Studying these matters causally might be impossible, but a recent paper, “Sameness Entices, but Novelty Enchants in Fanfiction Online,” explores a correlational relationship between the enjoyment of a work and the work’s originality through a data analysis of an online fanfiction archive.
Against the Warlock Release Post and Author’s Note
The best wielders of this kind of magic are those who can compellingly spin words into a believable tale, and the more skilled, the wilder a tale you can suggest successfully.
Magical Explanations
Magic stops being magical when it’s explained, but physics becomes more magical the more we understand it.
On the Principle of Motivational Momentum
Now that I’m refocused on Golems and Kings, I would like to finish it not later than the end of the summer, so that I can restart Rogue Planet in September.
Nonlinear Storytelling
Balancing a timeline across multiple viewpoints and storylines, and deciding how the viewpoints will be sequenced and presented is all the nonlinearity most stories will necessitate or support. But there are stories where it is appropriate to do something more creative and imaginative.
Lengths and Forms
Working within those forms is part of managing reader expectations, which is a key component of making a story appeal to a given reader, but the expectations we have around form and length of stories are not derived from some optimization method synchronized with humanity’s ability to interact with literature.
Clarity of Vision – Opacity of Writing
In a substantial way, the very clarity of my vision for the story undermined my ability to write that story so someone else could understand it.
Writing in the “Real” World
Writing a story associated with the real world is complicated, and it becomes more complicated the more closely associated with the present real world it is.
An Oblique Approach to Reality
Thinking of poetry as an oblique approach to reality reframes my understanding of poems and helps explain why I’ve always struggled with writing original poems, but it doesn’t mean I can suddenly write poetry.
Specificity
Being specific with what you say might seem important in legal writing, essays, philosophy, and other, less fictional formats, but storytelling is less obvious. If you’ve been paying attention to our posts about word choice, though, you can probably see its relevance.
IGC Publishing 