We're gonna need to start teaching other kinds of narrative structure besides arcs. And other kinds of character structure besides redemption. Our post-covid world isn't gonna operate on that logic (if it ever did) and that logic is going to ring as untrue, emotionally, in future

coming back to say..these works already exist. Many of us are writing them. If you are an editor and you get a book that doesn't fit an arc, maybe try and work with it instead of rejecting out of hand!

..also a good ex of this that I am re-reading tonight is the short story "common law" by Edward P Jones. Anyways, I wrote about all of this in my substack here https://kaitlyngreenidge.substack.com/p/fruit-flies