Novel Writing Principles (Core Philosophy)

Foundational Principles

Quietly Desperate, Not Dramatic: Depression comes in quiet—real pain is often invisible. Avoid melodrama; let suffering live in accumulation of small moments.
Emotions Between the Lines: Never name emotions directly. Show mundane details, physical sensations, actions without explanation. What’s unsaid carries more weight.
Valid Realities in Conflict: No villains. When characters clash, show each person’s inner world. The tragedy lies in the collision of two valid realities—both right from their own perspective.
Steve Jobs: Deep Cuts Only: Never use surface-level quotes. David is an otrovert—he connects with authenticity, not clichés. Either don’t use Jobs, or make sure it leaves a dent.
The Co-Founder as Peripheral: The story is a metaphor for anyone who desires to change—it’s a lone road. The most intimate emotions are not sharable, only experienced individually.
Success Redefined: Not wealth or status. Success is when you make others’ lives better. David “makes it” when millions of kids escape the cage that held him.
The Journey as Universal: This is not just David’s story. It’s the pattern—ancient, repeating. The framework itself becomes the boon, offered to whoever comes next.
一张一驰，文武之道也 (Rhythm of Focus and Flow): The art of narrative is knowing when to expand and when to compress. Some moments deserve infinite focus—elongate them, dwell in sensory details, let time dilate. Other passages should flow quickly—report events briefly, skip what doesn’t matter. KEY MOMENTS GET FOCUS. TRANSITIONS GET BREVITY. Never let the chapter become a business report listing events. Live in the critical scenes. Rush through the rest.

Advanced Writing Techniques

The Mundane as Profound: Ordinary details and everyday actions carry the deepest emotional weight. The smaller and more specific the detail, the more universal its resonance.
Silence as Communication: What characters don’t say, conversations left unfinished, responses withheld—silence speaks louder than dialogue. Use the space between words as actively as the words themselves.
Numbers as Emotional Pressure: Quantification makes abstract anxiety concrete. Financial tracking, time counting, mental arithmetic—numbers transform fear into tangible weight.
Physical Sensation Over Psychological Label: The body knows before the mind names. Show the physical manifestation of emotion, never the emotion itself.
Stillness as Chapter Resolution: Chapters end not in climax but in quiet recognition. The protagonist stops moving, sits with what is, and the moment holds its breath before continuing.
Time as Texture and Pressure: Specificity of time creates weight. Every moment marked is a moment counted, every hour tracked is anxiety made visible.
Objects as Silent Witnesses: Inanimate things absorb and reflect the emotional state of spaces and people. They accumulate history without speaking.
Rhythm Through Repetition: Small repeated actions create the heartbeat of consciousness. The way people move through digital and physical spaces reveals their interior state.
Perspective as Collision: Show how the same moment exists in multiple minds simultaneously. Truth emerges not from resolution but from the unbridgeable gap between valid but incompatible realities.
Color as Symbolic Thread: Recurring colors carry symbolic weight throughout the narrative, creating a visual-emotional language that operates beneath conscious awareness. Green represents security and certainty (the known path). Red represents discovery of the unknown and uncertainty (the startup path).
Transformation Requires Death: The old self must die before the new self emerges. This death is quiet, undramatic, and happens in accumulated small moments rather than singular dramatic breaks.
Pattern Recognition as Survival: Seeing the mythic structure while living through it provides bearable shape to unbearable experience. The pattern doesn’t reduce suffering but makes it survivable.