Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 199

Dear Publishers,

Hi there, publisher!

I’m an author. Maybe you know me? I’m the Internet’s “Chuck Wendig.” AKA, “That Guy Who Curses A Lot In Interesting Ways.” I write stories. I have a beard composed of thousands of self-aware cilia that whisper those stories in my ear, stories I then transcribe for the world to read.

You’re a publisher. Or a person who works in publishing. Or a robot in the humanless future scouring ancient blog posts to try to discover exactly how people went extinct (spoiler alert: iOS9 became self-aware and killed us all).

I like you.

I think you do the Story Lord’s work in bringing books to to the world. People can bag on you all they like, but I say, without you and the authors you publish, my life would be a hollow, smelly carapace — like a turtle’s shell if you first scraped out all the vital turtley bits.

And that word, “vital,” applies to you. You are vital. A vital part of the ecosystem. A critical and competitive keystone of the entire book-reading, book-loving, book-smelling, book-humping culture. I love books. You publish books. So let’s be best pals, yeah? *cuts palm with a Swiss Army Knife, offers to shake your hand* LET US SEAL THIS FRIENDSHIP IN BLOOD.

Ahem. Sorry.

Still, as much as I like you, I think it’s time we had a conversation. I’ve noticed some things you do that, frankly, I think you could be doing better. Admittedly, I’m just an outsider — a rogue ronin author stalking the dustblown wastes, writing my stories during the day underneath collapsed highway overpasses — for at night I must flee the Yowling Hell-Warblers and their motorcycle riding Coyote Men. I’m an outsider who, I admit, is probably ignorant to The Way Things Really Are Inside The Publishing Machine.

Just the same, I’m going to opine loudly.

Because that’s how I do.

Let’s talk about you, you silly scamps, you.

DRM Is For Assbadgers

I get it. You like DRM. You think it’s valuable in staving off waves of book-thieving pirates.

And, hey, DRM by itself is not toxic. DRM is like GMOs or lasers or hybridized bat-shark-wolf monsters: fine on its own until someone comes along and implements it poorly.

And, for the most part, DRM is implemented poorly.

DRM is dumb. DRM does not work. DRM is the Empire is tightening its fist, which only forces more star systems to slip through its fingers. You know how our war on terrorism basically begets more terrorism? Like, someone blows up our shit, then we blow up some Yemeni daycare thinking that an Al Qaeda higher-up is hiding there, and then all the people affected by the blown-up daycare suddenly think, “The US kills kids so now we’re gonna be fight the US with tooth and nail?” Meaning, our war on terror just creates more terrorists?

Similar situation with DRM (with way fewer dead people, to be clear). You don’t want books to be pirated; you implement DRM. DRM mostly just pisses off regular users who suddenly have reduced access to the thing they thought they owned. They decide to become pirates, instead, because it’s easier and it gives them the access to the content in the way that they want it.

DRM creates — and then challenges — pirates.

It punishes regular readers.

I Will Buy The Physical Book And You Will Give Me The E-Book

No, really, I’m not kidding. You tell me, “You buy a hardcopy, we’ll give you an e-copy,” then I’ll take that deal every time. Practically and financially, this makes sense: I’m buying the story from you in one container (the hardcopy) already. You might as well give me the story in its more ephemeral, digital non-container (aka an e-book), too. It’s a great value. And it encourages that physical distribution chain we all love so much. I said a while back, “If you don’t do this, Amazon will,” and drum roll please, they have, with Kindle Matchbook. (And one of my publishers, Angry Robot, will now do this in the US with Clonefiles.)

Don’t worry, there’s still room for you at the party. Ever hear of a bookstore called “Barnes & Noble?” Could be a shot in the arm of their book business (and their Nook business). Plus, I keep hearing about these little magic pockets of book-love called “independent bookstores”…

Partner With Independent Bookstores

Indie stores are awesome. (I mean, in theory. Some suck ass, just as some fraction of everything and everyone sucks ass.) Indie bookstores want to sell books and spread the book-love around. And you, as publishers, are purveyors of those very books. Partner with them.

I don’t just mean, “Let them sell your books.” I mean, “Let them sell special editions that only they can sell.” I mean, “Let them sell e-books in new and interesting ways, such as on USB keys or by (as above) selling them with the physical editions.” Give them access. Opportunity. Unique entries in the canon and culture of sweet delectable bookishness.

Libraries Are Our Friends And, Also, Vital

You know another way that a lot of people learn to love books? Libraries. I mean, how awesome is a library? It’s a BIG BUILDING. Filled to the fucking ceiling with BOOKS and people who will help you find MORE BOOKS. It’s a book playground! A wonderland of reading and learning and fantasy and drama and information! And it’s great for people who can’t afford books. (Like, say, a whola lotta folks in this occasionally wibbly-wobbly fucky-wucky economy of ours.)

Help libraries. Help them. They’re customers. But even beyond that, they’re the drug dealers of the book world. They’re the ones giving out free samples of your work (which, to be clear, they paid for) and fostering a love of stories and a culture of books. Libraries are Willy Wonka factories where they make new readers instead of weird-ass child-endangerment candy. (Seriously, the government needs to step in and shut Wonka down. Last I heard he was drowning kids in a corn syrup river or something. He’s like a fucking Batman villain, that guy.)

Don’t obstruct their e-book lending library. Don’t make the library’s job more difficult. Help them! Give them aid and succor in this horrible time when our government has a real boner for this “austerity” bullshit (austerity sounds nice until you realize it’s a lot what happened when the Titanic sank — the rich people get their boats, the poor people get eaten by ice sharks). Do you want libraries to be places where people just get to use the Internet for free? Do you want libraries to just go away? No! You don’t! Libraries rule! Librarians are the curators of our culture!

HELP LIBRARIES.

GODDAMNIT.

Mmkay? Mmkay.

