Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 237

Flash Fiction Challenge: Five Titles Make A Challenge

Last week’s challenge — “The Epic Game Of Aspects Redux” — is there for your eyeballs.

Here’s how this week’s challenge works.

I’m going to give you five titles.

You will either:

a) Choose one of these titles for a new piece of flash fiction.

or

b) Remix the titles (adding no new words of your own) to create a new title which, well, duh, you will then use to compose a new piece of flash fiction.

Get it? Got it? GOBBA GOOBA.

The five titles are:

“The Monkey’s Pageant.”

“Dead-Clock’s Revenge.”

“The Black Lighthouse.”

“Bright Stars Gone To Black.”

“Plastic Dreams & Doll Desires.”

You’ve got one week. Due by Friday the 12th, noon EST.

You have up to 1000 words.

Any genre will do.

Post at your space. Link back here.

Now. Grab a title off the table and go.

Tracy Barnett: The Terribleminds Interview

Tracy Barnett is a creator of games in the old school, including the successfully-funded-on-Kickstarter game, School Daze. (Oh, and he has a new Kickstarter running for a game between only two people called “One Shot.”) You can find him at his online space, sandandsteam.net, or follow him on the Twitters @TheOtherTracy. Behold his thought-milk, below.

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.

[RETRIEVAL COMMENCING]

[IMAGE FILES NOT FOUND]

[DATABASE CORRUPTED]

[PARTIAL TEXTUAL RECORD BEING DISPLAYED]

Wednesday, March 25 53 A.U.

53% left.

I found this old JournalPad in some wreckage near the Scrapyard. The ads claimed the battery would last longer than a single man’s lifetime with one charge. Given what’s happened around here, I don’t doubt that claim for a second. If we don’t find some food and some potable water, we’re fucked.

[IMAGE: JPI0023.PNG]

I used to work up there. I didn’t make the cut. I wasn’t smart enough, or diligent enough, or I didn’t kiss enough ass, or… something. I don’t even know anymore. When the decision came down from the UEG, everyone in the facility assumed they’d be on board. They’d get a lift off thi-4$*#^!ff

[FILE CORRUPTION]

[RE-SEGMENTING FILE]

#(4495)#&@@!-as the worst. Once the dome perimeter shut down, the fumes started seeping in. And worse than the fumes were the people. The Forgotten. The ones who didn’t even deserve a life in the domes. The ones who were always on the outside. Well, not any more. They’re in the City Center right now. I guess I’m one of them, now. I’ve got a hack-job rebreather, a cough that won’t quit, sores that seep, and I’m always hungry. I guess we’re all Forgotten, niiii#*$))(&^!\

[FILE CORRUPTION]

[RESEGMENTING FILE]

QQQ*23jksday, March 27 53 A.U.

52.95% left.

We managed to get our hands on a purifying until. Nothing fancy, just something leftover from a middle-class apartment. The gangers must have missed it during their initial sweep. Who can blame them? I don’t. Now we’ve got a chance. Now we can stop drinking that irradiated sludge that’s been seeping down the sidewalls of our “home.”

Home. There’s a word that’s lost its meaning. I wonder what they’re thinking up there. You can just make them out, you know. If the smog clears, and the sun’s just right, you can see the reflections off the orbiting hab units. See?

[IMAGE: JPI0026.PNG]

They look like stars. It’s our new constellation. The Abandoner. That’s what I’ll call it.

Friday, May 22 53 A.U.

52.15% Left.

Fuckers.

Fucking gangers, fucking abandoners, just… fucking everyone. Maria was crying today. What am I supposed to say to her? That I couldn’t help protect her? That to be able to survive in this new world of ours, you have to out-bastard the other guys? Maybe that’s what she needs to hear. I needed to. I learned the hard way.

We’d made something of a permanent home inside one of the old CO2 reclamation facilities. It hadn’t been completely stripped of parts yet and most of the old equipment was inactive. Sure, we had to get past the defense grid drones first but we figured that would only help keep us safer. The perimeter drones would guard our backs and we might be able to get some more sleep.

We didn’t count on the gangers having a bio0385*$%JF#*

[FILE CORRUPTION]

[RESEGMENTING FILE]

‘’’’’’’’`3958-ard to even wake up during what passes for morning around here. The old domed city has been decaying at an alarming rate now that there’s no one to monitor the systems. The toxicity levels of every substance around us are through the roof. It’s a wonder that we’re still alive.

Sunday, September 27 53 A.U.

51.45% Left.

We did it! We beat them at their own game, the bio-freaks! Sure, sure we had to try some risky shit but we made it. It was like throwing a piece of sodium into a beaker of water back in by early Chem days… except the sodium was a volatile mass of nuclear material and that beaker of water was the gangers’ main hidey-hole.

What an explosion.

Since then, we’ve had strays trickling in. The streets are a little safer and it’s obvious that we’re the ones with the power in the area, now. That’s good. We need to keep the fuckers down, keep reminding them of who’s in charge around here*W%&*%RHHHHGD{“

[FILE CORRUPTION]

[RESEGMENTING FILE]

“!@#(DDDEH(aria wants to have a baby. I argued against it. I mean, I’m no doctor but I’m sure that all of the exposure we had to all of that radiation last year is going to have a permanent effect on our DNA. She doesn’t care. She just wants all of this to have been worth something. And I see her point. We fought the gangers, fought for supplies, hell, we fought against the city itself.

And we made it.

If she wants a baby, who am I to stand in her way?

Sunday, December 26 54 A.U.

46% Left.

Kreena. That’s her name. She’s our gift and we got her on a day that used to mean something. It means everything to us, now. The doc we rescued last month took a look at her and said she’s as well as can be expected. We know better. She’s strong. She’s already more adapted to this new world in one day of life than we are after having been out in it for over a year.

[IMAGE: JPI0343.PNG]

We’ll raise her. She’ll know strength. She’ll know the truth about why our lives are like this. And she’ll know what’s coming. The Departure was only the first stage. There’s more comi_+_{}’455fjdd

[FILE CORRUPTION]

[RESEGMENTING FILE]

+@#_$)$NND&0.5% Left.

i tolddd herr…..

loookkkk to thhee aaaabandonnnnersssd

fffgire coomnes fropm the sssssdky

aabandonertas coomming top resdhapes thje woirtld

[END FILE RECOVERY]

Why do you tell stories?

