Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 220

Ten Questions About Seduction Of The Innocent, By Max Allan Collins

If you’re at all like me, right now you’re goggling your eyes — because, yeah, holy crap, it’s Max Allan Collins. (Preceded, perhaps, by the, as in, the Max Allan Collins.) He’s got a new detective novel hitting shelves that concerns the murder of a comic book censor in the 1950s. Want to know more? Here, he’ll tell you about it:

Tell Us About Yourself: Who The Hell Are You?

A storyteller is who the hell I am.  I have spent decades avoiding real work by telling elaborate lies (novels, short stories, comic books, graphic novels, screenplays) for money.  I occasionally tell the truth (non-fiction works like THE HISTORY OF MYSTERY and MICKEY SPILLANE ON SCREEN, documentaries like MIKE HAMMER’S MICKEY SPILLANE, featured on the Criterion edition of KISS ME DEADLY, and CAVEMAN: V.T. HAMLIN AND ALLEY OOP).  I am probably best known for writing the graphic novel ROAD TO PERDITION and the historical thrillers with Chicago private eye Nathan Heller, starting with the “Shamus” Best Novel winner of 1983, TRUE DETECTIVE, through last year’s TARGET LANCER.

Give Us The 140-Character Pitch:

SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT is a tough but humorous mystery in the vein of Rex Stout or Ellery Queen, focusing on the 1950s McCarthy-era witch hunt leveled at comic books.

Where Does This Story Come From?

Two things — my desire to pay fairly light-hearted homage to the traditional mystery novels of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, a pastiche not a parody, but with the serious historical back-drop of the censorship that was unfairly, even stupidly imposed on comic books, stunting the growth of a storytelling medium out of a misguided concern for children.

How Is This A Story Only You Could’ve Written?

I was a small, impressionable child when Dr. Frederic Wertham launched his jihad against comic books, and witnessed many of my favorite comics either disappear or continue in an emasculated fashion.  As an adult, I became a writer in two areas two that are pertinent to this novel — first, I wrote comic strips and comic books, and second, I specialized as a prose novelist in historical detective stories with 20th Century settings.  My Nathan Heller novels explored real crimes, and hew close to the events and even use mostly real names.  But Jack and Maggie Starr appear in historically based stories, with comic strip/book themes, that are more broadly depicted — murders added to historical subjects, names changed and so on.

What Was The Hardest Thing About Writing SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT?

Balancing the history and the mystery was tricky.  I submitted the novel with perhaps 10,000 words more of material pertaining to the history of comic books.  I cut this material back, as I already had the problem of the murder not occurring till midway in the novel.  That’s a problem or at least a challenge in a traditional murder mystery, because you want the murder as soon as possible, so the investigative proceedings can get under way.  But I like to have the eventual murder victim on stage for a while, to show why he or she is killable, and to introduce as many suspects as I can before the inevitable.

What Did You Learn Writing SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT?

The previous two Jack and Maggie Starr novels, written for a different publisher, had faced their own censorship — that publisher did primarily “cozy” mysteries, so I was asked not to get too tough with the action and violence, and to take it easy on the sexual content.  At Hard Case Crime, the more sex and violence the better, and while I did not go wild in either department in this novel, it felt very good to have the freedom for Jack to get tough and to swear a little and to even get laid.  So what I learned was that, even though I was working in the vein of Stout and Queen (neither of whom did much on-stage violence and sex), Jack and Maggie work better in a less restrained format.

What Do You Love About SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT?

Getting to have my say about the Wertham witch hunt era was very rewarding, particularly because I think I did it in an entertaining way.

What Don’t You Like About It?

It has been bought for movies or TV yet.

Give Us Your Favorite Paragraph From The Story:

He shoved her hard from behind, like the guy on the cover of that Suspense Crime Stories comic book at the hearing, and she was falling toward me as I hurtled up the stairs.  She didn’t tumble, she had the presence of mind to grab onto a banister, which didn’t stop her fall, her hand sliding down the wooden pole just as she began to do a header, but I was up there in time to catch all that long-legged nakedness in my arms.

What’s Next For You As A Storyteller?

I have just completed THE WRONG QUARRY for Hard Case Crime, and my editor, Charles Ardai, will have his notes and a copy-edited manuscript for me to deal with next week.  After that, I will do a Mike Hammer short story for Otto Penzler, utilizing a fragment from the late great Mickey Spillane’s files, and then will do my draft of the next ANTIQUES mystery, working from my wife Barb’s rough draft — we write together as Barbara Allan.  Our latest book together, ANTIQUES CHOP, will be out in May.  The book I’ll be working on is called ANTIQUES A GO GO.

Max Allan Collins: Website

Seduction of the Innocent: Excerpt / Amazon / B&N / Indiebound

How To Push Past The Bullshit And Write That Goddamn Novel: A Very Simple No-Fuckery Writing Plan To Get Shit Done

Life will never be kind to the writer. Particularly those who stay at home. You go to a full-time job outside the house, everyone gives you a wide berth to let you do what you need to do. Stay at home to write a book and everybody interrupts you like all you’re doing is watching a Teen Mom marathon on MTV while chowing down on pizza-flavored Combos and Haagen-Daaz.

Life intrudes upon you. It kicks down the door and stomps all over a writer’s practical aspirations to write. Kids. Dogs. A full-time job. A part-time job. Cleaning. Cooking. Pubic grooming. Xenomorph invasion. Hallucinations. Masturbation. LIQUOR AND MONKEY WRESTLING.

As your shoulders bear the burden of carrying the multiple shit-sacks of life’s daily ordure output, it gets easier and easier to push writing aside: “I’ll do that tomorrow,” you say, and next thing you know you’re in diapers once more, this time at an old folks’ home gumming chocolate pudding topped with a skin so thick you need scissors to cut it. Procrastination is the affirmation of an unpleasant and unwelcome but all-too-easy status quo. You merely need to do nothing and yet at the same time feel productive because you’ve promised no really I’ll pinky swear to put down some words tomorrow. You know what I want to say to that?

Tomorrow can guzzle a bucket of vulture barf.

Yesterday’s gone the way of the dodo. You have one day, and it is today.

Your promises are as hollow as a cheap-ass dollar-store chocolate Easter Bunny.

