3/ SFF:
Piranesi (Susanna Clarke)
A Deadly Education (@naominovik)
Fable (@adriennebooks) >> Namesake completes the duology March '21 and it's superb
The Midnight Bargain (@clpolk)
Winternight trilogy (@arden_katherine)
House of Earth and Blood (@SJMaas)
5/ Fiction:
The Smash-Up (@alibenj1)
Migrations (@CharMcConaghy) >> The #1 best book I read this year, certainly a Top 5 of All Time.
6/ Non-fiction:
Not my most robust category, but these two left deep, important impressions on my heart.
Just Mercy (@eji_org)
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (@LoriGottlieb1)
7/ What did you love this year? What should headline my 2021 reading? You've made some great recommendations, Twitter, so keep 'em coming! 😉📚♥️
1/ Today I want to talk abt an issue that *mostly* plagues SFF authors, but that also has a tendency to creep into character-driven lit fic and women's fic, too. Ready? Here it is: Too much backstory and/or world-building at the start of your book. Let's unpack...
2/ Regardless of genre, you'll tell me that the info you're delivering abt MC or world's history is essential to understanding the primary conflict. And what I'm going to tell you is, you're probably wrong.
3/ Conflict structures are a lot like themes, in the sense that we can frame them in very general terms: MC desires X. [Thing/Person] prevents MC from obtaining X. If MC fails to obtain X, [bad stuff]. That's a primary conflict, my friends. We don't need detail to understand it.
1/ There's a huge difference between "stuff happening" in your book and actual plot. I tweeted y'day about accumulation of language vs culmination of events, but I think we need to unpack this a little more. Nothing like a Saturday morning fireside chat to start the weekend...
2/ Plenty happens in the course of your day that doesn't change the plot of your life. Your morning routine, for instance -- not especially interesting if it's business as usual. WOW YOU MADE COFFEE AGAIN. Proud of you, champ. Also? No one cares.
3/ Like you, your characters have a norm. And while you might think it's important for us to see the mundane... you're probably wrong. Showing us the deviation from normalcy accomplishes the same thing: once we know what's different, we can infer what the norm would have been.