Because I want to see other people react to them. My stories are largely told at the game table. They unfold as people interact with one another, and their pattern is never set. At least, it shouldn’t be. If it is, then the collaborative process that happens so wonderfully in game sessions is just gone. That’s where the magic is for me: seeing a story bloom, unfold, and hang in the air between the players. It may only last for a few moments, but it’s there, and it’s awesome.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice.

Trust your audience. In my case, this means people reading the setting, or rules that I write. It also means trusting the players at my game table. I always do my best to never underestimate them. If you give your players or readers room to think and react, they’ll surprise you every time. Surprise is good.

What’s the worst piece of writing/storytelling advice you’ve ever received?

“Write the way they want you to write.” It was simultaneously the best an worst advice. On the plus side, it helped me pass my Freshman Proficiency test when I was in 9th grade. On the downside, that’s the only venue in which that advice hold water when it comes to your own writing. Sure, if you’re freelancing and are given guidelines, you’ve got to follow them. If you’re writing for your own work though? You need to feel free to stretch yourself.

What goes into writing a strong character? Bonus round: give an example of a strong character.

A strong character needs to be flawed. A prefect character is boring unless the point of their perfection is to see it eventually fail. That’d be Checkov’s Gun for the personality set. Intro a perfect character, and your audience should expect that character’s perfection to fall by act three.

But I digress.

Strong characters need to have a life of their own. Love them or hate them, you need to remember them.

Recommend a book, comic book, film, or game: something with great story. Go!

There’s this short story compilation called My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, where every story is a retold or new fairy tale. We forget how powerful such stories and folklore can be. Reading that book helped me remember what it was like to imagine after a while of that part of my mind being ground down.

Favorite word? And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

Slough. Pronounce it slew, or pronounce it sluff, it’s a word that sticks with me for no good reason. I’ll sometimes just tweet the word. It’s also one of those words that makes people uncomfortable, like moist.

I wish I had something more creative for this category, but fuck is always a go-to for me. Especially in phrases. “Fuck me running” is especially evocative for me. Just try and imagine how that would work. Doesn’t matter your sex, it’s awkward and delightful.

Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don’t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)

I love beer. All kinds, depending on the season. I’ve not gotten into brewing my own, but I’d love to. I also like a good whiskey.

What skills do you bring to help the humans win the inevitable robot war?

Win? None. However, once people with more skill than me help us win, I’ll be aces as helping us rebuild society. I’m a people person, so I can get groups together and… ah, who am I kidding? All hail our eventual robot overlords.

School Daze. Give us the Twitter pitch — 140 characters, what it’s about.

Did high school suck? Want to make it not suck? Play #SchoolDaze, and tell awesome stories. Be who you want, and make high school fun again.

(140 exactly. BOOM.)

We are often compelled to do this thing that we do as creators, so what drove you to it? What drove you to make games?

A feeling of inadequacy, combined with a desire to prove myself. That’s a lethal cocktail if you handle it the wrong way. I decided to start working on a campaign setting for Pathfinder after a one-shot adventure for a friend of mine. During the adventure, I had needed a destination for the ship they were on, so I made up this little town called Port-of-Call, a shitty dock town that served as a caravan jump-off for Kage. Kage was a techno-magical metal city in the middle of a desert, and run by a cabal of wizards called the Collegium. Well, Kage— pronounced Ka-shey; I was all clever and used a rough transliteration of the Japanese word for shadow—ended up becoming the focus of this campaign setting.

Because I simultaneously thought that I was making something cool, and wanted people to tell me how crappy my work was, I started just putting my stuff out there on a WordPress blog. Thing is, it turned out that I had some decent ideas. At the least, people weren’t telling me to pack it in. At the same time, I was going through some mental muck. Dealing with that muck helped me grow a backbone and realize for myself that my stuff was pretty good. Then I got ambitious.

I decided to take Kage and split it into three different sections, each of which would be expressed in a different game system—a suggestion from my friend Lenny, and a good one, too; take a look at what Fantasy Flight is doing with Star Wars—and my inability to properly manage that project led to its current on-the-shelf state. So when I was driving home from visiting friends in KC, and I got the idea for School Daze, I ran with it. I had the mental mojo, and the ability to see a project through; and I have done so. I’m super-proud of School Daze.

As for the campaign setting, well, I’m going to come back to it. When is the question.

What’s the difference between telling a story in a passive medium (say, books) and telling a story in a game?

In a book, you’ve got at least some control, or you tell yourself that you do. If you’re doing it right in a book, your characters take on lives of their own and make decisions that surprise you. That’s just good writing, there.

In a game, the narrative doesn’t belong to you if you’re the one running the game. The narrative belongs to your players and their characters. If you forget that, it’s to the detriment of your game. Sure, you plan out plot points, combats, challenges, etc. But at any point, the characters could say “fuck this, we’re going to become merchants.” Then? You roll with that. The game is theirs. You need to try to control the flow, moderate the chaos, but you need to follow their desires, or the game falls flat. It’d be like f the people in your book decided to just leave halfway through; without players, you have no game. If you have no game, you have no narrative.

What’s a pen-and-paper game everyone should be playing, but isn’t?

School Daze!

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Ahem.

I really love my game, I think you should play it. But there are other games that inspired it. Normally, I would just shout “PLAY FIASCO!” at you, and expect you to go play that amazing game immediately.

However, the question asked was about a game that no one is playing, but should. For that response, I give you Dread. Dread is a horror RPG that doesn’t use dice. Instead, it uses a Jenga tower for its conflict resolution. Where you would roll a die in most games, in Dread you have to make one or more successful pulls from the tower. If you knock the tower over, even accidentally, your character is out of the scenario.

On the surface, this all sounds hokey. I thought so, too. Then, fifteen minutes into my first session, everyone in the game was sitting about two feet away from the table, afraid to come close unless they needed to make a pull. The tower itself becomes a source of tension, which only adds to the horror of the scenario. It’s a peanut-butter-chocolate moment for me. It’s glorious. I’ve never experienced a game like it.