Change Starts From Within

SFF right now is going through a lot of growing paints in terms of straining its white dude diapers and trying to figure out how to accommodate, well, Those Who Aren’t Heteronormative White Dudes. This is a good thing. We’re starting to see that there exists a whole audience who maybe isn’t being talked to — this is good for society but also makes financial sense, too, because untapped audience is an audience who isn’t yet spending money with you.

A lot of this change happens inside publishing. It starts with hiring people at all strata within the industry from a variety of life experiences and social configurations.

Please do that! Thanks!

A Ten Dollar E-Book Is A Little Bit Of Bullshit

“BUT IT COSTS AS MUCH TO MAKE AN E-BOOK–” you start to say, and I cut you off with a frowny look and a cat’s hiss. Listen, I don’t care what your justifications are for selling an e-book at a price above ten dollars. You’re trying to slow the flight from the physical distribution model, maybe. Or maybe it’s just that you don’t know yet how exactly e-books fit into the staggered chain of release from hardback to paperback.

What I know is, a mass market paperback does not cost ten dollars.

Nor should an e-book. Ever.

I learned a very important lesson from author Maurice Broaddus at Worldcon this year, and it was this: if someone is saying or doing something you don’t like, threaten to pee on them. Threatening that seals the deal, gets the job done. So, publishers: if you keep offering $10+ e-books, I’m gonna pee on you. On your shoes. Your socks. On the legs of your khakis. God help you if you’re sitting down because then I can get better reach.

Cheaper e-books. Or I pee. On you. That’s the choice.

*stares*

*drinks a big glass of water*

*stares harder*

Authors Are Your Partners, Not Your Bangladeshi Climate Change Refugees

I’ve been happy with my publishers. I know a lot of authors who are happy with theirs, too, and who have signed smart contracts (usually through the intervention of their agents) and who are doing just fine. I also know authors who have seen (and sometimes signed) onerous contracts that are exploitative and nasty. Little clauses and line items that knock an author down at the knees. You try to grab rights that should never be yours, or offer up Byzantine rules so confusing and labyrinthine it’s like a math puzzle for MENSA meth addicts.

Here’s an actual line from an actual publisher contract:

“If you sell 4,312 copies, your percentage goes from 17.5% to 25%, unless it’s a Harvest Moon, in which case you are to be visited by three editors who will offer you three rare minerals and if you choose correctly than you will be allowed to pick your cover artist but the publisher will also claim eternal copyrights to your work in Bulgaria, and also if four trains leave Penn Station at 4:22PM, each carrying seven constipated random penguins –”

Okay, I might just be making that up.

So, let’s go back to the time where we all remember that publishers need authors to publish. Let’s also note that self-publishing has become a Very Real Thing and a Bonafide Actual Option, which means that even as the Big Six becomes the Big Five, you still have competition — competition in the form of authors who choose to become author-publishers, instead.

As such, it is best to approach authors as if they are a partner in this endeavor (as they are) and to bring value to that relationship instead of acting as if they’re making iPhones for you in a Brooklyn sweatshop. What I’m trying to say is –

Publishers: I like you! Do you like me? Then let’s get book-married. Because that’s what this relationship is: sure, it has a business component, but given that we’re both at our core bibliogeeks of some stripe or another, it looks a helluva lot like a marriage. You’re not my boss. Nor am I yours. PUT A RING ON IT. *mashes cake into your mouth*

Authors Need Some Motherfucking Data, Stat

Let’s assume you agree that we’re your partners and not an expendable resource like so much authorial lumber. Let’s also assume that while you will handle the lion’s share of Big Marketing, you will, just the same, expect us writer-types to do some more interpersonal marketing and to go on book tours and such in order to connect with our once-and-future audience.

To do this? We need data.

Constant, accurate, capable data.

Where are we selling? How much? To whom? What bookstores dig us? What bookstores have never heard of us? Where will we have the most effect? How’s Twitter at selling books? Facebook? Google Hangouts? If I get naked on YouTube, will that sell books? How many of my readers are bespectacled bearded men like myself? Are any of them ultraterrestrials from the Hollow Earth, and how best can I serve our chitinous subterranean secret masters?

Two things to note, here:

First, if you keep data from us, it might seem as if you’re trying to hide something. Again, we want to feel like partners, not like employees. What you know, we should also know.

Second, if you don’t give us the data, then — repeat after me – Amazon will. (That should become your mantra in the coming years, by the way.) And so enters a fundamental question: do you want us to see Amazon as our first ally, and not our publisher? That’s what Amazon wants, I’m guessing. So: help us. Data helps us sell books. And that is part of the point, right?

Stop With The Sneaky Vanity Publishing Stuff, Because, Ew

Archway Publishing, from Simon & Schuster. Author Solutions from Pengdom Ranguinhaus. Amongst others. They all offer self-publishing opportunities to authors for frequently absurd prices. Mmmyeah. No. Here’s the problem:

First, that’s actually not self-publishing anymore. Really, like, not at all. It’s actually just regular publishing, except now you’re charging me for it instead of paying me for it, which is so fucked up I can’t even discuss it without my words devolving into a series of BUH DUH WUH stuttering.

Second, self-publishing doesn’t actually cost that much money.

Third, signing up with these services often wildly exploits the author.

It’s bad news. It’s ugly business. And it just gives ammunition to those who say that publishers are giant Sarlacc pits ingesting authors and digesting them over the lifetime of their contracts. I get it. You’re a business and you want to do businessy things. But this? This is not how you do it, at least not without dirtying your blouse in the process.

Self-Publishing Is Calling From Inside The House

Author-based publishing is here and it’s not going anywhere. Author-publishers are all up the attic, like squirrels. I think over time that traditional publishing and self-publishing will start to squish together in a big wadded up ball, like a bunch of socks in the dryer. And that’s a good thing. Hybrid authors will become more of an important presence — authors who recognize that both paths offer unique benefits and increase audience and competition.

