There’s this movie, “Away We Go,” that I’d like to stipulate is a fairly solid narrative. (It’s not without flaws, mind you, and Problematic Problems with certain portrayals might need to be left aside.) It’s a movie about a relationship undergoing change, but there’s never any sense that the relationship is in danger of ending. The surface question of the movie, “where are they going to live?” kicks off the action but doesn’t really provide much dynamism; the change over time is in the characters maturing and their relationship deepening.

I suspect that Tolstoy is partly to blame, here, with the “all happy families are alike” nonsense. If one is used to thinking that relationships can only differ in their dysfunctions, then it’s hard to imagine there being suspense involved in exploring what kind of fruit a relationship is going to bear.

I think there’s plenty of room for good relationships in stories that are about other things. But that’s not quite the same thing either.

a good story requires dramatic tension, and good relationships lack dramatic tension.

I’ve had an essay stewing about this for the last decade or so, but the short version is: I don’t think that this is necessarily true, and I think that the inability of American culture to tell stories set within relationships, rather than solely at their endpoints, is… er… significant?

Can I summon someone else to do the smart writing for me? I’m half-sick and, oh, who am I kidding.

This is a different genre, but have you read Maryrose Wood’s INCORRIGIBLE CHILDREN OF ASHTON PLACE series? It’s MG, officially set in Victorian England (but not really – there’s no pretense at real authenticity, but it’s all very, very funny and often surreal satire on the tropes of Victorian kidlit), and it starts with Book 1, THE MYSTERIOUS HOWLING. A plucky 15-year-old governess (with mysteriously missing parents) is hired to tutor three children who were literally raised by wolves, and the result is genuinely hilarious.

I spent the first chapter of Book 1 wondering if the writing style might just be too much affectation – and then I fell into the rhythm and just adored it from then onwards, giggling out loud over and over again. I’m on Book 3 now, and the whole series is just delicious.

I’d say more creative control is the number one reason to self-publish for an author has has a track record and already developed skills. (For someone who hasn’t been published yet, if their skills aren’t yet up to snuff, you basically take the risk of showing all your flaws to the world when you self-publish. This is certaily worth the risk for some authors.) In the case of the Daron serial, this was a project that multiple publishers told me had no viable economic life, though it had literary merit. So self-publishing made complete sense, especially with the advent of web serials (which are essentially fiction blogs) and ebooks. I haven’t made enough to live on with Daron, but in less than two years I have topped the $2,000 advance one publisher had offered me for it (*if* I would cut it down to under 100,000 words) and I’m estimating that if I keep going like this, in another year I’ll possibly double that. I polled the readership recently and a Kickstarter may be in the offing, too, which would add a bit more, depending on how many people go for it, to make a print edition available.

So yes, self-publishing is paying off, relative to how little trad publishing usually pays in the first place. :-) And the validation I get from reader comments and the fun I’ve had writing it, cannot be matched in any other medium. So even if it hadn’t made any money, Daron’s Guitar Chronicles would have been worth doing.

If you’re leaning towards the crime genre, I love love love the first seven or eight Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly. He’s flown off the rails in the last few years, but those early Bosch books are tremendous.