WRITING ADVICE #2
Send your writing-related questions to: itsottessab@gmail.com. Each week I'll pick a question at random and answer it here.
DEAR OTTESSA,
1. Fuck marry kill: plot, conflict, tension.
2. The protagonist of my novel is a 22-year-old girl. In the absence of any literal sex scenes in my book, why do you think my 70s-aged male grad school advisor asked, "Do she and [boyfriend character] have sex?"
3. What's a story you've tried to write many times and been unable to make it work? And why do you think that is?
Xoxo
Clara Whitman*
DEAR CLARA,
1: I’d Fuck plot, Marry tension, and Kill conflict.
Because you can’t really have tension without conflict. Tension is the product of unresolved conflict. So I’d Kill conflict because it is extraneous if you have tension.