I’m going to give you literally no excuse at all to write and finish that novel. You know the one. The one that lives in your head and your heart but not on the page. The one you always say, “I’m going to write that book someday.” The one you talk about. But not the one you write. The one that makes you blah blah blah “aspiring” rather than the “real deal.” I’m going to give you a prescription for a writing plan that is simple, straightforward, and contains zero heinous fuckery. It’s so easy, a determined ten-year-old could do it. You will have no excuse. None. Zip.

Fuck-all.

Because if you come back to me and say, “I can’t do that,” you might as well have told me, “I can’t pick myself up out of this pile of mule poop I accidentally rolled in. I’m literally just bound to lay here in this once-warm now-cold heap of mule turds. Forever. Until I die. I have no self-capability and I am less motivated than your average sea cucumber. Please kick dirt on me, and if the word writer ever comes out of my mouth again, just slap my face.”

Further, if someone tells you they aren’t able to write a novel — “I don’t have time! My life is too busy!” — just send them a link to this post with my blessing.

Ready? Here’s the rules:

The Big 350

You’re going to write and finish the first draft of a novel in one year’s time.

You are going to do this by writing five days out of the week, or 260 days out of the year.

You are going to write 350 words on each of those 260 days.

That means, at the end of one year, you will have written 91,000 words.

More than enough for an average novel length.

To be clear, 350 words? Not a lot. At this point in your reading, this post is already 500 words long. You can sneeze 350 words. It’s like a word appetizer every day. Some days it’ll take you 15 minutes, other days two hours — but you’re going to commit to those 350 words every day, whether you type them out, or scrawl them in a notebook, or chisel them into the wall of your prison cell. You will carve these words out of the time you are given.

You get 24 hours a day. As do I. As do we all.

Grab a little time to write a little bit every day.

The Goal

The goal is not to write a masterpiece. It’s not to sprint. This ain’t NaNoWriMo. The goal is to finish a novel despite a life that seems hell-bent to let you do no such thing. It is you snatching snippets of word count from the air and smooshing them together until they form a cohesive (if not coherent) whole. It assumes a “slow and steady wins the race” approach to this book.

A finished first draft. That is the brass ring, the crown jewels, the Cup of the Dead Hippie God.

The Other Rules

No other rules exist. Next question.

Things To Consider

Wanna do an outline? Great, go for it. Edit as you go or all in one lump? I don’t give a monkey’s poop-caked paw how you approach it. Do as you like. Just hit your target of 350 words per day.

Let me say that again: Just hit your target. Don’t turn off your targeting computer. Don’t listen to that weird old man. Use your targeting computer, Luke. The Force is some flimsy hoo-haw made by a bunch of loveless space cenobites. No, not those cenobites, goddamnit you’re confusing your movies. Stop fiddling with that ornate-looking puzzle box. CRIMINY.

Wrote more than your allotted and expected count in one day? Fuck yeah. High-five. Fist-bump. Slap-and-tickle. Give unto yourself the pleasures of the flesh and celebrate that you’re this much closer to the end goal. Didn’t write today? Well, goddamnit. Fine. Guess what? It’s only 350 words. Cram it into tomorrow’s word-hole. That’s still only 700 words. It’s not even a 1000 words. Some writers write that much before they wake up in the morning.

Make a spreadsheet if you have to. Track your 350 words per day (you’ll probably end up writing more than that consistently and hitting your tally quicker, particularly with a spreadsheet to remind you — you will discover it’s actually hard to stop at 350 words).

The word count is small enough and steady enough where you can comfortably fuck doubt right in the ear. You’re creeping through the draft like a burglar. One step at a time. Relax. Breathe. Like that one fish says to that other fish in the movie about all the fucking fish: Just keep swimming. Or for a differnt metaphor, you know how you eat an elephant? ONE BITE AT A TIME.

Contains Zero Fuckery

This is easy! You can do this! You can do better than this! This is a plan on par with, “Do one push-up every day.” This is, “Don’t pee on the salad bar.” This is a bare minimum, common denominator, common sense, zero fuckery writing plan. You can’t do this, you don’t want to be a writer. You don’t get to be a writer. Not least of all because you can’t carve just a little bit of fat from your day in sizzle up 350 words in your story-skillet.

Lend this plan a little bit of your time.

Give this plan a little bit of your effort.

And in one year’s time, you will have a novel.

It won’t be a masterpiece.

It will need editing.

But it’ll be a first draft of something real.

Something many so-called “writers” never achieve.

One year.

Weekends off.

Just 350 words for 260 days.

Shut up and write.

How To Read Like A Writer

All a writer’s gotta do is read and write.

That, the most simplistic piece of writing advice around. So dismissive of what writers do, isn’t it? As if writing is just practice, practice, practice. Nothing to learn here. No thought behind it. No understanding of the mechanics of language. No need to ever gaze into the bloodshot eye of publishing to learn its secrets. Just read and write, read and write, read and write, and poof –

You’re a writer.

IT’S GODDAMN MAGIC IS WHAT IT IS.

Ahem.

That’s not to say the advice is bad.

You do need to write a lot.

And you sure as hell need to read a lot.

But the truth of those statements cannot be contained in those statements.

Meaning, it’s a whole lot more complicated than all that.

You can’t just pick up a book, read it, and have its wisdom absorbed into you. Eating a microwave burrito doesn’t make you a chef. Sitting on a chair doesn’t make you a fucking carpenter. And reading doesn’t make you a writer.

My impetus for this post comes from the Passive Voice blog, which linked to a quote of mine regarding reading outside one’s comfort zone as a writer, and some of the comments in response troubled me a little bit — “…I get zero inspiration from what I read. All of my inspiration comes from the world around me. Reading is what I do to put my brain in neutral and coast for a while.”

Now, I certainly approve of the idea that one should grab inspiration from the world around them — I think the all a writer’s gotta do is read and write chestnut constantly misses that third and arguably most important axis: “…oh, and also, the writer should damn well live a life and experience the world all around him.”

But not gaining inspiration from reading? Jeez, really? How did one decide to be a writer at all if one is not inspired by the written word? That sounds to me like a special kind of hell.

