aesmael

Not really. It is a list, but of Nalo Hopkinson's signs a story is going off track. I would like to quote on of her points because it articulates a thought I have been trying to give voice to for a while now. "Fiction is artificial. In a way, you could look at it as a time-based art, like film. I think of a fiction story as an imaginative (imaginary) three-dimensional construct in movement. As the story progresses through time and space, the reader should begin to be able to perceive more and more of its shape and architecture. On a craft level, the kind of satisfaction I get from a story that works for me is similar to the kind I get when I look at a building where the design was creative and the construction sound and well-executed. To me, all the bits of a story need to support each other and add soundness to the structure as a whole. And they need to do so creatively."

This would be why she is a well respected author and I am still a mere amateur. In fact, I have nothing to add.

(via No Fear of the Future)