But that doesn’t easily happen when you see things like the vanity publishing stuff, mentioned above. Or when you see how some publishers are reticent to offer print rights separate from digital rights (print rights and print distribution, be advised, is where author-publishers still can’t get a great foothold). I think you’ll find continued value in treating the new class of author-publishers not as competition or as a vein of ore to be exploited but, again, as partners. And that means crossing the bridge and offering them some of the things they’re maybe used to getting: input on cover design, higher percentage rates (which means reduced advances, most likely), a measure of unprecedented control.

Authors are no longer as hungry for that big break — because, with electronic distribution becoming so easy, so accessible, so free — they can do it for themselves. Doesn’t matter whether or not it’s a good idea to do so (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t). The mere fact that the option exists as opportunity is enough for you to sometimes change the dynamic, to present new ways of partnering with authors going forward.

Publishers are still a critical component to this entire thing. They offer whole buildings full of people who love books, love authors, and who know a whole lotta important things about this bath salts Thunderdome called “publishing.” Hell, most traditional publishers have forgotten more about this industry than most author-publishers have yet known. But that isn’t enough. Not anymore. Relationships must evolve. The business models must change. Authors are starting to drive the bus — sometimes, okay, yes, off the cliff, but that’s where you can help. But you can’t help if the relationship isn’t equitable. If it doesn’t make sense.

Let’s cast our eyes forward together.

Let’s be nimble.

LET US SEAL THIS FRIENDSHIP IN BLOOD.

I mean, uhh, let’s publish some books together!

Author Naming And Shaming: A Quick Comment

There’s a post going around naming-and-shaming authors who have reportedly bought favorable fake reviews from the likes of Fiverr.com — I’d encourage you to note that the post has no evidence of tomfoolery and also zero comments. I tried leaving a comment but, along with others, am apparently held fast in permanent moderation.

(No, I’m not going to link to it. No point in generating traffic for these folks, which for all I know is exactly what they want in the first place.)

I can believe that some authors do pay for reviews of that ilk (which to be clear is wholly separate from paying for legitimate reviews from the likes of Kirkus or Publishers Weekly, which invites an entirely separate conversation), but this post has no evidence to support it and feels ultimately like a hit piece. Plus, some of the names? Throwing stones at giants.

I’m not saying authors don’t sometimes behave badly (they do!), but you also can’t just SAY STUFF and have that be MAGICALLY TRUE (or, also, legal).

For the record, all my reviews — while occasionally solicited in the form of me flailing my arms to the general public and saying “I’d sure like some reviews!” — were not paid for by me, my publishers, my beard, or any other human or non-human proxy. All my reviews are free-range, grass-fed, zero-antibiotic, with no high-fructose corn syrup. No animals were harmed in the making of my book reviews, except for that one llama, AND HE KNOWS WHAT HE DID.

Semi-related — whenever there’s a kerfuffle I get people emailing me or tweeting at me for my comment. So, on the whole Goodreads thing where now they’re clamping down on (read: deleting) reviews that talk about authors but not books, I’ll just say this: that’s the right of Goodreads (or Amazon, now), since they own the space and can dictate the nature and tenor of the reviews left there. It’s not censorship (though it will be called this) because censorship is a whole different animal. It’s Goodreads’ lawn, and they can dictate what you do on it. Your concern over any changes is reasonable and understood and such concern should be met with finding (or, best case scenario, forming) a new place for book and author review.

I have occasionally found Goodreads to be a toxic place for authors, but I have also, far more often, found it to be interesting and enlightening, so hopefully all this will shake out in a pleasing way and we can all hold hands and do the maypole dance once more. Or something.

Now I go back to my edit-cave, where I am sinking beneath the tides on my edits of Blightborn, Book Two of the Heartland Trilogy. Wish me luck. *kersploosh*

Please Ban My Books As Loudly And Obnoxiously As You Can

I have come to the decision — since it is banned books week, after all — that my books are vile, wretched specimens of American pop culture. They prominently feature:

Crass profanity!

Caustic violence!

Gratuitous sexual exploits!

CHILDREN ARE READING MY BOOKS.

I’ve seen these children. On the playgrounds of America. Smoking cigarillos and drinking high-fructose corn syrup right out of the bottle. In each of their hands, a copy of Blackbirds, or Blue Blazes, or the gateway drug, Under the Empyrean Sky — a book I wrote specifically to hook the youth of America on my disgusting meth-candy prose. My god, who let me loose on the bookshelves? My books are a virus! A horrible, salacious virus featuring sex and drugs and sexy drugs and druggy sex and naughty words and cigarette-smoking and surly teenagers and knives and guns and whiskey and sentence fragments and rampant metaphors and –

FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

My books rend innocence the way cats claw sweaters.

So, I think the only solution is to ban them.

Ban them noisily! Loudly! In public! Get together your boycotts, your petitions. Call the news media! Call the principal of your school! CALL THE PRESIDENT OF THESE UNITED STATES. Buy several copies of my books — as many as you can carry! — to get this wretchedness off the shelves (the equivalent of sucking snake venom from a viper bite). Then stack up all those books and burn them. On television, if possible. Get pictures! For USA Today.

Kidnap Matt Lauer. Force him to understand. (Don’t forget to kidnap a cameraman, too.)

My books are a toxin.

A sexy, sassy toxin. That will ruin teenagers. And turn you all into sexy drug zombies.

I know the time is now.

Buy my books. All of them.

And then ban the crap out of them.

I eagerly await you doing the right thing.

I eagerly await all the banhammers and burnination.

*stares*

*waits*

*noisily sips Earl Grey tea*

Crowdsourcing The Essential Books: Noir

Last week, we crowdsourced your essential epic fantasy reads.

This week? It’s noir.

Why? I dunno. BECAUSE THE BLACKNESS OF MY HEART DEMANDS IT.

What is noir? That’s for you to tell me. Discuss it amongst yourselves.

