I'm done with this writing advice (Patreon)

As I've been finishing up a cozy fantasy, I keep thinking about the old writing advice, drummed into me by countless writing books and advice blogs etc.,: Conflict on every page. Increase the tension here. Conflict! Tension! Conflict! Tension! There is also a general literary bias that stories are more important if they're depressing, which is not always connected to the tension and conflict thing, but it’s not like we don’t all know that comedy and romance don’t win Best Picture. 

Don't get me wrong, there are times when I LOVE writing and reading conflict, tension, and indeed, stuff that is very depressing. I've written several books that have been accused of making people cry, or making them uncomfortable, and I’m proud of that.

I also don't think it's bad advice for beginning to intermediate writers because new writers do have a tendency to let books just drag. 

But as I'm writing this, I do think there is some real power in writing stories that are about finding happiness, and letting those stories cross genres and not just being small town romances and cozy mysteries, which for some reason have been about the only books allowed to be unabashedly joyous. I'm not really sure if DOLL GIRL MEETS DEAD GUY has conflict on every single page, and I don't care. I think every page might be interesting or relatable, at least to someone, and that’s good enough for me. There is something that feels really empowering about giving my character some nice things. Yes, there's a romance and that's a pretty standard source of happiness in books. But...in the past I probably would have added some family or cultural conflict.

But then I decided, you know, I actually like the Ven-Diri a lot and I like Dorr's family too, and Sorla isn't easily creeped out. That wouldn't be in character for her anyway. What if Sorla liked his family and his culture and they liked her back? 

This book has ended up full of stuff like that. People just loving each other, in different ways, not always perfectly, but also pretty unwaveringly.

That isn’t to say there aren’t some bigger conflicts. There are. There are also teeny-tiny conflicts, the kind we all live with every day, and those are my favorite. Actually, The Cursed Soul trilogy was full of those, too. Grau and Velsa have several very SMALL arguments and I really love those. In real life, being a loving couple nevertheless almost always involves a bunch of small arguments. I really feel comfortable in that space of writing good, loving people who nevertheless are not perfect and also have their own different opinions of each other, that might not be the entire picture, as well as different sides of themselves. But they’re the kind of disagreement you have with people you really love and feel safe with. Teeny tiny micro-tensions in a fantasy world instead of big save-the-world ones.

What it feels like to me is figuring out how to have a better life and how to attract better things and how to love more in fiction, in a hopefully realistic way and not a sappy unrealistic way. I have felt this from some of the other books I’ve been reading, so it’s not like it’s my own thing, but it really speaks to me right now.