I seem to remember that ten years ago there was a time when no paranormal romance novels could be found, and then suddenly it seems like they're showing up everywhere, and there are whole sections in bookstores dedicated to the genre.

I thought maybe someone would be able to tell me which was sort of the "first" paranormal romance centered book, or perhaps tell me which was the sort of "it starts here" work (for example, in my mind, the "it starts here" work of epic fantasy was Lord of the Rings. For detective novels, it would be the Sherlock Holmes works.)

Another thing I meant to add earlier is that when a book in a series starts off with one first person, single POV, and then the second book in the series takes a side character from the first book and makes them the new first person, single POV it kind of throws me off a bit. It takes a little more time for me to get used to the new voice and seeing the former main character referred to in the third person (and, let's face it, the main reason I went back and bought the second book was because I liked the POV voice of the first book. I want more of that guy I already know!)

If you're worried about readings skipping your Points of view you might be writing a character badly or sticking with them too long.  That doesn't mean don't use them.  That means don't bite off more than your reader can chew.

I agree. Although it is a tricky balance to achieve.

And GoT...  It's much overhyped.  So many of PoV characters are uninteresting or obnoxious.  There's no hope left in the series.  It was great for three books.  Then it got old.  You're not missing too much.

I'd heard there was a board game and a movie in the works for it now? So I suppose some people got something out of it. For me, it was just ultimately too confusing. Too many people, too many plotlines. I never had any idea what was happening.

It's beginning to sound to me as though conflict is what prevents the beginning from getting to the end...? For example, beginning: Frodo has an evil ring. End: destroy the ring! Everything in between: conflict! (Because if it was simply a matter of dropping the ring into the dustbin, there would be no need to write LOTR)

Does that sound right?

I had this sort of mental mixup where I thought conflict had to be related to fighting in some fashion, where one person does one thing and another person pushes back.

In all of the "craft" books i've read, conflict seems to be the number one rule of any book. My problem is that I'm not quite sure how I would define "conflict" as such. There are examples in the books, but some of them are confusing.

Would a fight with a friend be conflict? Would giving someone the cold shoulder be conflict? Is holding a gun to someone's head conflict? Is there some kind of conflict that does not include weapons and/or fighting?

Often when I'm writing I don't think of conflict first. I write out the scene as it plays in my head and then sort of go back and try to find the conflict (this is pretty much the method of the detective who thinks he knows who the murderer is, finding clues to said person's guilt in every shadow and speck of dust: I really have no idea if what I call conflict is really conflict or just me thinking it's conflict)

This brings me a bit to scenes and sequels (Hello, JB!) I don't think of my stories in terms of scenes and sequels either. I don't, for example, think: someone crashed into Harry's car just as he was running away from the cops<end of scene--(denied!!), start of sequel> Harry felt shock jolt through his body as he began to feel pain in his head <emotion part of sequel>...<reasoning part of sequel>....etc etc. I usually just think, "someone hit his car, and he felt shocked, and then he realized he still had to run from the police" without all the <> bits.

Is there something I should change with my story thinking process? Any tips or advice?

Thanks everyone for all the helpful views and comments.

Before I go further into this, I thought I'd better clarify what it is I'm trying to do.

The MC Comes of Age in the book and starts developing Weird Powers that he had no idea he had (don't know why I'm capitalizing all those words, but anyway...). From afar, the evil Bad Guy (aka Mr. Mind Conrol) notices the development of these powers and wants to use the MC in his great plan to Take Over the World (mwhahaha and all that sort of thing).

The MC is someone who can literally see someone getting kidnapped in broad daylight on a wide open street and he'll turn away just to avoid having to do something about it.

What the Bad Guy does is less "Pick up the gun, kill the man" and more "oh, look, there's a fight in the alley, go take a look" (I should add that there is something in said alley that the BG wants the MC to see, he's not just randomly willing him to go into dark alleys).

This sort of goes on until a point in the book when the two meet and the MC realizes the whole mind control thing and is thus able to fight against it (like someone seeing through a magic trick who learns to watch for that crucial moment). From then on it leads to the big end-of-the-world scene where the MC comes to terms with his avaoidance issues and ultimately ends up making his own choices and saving the world.

I should say that the book is in third person, and the reader is well aware of the BG long before the MC is. This is to avoid the sort of ending I personally call the ta-dah ending, as in "ta-dah! Guess what, reader? All that vague stuff you just read was the result of the BG's cool mind control powers that no one has mentioned up to now. Gotcha!"

The BG's mind control is something that is necessary for another piece of the plot, so I don't feel like I'm doing it solely to lure in the MC.

And yes, I do worry that it sounds too god-from-the-machine-ish. Not sure how to get past that.

By the way, I'm intrigued by the "using mind control as an avoidance tool", but I'm not sure it works for this particular story.

It comes as no surprise to anyone that I'm just now discovering I should have thought it through before I decided to wand up my characters. Like Quantus said, the idea of something that rolls away or breaks or whatever just when you need to use it.

I did consider using a cell phone or something as a similar focus, but it sounds a bit oxymoronic for this universe, though I'm liking the idea enough that I might use it for another story.

I did kind of change the wand from “any old stick” to a stick made with special material that is useful for focusing power, although as of now the wands don't have an owner user issue, meaning that anyone who's a wizard can use anyone's wand.

I'm working on an urban fantasy with wizards, where the ability of magic is passed on from wizard to wizard (think JB's summer/winter knights method of passing on power), and I've been writing the story with everyone using wands, for no particular reason I can remember, but I guess it must have made sense at the time.

Now I've had time to read back, I wonder if wands are too Harry Potterish? Should I go for a different item to focus power? A staff or chains or something like that for example? Or should I skip the item altogether and just let them have fireballs in their hands or do what they did on Charmed?

Any thoughts, advice, or personal preferences?