Here’s the trick: in the comments, you drop your three most essential noir reads. They don’t need to be “classics,” but they should ostensibly get across the message — from you! — that says, “This is what I think noir is.” That’s your job. See you in the comments section.

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Cooperative Cliffhanger, Part One

Last week’s challenge: Spin the Wheel of Conflict.

I’m writing a serial right now, a story called “The Forever Endeavor” (read the first part for free at Tor.com), and one of the tricks with writing a serial is getting people invested enough to read the second part. And thus one might embrace the art of the cliffhanger — in pulp terms, the protagonist or another character is dangling over the edge of the cliff. Their fate, certified by doom. And then the next chapter reveals how they got out of such a sticky wicket.

You dangle them from the cliff. You save them from the cliff.

Doom? Salvation.

Question? Answer.

That’s the barebones idea, of course — cliffhangers can have way more nuance, and can be more emotional than physical, too. The end of a marriage! The pull of a trigger! The press of a forbidden button! The goal of the cliffhanger is to walk the audience right up to the edge of uncertainty and then leave them there, jaw dropped, unsure what could come next. It’s a sharp shock — and the only medicine is to read to the next chapter.

I wanna play with that idea, here.

Here’s what you’re going to do:

You’re going to write an unfinished story.

Around 1000 words that leads to a cliffhanger of some kind.

Then, next week, we’ll pick up in part two –

Where someone else may write the end of your story.

You’re writing, in a sense, to entice another writer to want to complete the second half of your tale. To answer the cliffhanger, to be the one who saves the day, solves the mystery.

Like I said: ~1000 words.

Post at your online space. Link back here so we can read it.

Due by next Friday, 9/27, by noon EST.

Ten Questions About Stonecast, By Anton Strout

They were like “HEY DO YOU WANT TO INTERVIEW ANSON TROUT” and I was like, “The guy from Happy Days?” and they were like “NO THE GUY WHO WROTE THOSE COOL URBAN FANTASY BOOKS” and I was like, “You mean Anton Strout,” and they were like “THAT’S WHAT WE SAID, STUPID.” Needless to say, it’s a no-brainer to have the lovely Mister Strout here. Please to enjoy as he answers questions about Stonecast:

Tell us about yourself. Who the hell are you?

I have been told by some I am the anti-Wendig, by those who know us both. Which sucks because you keep posting really profound things about writing that I can never quite articulate myself, but they are so on the money! So if I’m the anti-you… then I guess I post profound pity things about writing!

When not overthinking this comparison I somehow manage to write me some quirky urban fantasy because the pain of missing Buffy & Angel runs too deep still. I’ve discovered the soothing balm of Supernatural, which is helping…

Give us the 140-character story pitch for Stonecast.

Damn you. Hmm…

A female Spellmason, D&D nerd, & a glaive guisarme wielding dancer struggle to find the whereabouts of a gargoyle once sworn to protect them

Where does this story come from?

There is a store about three blocks from my office at Penguin… I found it under Gargoyles Cartoon Fan Fiction.

Actually, the whole Spellmason Chronicles stemmed from a one shot short story I did for an urban fantasy. As with most shorts, you’re really capturing a moment in time. There’s usually a before and after that the author must know to color the tale, but it doesn’t get written. In creating the short Stanis, I discovered when I was finished that there was more I wanted to tell about the world I had created. I ran it up the flagpole at Ace, and they went for it… the fools!

How is this a story only you could’ve written?

Well, first of all, Joss Whedon keeps refusing to take my calls to collaborate! I find this an unsettling trend. The whole reason I got into writing was because I found no one was telling exactly the type of stories I wanted to be reading. Yes, there’s a lot of books out there that I love, but I felt that there was a vacuum, and I was the suck to fill that vacuum!  Or something like that…

For a long time I called my Simon Canderous series a sort of Diet Dresden Files, but now that I’m working on book three of my second series, I find I can’t quite compare myself to other books. Not that I’m incomparable. I just think I’m… me. I write stories mostly set in the modern world where the only reaction to the shambling horrors out there is to either scream or meta-deconstruct them with a reference about Hogwarts or the Beholder from Dungeons & Dragons.

What was the hardest thing about writing Stonecast?

Probably handling the two first person narrators to the tale. One is a gargoyle that’s been around since the 1800s, and the other is a twentysomething artist caught up in her family’s true legacy. Keeping the voices of the two unique and separate was a challenge. The gargoyle, Stanis, doesn’t get modern or idiomatic language, doesn’t contract his words. There’s a sad, quiet stoicism to him that I’ve come to enjoy writing from his perspective. Alexandra Belarus, our heroine, is a child of our times… her language has a different almost cinematic flow to it. And somehow I have to make these two perspectives thread each other to create one cohesive narrative… it’s certainly one of the most daunting tasks I’ve put upon myself.

What did you learn writing Stonecast?

How to cry a lot…? The lessons I learn along the way are rarely obvious to me. Occassionally in retrospect I can see it, but not always. In the case of Stonecast I think I learned subtlety. I have had a tendency in my fiction to overstate things for fear the audience would miss it if I didn’t put a spotlight on it. And then a second and third spotlight. My editor has been beating that out of me for years. With writing the dual first person narratives I’ve had to work at the craft of implying things so that narrative 1+narrative 2= narrative 3, where narrative 3 is something I never actually wrote on the page.

What do you love about Stonecast?

What’s not to love?! It has all sorts of things that I am thrilled to have in one book. I got to include alchemy and witchcraft and Dungeons and Dragons references… I even have a tiny brick golem named Bricksley who waddles around doing chores. Oh, and tons of gargoyle-y action.

What would you do differently next time?

I’ve had time management issues on my last two books. It’s led to a lot of panic writing, which causes burst of inspiration all its own. I need to get myself back onto a more regular schedule. Having twins in May is REALLY helping with that. *cries* Actually, what helps is reading a lot of what you post online about write. It makes me feel less crazy, or at least there are other people banging their heads on the padded walls just like me. Comparatively, I feel like a whiny bitch… which is usually when I get motivated again.