What’s next for you as a storyteller? What does the future hold?

Next up for me is a new game called Terrorform. The earth is fucked, and humanity is going to fix it. There are orbital stations that can house humanity for generations while we terraform our own planet. Problem is, not everyone makes it off. The players will play those people, and will work to survive the terraforming. But when humanity comes back to their new/old home? It’s likely that the Forgotten will not remember their ancestors fondly.

I’m hoping to get this game written sooner rather than later, and to publish in 2013.

Line Up For Your Penmonkey Self-Evaluations

PREPARE TO GET PROBED.

Ha ha ha, no, no, silly, not like that.

I mean, “Prepare to get probed rectally.”

*checks notes*

Wait, I mean, “not rectally.”

Sorry! Sorry. Always get that one wrong.

So, from time to time it’s a good idea to shove your own penmonkey dreams under the lens of the microscope, see how things are going for you. As such, it’s time for a report card if you’re willing.

The questions — and you can answer as many or as few of these as you care to — are:

How’s it going, writing-wise?

How goes progress on any current projects? Whatcha working on?

Any problems with said projects? Issues you’re having?

Anything I or the lovely community of terribleminds can help with?

(This is also a good time to ask for beta readers if you need ‘em.)

Beyond individual projects, how’s the bigger picture looking?

What are your strengths as a writer and storyteller?

More importantly: what and where are your weaknesses?

So: there you go.

A few self-eval questions to get you talking.

I’ll hang up and wait for your answer.

CARRIER LOST

25 Ways To Get Your Creative Groove Back As A Writer

Sometimes, writers get out of the groove. They lose their voodoo. This isn’t just writer’s block — hell, you might even still be writing. But it feels hollow, unrewarding, like it’s not just giving back what you put in.

You need your creative mojo back.

Which means, another list of 25, comin’ right up.

(Some of these, I figure, also work toward writer’s block, if that’s a thing you believe in.)

1. Read Outside Your Comfort Zone

By “comfort zone,” I mean that room inside your head where it’s all pillows and chocolates and footy pajamas, with gamboling puppies and a vending machine that dispenses only liquor and cupcakes. On the wall of our comfort zone is a shelf of books and these are the books representative of the many categories we already prefer to digest: “I read: presidential autobiographies, graphic novels about talking animals, and the genre of ‘paranormal bromance.’” Comfort, however erm comfortable it may be, is not a great thing for creativity — so, escape this mind-realm of plush luxury and go read books you’d never ever read. Wouldn’t ever pick up a book of travel essays, or one about food culture, or a young adult novel? New books mean new input — and that means new inspiration. By the way, dibs on ‘paranormal bromance.’ HANDS OFF.

2. Re-Read A Book You Love Utterly

Fuck it. Instead of escaping your comfort zone, let’s nest deep within its pillowy folds. Grab a beloved book off your shelf and re-read it. Re-discover why a book like this made you want to be a writer in the first goddamn place. Let it fill you with its power (worst pick-up line ever) as it did many years before. Let it bring you back to center. Books you love are like a flashlight in dark times.

3. Read Something Utterly Shitty That Somehow Got Published

I read a script recently. It was a script that had been optioned (though never made), meaning, it was a script that someone out on the Leftmost Coast paid good money for. Like, probably more money than I’ve ever made in a year. Or ten years. OR MY WHOLE SAD INK-FINGERED LIFE SHUT UP. Anyway, point is: it was not very good. I mean, I won’t go so far as to call it genuinely shit-tacular, but it was… well, you know how fast food is often wildly mediocre? Yeah, that. Its mediocrity enlivened me. It told me, “I write better than this. I will write better than this.” It was a horse-kick to my motivational centers.

4. Achieve Narrative Conclusion, Gleefully Shellacking Your Brain-Pants

Take a teeny tiny project — a poem, a short story, a flash fiction challenge, a series of tales told in ten tweets, whatever — and finish it. I’m going to make up some science now, so, put on your Reality-Defying Goggles. Ready? Finishing any creative project releases a chemical in your brain called Hopamine (pronounced “hope-a-meen”), aka “Triumph Squeezin’s” or “Victory Fluid.” By stimulating the gland that releases this creative hormone, you further stimulate the rest of your brain to want to seek that feeling again and again, like a drug addict chasing a high. Meaning: the more projects you complete, the more projects you complete.

5. The “Just For You” Project

That sounds like a really weird euphemism for masturbation. “Hey, what are you gonna do now?” “Gonna go upstairs, initiate a just-for-me project.” *grabs a box of Kleenex and a soup can filled with ballistics gel* Anyway. Sometimes creative lockjaw happens when you’re too busy doing work for everybody else and you’ve saved nothing for yourself. Pick a project, small, large, whatever, that’s something you want to do. Doesn’t matter if anybody else thinks it’s a good idea. Fuck the naysayers. Completing work that’s satisfying to you will tickle your creative muscles. And hey, there’s another masturbation euphemism if you want it.

6. Write Outside Your Comfort Zone

Remember your “comfort zone?” Cuddly unicorns and that Carly Rae Jepsen poster on the wall? Let’s just set fire to the whole place. Ignore the unicorn screams. (And shit, do they ever scream.) Earlier I advocated reading outside your comfort zone, so now it’s time to write outside of it. Pick something you’d never write, and try it. Don’t worry about finishing it — this is an exercise, not a job. Write romance, or hard sci-fi, or a film script or the marketing materials for a new drug called “pink meth.” Whatever. Sometimes you have to come at creative logjam from a whole different angle to break it apart.

7. Public Lewdness, I Mean, “Public Creativity”

Put your work out there for all to see — probably online, but somewhere, somehow in the public space. Which is to say, get a blog or whatever, and start writing so that the world can see. It’s a stunt, of sorts, and normally I don’t advocate this as a way to exist normally, but here’s what this does: writers are used to performing behind the curtain. We sit in our offices, completely nude. We drink a can of Red Bull, kill a goat, powder up with some Gold Bond, then we write. Nobody’s watching. But you start writing in public, it’s the equivalent of getting on stage. People are watching what you do more closely. It feels like walking across a tightrope without a net. While high on really weird drugs. Anything to drop-kick creative ennui.