Still: I get it. We’re accustomed to reading for entertainment. We want to be amused by the antics on the page. Excited by a scene of tension or terror or action. Griefstruck by a character’s death. Turned on by a mistress sticking the whip-handle up her submissive’s uh-oh-hole. We’re reading to elicit a certain emotional reaction. We’re not necessarily reading to be challenged.

Well, cram that up your uh-oh-hole.

You need to start reading like a writer.

Here’s how:

Be present in the text. Do not put your brain in neutral and coast. It’s great when a book takes us out of our own lives and draws is into the life on the page. But it’s precisely that moment you want to avoid: you don’t want to be lost in the text. You want to be aware. Because that writer’s ability to make you forget you’re reading a book? That writer’s doing something super-fucking-awesome. Don’t you want to know what it is?

Read to understand; dissect the page. Go back to the chef metaphor: a chef doesn’t just eat to enjoy. A chef watches how another chef operates. A chef wants to look at technique and then wants to see how that technique translates to the food on the plate: what ingredients are present? What textures and spices? What ancient shellfish from beyond space and time? The chef dissects the meal and so must the writer dissect the page and the story before him. You are not reading to be entertained. You are reading to understand.

Read with questions in mind. Always be asking questions. How did she write this? Why, if you can guess, did she write this way or choose the words she chose? Look at the placement of the words on the page. How much dialogue to description? How does she handle character, or setting, or action? Perhaps the biggest question of all: how would you have done differently? Not better. Not worse. But how would you have handled writing this?

Read to critique. The notion of critique has lost all its nuance in the Internet age — now critique is either a plate full of firecrackers and cookies and My Little Ponies or it’s a bowl full of llama diarrhea. Everything is either OMG AWESOME +1 LIKE RETWEET HERE ARE A THOUSAND EXCLAMATION POINTS or THIS WAS THE WORST THING I’VE EVER EXPERIENCED IT MADE ME STAB MY OWN MOTHER IN THE NECK WITH A BROKEN COKE BOTTLE. But remember – critique isn’t about love or hate. Critique is an analysis. Analyze the work.

Read deeply. Our reading is often quite shallow. Don’t let it be. Look beyond the words. Figure out what the author is trying to say. What themes are at work? What ideas are resonant throughout the piece? What secret childhood traumas can you discern? Was the author the victim of many so-called “swirlies” in junior high? I KID THE POOR BULLIED AUTHORS. Just the same — look for the author on the page and in the story. Try to seek subtext hiding behind text. Look for hidden purpose and the show going on behind the curtain.

Understand the interplay between writing and storytelling. Those are two separate skills (or crafts, or arts, or magical leprechaun incantations or whatever you want to call them) — the story comprises all those narrative components and the writing comprises the language that communicates those narrative components. Both have structure. Both utilize the other. Separate but then ask: how and how well do they work together?

Read from the screen. Watch television. Films. Games. Get scripts. Read those. You’ll learn a lot about dialogue and description. You’ll learn the architecture of story.

Read beyond the walls of your pleasure dome. If all you do is read in the genre in which you write and/or enjoy, you’ve created for yourself a narrative echo chamber — your own authorial intentions are boomeranged back to you. You gain nothing. You are a part of a giant genre centipede, consuming material and excreting it, passing along a series of tried (and tired) tropes and ideas, with the only advantage being that they first pass through your intellectual colonic flora. Don’t be afraid to read books that trouble you. Books that have found success beyond your understanding. Books that live outside your favored genres. Fuck comfort.

* * *

Now, all of this is not to say you can’t or shouldn’t read for pleasure. I wouldn’t rob you of that. I might steal your wallet or your shoes or your wife but never the pleasure you gain from reading the written word. Just the same, if this writing thing is what you want to do with some or all of your life, then accept that reading is part of the job. And this job demands that all the lights in your brain are turned on, not dulled to a dim room in order to passively absorb the haw-haws and ooh-aahs of entertainment. Read like a writer, goddamnit.

Blonde Roast, By Starbucks: My Review

On the Coffee Snob scale from 1 to 10 (1 being lowest, 10 being highest), I am a 7.5.

I like good coffee. I grind it and brew it myself. I’ll French Press some motherfucking bean juice now and again, but I don’t get crazy about it. I don’t require my coffee to be run through the intestinal tract of a rare Sumatran rat-monkey, but if you try to serve me Keurig coffee in one of those little pre-configured K-Cups, I’ll break all your fingers with my back teeth.

(Further, do not ever ever ever never ever serve me decaf coffee. You might as well piss in my gas tank. THAT WAY LIES DEATH AND LASERS. Just a friendly warning!)

Like I said: 7.5 on the Coffee Snob scale.

And so we come to Starbucks.

I like Starbucks espresso drinks well enough. They do fine in a pinch, and make a serviceable latte or cappuccino. If I have no other option and I see the sign for that saucy tail-flipping Seattle mermaid, fuck it, I’m happy to get my fix from the S’bux without complaint.

But their coffee sucks balls.

It’s like drinking coffee brewed from a crushed up charcoal aquarium filter. It tastes like burned gorilla pubes. I drink a Starbucks roast – any roast at all — and I get that first hit of “oooh, coffee” followed by “all I taste is ash and carbon on the tongue, a finish of frizzled scorched briquettes. (They call it “Charbucks” for a reason, after all.)

They seem incapable of a light roast. And a light roast? It’s my favorite coffee. You gimme a nice winey, fruity Ethiopian peaberry and I’m in heaven — plus, a lighter roast has the benefit of having a wee smidgen more caffeine and goddamnit, I’ll take what I can get in the go-go-juice department. And yet, any time Starbucks offers a light roast, I get a cup and it still tastes like I’m licking an asbestos roof shingle that survived a house fire. I have to imagine that in the back of every Starbucks is some diligent pyromaniac asshole with a micro-torch hand-scorching every fucking coffee bean that comes into the place. “I just want to watch the world burn!”

So, it was with some trepidation that I embraced the quest to try Starbucks’ not-so-new “blonde roast.” They’d begun a campaign to push this coffee and all the advertising seemed to contain the subtext of, “We know our coffee tastes like driveway gravel, so here’s this one light roast that’s actually a light roast and just shut up and try it and stop complaining.”