Give us your favorite paragraph from the story.

“Hey,” she said, raking her blade in sparks against the brick golem. “We used to wish there to be magic in the world, and we got it.”

“I’m not asking for much,” I said. “Just some real instruction. A Dumbledore, a Snape . . . hell, I’d even take a Trelawney right about now.”

What’s next for you as a storyteller?

I’m under deadline through the end of the year on The Spellmason Chronicles 3, but I’d really like to fit in more work on a half finished young adult book I call my Dickensian Steampunk Voltron Iron Man novel. And there’s a gnawing idea for a graphic novel burrowing into my head… I need to teach my newborn twins to pick up some of the slack, dammit!

Anton Strout: Website / Twitter

Stonecast: Amazon / B&N

Ten Questions About Vicious, By V.E. Schwab

I get a lot of books to potentially blurb these days, and I’d love to hug and squeeze each book to my bosom and blurb them unabashedly, but I’m a slow-ass reader. And already writing four books in the next 12 months. So, when Tor said, “Hey, maybe you blurb this book?” and they waved Victoria Schwab’s book Vicious at me, I told them the same thing I tell everyone else: if I have time, and if I really love it. And I expected neither of those things would come true. I was wrong. So wrong. It was one of those books I opened, and it was like a hand around my neck that yanked me into the story. (My blurb, by the way: “An epic collision of super-powered nemeses. The writing and storycraft is Schwab’s own superpower as this tale leaps off the page in all its dark, four-color comic-book glory.”) Vicious comes out next week. You want to read this.

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

I have no idea. It’s always the first question asked and it usually leads to “Oh god, who AM I?” and that leads to drinking…tea, of course. But existential crises aside, I’m the product of a British mother, a Beverly Hills father, and a southern upbringing. I’m a 26-year-old superwholockian who likes to write about dark things. I have two YA books on shelves right now (THE NEAR WITCH, about a village where children start to disappear, and THE ARCHIVED, about a library of the dead) and my first adult novel, a supervillain origin story called VICIOUS, hits shelves this week!

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH:

Two pre-med students discover the key to superpowers—near-death experiences—and set out to create their own abilities. It doesn’t end well.

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

I’ve always wanted to write about superpowers, but VICIOUS actually started out as someone else’s story. Originally, this guy with superpowers came to this city called Merit and was recruited by two rival groups, one that called themselves heroes, and the other that called themselves villains simply because they were on the other side. In writing about those two groups, I became fascinated by two things: 1) the leaders of the respective groups, Victor and Eli, and why they hated each other, and 2) the idea that the labels hero and villain had nothing to do with whether these people were good or bad. They were just opposed.

Everything else got trashed and I started again, this time looking at Victor and Eli and how they got to be arch-nemeses, how Eli came to be thought of as a hero, making Victor automatically the villain. I wanted to explore what happens when you take the meaning out of those words. Who do you root for?

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?

It’s pretty sick and twisted, that dark funny where you feel like maybe you shouldn’t be laughing, and I think that’s very much my own personality coming through. Also I studied hero/villain archetypes in college, and have always been fascinated with the gray between, the Anti. And my editor and I joke that Victor is my sociopathic supervillain alter ego, so this book is pretty much made up of me. But most of all, at its heart, this book is me because it’s mine. I wrote it over the course of two years, in between other deadlines, and I did it entirely for me. It was everything I wanted as a reader and as a writer, and while I’m so very excited to now be sharing it with others, it is more mine than anything else I’ve ever written.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING VICIOUS?

Coming off of THE ARCHIVED, which is an intensely emotional book, I’m used to giving emotional answers, about having to live out my characters’ grief, etc. But VICIOUS is in many ways a purposefully unemotional book. Our main character, Victor, is a sociopath. There is a level of remove (it’s not the kind, hopefully, that makes you as a reader care less, everything just has a careful distance), and so the hardest part of writing a book was, for once, not the emotional component.

The hardest thing about VICIOUS was making the craft element feel invisible, effortless. From a construction standpoint, the book is a puzzle. It’s a braided narrative, five POVs—two main, two secondary, and one tertiary—twisting across a decade-long window. Making it move the way it needs to was no small feat. And then there was the actual logic between the superpowers. No radioactive goo for me. I wanted a medical foundation that was intuitive and compelling, something the reader could see actually happening. Those two components (I know, I cheated and said two, but we can put them under the craft blanket) were the hardest.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING VICIOUS?

That the trick is not in finding ways to kill characters, but in finding ways to bring them back in one piece.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT VICIOUS?

I love that even though there are no heroes, you will root for someone. I love that even though it’s emotionally detached, you will care about the characters. I love that after almost three years with these characters, I still love them. It is the only thing I’ve EVER written that I re-read for fun, and because I miss them.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

Nothing. Honestly.

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:

“The moments that define lives aren’t always obvious. They don’t scream LEDGE, and nine times out of ten there’s no rope to duck under, no line to cross, no blood pact, no official letter on fancy paper. They aren’t always protracted, heavy with meaning. Between one sip and the next, Victor made the biggest mistake of his life, and it was made of nothing more than one line. Three small words. ”I’ll go first.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

The second book in my ARCHIVED series, THE UNBOUND, comes out in January, I have a Middle Grade series about a Doctor Who/Peter Pan-esque guardian angel—EVERYDAY ANGEL—kicking off with Scholastic next summer, and a brand new adult book full of magic and Londons (yes, plural) and cross-dressing pirates hitting shelves next fall. If I finish writing it in time. I guess I should get back to work!

V.E. Schwab: Website / Twitter

Vicious (9/24/13): Amazon / B&N / Indiebound

Me! This Saturday! At The Library!

Ahem.

I will be at the Free Library of Philadelphia (Joseph E. Coleman Northwest Regional) on Saturday! You’ll be there. Don’t disappoint me. OR WE’LL DISCUSS YOU IN YOUR ABSENCE.

