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Inevitable Narrative: How to Detect what Is Necessary in Your Fiction

December 7, 2020

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

characters, ending, narrative, plot, writing

Learning how to detect what is necessary in your fiction allows you to write an inevitable narrative. A narrative that is inevitable is structurally solid and leads to a sense-making ending.

Therefore, it should be fairly obvious that learning to see what’s necessary and what’s not when writing is very important. To put it simply, without having an inevitable narrative you will likely have problems with narrative pace as well as a problematic ending.

Moreover, a non inevitable narrative… inevitably creates problems with over-explaining and exposition. The reason? If something that shouldn’t be there actually is, you tend to (sometimes subconsciously) rationalize it with superfluous content.

In this post we’ll take a closer look at inevitable narratives. I’ll show you how to decide what is narratively inevitable and what isn’t, as well as how to structure your narrative in a way that precisely favors its inevitability.

inevitable narrative
An inevitable narrative helps you find the only way to a sense-making ending
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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.

points of divergence
Writing criticality is… critical. As does criticality in a nuclear context, points of divergence imply a point of no return. Once you commit to a plot line, you need to stick to it.
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Narrative Exposition: How To Improve Your Writing Technique

October 18, 2018

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

exposition, fiction, literature, narrative, plot, writing

A novel is about emotions and thoughts, but it’s also about facts. Even in literary fiction, where focus is on characters, the author needs to communicate certain facts to the reader. For example, what a character did on a certain past occasion. Or, where her parents were at some point in time. We call this narrative exposition (I will offer a more detailed definition further below). Believe it or not, narrative exposition is an area where authors of even the highest caliber can have trouble with.

Improving your narrative exposition technique can dramatically improve many areas of your writing. It can make your narrative flow more naturally and more realistically. A better narrative exposition strategy can also increase the affective power of your characters.

narrative exposition
Narrative exposition controls, among other things, the narrative flow
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