{"id":732,"date":"2026-04-28T20:17:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/?p=732"},"modified":"2026-04-28T20:17:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:17:49","slug":"avoiding-pointless-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/?p=732","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding Pointless Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I do a monthly blog for the Western Colorado Writers&#8217; Forum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This month I tackled one of the tougher topics to be specific about: theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a long post, but I think it&#8217;s worth the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-western-colorado-writers-039-forum wp-block-embed-western-colorado-writers-039-forum\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"OEZQYnfe1D\"><a href=\"https:\/\/westerncoloradowriters.org\/avoiding-pointless-fiction-by-james-van-pelt\/\">Avoiding Pointless Fiction by James Van Pelt<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;Avoiding Pointless Fiction by James Van Pelt&#8221; &#8212; Western Colorado Writers&#039; Forum\" src=\"https:\/\/westerncoloradowriters.org\/avoiding-pointless-fiction-by-james-van-pelt\/embed\/#?secret=N0mpwQMtmZ#?secret=OEZQYnfe1D\" data-secret=\"OEZQYnfe1D\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I do a monthly blog for the Western Colorado Writers&#8217; Forum. This month I tackled one of the tougher topics to be specific about: theme. It&#8217;s a long post, but I think it&#8217;s worth the journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,3,41],"tags":[12,8,9,7,10],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-publishing","category-writing","category-writing-advice","tag-craft","tag-publishing","tag-short-stories","tag-writing","tag-writing-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":733,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions\/733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}