Details:

Author Visit with Chuck Wendig – Saturday, September 21, 2013 at 3:00PM

Wendig has been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of science fiction or fantasy for his first Miriam Black novel, Blackbirds, described in The Financial Times as “… a splendidly profane slice of urban fantasy – hard, dark and fast… a black comedy that even the Grim Reaper could smile at.”  Other well-received recent books are Mockingbirds and Blue Blazes.

Wendig will talk about his books, especially about the origins of his recently published young adult science fiction novel, Under the Empyrean Sky, the first book in the Heartland trilogy, which Kirkus Reviews called “A chilling post-apocalyptic adventure set on an Earth devastated by poor agricultural practices…A thoroughly imagined environmental nightmare with taut pacing and compelling characters that will leave readers eager for more.”

He will also talk about writing, as he is well-known for his witty, profane, and very practical advice to writers, which he dispenses at his blog, terribleminds.com, and through several popular e-books. A collection of this advice will be published as a paperback in November 2013: The Kick-Ass Writer: 1001 Ways to Write Great Fiction, Get Published, and Earn Your Audience.

Bring your copy of Chuck’s books and he will sign it for you after his talk!

The Forever Endeavor, Part One: Free To Read!

So, as you may recall, I am writing a serialized story for Fireside Fiction Company.

That story is “The Forever Endeavor.” It’s about, as I put it before, a man who finds a very special box with a very special button that does a—well, obviously, a very special thing.

To get full access to all the serial chapters, you need to subscribe to Fireside.

However, were you wanting to read the first installment, well — Tor.com has you covered.

Please also note that the stories are illustrated by none other than (ahem) HUGO-AWARD-WINNING ARTIST, GALEN DARA. *puffs out chest proudly*

Written by Campbell-nominated me. Illustrated by Hugo-winning Galen Dara.

First installment: free.

Rest: awaiting your clickies.

*stares*

25 Things You Should Know About Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is one of those topics that bakes my noodle every time my brain chooses to dwell on it. I have a whole bucket full of opinions, many of them in stark disagreement with one another. So, this list below should never at any time be taken as “25 Exhaustive Universal Truths About Worldbuilding,” but rather be regarded as, “25 Things Chuck Wendig Thinks About Worldbuilding At This Exact Moment In Time, Oh, Wait, Some Of Them Just Changed.”

Kay? Kay.

Let’s chat.

1. What We Mean When We Say “Worldbuilding”

We’re talking about the revelation of your storyworld and its details through the story itself. It’s easy to think this means “setting,” but that’s way too simple — worldbuilding covers everything and anything inside that world. Money, clothing, territorial boundaries, tribal customs, building materials, imports and exports, transportation, sex, food, the various types of monkeys people possess, whether the world does or does not contain Satanic “twerking” rites.

2. The World Serves The Story, The Story Does Not Serve The World

My opinion: you build a world to serve the story or stories you want to tell; you do not tell a story that is slave to the worldbuilding. Story comes first. Worldbuilding supports the story. Meaning, you must look at the components of the story you hope to tell: it’s got these characters, it’s about this idea, it makes a particular argument, and from there you start to see that the world can organically accommodate and reflect those things. Doing the opposite — leading with the worldbuilding — is what you’d do if you were writing a roleplaying game which has to tell all kinds of stories, not just yours. If you put the cart before the horse the horse is gonna headbutt the cart and knock it over and then you’re all, WAIT NO MY CABBAGES then we laugh at you.

3. Put Differently, You’re Not Writing A Fucking Encyclopedia

If you prioritize worldbuilding, you’re probably going to end up with like, seven different versions of the D&D Monster Manual but no actual novel. Which, again, is super-awesome if you’re writing a roleplaying game, but less awesome if your goal is to write a more static and ego-driven story. Worldbuilding can be a giant time sink and, worse, a distraction that can make you feel productive while also keeping you from lashing your body to the mast of your novel, comic, or film — which, again, is more likely your purpose.

4. Okay, Wait, You Might Be Writing An Encyclopedia

But then again, that’s not to say you’ll find zero value in writing a storyworld bible for the tale at hand. If you’re writing a three-book epic fantasy, and each book is gonna be 150,000 words a pop or more, you may want to find a comfort level with the details big and small of the world about which you’re writing — in certain modes of fantasy, the world is itself a character, and a focused world bible will help you reflect that. Just the same, you’re still better off ensuring that what goes into the story bible reflects the characters and themes you plan to work with, and it’s probably also wise to get some of those story details down in your notes before you hunker down and start writing the bible for Middle Earth II: Shirelectric Hobbaloo. Here’s one test: if you’ve spent a year writing a 400-page story bible (one you could use to break the neck of a walrus) and yet you still haven’t put a single sentence down on your novel, you might be committing too much energy in the wrong direction.

5. Variant Approach: Ninja Genesis

Man, now I have a great idea for a Phil Collins cover band. *dons ninja gear, starts singing Sh-sh-shuriken, sung to the tune of Sussudio* WAIT YOU’RE STILL HERE okay I’ll worry about that later. If you’re lazy (like me!) and don’t feel like you can commit to writing a glacier-sized world bible, hey, you know what? Build it as you go. As you write, introduce details relevant to the story, the plot, the characters, the theme, and to the chapter at hand. This’ll probably require work on the back-end — no, not proctology, though perhaps it’s not unlike proctology, because you’ll have to go back on the second draft and root around and make everything work together instead of the random slapdash worldbuilding you just did. The pro: this is organic and works for lazy people (like me!). The con: more work after the fact, and may not give you a full sense of the world going into the story. Probably better for stories that require lighter worldbuilding, like those based off of our existing world.