Today, I went into Starbucks.

I ordered a “tall” (fuck you, Starbucks, and your asinine sizing chart) blonde roast.

Then I went grocery shopping and consumed it.

The too-long-didn’t-read?

Mmnnneeh? Muh? Eh? Mmm? Guh?

Like, okay, it’s fine. It is lighter than the traditional “the burned-out core of a supernova star” brew. But even behind that lighter roast still lurks that tang of unpleasant bitterness one associates with amateur hour bush league coffee. This is more of a dirty blonde coffee, or a blonde highlights but technically it’s still dark hair coffee. I’ll admit that the longer I drank it, the more… appealing it became, and by the end (when it had cooled down to luke-warm temps) I started to get those winey, acidy undertones I was hoping to get right from the get-go.

But, for the most part, still a mediocre brew.

Sorry, Starbucks.

Signed, Sort-of-a-Coffee Snob

Authorial Sludgebody: How To Fix?

Once again, it’s that time of the year where I feel like a hibernating bear who suddenly wakes up in his cave surrounded by candy cane wrappers and choco-smear paw-prints and the bones from various turkey dinners. It’s that post-holiday wake-up call where your body reminds you:

“DEAREST SLUDGEBODY. IT IS WINTER AND YOU ARE NOW SWADDLED IN SLUDGE. FIX THIS, FLAPJACK. EITHER THAT OR JUST PUT ON 100 MORE POUNDS AND COMMIT TO THE SLUDGE.”

This is all pretty normal for me, though this year it seems a bit worse than in prior years (the curse of getting older? the doom of living with a toddler where it’s harder to amend my diet for the better?). I assume my routine will be the same as in former years, and the answer is of course a straightforward one — “Modify lifestyle by changing diet and increasing exercise.”

Still, I’m curious — the simple answer is a good one but I’m also curious about the more granular answers. For those of you who have tried or are trying to lose weight — what works? What didn’t? What diet? What exercise? Give a shout.

Curious to hear your experiments, expectations, and results.

If you don’t mind sharing, of course.

My hats off to those who do.

I’ll hang up and wait for your answer.

Click.

NO CARRIER

Flash Fiction Challenge: Write What You Know

Last week’s challenge: “Inspiration From Inexplicable Photos“

This challenge is a little different from all the others.

It plays off that oft-slung chestnut of writing wisdom, “Write what you know.”

In this case, I want you to do exactly that — but with a twist.

I want you to grab an event from your life. Then I want you to write about it through a fictional, genre interpretation — changing the event from your life to suit the story you’re telling. So, maybe you write about your first hunting trip between father-and-son, but you reinterpret that as a king taking his youngest out to hunt dragons. Or, you take events from your Prom (“I caught my boyfriend cheating on me in the science lab”) and spin it so that the event happens at the same time a slasher killer is making literal mincemeat of the Prom King and Queen.

Take true life.

Reimagine it through the lens of fiction.

You’ve got 1000 words.

Post your story on your site, link back here.

Due by Friday the 22nd, noon EST.

Ten Questions About Three Graves Full, By Jamie Mason

Today, author Jamie Mason joins us to talk about her new novel, Three Graves Full (which has a helluva title and an, erm, more helluva-er premise). Here, then, are her ten answers:

Tell Us About Yourself: Who The Hell Are You?

Now there’s a loaded question if ever I’ve heard one. Instant existential crisis. As it happens, I’m a collection of likes, dislikes, and memories inside a fairly government-issue female container. I have examples, see?

Likes: Bedsheets fresh out of the laundry.

Dislikes: Ticking clocks.

Remembers: When I was six years old, I heard on the radio that our area was under a Tornado Advisory. My mother was not listening to the broadcast and, not wishing to alarm her with my blooming heroism, I snuck out. I quietly rounded up my five-year-old sister and the kid from the apartment downstairs. Armed all with tablespoons, I marched out my platoon under roiling skies, all the way to the neighborhood entrance.

There, at the base of the sign pillar for King’s Garden Apartments, three intrepid children, under my command, dug a hole. It was a pretty good hole, too. Good enough so that, by design, if that tornado dared turn our way, it would trip in our tablespoon trench, fall over, and dissipate across the main drive.

King’s Garden Apartments still stands today. You’re welcome, citizens. You’re welcome.

As for the standard, government-issue female container, well, I guess my picture is on the back flap of the book.

Other than that I grew up in the Washington DC area and now live in the mountains of Western North Carolina with my husband and two daughters.

Give Us The 140-Character Story Pitch:

When hired gardeners discover a body buried in the yard, the homeowner is horrified. But mostly because it’s not the body he’d buried out back a long time ago.

Where Does This Story Come From?

THREE GRAVES FULL came from throwing a tantrum over another story I was writing. It just wasn’t working. A writer friend, Graeme Cameron (you don’t know him, but you will,) suggested that I set it aside rather than gnash my teeth to nubs. He offered an exercise in its place: I was to seek out a list of interesting headlines compiled from various newspapers.

I was under strict instructions not to read the articles. I had to pick one, then write a story that would result that headline.

The one I chose read: Landscapers Find Skull In Mulch Bed.

I still don’t know what real news story (and presumably tragedy) sparked the article, but what I was left with was Chapter One.

How Is This A Story Only You Could’ve Written?

Given the Rule of Infinite Monkeys, I’m not sure how to answer that. I don’t think I’m more special than Shakespeare. Certainly the process that results in a story is different for every writer, every time – parts of the story seem to float into your ear from the schizophrenic nowhere, some things feel like they get chiseled out of stubborn granite, and some stuff is pulled like taffy from the goo pits in the darker places of your mind. Those bits usually have to be rinsed off.

In the case of THREE GRAVES FULL, I rotated through the nuthouse, the quarries, and the quicksand in a particular sequence, doubling back and do-si-do, lather, rinse, repeat. If those steps were to be exactly duplicated I would rather suspect a glitch in the Matrix.

What Was The Hardest Thing About Writing THREE GRAVES FULL?