8. Stop, Collaborate And Listen

Writers are traditionally loners. Like Pee-Wee Herman, and serial killers. (Actually, would it have surprised anyone if the character of Pee-Wee turned out to be a serial killer? That talking Playhouse Chair probably eats the fucking bodies.) A writer is used to operating in a lawless, non-reactive land. Change that. Collaborate with someone. On a story, script, comic, whatever. Engage in an act of creative agitation. The give-and-take of collaboration constantly forces you to bat back new ideas and reactions — it’s not always easy, but it’s frequently productive. Even if just to retrain your brain to be all arty and stuff.

9. Gun Down Your Creative Routine In The Streets

You do things a certain way, right? Wake up. Eat a bowl of Yummy Mummy cereal. Get dressed in jammy-pants and a FUCK YOU t-shirt, then go to Starbucks with your laptop and pretend to write as you stare hatefully at all who enter. Then: lemon meringue pie, and finally, bed. Your status quo needs to change. This is emblematic of how narrative works (a story is often born from the disruption of status quo), and so it is emblematic of how the writer sometimes must work, too. Change it up. Write somewhere different. Write in a new way (on a new word processor, with pen and notebook, in your own fluids). Do something different. Shake lose the barnacles you’ve gathered while floating inert in the murky harbor of your undoing.

10. Have A New Experience

Spontaneous generation does not exist. Fruit flies are not born out of thin air, nor is our creativity. We need fuel. We need stimulus. Like Johnny-5, we need input, motherfucker. Part of what fuels our creative expression is the life we live and the experiences we have, so there comes a time when you need to have some new experiences. Moroccan food, ziplines, mountainous ascent, bar fight with strange people, sex with strange people, Mezcal bender, civet-shit coffee, BDSM, ride a deer, kick a robot, something, anything. Have  new experiences. Adventures both big and tiny. It’s all paint for the palette, man.

11. Get Out Of The Goddamn House, You Mumbling Shut-In

“Locked-in syndrome” is where your body can’t move but you can see and experience everything going on around you, and metaphorically, writers are like that. We get locked in to our offices, our homes, our lives. (Don’t tell me you haven’t thought at least once about trying adult diapers. Because you are a liar-faced lie-bot from a future made of liars.) Sometimes, to build off the last entry, you just need to get out of the fucking house. Like, with some regularity. Though one supposes an entry featuring the word “diaper” should not also feature the word “regularity” in a different context, but whatever. I’m a rebel, Dottie.

12. Get Some Class, You Surly Miscreant

Wait, no, sorry, I mean, “take a class.” As in, go learn a new skill. Doesn’t have to be related to writing — in fact, better if it’s not. Learn Photoshop. Or wood-working. Or robot-taming. Imagine if you will that we are characters in a role-playing game and we have an unlockable “skill tree” where new new avenues of experience open up by completing sometimes unforeseen challenges. This is like that. You learn something new, it opens up new pathways into your creative life you did not expect.

13. Exercise Your Indolent Sloth Carcass Of A Body, You Indolent Sloth Carcass

While you’re out, maybe move your body around. Jiggle your sludgy flesh in a way that simulates “not dying from sheer torpidity.” Sometimes our mental shutdowns are related to physical concerns. Maybe you just need some fucking exercise. Walk. Run. Bike. Swim. Lift something heavier than your iPad. Fight a mountain lion. Hunt your fellow man. Whatever. Just move that ass.

14. Also: Stop Eating Like A Drunken Goat

I’ve advocated this before and I will do it again, right here, right now: stop eating assily. Not a word, “assily,” but I said it because I’m allowed to make up new words because I have my Pennsylvania Writer’s License. To repeat: sometimes mental shutdowns are related to physical concerns. And physical concerns can come from diet. Maybe you’re eating too many carbs and not burning them off (contributing to “brain fog”). Maybe you’re allergic to something and yet you still keep eating it (OH GOD I LOVE EATING DONUTS DIPPED IN CHOCOLATE MILK AND SNAKE VENOM WHY ARE MY LEGS NUMB). Change that diet.

15. Address Mental Health Concerns

To get serious for a moment, a lot of writers suffer from various mental maladies. This is entirely common and writers suffering under such afflictions are in no way alone. Problem is, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees in just such a state and it’s harder to differentiate what’s a problem with, say, a story and what’s a problem with, say, your own psychic and psychological landscape. Trying to fix creative problems when you have larger concerns is like trying to fix a plumbing problem by headbutting a toilet. It will be painful and frustrating so always address your own mental health first. This is easier said than done, but that doesn’t change the fact that it needs to happen before anything else falls in line.

16. Create Story Maps

Pick a book you love off the shelves — or, if you’ve got a wild hair (wild hare?) up your ass, grab one you hate. Whatever. Read it. But read it critically. (“Critically” does not mean, “Look for the bad stuff.” It means, read beyond entertainment. Apply critical thinking skills to your book-absorbing process. The Internet has separated us into FUCKITY-SUCKS or SHITSTORM OF AWESOME camps, and that is not critical thinking, that is base level Neanderthal tribe-making. Er, rant over.) Map the story. Outline it. Figure out what’s happening inside the tale. Track character arcs. Look at the narrative from a sky-high height. Get a measure of the mechanics. Sometimes just seeing how a story comprises all these interlocking pieces helps stimulate your own grasp of the task at hand. Also, wait, do you have a rabbit up your ass? Can we address that?

17. Bucket Of Book Titles

Go the Ray Bradbury route: just start writing out awesome-as-fuck book titles. One after the other. Ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred. This bizarre-o menu of non-existent books will almost assuredly start filling your head with stories connected to them.

18. Cavalcade Of Characters

Sometimes stories are too big. We just can’t get our minds around them and we fritz out, sparking and hissing like a broken Roomba clogged with Chinese food containers and jizz tissues. Breaking stories into pieces and playing with the pieces first has the fun of, say, playing with action figures. So: just create some characters, almost like in a roleplaying game. Don’t worry about larger stories, just start making names and some personalities to go with them. Some will stay supporting characters, others will emerge as bigger personas. And soon, stories will emerge from the pile: order out of chaos.