6. The Pig In A Purse

Here’s some probably-really-bad and likely-untrue advice: give the audience only those details they need to know to understand the story. Now, it’s worth highlighting what I mean by “story” — story, for me, is not the same as plot. Story is the apple, plot is the arrow through it. Plot is a sequence of events as revealed to the reader, but story is all the stuff in and around that. Mood is a function of story, so when I say to include those worldbuilding elements that are necessary to move the story forward, I don’t merely mean the plot. I mean, hey, it’s totally okay to include a detail that is relevant to advancing a particular mood of gloom, or a theme of “man’s inhumanity to mermaids” or whatever. The problem is when the worldbuilding overwhelms — read: “smothers” — the story with needless details. I don’t need you to describe every family crest, guild sigil, hairstyle, nipple clamp, or blade of grass in the world. (Wait, on second thought: tell me more about these nipple clamps.) This is bad advice, probably, because a lot of fantasy storytelling is very much this: chapter after chapter of rich, robust, wormy worldbuilding loam. Fertile dirt, maybe, but too fetishistic and not necessary to move the audience forward in that space. And moving them forward is, I suspect, the goal.

7. Function Beyond Plot

This bears further reiterating: worldbuilding supports story, not just plot. Which means that your worldbuilding supports mood, theme, conflict, character, culture, setting. It doesn’t have to move only the sequence of events further. The details of the world you’ve created can and should engage with the whole narrative, not just action and event.

8. Action And Dialogue Above Description And Exposition

That being said, what’s true for other stories is true with a story featuring thick, delicious worldbuilding — you’re better off conveying the details of that world through action and dialogue than through giant boulders of description and exposition dropped on your readers from a vertiginous height. I get points for using “vertiginous,” right? Fellas? Ladies? Anybody?

9. A Rich Tapestry Or An Unrolled Tube Of Plain White Toilet Paper?

A lot of worldbuilding is dull as a hammer, as complex as a meaty slap to the face. This is fine for certain modes of storytelling (and a powerful story will set aside any concerns over monochromatic worldbuilding), but in general, if you’re gonna build a world, you’re best introducing some measure of nuance into it. We’ve been conditioned, perhaps, by the news and other forces (school, parents, bad fantasy novels) that everything is black and white, good and evil, that all things are easily slotted into their compartments. Example: the Middle East. Our politicians, our news media, our pop culture portray the Middle East like, “Okay, those are the good guys, those are the bad guys, ta-da, yay, simplistic world-view confirmed,” but if you spend more than five minutes looking into it, you realize the picture looks more like this. Certainly some stories are better off relying on the good versus evil paradigm, but generally, they dominate. More interesting (to me, if not to you) are those stories that are drawn from complexity and nuance rather than from easily predictable, simplistic strokes.

10. The Nature Of “Write What You Know”

Write What You Know is one of those pieces of writing advice that inspires glorious epiphany and pants-pooping rage in equal measure. Genre fiction tends to be where folks hit their heads against it in frustration: “Well, how can I write about murder scenes, alien apocalypses, or humping a sexy elf? I’VE ONLY DONE TWO OUT OF THE THREE. And the third, I was really drunk on monkey schnapps.” With worldbuilding, the question becomes: how can this advice hold up? The easy answer is: it doesn’t. It can come into the writing of characters and situations, but worldbuilding, not so much. The more complicated answer is: you can still borrow from things you understand and translate them accordingly. Maybe you know local school politics or neighborhood hierarchy, and you know how both operate viciously, each an engine that runs on gossip and lies — psst, you can use that. Just give it a fantasy or space opera context, and boom. Alternately, you can borrow from culture, politics and history. Read some non-fiction about other places and different people. Again: translate. Use write what you know as a springboard to know more things, then gaze upon said things through the lens of the fantastic.

11. Remix Culture

We live in an era of remix culture. And reboot culture. Everything that’s not something entirely new either feels like a microwaved rehash or a remix of other stories — but believe me when I say, remixing with worldbuilding is perfectly acceptable. Hell, remixing can be fun. On my iPad I used DJ software to remix Kayne West’s “Black Skinhead” with the Thomas the Tank Engine theme and, pow, now it’s getting radio play in both Moldavia and Moldova. Point is to remix things that are different enough and interesting enough so that the result is something new and unseen — remixing can be magical alchemy or it can be as boring as pouring two different types of milk together in the same glass. (“My world is a remix of Tolkien and Robert Jordan” is far less interesting than, say, “I’m remixing Cherokee myth with Eastern European vampires and throwing in a hefty dash of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger.”) Don’t be lazy. Don’t be predictable. Use other ideas to create something new and uniquely yours.

12. Ew, Stereotypes

If you’re worldbuilding, don’t rely on stereotypes. Noble savages and white heroes and damsels-in-distress and people of a single race acting in a single way. No culture is monolithic, skin color does not determine demeanor or magical racial bonuses, men are not all one thing and women are not all another thing. Stereotypes are lazy at best, harmful at worst. They make Story Jesus karate a kitten and then post the pictures on Facebook that say “SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO.”

13. Your Heteronormative White Male Gaze

Carrying this conversation a little further: if you’re firmly ensconced in your mini-mansion sitting on top of Heteronormative White Dude Mountain, you should cast an extra-long look at any presuppositions in your worldbuilding and sniff for the acrid tang of privilege sprayed all over from your White Dude scent glands. The result of worldbuilding in genre fiction seem to skew strongly toward White Dudes, and this is frequently excused in some way  – “Well, in the Middle Ages, women were basically sexy goats and dudes were the shepherds and I’m just being authentic and something-something slaves and blah-blah-the-Moors–” Mmm, uh-uh, bzzt, wrongo. First: you don’t need to be “authentic” to history in genre fiction that does not use actual history. Second, history is a lot more nuanced than you think. Third, we know you’re just using that as an excuse, so just stop it. You’re embarrassing yourself. For shame. *shakes head*

14. Small Details Are Just As Important As Big Ones

It’s easy to get wrapped up in all the Big Epic Holy Fucksmuckers aspects of worldbuilding — all the weighty topics like RELIGION and POLITICS and THE DANCE MUSIC OF KINGS. But a lot of worldbuilding lives in little details. What they drink at different meals. How they wash their hands. How they treat their animals. What materials they use to construct their sex toys (“BEHOLD THE ORICHALCUM DONG”). These little details can connect to and reflect a larger cultural aspect without bludgeoning readers over the head and neck with weighty exposition.

