Fate… how much of my writing is left to it? It was fairly difficult to come up with a topic for today, since it is Insecure Writers Support Group day, where we blog about things pertaining to writing, and support each other through the downs and ups of our writing lives. And boy, were there plenty of those last month!
As usual everyone signs up at the Insecure Writers Support Group Sign-up page (which also has all the details of this week’s topic), and thanks to Ninja Captain Alex J Cavanaugh and his team of co-hosts, everybody gets visited by plenty of other people.
Please get to visit as many other participants as you can, and especially the awesome co-hosts this month, who are PK Hrezo, Pat Garcia, SE White,Lisa Buie Collard, and Diane Burton!
Question of the Month (answer – Fate)
Are you a risk-taker when writing? Do you try something radically different in style/POV/etc. or add controversial topics to your work?
When I’m writing, I leave a lot of it up to Fate. If I’m doing Flash Fiction (why didn’t I pick that for my F?) I do try to experiment. Some of the prompts you get require a stretch–especially those of Chuck Wendig’s which asked you to mash-up a couple of sub-genres. Much of the time I had to look up what the sub-genres meant! Wikipedia has a very good set of pages on sub-genres, by the way.
If I’m in a novel, though, I think my readers want to find what they expect, to a certain extent. A series needs to be a series. Suddenly changing style radically does not work (in my opinion, anyway). That said, I have been working hard on deeper point of view on each of the Viridian series books, to the extent that when I wrote the last of the Princelings books I wondered whether I was getting too much into one POV or the other.
But that’s always a problem for me when I have two protagonists working together, equal partners. Whose POV should it be when they are together? I’ve gradually sorted that out, so you stay with one, then move to the other, and hopefully I’m getting better at it.
Would I write a novel in a radically different style? I’d have to have become really comfortable with it to keep that voice going throughout. And it’s hard enough just writing a novel! (I’m behind on my wordcount target at the moment).
Maybe… if I get a good enough idea I might… I’ll leave it to fate!
and now a reminder of my Flash Fiction Collections!
You can see them all on my author page on Amazon; the first is out, the rest over the next three months (pre-order now!)
Hi Jemima – you’ve lots of stories to tell … and yes ‘fate’ does tend to decide for us … while flash fiction gets us writing … in my case ‘oddly’! Cheers Hilary
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That’s great that you can take more risks in your writing when writing flash fiction. I don’t take many big risks in my novel writing either. As an unpublished writer, I think that I have to follow the rules.
I have a feeling Stephen King said something about following the rules in ‘On Writing’… along the lines of ‘you have to be able to write by the rules before you know when you can break them.’ or maybe it was someone else 🙂
Short stories are better places to take those risks. As you said, with a series fans expect what came before.
Thanks, Alex. 🙂
Short stories are definitely fun for risk taking and experimenting. I love reading through anthologies for this reason.
I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose that’s why I find anthologies so enjoyable – especially for scifi/spec fic – the longer novels seem repetitive.
Hi,
Writing outside of your own style is very risky. I am a risk taker too but I do it best in my own style and the genre I write.
All the best.
Shalom aleichem,
Pat G @ EverythingMustChange
It takes long enough to develop your own style, without taking risks with it too! Thanks, Pat.
Dual POV always throws me for a loop. I try to let the characters dictate who’s head we should be in, but if it gets uneven (one character getting more time than the other) it tends to drive me nuts. LOL
Yes. I must check whether I’m spending too much time in one person’s head, and whether it’s justified….
Juggling multiple POVs sounds like a real challenge. I’m impressed with anyone who tries it.
I’m not sure how successful I am at present. I wonder whether these people sound different from each other. Something to think about when I’m editing, though.
I agree with you. Fate does have a lot to do with the way our writing shapes up. Multiple POV’s are definitely tough. Taking a call as to whose voice deserves more attention is challenging but can also alter the narrative to a large extent.
I’ve always been bad at the unreliable narrator. Maybe my characters are too perfect?
I like the way you put that: leaving things to “Fate.” But at the same time giving some order to it. Great mashup!
Writing Flash Fiction is hard. To be confined to such short content makes you a really tight writer. I like your take on risk.
Its not easy to do these stuffs and it take time and hardwork also.