19. Open Defiance! The Flames Of Anarchy!

Middle finger extended — now point that gesture-of-anarchic-defiance toward All The Rules You’re Supposed To Follow. Write something that exists as a contrarian’s rebellion against What You’re Supposed To Do. Like, if you write a romance novel, there’s all these rules and tropes, right? So: break ‘em all. Or, you’re not supposed to write in Second-Person-POV, or no Epistolic Novels, or, Don’t Break The Fourth Wall, or, or, or. Gather up as many rules as you care and execute them in the town square. It feels good to break the rules. “Should Not, But Fucking Did It Anyway” is a powerful creative aphrodisiac.

20. Art Harder In A Whole Other Direction

Sometimes we unlock creative potential by performing other creative tasks. Photography or music or macrame or crayon drawings or amateur porn movies or whatever it is that makes your grapefruit squirt. For me, photography kickstarts my visual and metaphorical centers, which helps my writing.

21. Write Your Life

Take time, dig deep, and write about things that actually happened to you. Trust your gut — the stories and events and characters that rise up first are the ones you should go with. This isn’t for anyone else. This is for you. This is like creative mining, just digging down into the loamy 8-bit soil of your Minecraft Mind, not sure if you’ll find iron or diamonds or empty out into a vast and unexpected cavern of possibility. Our creative lives come from somewhere, a culmination of who we are and what we love, and this is exploring the former part. This is opening up the who we are portion of the experience. Sometimes you need to tease it out. Sometimes you blow open the mountain with suicide-bomber bighorn sheep. Open the way, even if pain lurks there. Hell, especially if pain lurks there. Pain is our bread and butter.

22. Tell A Story In Images

Take images. From online. From in magazines. From advertisements. FROM INSIDE YOUR OWN DISEASED SKULL. Wherever. Cut ‘em out and collect ‘em and, one day, gather them up and try to use them to tell a story. String them together. Find a narrative. Finding narrative in unlike places — those unanticipated narrative connections — is a meaningful exercise in terms of getting back on the creative horse. And a “creative horse” is, of course, a pegasus.

23. Fail

Failure feels like an ending, but it’s not. I will continue to assert that fail is profound. It is both deconstructive and instructive at the same time. If you look at failure just the right way, failure is no longer a wall, but a door. Actually, hell with that metaphor: failure is a bottle rocket gooey with Icy Hot shoved deep into your no-no-hole and lit on fire with a signal flare. Failure can create in you the drive to do better, to go bigger, stronger, crazier — and the simple act of failure can realign your creative stars.

24. Quit For A Little While

Walk away from the creative life. For a week. Maybe a month. However long you need. I don’t advocate giving up easily — so, let’s just call this a vacation. We put upon ourselves undue pressure and sometimes the best way to vent that pressure is to pop the lid, let the steam out, and go do something else for a little while. The creative tapeworm will one day start coiling and roiling within, taking little nibbles here and there to let you know it’s time to get back to it.

25. Quit Moaning And Mount Up, Motherfucker

At the end of the day, here’s the best way to get your groove back, creatively speaking: work your tailbone to a rounded nub. Shovel story upon story, smash words into other words. Quit worrying, cut the bitching, and do what needs to be done. We sometimes feel like our authorial voodoo is flagging — but work begets work, and effort (even when it feels like you’re pushing a fold-out couch up a craggy mountain pass) will beget creativity. Work is in many ways like the act of planting a seed: tilling the hard earth is no easy task and the time it takes may seem like it’s wasted, thrown into an earthen hole, but one day that little motherfucker starts to sprout, and then the hard work gives way to the natural processes that are blessedly inevitable.

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

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING: $0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

It’s Fall, So I’m Hankering For Games

I don’t know why I get geeky for games come fall.

Maybe it’s because a lot of big tentpole game releases release come autumn.

Maybe it’s because the weather gets colder and that means come night it’s time to hunker down under a blanket with a bottle of liquor, no pants, and an Xbox controller.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been preprogrammed by our alien overlords to feel this way.

Whatever.

Point is, I’m kinda hankering for games.

So. Make some recommendations.

Consider:

I have an Xbox 360.

I have a Mac.

I have iPhone / iPad.

Bonus points if you throw in the consideration of:

I do not have a metric buttload of time. Between the baby, the puppy, and, oh yeah, this whole writing thing, I always have less time than I expect when it comes to committing to games. So, any game recommendation is good, but games that require a reduced time commitment are even awesomer.

Also: feel free to recommend stuff coming out that I am not yet aware of.

Let the rec’s begin.

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Epic Game Of Aspects Redux

I’ve gotten a lot of people telling me how much they loved the previous Game of Aspects challenges, so –

WE SHALL DO IT AGAIN.

And we’ll do it even bigger this time.

But! Before we do, I need your help.

Or, someone’s help.

I want to do this game of aspects thing as a website. Like, imagine that there’s a website that every time you click it, it gives you a new combination of flash fiction story seeds based off these types of lists. Maybe there’s a front page that lets you customize some aspect — maybe no front-page. I dunno. Anyone out there savvy enough to talk me through this? You can hit me up in the comments or at my terribleminds-at-gmail-dot-com email address. My thanks in advance, you wonderful humans.

Now, onto the game.

This time, again you can either go do the Random Number Generator at Random.org, or you can instead use a d20. Not a d10 this time, word-whippers. A MOTHERFUCKING d20.

So, let’s get on with it. You know the drill — you’ve got three categories below

You’ve got Subgenre / Conflict / Element to Include.

Pick one from each category either randomly or by your own hand (though randomly is the most fun), then write a flash fiction short story no longer than 1000 words. Post at your online space, link back to it in the comments here, and voila. Easy-peasy, George-and-Weezy.

Oh, EDIT: Due by Friday, October 5th, noon EST. I won’t pick favorites until after that weekend is over, as I’ll be in Loverly Georgia (state, not country), at the Crossroads Writing Conference.

Once again, as I’m having so much fun with this, I’ll send my favorite story a prize.

No idea what the prize is. We’ll just call it a MYSTERY BOX.

