Shveta Thakrar asked Holly Black:

I would love to hear you talk a bit about plotting! You mentioned plot and subplot triangles when you taught at my Clarion, but I'm at a point where I still struggle with plotting novels in general. Any insights you can offer would be fantastic.

Holly Black Hi, Shveta! I still struggle with plotting too. In fact, I like to talk about plotting because I struggle with it so much. But the thing that I feel like I've learned between when I taught your Clarion class and now is to remember that plot is what moves your characters along in the story, but is also the thing that readers will forget first. What gives readers pleasure is character stuff -- their pain, their secrets, their choices, their sacrifices -- and so the plot that gives us the most of that is going to be the one that works best for the story.

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