The not knowing if it would go anywhere, if anyone would buy it. With fiction, you have to write the entire book up front (and rewrite it, and polish it, and write it some more, and change it, and change it back, etc.…) You have to go over and over it before even attempting to get an agent, which is still miles away from getting a publishing contract. And it’s hard work; consuming − but it’s voluntary. And that’s a problem. There is no keyboard mandate and the Muse certainly doesn’t put a gun to your head. It’s the hardest part. No one was making me do it. I could stop any time I liked. So I kept having to hurdle my inertia and work – work really hard. And the whole time there’s the Devil on my shoulder whispering, “Why do you bother? No one’s going want this. You’re going to do all this work and nothing will ever come of it…”

That shoulder devil is an asshole.

What Did You Learn Writing THREE GRAVES FULL?

That I’m not as good a typist as I ought to be. Seriously, I’ve written how many words and I still have to watch the keyboard? Pitiful.

I also learned about research. People will tell you anything if you tell them you’re writing a book. It’s awesome.

What Do You Love About THREE GRAVES FULL?

I love that it’s horrible-funny in the same way you sometimes laugh when you bang your knee. Pain is not funny, and certainly neither is murder, but life can be funny in how wrong things can go.

What Would You Do Differently Next Time?

I would (and will) try to get that shoulder devil to piss off. I’d try to work more diligently with less resistance, because a bad day writing is still a hell of a lot better than even a good day at a whole lot of other things.

Give Us Your Favorite Paragraph From The Story:

I don’t know that I have a favorite, but I’m fond of this one and it stands alone better than some others. I think. I dunno. Maybe?

“Strangely though, it wasn’t recalling the muffled crunch of bone that plagued him, nor the memory of the cleaning afterward, hours of it, all the while marveling that his heart could pound that hard for that long. No. It was that first shovelful of dark dirt spraying across the white sheet at the bottom of the grave that came to him every time he closed his eyes to sleep. Was it deep enough? He didn’t know—he wasn’t a gravedigger. Then again, in his mind he wasn’t a murderer either, but facts are facts.”

What’s Next For You As A Storyteller?

Right now I’m working on another novel, one that I hope would sit comfortably on the same shelf with THREE GRVAES FULL. It’s another crime/suspense type thing, but this time with a thread of the spy novel through it.

Three Graves Full: Amazon / B&N / Powells / Indiebound

Jamie Mason: Website / Blog

@JamieMason_

Ten Questions About Ravine, By Ron Marz

Ron Marz is a comics creator I’ve been following for quite a while on Twitter (and so should you — his @ link is at the bottom of this page). So when it came time for him to be the first “10 Questions” about a graphic novel, well, all I have to say to that is “fuck yeah.” Here’s Ron to talk about his newest, Ravine, at Top Cow. 

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

My name is Ron Marz. I write comic books, from company-owned stuff like “Green Lantern” and “Silver Surfer” and “Star Wars,” to creator-owned work that I love like my own children. I dabble in videogames and other kinds of storytelling too.

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH:

It only seems like there’s 140 characters in “Ravine,” but in reality it’s only about two dozen characters in the first volume. Uh … wait, that’s probably not what you meant, right? “Ravine” is a series of epic fantasy graphic novels, the kind of thing that would be racked with Tolkien and George R.R. Martin. The first volume is out this month.

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

Croatia. The artist and co-writer  on “Ravine” is Stjepan Sejic, my Croatian buddy with whom been collaborating on monthly comics like “Witchblade” and “Artifacts” for seven years or so. “Ravine” is a story that Stjepan’s been putting together for the last decade, crafting an entire world. A few years ago, he asked me to join him on the story and dialogue, so now we’re co-owners and co-conspirators.

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

Well, I think in this case, it’s a story that only Stjepan and I could have done together. It’s very much a collaboration, which is one of the core strengths of doing comics. Comics are a blend of words and pictures that create something you can’t get from either of those alone. So a writer and artist come together and create something unique to them, to their collaboration. “Ravine” would be a different project with anybody else working on it.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING RAVINE?

I think the sheer size of the graphic novel was something I wasn’t used to. Generally in comics, you’re writing single issues of about 20 pages of story and art, that are then put together in collections. So you’re generally working in smaller chunks, writing an issue of one title, jumping to an issue of a different title, then back again. The variety keeps you interested and motivated. If you’re stuck on one issue, you can jump to another and make progress on that. In this situation, I was working on all 160 pages of “Ravine” at once, and having to set other things aside in order to make the print deadline.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING RAVINE?

This was a bit different from the way Stjepan and I usually work together, in that the typical process is me writing a script with art direction and first-draft dialogue. Then Stjepan paints the pages digitall, after which I go back in and write the final dialogue for the letterer to put on the page. With “Ravine,” Stjepan painted the pages, gave me a sense of the dialogue, and then I did a complete rewrite of it. I had to immerse myself in this new world, but it actually proved to be a boon creatively, because I could come to it with a fresh eye, and make sure we were properly introducing all the characters and concepts. It was a bit different way of working, but in comics, the important part is the finished product, not how you get there.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT IT?

I grew up on this kind of story, on Tolkien and Burroughs and Robert E. Howard. So I’m really pleased that we’re bringing this kind of epic fantasy to comics, in a package of this size. It’s slowly changing, but comics are still dominated, to large extent, by the same superheroes we all grew up with. The kind of story we’re doing in “Ravine” is large scale and extremely visual, so I feel like comics is a perfect vehicle to tell it.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

Well, Volume 2, which is another 160 pages, will be out in the summer, so we’re already well into. Though I think I’ll plan the schedule a bit more loosely, so I can work on a palette cleanser here and there when I need to.

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:

How about a favorite page instead? (click for bigger)

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

More “Ravine,” more comics in general. I’m writing the monthly “Artifacts” title for Top Cow/Image, with more coming up from them as well. My creator-owned “Shinku” title is still coming out for Image, and later this year, I’ll be launching a comic called “The Protectors” for Athleta Comics, which is a publishing company started by Israel Idonije of the Chicago Bears, who is a huge comics fan, literally and figuratively.I also want to carve out time this year to do some more prose work. I’ve got a children’s book and a YA novel I want to get off the ground. Too many ideas, too little time.

Ravine: Top Cow / Amazon

Ron Marz: Website

@ronmarz

The Hardest Writerly Truth Of Them All

You are the sun at the center of your own narrative universe. You are its god. You are its savior.