On with the lists!

Subgenre

1. Men’s Adventure

2. Dieselpunk

3. Post-Apocalyptic

4. Southern Gothic

5. Comic Fantasy

6. Superhero

7. Hardboiled

8. Wuxia

9. Weird West

10. Wild West

11. Yuri

12. Whodunit

13. Science-Fantasy

14. Magic Realism

15. Spy Thriller

16. Black Comedy

17. Alien Invasion

18. Time Travel

19. Twisted Fairy Tale

20. Fanfiction

Conflict / Problem

1. Lover’s Quarrel!

2. Civil War!

3. Heist Gone Wrong!

4. Assassin!

5. Abduction!

6. Exiled!

7. Haunted By The Past!

8. Sins Of The Father!

9. Betrayed!

10. A Changed World!

11. Trapped!

12. A Quest For Something!

13. A Quest For Someone!

14. Revenge!

15. Enemies At The Gate!

16. Family Thrown Apart!

17. Disease!

18. Lost!

19. Get The Band Back Together!

20. Sanctioned Competition!

Element to Include

1. Unicorn

2. Sentient Supercomputer

3. Sea Monster

4. Plane (or Spaceship) Crash

5. A Dead Body

6. A Summoning Ritual

7. A Hallucination

8. Flying Monkeys

9. A Hologram

10. The Devil

11. A Dirty Magazine

12. An Ancient Sword

13. The Restless Dead

14. A Gourmet Meal

15. A Severed Hand

16. Poisonous Snakes

17. A Black Hole

18. Some Manner Of Werecreature/Shapeshifter

19. A Talking Tree

20. Heaven

Susan Spann: The Terribleminds Interview

When it comes time to ask if you can have an interview up at this blog, there’s a few surefire ways to get in, but one of them I didn’t expect: apparently, all you have to do is say the phrase “ninja detective,” and I’m all in. As such, please to meet Susan Spann, author of Claws of the Cat: a Shinobi Mystery, coming in June. Find her at susanspann.com or @SusanSpann!

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.

A year ago, I was ambushed by ninjas while standing in my bathroom. Well, maybe it was just one ninja. An imaginary ninja. Who solves murders instead of committing them. Then he disappeared, leaving me holding an eyeliner pen and the basis for an awesome mystery series.

Ninjas are sneaky that way.

Why do you tell stories?

To silence the voices in my head. Sometimes it works.

When it doesn’t, I murder my imaginary friends.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

“Never give up, never surrender.”

Writing is a long game, not a sprint, and only the dedicated prevail.

Since I’m an attorney, and therefore genetically incapable of giving a short answer to any question, I’ll add that it’s impossible to stay in the game without keeping your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keys. Writers write. We make the time, we steal the time. We puts the words on the page, precious.

What’s the worst piece of writing/storytelling advice you’ve ever received?

For almost a decade, I told myself “don’t worry, you’re busy with law practice, family and (insert excuse du jour), you’ll find time to write when things ease up.”

FAIL.

Things never ease up. Writing time does not appear like a sparkling wish-fairy riding a rainbow unicorn. Writers are born of stolen minutes, pigheaded determination and a katana-wielding conscience that orders us to put down the remote and turn off TOP CHEF until we put words on the page or fix the dog’s breakfast we made of the manuscript yesterday.

Everyone is always too busy to write. The difference is that writers do it anyway.

What goes into writing a strong character? Bonus round: give an example of a strong character.

For me, character building flows from world building. It’s much easier to write strong characters when I’m inserting them into a three-dimensional, fully developed environment. Knowing the layout of a character’s bedroom, house, and neighborhood makes it easier to understand what kind of person would inhabit that space.

Once the world is built, I write an outline for the novel itself and then journal entries in the voice of each character in the story – including the corpse. Letting the character speak – about anything that character deems important – is a great way to get a handle on voice and character quirks. Sometimes the information gets into the novel, sometimes not, but knowing what the character thinks is important helps me develop a layered personality (and backstory) that makes each character feel much more real when I let them all loose together.

That’s when they start killing each other.

As far as examples go, I’ll offer Ender Wiggin (from Ender’s Game). Orson Scott Card developed a fully-realized world with history, backstory and details, and then told us only the portions necessary to the tale. The reader has a sense that Ender really lived six years in that world before the novel begins, and that he’s a fully-developed person rather than an automaton who behaves as he does merely because Card “needed him to” for plot purposes. I don’t know whether Card goes in for journal entries, but he certainly understands character development.

World-building before character-building. Oooh. Tell me more: how long do you spend world-building? How do you know enough is enough and it’s time for the character to occupy that space?

I’ll tell you a secret about my world building process: I cheat by using history when I can.

The Shinobi series is set in Kyoto in 1565, just before the assassination of the Shogun. At that time, the Japanese capitol was a stunning, dangerous city filled with samurai and real-life ninjas and weapons and geishas and sake bars. I wanted the reader to walk the muddy streets, see the buildings, and smell the blood and hydrangeas at the teahouse where the samurai victim died. I studied medieval Japan in college (many years ago) and spent six full months in additional research to build the version of 16th century Kyoto that serves as a backdrop for the Shinobi novels.

But the truth is, I’ve never finished the process and probably never will. Each novel involves a different aspect of Japanese culture, a different victim, a different setting – and all of that requires additional world-building.

In terms of “enough is enough” – for me, the process has two stages. The first stage ends when I know enough about the physical “sets” for the characters to move around without knocking over the scenery (unless it’s called for). I create an architectural layout for every location the characters visit, place it on a map of medieval Kyoto and fill in details to make the location “real.” (This often involves writing backstory, most of which will never appear in the novels.) Then I develop characters to inhabit those spaces.

Phase 2 is the other half of the chicken-and-egg problem: final world building can only take place once I know about the characters themselves. This includes the characters’ individual histories (again, almost all for offstage use) and fine details – things like “what type of flowers would be displayed in a Kyoto teahouse in May of 1565?”

So: Phase 1 is macro level: historical, physical, architectural. Phase 2 is micro-scale: all the fine details.

Sometimes a plot point or major edit requires taking the phases out of order, but for the most part that’s how it works in my writing world.

