Prioritization!

This year, I'm focused more than ever on prioritizing my writing. Not putting my writing first, but rather, prioritizing what I ask the reader to look at and remember on each page. Priority. Organization.

Organization is the difference between a story and a novel.

It isn't enough to know everything about your characters, story, plot. In fact, sometimes knowing too much can get in your way. Because readers don't need to know everything: they need to know just enough to create an emotional and intellectual engagement.

An unprioritized novel never builds to something unputdownable. It is just a series of facts and events the reader must remember. It's just work.

It is up to the writer to aggressively prioritize, organize, and stylize those events to make them into something that feels effortless and purposeful.

I think that's more important than ever.

Our modern story tastes are changing faster than ever (it's hard to remember, sometimes, that the novel, as a storytelling form, is very young), and increasingly we're pivoting to highly stylized stories, highly prioritized stories, highly organized stories.

We want to feel the hand of the writer. We want to know the writer is in control, that our time with the page will be worthwhile. Priorities! Not just And then this happened and then this happened and then this happened.

All of these things are true in the Raven Cycle, but if they had been told without prioritization, no one would have fallen in love with the series.

Instead:

Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she had been told that she would kill her true love . . . and puzzle the boys' stories inside hers, so we understand that her beginning, middle, and end will dictate where we are in the overall story.