I am not its god. I am not its savior.

Let’s rewind a little.

I get emails.

These emails ask me things like, How do I get motivated? or How do I get inspired?

Or, worse, they want to know how I “do it” every day. Not a reference to my sexual prowess (were you to ask the intimate partners of my life, they may speak of a lack of prowess reminiscent of the fumblings of an inept-yet-eager lube-soaked chimpanzee), but rather it’s a reference to my ability to hunker down and just… write.

I do it every day. And people want to know how.

They want hard answers. They want a button to push, a lever to yank. More troubling, they seem to want a menu of options. Discard this one, pick that one, the perfect meal suited to the eater.

I have one answer for you.

It is not a nice, nor easy, answer.

That answer is: “You just do.”

How do you get motivated?

You just do.

How do you get inspired?

You just do.

How do you write every day? How do you finish a book? How do you learn to spin a great narrative, to create memorable characters, to put pen to paper and fingers to keys and explode your heart and your mind with the power of motherfucking stories?

You.

Just.

Do.

This may seem like an admonishment against writing advice, that all the shit that I sling here is worthless because the reality is, the very act of writing is the answer. Do not misunderstand: writing advice has value, but it only has value to those who are willing to execute and implement. All the writing-talk and story-speak in the world won’t do more than tickle your theoretical story’s imaginary testicles if you’re unwilling to commit the time and effort it takes to grab the words from inside your ribcage and smash them like overripe fruit on the page.

Only when you choose to open that door by embracing action does this stuff matter.

Until then, it’s all just candy-floss and elf-dreams, man. It’s ether. It’s nothing.

Action. Execution. Implementation.

Do. Write. Finish.

I know, you’re saying, “That’s easier said than done.” I know it is! So fucking what? A big-ass boulder tumbles down from the mountaintop and falls on your hand and pins the limb, you either gnaw through your arm like a goddamn coyote or you die under the rock. Door won’t open? Kick it down. Wall blocking your path? Bash it with your skull until it falls or you do.

Life’s getting in the way? I’m sorry, that’s how life works. Life is a series of obstructions — it’s speedbumps all the way down. You’re depressed? Get in line. You’re depressed. So’s that woman over there and she wrote 1000 words today, and yesterday, and the day before. You think I don’t deal with depression? Of course I do. We writers are tailor-made for that. I know, I sound unsympathetic — trust me, it’s the opposite. I’m completely sympathetic. I’ve been there. I’m sometimes there still. It doesn’t change the cold, hard fact that all the power lies with you. In your brain. In your hands. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. Did you want it to be easy? What fun is easy? Easy is a value of zero. And surely you want more than nothing? Writing makes you pay. In blood and tears and frustration. You do it because you love it. Not because it’s a warm bed at your back but because it’s sharp stones under your feet spurring you forward.

It’s the wolf at your heels. It’s the fire in your heart. Wolves bite. Fire burns.

Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it’s scary. Sometimes it’s hard and makes no sense and sometimes the frustration gets so bad you just want to dunk your head in a bucket of whiskey and hide your tears inside the liquid burn but, but, but –

Fuck it. Shut up! Write. You get your years and you get no more. These are your days. No Muse is going to breathe a hot sigh of inspiration up your hiney-hole. I’m not going to come to your house and crawl inside your skin and bind my bones to yours with the purpose of forcing you to crap out all your big bad story-words. Oh, you have writer’s block? Boo-hoo! Writer’s Block has as much power as you give it — it’s a Weeping Angel, so bind it to the earth with your gaze.

This is creation!

This is the act of forging something out of nothing. It demands sacrifice. It’s you carving off parts of yourself to a future without promises, you spilling power and grief and embracing chaos and uncertainty all in the hopes of trying to make sense of this thing you do in the sheer bloody-minded chance that something you write will finally matter but the trick is, it all matters, because writing is how we connect with ourselves and the world beyond our margins. Writing is how we tether ourselves to god, a god in a narrative world that is, of course, us.

You’re the Muse that inspires you. You’re the god to which you sacrifice. You’re the battering ram made of unholy fire that tears down Writer’s Block. You’re the knife that cuts the arm off, you’re the boulder that must be pulverized, you’re the devil in the details.

You’re the one-armed coyote or you’re the dead sonofabitch under the rock.

I can try to tell you how to write.

But first you have to be willing to write.

You only get the map when you step through the door.

It only gets done by doing it.

Will yourself to create.

Accept no excuses.

Brook no fear.

Shut up.

Fuck it.

Write.

25 Things You Should Know About Narrative Point-Of-View

1. Know Thy Narrator

One of the first questions you have to ask is, who the fuck is telling this story? Is intrepid space reporter Annie McMeteor telling it in her own voice? Is a narrator telling Annie’s story for her? Is the story told from a panoply of characters — or from a narrator attempting to tell the story by stitching together a quilt of multiple minds and voices? Is the story told by a gruff and emotionless objective character who sits fat like a fly on the wall? You can try writing your story without knowing who the narrator is, but you’d better figure it out by the end of the first paragraph or you’re going to be writing one big, barfy, confusing mess. Your uncertainty in this regard will punish the reader, so it’s time, in Glengarry Glen Ross parlance, “to fuck or walk.”

2. Who’s On First, I Don’t Know’s On Third

You already know this but it bears repeating: first-person POV is when the story is told with the pronoun “I” (I went to the store, I like cheese, I killed a man in Reno not so much to watch him die but more because I wanted his calculator wristwatch). Third-person POV is when the story is told with the pronouns “she,” “he,” “it,” “they” (She opened the window, he peed out the window, they all got peed on by the guy peeing out the window).

3. Ha Ha Ha, Second-Person, That’s A Good One

The second-person mode uses the pronoun “you.” As in, it’s telling the story from the perspective of you the reader. In theory, this is awesome. In practice it often comes off totally fucking goofy. Sure, a gifted storyteller can pull it off — and hey, sometimes fiction is about risks. It probably works better in short fiction than long (as sustaining that narrative mode will be tricky and tiresome). To be honest, whenever I read a second-person narrative, I keep thinking in my head, “You are eaten by a grue.” Then I quit reading it because, y’know, grue.

