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Affect in Writing: A Way of Feeling

March 10, 2020

If you searched Home for Fiction for the term “affective power”, you’d discover tons of results. I have referred to the concept of affect in writing in many of my posts – “Sounds in Literature”, “Writing and Reading Symbolism”, and “Narrative Exposition”, to name three.

I now finally decided to write a proper post about it, for two reasons: Firstly, it’s important to speak a bit more analytically about something I use so often. Secondly, I realized that some of my more academically inclined readers might think I make some claim to Affect Theory.

Let’s clear this latter part right away: Although perhaps some accidental commonalities might exist, the way I use the concept of affect has absolutely no connection to affect theory.

Rather, I deploy the concept of affect in writing to refer to emotions, thoughts, and states of mind. I’ll open up the concept in more detail, also explaining i) why it’s important for writers; ii) how to use it in your fiction.

affect, image of woman — Affect in writing is an expression involving emotions, thoughts, and states of mind

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Writing Criticality: Identify and Control Points of Divergence in Your Fiction

February 26, 2020

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

fiction, plot, writing

In physics, criticality refers to a nuclear reaction that is able to continue by itself. But for our purposes, I use it as a metaphor to indicate “points of no return”. In other words, points of divergence in a novel, where the plot can take two (critically) different directions.

The concept of points of divergence might be familiar to authors writing alternative-history science fiction. For an example, you can see my review of Elleander Morning. However, when I refer to writing criticality, I’m not limiting myself to speculative fiction.

The concept of points of divergence is ubiquitous. It pervades all fictional narratives, regardless of genre. Or at least… it ought to! In this post I’ll show you how to work with points of divergence – identifying, controlling, and deploying them successfully.

A note on terminology: I use the terms “Writing Criticality” and “point of divergence” interchangeably in the post.

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When Books Write Themselves: Perspectives on Creativity

February 13, 2020

Writing

book, creativity, literature, writing

The key to writing good literature is understanding subtlety and gradation. When it comes to good fiction and great books, things are rarely binary. In other words, you can’t answer some questions with a simple yes or no. And the question do books write themselves? is precisely such a question.

On the surface, the answer appears to be “no, you idiot, how could books write themselves? You need a person to write them.” That’s (self-evidently) true, but it’s not the whole truth.

Because, as we will see in today’s post, not only do books write themselves – in some way which we’ll analyze – but you shouldn’t interfere with the process, either.

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