Methodposting #1: Good novels use MSG - by Jaye Chen
jayechen.substack.com · 1,207 words · saved by 1 readers
(this is first in like 3 rants i wrote last year in the depth of the hell that is writing my novel)
(this is first in like 3 rants i wrote last year in the depth of the hell that is writing my novel) Writing fiction is very cool because you get to be less naked. You get away with basically nothing in poetry or criticism. You are completely naked, beholden to your subject, beholden to your questions. In poetry you are beholden to sound. In noncritical nonfiction you sometimes have to use gimmicks by necessity and it's like, totally fine, nobody calls you out for it, it usually makes the article-essay-whatever it is a lot better for the reader. But writing fiction is about developing a new…
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