Excellent as always. And a truth so reassuring, coming from you: “And don’t worry if you constantly change things around. That’s absolutely normal. Unless you’re blessed, you discover the novel you’re writing while you’re writing.”
What's interesting to me in your example is that one of your secondary conflicts - the family curse - the fukú - starts the book.
That's revealing, I guess, for those of us in the trenches: the primary conflict need not be first. Tho I guess I can see how Oscar's search for love is the zafa. And so the primary conflict is there, too, waiting to be named.
Thoughts?
I sometimes think of conflicts in stories as parentheticals (I think I got this from somewhere, tho I can't remember where), with the first being the throughline that stays open throughout the story, and maybe never closes (your Core Booster). And smaller conflicts being parentheticals that open and close within a chapter or scene or whatever, and on and on.
But this helps me recognize the limitations of the parenthetical analogy ("Wack analogies aside..."), especially as I struggle with introducing my own foundational conflict, which may be more important to me the writer than the story.
Excellent as always. And a truth so reassuring, coming from you: “And don’t worry if you constantly change things around. That’s absolutely normal. Unless you’re blessed, you discover the novel you’re writing while you’re writing.”
What's interesting to me in your example is that one of your secondary conflicts - the family curse - the fukú - starts the book.
That's revealing, I guess, for those of us in the trenches: the primary conflict need not be first. Tho I guess I can see how Oscar's search for love is the zafa. And so the primary conflict is there, too, waiting to be named.
Thoughts?
I sometimes think of conflicts in stories as parentheticals (I think I got this from somewhere, tho I can't remember where), with the first being the throughline that stays open throughout the story, and maybe never closes (your Core Booster). And smaller conflicts being parentheticals that open and close within a chapter or scene or whatever, and on and on.
But this helps me recognize the limitations of the parenthetical analogy ("Wack analogies aside..."), especially as I struggle with introducing my own foundational conflict, which may be more important to me the writer than the story.