing – it fell on me from out of the sky and insisted on being written – but all of my friends have finally convinced me that clearly I am supposed to be writing it, so I’m trying not to say that anymore.)
It’s almost eerie, how the scene I wrote yesterday matches exactly what KAK says the pinch point with the villain is supposed to do. But I didn’t plan it at all. In fact, this scene introduced a new POV character and a new plot element, totally unexpected. But this is how I write and how I write this book in particular. It’s insisting on doing all sorts of things that I haven’t done before and don’t expect and I’ve just surrendered and am going with it. Which actually makes this project really fun, because I’m just letting it be whatever it is and not worrying about reader expectations or where it will fit in the marketplace.
All of this is to say that we all have our own process. My mantra: figure out what your process is and own it.
KAK loves to geek out on analysis, minutely controlling her stories down to pinches.
My stories just go their own way and I try to cling to the saddle.
It’s all good.
(Except sometimes I end up writing something I’m not supposed to be writing….)
//A round-up of what I’ve been reading lately, including several excursions from my normal reading. I’m thinking about female/femme narratives and how we center those (or don’t) in terms of stories about men.
//Thoughts on learning to paint by numbers, or learn to follow the rules of craft before you break them. How I’m breaking my own rule, on epistolary romances, and a funny story about my granddaughter.
//Zencastr borked on me, so there’s an abrupt ending, but I’m talking about self-publishing careers vs. trad-pub ones, AI and creativity, and writing a book that is an artistic conversation with another book.
//A roundup of my travels and socializing: Nebula Conference, the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, New Mexico Writers, literary snobbery, tail-sniffing, and repping genre writers who keep the industry going!