Recommend a book, comic book, film, or game: something with great story. Go!

My all-time favorite comic book was Star Wars #1 (The original, from the ‘70s, and I’ll date myself by saying I bought it new. Sadly, I don’t have it any more.)

When it comes to film, I’m a fan of explosions and special effects. My favorites range from LORD OF THE RINGS to STAR WARS (Episodes 4/5/6), RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and the original DIE HARD.

If we’re talking video games, it’s World of Warcraft. I raid as a level 85 holy priest & boomkin, Feathermoon server. (Your MMO-geek readers are smiling…and everyone else is now thoroughly confused.)

And since we’re talking story, the novel of choice is ENDER’S GAME (big surprise). After that one, my favorites will have to resolve it by author-on-author death match.

Favorite word? And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

Favorite word? No question: DEFENESTRATE.

Favorite curse word: “Bother.” I’m familiar with plenty of others (including the ones most people actually consider “real” cursing), but “bother” raises the most eyebrows when I use it in public.

Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don’t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)

The last time I drank alcohol, I ended up singing show tunes under the table. (True story…and one that makes me glad for the days before YouTube.)

Favorite beverage: coffee, in copious quantities. Hot or iced. No sugar, but lots of cream. Lots. In fact, just leave the cow.

What skills do you bring to help the humans win the inevitable war against the robots?

I raise seahorses and rare corals, so I’m thinking we can use my tank to distract the robots long enough to make a getaway. If we can keep them watching long enough they’ll corrode and we can turn them into giant coffee makers.

Mmmm…. Coffee.

What’s next for you as a storyteller? What does the future hold?

I recently signed a three-book contract with St.Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne books for the Shinobi mystery series. The first novel, CLAWS OF THE CAT, is scheduled for release in Spring 2013, and I’m currently editing the second installment, outlining the third, and developing ideas for additional books. The series could run substantially more than three novels if readers like ninja detectives as much as I do.

I’m kicking around a few other ideas, both long-form and short-form – one of which involves pirates. Because pirates versus ninjas is the ultimate dilemma.

Okay, you just said “ninja detective.” Please tell us about this ninja detective right now before we all explode from urgency.

The Shinobi Mysteries feature the ongoing adventures of Hiro Hattori, ninja assassin-turned-bodyguard-turned-16th century detective. In Claws of the Cat, a samurai is brutally murdered in a Kyoto teahouse and Hiro has three days to find the killer in order to save the beautiful geisha accused of the crime and prevent the dead man’s vengeful son from executing the Portuguese Jesuit Hiro is sworn to protect.

It’s a book about ninjas, bloody crime scenes, teahouses and geishas and swords, with a Portuguese priest, a weapons dealer, a female samurai and an unruly kitten thrown in for good measure.

Because every ninja book needs a kitten.

Hiro is everything I love in a detective – he’s smart, sardonic, and generally uncooperative. Best of all – he’s a ninja – and that’s central to the way he solves each crime. His worldview doesn’t always mesh well with that of his Portuguese Jesuit sidekick, but they make a surprisingly good investigative team.

Why ninjas? (Or is the plural of ninja just “ninja?”)

Actually, I think the plural of “ninja” is “awesome.”

I’ve had a fascination with ninjas since college, where I majored in Asian studies. Medieval Japan was brutal and dangerous but also intriguing and beautiful.

Ninjas moved in the mainstream but didn’t follow normal social rules. They were highly trained spies and strategists as well as assassins. A ninja’s understanding of anatomy, weapons and poisons made him essentially a medieval forensics expert. I couldn’t think of a better detective. Plus … ninjas. Is there a better writing gig?

You wrote a mystery series: what’s the trick to writing a good mystery? What do some authors get wrong?

The key to mystery writing is the detective. The murder is important (and the gorier the better) but all the poisonings and exsanguinations in the world won’t save a novel if the detective is as boring as watching paint dry. It’s not our love of the corpse that keeps us reading – that guy was dead on page 1 and nobody cares about fictitious corpses. We read because the detective is fun, or cool (or sometimes even annoying) and we want to be there with him when he finally solves the crime. (Note: I use the all-inclusive “he” because it’s easy but I use it without prejudice – I’ve read some smashing female detective stories too.)

So, like everything else, mystery comes down to compelling characters and good writing. Neither is negotiable.

If you could be a ninja, what would your ninja-weapon-of-choice be?

I have enough experience with shuriken (throwing stars) to know that (a) I love throwing them, and (b) if my ninja-life depended on my aim I wouldn’t survive very long. Since I’m female, they’d probably want me to specialize in neko-te (cat’s claws), and though that weapon does appear in the novel my personal weapon of choice (and experience) is a sword.

In the immortal words of Solo-san: Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good katana at your side.

Emma Newman’s Split Worlds: “Simple Proof”

Hello, humans of Terribleminds. I’d like to introduce you to Emma Newman, a lovely and wonderful new talent I met at Worldcon. She asked if I’d host one of her Split Worlds stories here, and further said that she’d even use this past week’s flash fiction challenge — “The Novice Revenges the Rhythm” — as inspiration. Below, you’ll find the story. You can find Emma at her website, and on Twitter (@emapocalyptic). She is the author of Between Two Thorns, upcoming from Angry Robot Books. Now: onto Emma!

This is the thirtieth tale in a year and a day of weekly short stories set in The Split Worlds. If you would like me to read it to you instead, you can listen here.  This story is part of the build-up to the release of the first Split Worlds novel “Between Two Thorns” in March 2013. Every week a new story is released. You can find links to all the other stories, and the new ones as they are released here.where you can also sign up to receive each story free in your inbox every week (starting at the very first one).

Simple Proof

Kay was expecting a stern glare when she arrived at her tutorial ten minutes late, not a smile and a note handed to her as soon as she walked in. The excuses she’d lined up – some of which were actually true – proved unnecessary.

The note read; ‘Please send Kay Hyde to Convocation House A.S.A.P. Regards, Rupert’.

“He’s a close friend of the Chancellor apparently,” the don said.

“But what about the tutorial?”

“We’ll reschedule. Go!”