4. Witnessing Versus Experiencing: Where To Place The Camera?

A novel has no camera because a novel is just a big brick of words, but for the sake of delicious metaphor, let’s assume that “camera” is representative of the reader’s perspective. We often think of point-of-view as being the character’s perspective (and it is), but it’s also about the reader’s perspective. A third-person narrative has the camera outside the action — maybe hovering over one character, maybe pulling back all the way to the corner. A first-person narrative gives one character the camera — or even goes so far as to cram the camera up their nether-cavern and into their brain and against their eyeball. The question then becomes: is the reader here to witness what’s going on? Or experience it? Third-person asks we witness, first-person allows us to experience (and second-person really utilizes the experiential mode but, again, probably don’t do that).

5. The Intimacy Of The Reader

Put different, it becomes a question of intimacy. How intimate is the reader with the story, the setting, the characters? Once we begin to explode out the multiple modes of POV (objective, subjective, omniscient, etc.) it relates to how intimate the reader gets to be — is she kept close but privy to the confidence of only one character? Is the reader allowed to be all up in the satiny guts of every character in the room? Is the reader locked out? How much access does the reader have to the intellectual and emotional realm? Is she granted psychic narrative powers?

6. Objective: The Reader At The Window, Peering In

The objective mode of storytelling says, “Hey, reader, go stand outside and watch the story from the window, you funky little perv-weasel.” The reader isn’t privy to any of the psychic realm: it’s like watching a closed-circuit television feed. This happened, that happened, blah blah blah. It’s almost informationally pornographic: close-ups and thrusting but no emotional tangle.

7. Subjective: The Reader As A Psychic Monkey Riding A Specific Character

The subjective narrative mode filters the story through the lens of a single character. The reader is allowed inside (as long as he pulls up his pants and wipes his hands) and gets to play the role of a psychic Yoda-monkey clinging to one character’s back. The intimacy increases: the reader is now allowed access to one character’s internal realm. That character filters everything through an intellectual, emotional, and experiential lens for the reader.

8. Omniscient: Reader Drops Acid Gets To Live In Everybody’s Heads

YOU ARE NOW A GOLDEN GOD. Or, you just quaffed a cup of ayahuasca and now you’re hallucinating. Either way, omniscient POV allows us to become not a dude at the window or a telepathic lemur but rather, a hyper-aware psychic cloud floating above and within all the character action. We are granted a backstage pass to every character’s internal world.

9. The Limited Lens Of Third Person Subjective

Third-person subjective is often called “third-person limited” because you are, duh, limited to the lens of just one character. This allows us some of the intimacy of first-person while still remaining a witness to the action rather than the closest thing to a participant. It’s like having your cake and being able to eat it too, which is a phrase I’ve always considered a bit silly: of course I want to eat the cake I have because then what the fuck is the point of cake? If you’re trying to make some comment on the corporeality of cake (“once you’ve eaten it you no longer have it”), it still falls apart because relocating it to my belly still counts as me having it. Further, I might have eaten a single slice of cake and retain the other seven slices for later cake consumption. (And by “later” I mean, “in two-and-a-half minutes.”) So, whatever. What was I talking about? Who are you people and how’d you get in my Secret Cake Room?

10. Episodic Third: The Monkey Hops From Shoulder To Shoulder

This has lots of names — Third-Term Episodic, Third-Term Multiple, Third-Person Limited Shifting, Menage-A-Character, Third-Person Monkey-Head-Hopper, and so on. The point is that in a given narrative unit (most commonly, a chapter) the storyteller limits the filtering of the narrative through a single character — in the next chapter, the storyteller switches that filter to a whole different character. (I tend to like this approach in my own work. If third-person limited is ‘having your cake and eating it too,’ this is like ‘having cake with ice cream on top and then also pie and maybe cookies and eating it all but still having more.’)

11. The Deeper Plunge Of First Person Subjective

First-person subjective is the most common version of the first-person POV, and it allows for a deep dive into one character’s psyche. It is the most intimate in a 1:1 sense — the strength is that we get to know one character very, very well. We are more than just the monkey on the shoulder; we are a thought-eating brain parasite. We are given a vicarious thrill as both storyteller and reader in this mode. Sometimes, this mode can be overpowering; further, there exists the danger that the storyteller’s “voice” and the protagonist’s “voice” are a little too close. In a sense, first-person subjective is a bit like acting: the writer embodies the role of a character, attempting to wear the costume completely while on the page.

12. The News Report Had Sex With A Screenplay And Birthed The Objective POV

Journalism is all about details. Screenplays are blueprints for action and dialogue. The objective point-of-view — in both first- and third-person — offers us that sense of utter detachment. It is an exercise in, as noted, detail and action and dialogue. The internal world is closed off completely; any intellectual or emotional details are left to reader interpretation only. Much of this is actually about how much interpretation we want the reader to do — how much burden do we grant to the audience? The more objective the narrative becomes, the more must sit on the reader’s shoulder. The more subjective we become, the less interpretation the reader must do.

13. First Person Omniscient Is Like Hanging In The Headspace Of A God

Here’s how this works: the narrative is first-person (“I pooped…”) and yet offers total awareness and exploration of the internal world of every other character (“I pooped and Tom wonders why I did it on the salad bar, but Betty doesn’t care because she’s thinking about how she thinks salad is for assholes, anyway”). This is not a narrative mode you can get away with easily — it has to have a hook. A reason for existing. Like, in the Lovely Bones, the character is a ghost so that pretty much makes sense. But a character shouldn’t be able to offer an omniscient viewpoint without being psychic, or a ghost, or a god, or… well, a warbling moony-loon. Could be cool. Could also be a garish gimmick. Tread wisely.

14. Multiple First Person Narrators

You can, if you want, tell the story from alternating first-person narrators. One chapter tells it from Tom, the second from Betty, the third from Bim-Bim the Saturnian Baboon Lord, whatever. Like I said: you do what you want. You can take a shit on the grocery store salad bar as long as you don’t mind Tom giving you the stink-eye afterward. (Oh, one note about alternating first-person narrators: the voice of each needs to be strong and distinct so that readers aren’t left scratching their poor little reader noggins over who the fuck is talking to them.)