15. Simple Interactions Pregnant With Worldbuilding Complexity

Just as small details matter, so do the small interactions of our characters. The way one shares her food. The way another addresses a superior. The way a third chooses to couple rectally with the tentacled yelly-beast of Vrall, and whether or not they cuddle afterward, and what that cuddling means culturally. Allow the world to be built through what your characters do and say.

16. Your World Must Be Active And Alive

Worldbuilding is not an encyclopedia for dead cultures and forgotten races. That element can be in there, sure (because, so cool) but this world is one that features actual characters doing actual things and affecting the world. Worldbuilding has a tendency to feel staid and monolithic: “Everybody does this because it’s the culture.” But that’s never really true in our world, is it? Look at it like this: the rest of the world sees America as this single-headed entity, but they also seem to recognize that Americans are not always representative of that entity. That’s the breakdown: the world is one way, but the people are allowed to be another. Because people are alive. They have free will and agency to confirm and deny different aspects of their culture.

17. “But It’s Cool, Shut Up” Is Not An Excuse

All aspects of your worldbuilding should justify themselves in some way. “BUT IT’S COOL I LIKE IT” is not enough. My experience with worldbuilding is that it yields no small surfeit of Really Awesome Ideas that, at the same time, Don’t Really Belong In The Story. “But this cult! They do awesome things! And they spray acid from their nipples in the name of their Dark Lordess, Areola the Aerosolized Acid Queen, and they have magic based on the configuration of moles and skin tags and–” And none of that belongs in the book. Doesn’t connect to characters, plot, theme, anything. Cut it. Save it for a time when you can use it meaningfully, not just because oooh preshus darling I loves the pretty peacock. *paws at the darling, mewls*

18. The Rules

Worldbuilding likes to offer “rules” — in particular, rules about the way This Certain Thing works, which might be magic, or some alien technology, or political ascension, or what happens when you fuck a minotaur while holding a pelican under the boughs of the whispering wank-wank tree. Rules can be critical in helping readers understand the nature of the world and, more importantly, how the stakes of the story in this world shake out. (More on a story’s stakes here.) But (you know a ‘but’ had to be coming, right?), rules can also be woefully boring. They can be expository, obvious, and they can rob the story of mystery. You’re not writing a technical manual for HVAC repair. And yet, you also don’t want a world where everything is so unpredictable that it feels convenient and lazy. Here’s how to handle it: you should know the rules and conform to them. But you don’t need to spell them out to the audience. The audience is smart! The audience wants to work. Let them figure it out for themselves, like a puzzle.

19. Wait, I Need To Research My Made-Up World?

Tad Williams thinks so, and I happen to agree. Research trade routes. Economics. Religious persecution. Poetry. Guilds. Alchemy. Djinn. Leprechaun ranching. Medieval donkey shows. Knowing how real things work will inform how they work in your made-up fancy-land.

20. Imagine A World On The Edge Of Conflict

Conflict is the food that feeds the reader. Just as characters enter a story facing conflict, so too should the world in which they live. First, because it’s interesting. Second, because has any world ever been entirely without conflict? War! Famine! Plague! Facebook! Miley Cyrus’ soul-leeching hell-tongue! Conflict is good for your story, your characters, and your setting.

21. Everything Affects Everything Else

Behold the complexity intrinsic to worldbuilding. Everything pushes and pulls on everything else, often in interesting ways. Again, our world makes for good examples: think of how a technological development can change the world in a relatively short amount of time (printing press, electricity, the Internet, Robocop). Think of what happens when a critical resource (food, water, oil, coffee, hair pomade, black market llama squeezings) dries up. Small changes in an economic system can have huge results. A new farming practice can fix — or wreak havoc upon — the environment. Everything is tethered to everything else, and in this, you can find compelling worldbuilding as well as the interesting stories that grow out of it.

22. Subtextology

Characters can speak in subtext. So can the world. Not everything must be spoken or spelled out.

23. Preserving Mystery Is Vital

A fully-realized and known world is also a boring world. Mystery, alongside conflict, is another of those vital vittles that feeds the reader and keeps them hooked. Question marks are shaped like hooks for a reason, I say — so leave lots of questions. The best parts of any map are the ones that fade out and leave us with the dread note of HERE THERE BE DRAGONS. Preserve that uncertainty in your worldbuilding. Never pull back the curtain all the way. Always leave us hanging, waiting for you to reveal more, more, more.

24. Worldbuilding Versus Storytelling

Good worldbuilding does not automatically mean the same thing for the storytelling. I’ll leave you with this io9 article, which compares the worldbuilding of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace with Star Wars: A New Hope. One could make an argument that the worldbuilding in the prequel chapters is more robust and more detailed than what you’d find in the original trilogy. And one would hopefully also argue that this didn’t make for a better experience in any way, shape, or form and may have in fact robbed some of the narrative potency from that universe.

25. Construct Worlds Mapped After Your Own Heartsblood Spatter

Pro-tip: build worlds that you love. That interest you. Whose characters sing the song that drums in the deep dark labyrinthine chambers of the puzzle box you call a heart. If you don’t like it? If it doesn’t conjure themes that fascinate you, if it fails to play with images and ideas that appeal to you, the world will feel flat as a frog under an anvil. Get excited about world building! Embrace the mad genesis. Scream, let there be light, and then cackle, and pull the switch, and watch the storyworld of your dreams and nightmares glow bright and bold like a fucking Christmas tree on Jesus’ own front porch. I mean, jeez, if you don’t dig it, what’s the point?

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