Question for professional writers, and specifically authors: do you write every day? How much do you get done on average in a week? How do you manage creative burnout? #writerscommunity#writerslife#writersofbluesky#AuthorLife#WritingCommmunity#writing
Having one of those rare days where the tiled groundwork of understanding at last clicks into place and I step back and behold a stronger floor for my writing than before. I just became a much better and more interesting author.
I suppose the price of true art is that the artist must hold nothing back, even when the work would at first seem trivial. Wherever it leads, they must follow; whatever it demands, they must accomplish.
One of the hardest parts about meaningful art is that it forces you to confront yourself. I've been prevaricating about writing an outline for a character with a complicated family relationship, and wouldn't you know it, it's because I'm avoiding my own unresolved feelings of grief and anger.
The emotional narratives of conventional stories do not look like nice, arched hills. They look like stock market bubbles — because bubbles are the literal manifestation of stories investors tell each other. Start, run-up, small peak/bear trap, take off, crash/normalisation.
1. Exposition — Yes. 2. Rising Action — Yes. 3. Climax — No. Perhaps minor victory, but only as part of the Complication. 4. Falling Action — The opposite. Complication gives way to the final Escalation of Tension. 5. Resolution — Half true; actually Climax and Denouement.
The traditional Five Act structure is absolute bullshit. Very much reads as categorisation invented by someone who didn't know how stories work, to try to describe what they read but didn't understand. A story where the actual climax is smack in the middle bores in the back half.
Actually think about that. What happens to the dog when it catches up with the car?
On the negative side, I'm currently sick with an inner ear infection. Antibiotics let me sleep decently, which was good. On the positive, I dreamed up the premise to a new story. What if the regressive conservative/fascist movement got the world they thought they wanted?
Full Interview here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Interview with J. Thornbury Can you give us an introduction to who you are, and the sort of things you like to create? My name's James, and I'm an author. I've been writing since I was very young. M...