15. The Cool Kids Of POV High

The two most popular points-of-view are, I believe, first-person subjective and third-person limited (often third-person episodic limited — aka the monkey-hopper POV). First-person is particularly common in young adult fiction the reasons for which are either that “it’s the trend so shut up” or “because younger readers want that level of emotional intimacy with younger characters.” Not to say you must cleave to trends, but it’s good to be aware of them.

16. First And Third Living Together And Making Sweet Love

You can, if you’re really bad-ass, alternate from first to third. It’s tricky and can become just a stunt if you’re not careful. “BECAUSE I WANT TO SO SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH” is not always the best reason to try something inside your fiction: it helps to have some logic behind it. Is there some reason to perform the switch? Is there an epistolary component sandwiched like taco meat inside the narrative? Seek reason for the choices within your writing.

17. Be Consistent, Be Clear

Seek consistency and clarity in point-of-view, lest you confound and bewilder, lest you seem like the king of amateur-hour karaoke. Hell, seek consistency and clarity in all of your writing. Also, in your take-out orders. Because you think you ordered a “ham and cheese sandwich” but then you open the bag and suddenly your face is on fire from a thousand stingers and you’re like OMG THEY MUST’VE THOUGHT I SAID HAM AND BEES.

18. The Reader Is Your Puppet And POV Is One Of The Strings

The storyteller’s job isn’t to be the reader’s buddy. The storyteller is an untrustworthy fucker, a manipulator on par with the love child of Verbal Kint and Hannibal Lecter. Point-of-view is one of the most critical weapons in the storyteller’s arsenal: you can use to reveal information or to restrict it. You can use it to regulate the distance between reader and character, or between one character and another. You can use it to display false testimony or misleading detail. You can use it to open stuck jars or drown noisome chipmunks. Okay, maybe not that last part.

19. Perspective Creates Tension

Perspective — both its revelation and restriction — creates tension. The third-person POV allows different characters to notice individual details and experience separate events and we as the reader are privy to all their conflicting plots and schemes. Third-person omniscient is a blown-open diaper of perspective: the characters on the page don’t know what one another are thinking but we often do, and so we know that Tom is planning on killing Betty and that Bim-Bim the Space Baboon is really Tom and Betty’s long lost son. First-person pulls all that back and restricts the experiences to a single character, so instead the sense of external mystery is heightened even as internal mystery is reduced — the reverse can be true when you go back to third-person, where internal mystery is increased at the expense of external intrigue.

20. Wuzza Wooza Who Now?

Beware confusion with any exercise of point-of-view. Omniscience can overwhelm and bewilder. Subjectivity can leave out critical external details. Mystery is not useful when it seeds utter befuddlement. Or, put differently, “mystery” is not a synonym for “I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore in this goddamn story I’m so lost I think I need a nap.”

21. The Danger Of Illuminating Assholes

That sounds like someone’s shining a flashlight on an anus, but that’s not what I mean — what I mean is, the first-person perspective lends intimacy and sometimes that intimacy is exactly what fiction needs. However, characters who are in some sense “unlikable” often gain extra unwanted dimension with the first-person perspective. One danger is that the character’s moral complexities are watered-down because now we’re forced to march through the justifications for the character’s rampant assholery. The follow-up danger is that the deep psychic dive only magnifies the assholery to the point where the character is now a prolapsed anus the size of a Christmas stocking heavy with driveway gravel. An unlikable-but-interesting character can fast become a hated motherfucker when we live too long inside their heads. I want to watch Don Draper and Tony Soprano. I don’t want to lurk inside their heads.

22. What Objectivity Misses

Objective narrative view can offer a strong, clinical approach to storytelling. Though, one could also suggest that the power of the novel above other storytelling forms is how it allows us to plunge — however deep or shallow — into the internal world of the characters rather than just exploring the physical realm. The novel is a complicated beast and as much happens inside the action as around it, within it, and through it. If I wanted to watch Bim-Bim the Space Baboon run around and shoot laser pistols, I’d write a cartoon script. If I’m writing a novel, it’s because I want to behold the pathos of Bim-Bim. Which is also the name of my next novel: “THE PATHOS OF BIM-BIM,” with the follow-up, “DESOLATION OF THE MOON GIBBON.”

23. Is The Narrator A Poo-Poo-Faced Lying Liar Who Lies?

The more intimate the readers are allowed to be with the narrator, the more able the storyteller is to create conditions for an unreliable narrator, which is to say, a narrator whose experience and/or telling of the story is questionable. An unreliable narrator creates a sub rosa layer of the story where we the readers are left to wonder what is true and what is false. The more layers a story has, the more we have to discuss over all that cake and pie when we’re done reading it, and the more we have to discuss, the more cake and pie we eat, so, y’know, FUCK YEAH CAKEPIE.

24. This Is All Wrapped Up With Narrative Tense

It’s common for narrative tense to be wrapped up with narrative point-of-view, lumped together in something called “narrative mode.” (Which is also the mode that Teddy Ruxpin exists in at all times, I believe. Since Teddy Ruxpin is a bear, does he tell you a story as he’s eating you?) It’s too much to talk about here, just realize that adding tense to point-of-view adds further variable to your storytelling offerings — first-person present tense feels very internal and in-the-moment, whereas third-person present carries the urgent-yet-distant action of a screenplay. Third-person past tense feels very traditional, whereas second-person omniscient future tense feels like you’re just fucking with everybody, you crazy avant garde sonofabitch.

25. When In Doubt, Rewrite To A New POV

If you’re hip-deep in the book and you’re just not feeling it, try switching to a new point-of-view before giving up. You may find that a different way into the story — a different lens, camera, and filter — will enliven your investment and reveal the story you really want to tell. Think of it like an Instagram filter: you’re like, “Man, this foodie photo of foie gras Buffalo wings just doesn’t do anything for me,” but then you start clicking Instagram retro filters and suddenly you’re all HOLY FUCKSHOES NOW IT’S ART. Try new things until the story clicks. Which is a good tip, I think, for all aspects of writing and storytelling, so tattoo it somewhere on your body. Maybe your forehead, backwards, so you can read it in a mirror!

Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY:

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER:

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500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER:

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250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING:

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CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY:

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REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY:

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF