LynAlden on Nostr: One thing I've come to appreciate about fiction writing is that it's as much problem ...

One thing I've come to appreciate about fiction writing is that it's as much problem solving as it is creativity.

Creativity is the spark of it. You start with a story idea. Vibes.

And then there's the basics. You have to put in your hours on reading fiction, and looking up tutorials on dialogue, exposition, structure, etc. Basically, spend a thousand hours reading things you like and reviewing all the mostly-right rules so that you can selectively break them when need be.

But the majority of the time actually spent on the craft, is problem solving. And as an engineer, that appeals to me. You have a series of scenes that need to happen for the story to occur, and have to figure out how to fill in the gaps to make one lead to another properly, i.e. mostly invisibly to the reader as though they're immersed and it's totally organic and really happened. And then you realize a plot hole with one of your scenes, and have to figure out how to tweak that scene or other scenes to fix the plot hole without creating more plot holes in a butterfly effect.

It clicks all the same fun challenge sensors that my brain has when it comes to engineering design or financial analysis.