Eric Klein asked S. Shane Thomas:

i totally agree with your definition of subconcious mind writing but do you lose track of what your writing as your characters get lost in your stories?

S. Shane Thomas I have allowed myself to get derailed while writing, but I just take those loose threads and weave them into the plot. Most of the time its great, other times it creates chapters that I remove entirely. I spent a whole chapter in Distant Origins where two humans talk to their alien friend about "the friend zone," I dropped it because it didn't match the tone of the entire piece.

When I drafted A Paleolithic Fable I stayed on track a bit better. Perhaps the experience of editing out some of my tangential bits mended me, or perhaps only plotting a quarter of the story before drafting allowed me to avoid big cuts. I did curtail the amount of certain characters POV chapters in A Paleolithic Fable based on early reader responses.

Thanks for your question, Eric!

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