After a brisk five minute walk across central Oxford she knocked on the huge wooden door of Convocation House, shivering in the fog that had been clinging to the city for the last two days. The door was opened by a man wearing scruffy jeans and a hoodie, not the member of university staff she was expecting.

“Kay Hyde?”

“Yes, I was told to-”

“I thought you’d be a bloke.”

“Well… I’m not.”

He ushered her in and slammed the door shut. It wasn’t much warmer inside. “Forgot how bloody cold this place gets in November.” He held out a hand. “I’m Rupert.”

They shook hands as he pulled his hood down. He was barely older than most of her friends, a DPhil student at a push. She expected a friend of the Chancellor of Oxford University to be a jowly man in his fifties, not someone who looked like he was on his way to the kebab van.

“You wanted to see me?”

He beckoned her further in and she looked up at the vaulted ceiling. It really was a beautiful space. “A little bird told me you’re the best person at cryptic crosswords in the whole university,” he led her past the little sign which read ‘No Entry Beyond This Point’ and sat down on one of the wooden benches. He patted a space next to him.

She sat. “The best? I don’t know about that. I like doing them.”

He reached into a pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. “What do you make of this?”

She looked at him before reading it. “Is it true you’re a friend of the Chancellor?”

He grinned. “Oh yeah. Really, we’re best mates. We go way back. Speaking of which, your surname, Hyde…”

She braced herself for the inevitable bad joke.

“Are you a descendant of Edward Hyde by any chance?”

Kay nodded, now a little creeped out. “Yeah.”

“He was an amazing bloke. By all accounts. But you’re studying English Lit, not law.”

“Who are you?”

Rupert waved a hand at her question. “Just a history nerd. Read the clue. I’m stumped, I really am.”

“A novice revenges the rhythm,” Kay read out loud. “I don’t remember that one, which paper was the crossword in?”

“You remember all the crosswords you do?”

She nodded. “Most useless superpower ever.” She read the clue a couple of times. “How many letters does it have?”

“No idea.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “This isn’t a crossword clue, is it?”

“It’s more a riddle,” he said, spreading his hands. “Yeah, that’s a better way to put it. Sorry. I gave the wrong impression. But your leet skills should still come in useful.”

“I should be in a tutorial you know.”

“Trust me, this is far, far more important.”

“For me or for you?”

He laughed and it echoed around the freezing chamber. “So go on, what do you think the answer is?”

Kay shook her head. “It’s written a bit like a crossword clue but there’s usually more of a hint about how to solve it, and I’m just not seeing that here. It’s more like something Google Translate would come up with, or someone pissing about with a random sentence generator. Hang on, did someone send this to you?”

He pressed his lips tight together for a moment. “Maybe. Yes.”

“Ah, then we’re missing something. What else did they say?”

Rupert scrunched up his lips for a few moments, then shrugged. “It can’t hurt,” he muttered and fished something out of his back pocket.

At first Kay thought it was a piece of paper, but it was too heavy. She unrolled it, feeling its texture with her thumb. “Is this vellum?”

Rupert nodded.

The ink looked fresh. “Your friend must be a real eccentric.”

“Only half of that statement is true.”

“Ah, okay, now we’ve got something to work with,” Kay said. “Your friend wrote; ‘First and foremost, I am the most intelligent of all of us. Here is a simple proof.’ He sounds like a bit of a tosser. No offense.”

“None taken, never was a truer word spoken.”

Kay got her pen and notebook from her bag and wrote the clue out, one word to a line. “Okay… let’s see…”

She tried a variety of ideas, but the third one felt right. “I think I have it. I think ‘first and foremost’ is telling you to use the 1st and 4th letters of each word. Ignoring ‘A’ and ‘the’ because they don’t have enough letters, we get Ni, Re and Rh which could be-”

“Nickel, Rhodium and Rhenium! Elements from the periodic table!” Rupert leapt up and punched the air. “Yes! Get in! That’s it. Ekstrand is going to be so-” he stopped, as if remembering that she was still there. “That’s why he said a simple proof. Another word for elementary. Right?”

Kay nodded. “He might be a tosser but I like the way he makes riddles. So… is that all you needed?”

Rupert clasped her hand with both of his and shook it enthusiastically. “I really do appreciate your help. Listen, every month I like to get people together, students, researchers… people from the university. We chat and have a drink… it’s secret though. Exclusive. I want you to come.”

Kay stood and slung her bag over her shoulder. “So Oxford really does have a proper secret society?”

“Oh dozens,” Rupert smiled. “But mine’s the best one.”

 

25 Things You Should Do Before Starting Your Next Novel

I’m about to tackle a new novel (The Blue Blazes, coming in something-something 2013!), and also, I see the green flash on the horizon that indicates the coming reality storm that is “National Novel Writing Month,” so this seems like a good time for a post like this one, yeah?

Do you actually need to do all these things? No, of course not. This is merely a potential checklist. Scan it. Pick and choose what works, ditch the rest. End of story.

1. Get Your Expectations Firmly In Check

Writing a book is like a long trek through unfamiliar wilderness. It doesn’t take long before you feel lost, disoriented, hungry, ready to give up, lay down, eat your hands, and let the book die on the ground next to you like a gut-shot coyote. Know this going in: we build into this experience expectations that are unreasonable. We expect every day to be bliss. Every chapter to be perfect. Every word and sentence and paragraph to click in some kind of shining sidereal alignment. Some days will be bliss. Some chapters and words really will be perfect. But you also have to build room for things to suck. Because they will. Parts of this book will be the literary equivalent of you dumpster-diving through dirty needles and old Indian food just to find some spare change. Get used to it. Remember: this is just the first draft. Others will come. The work is ahead, but the work is clarifying. You have time. You have space. Be ready for hard days.

2. Find Your Own Personal “Give-A-Fuck” Factor

Seriously: why the fuck are you doing this? Not just writing a novel, but writing this novel. Are you excited? Does the prospect of writing this thing both geek you out and scare you in equal measure? It should. If you don’t, this might not be the story you want to write. People ask me sometimes, “How do I know which story to write right now?” Write the one that engages you. That lights up your mental console like a pinball machine on full fucking tilt. Write the book you care about writing. Find out why you want to write it, too — there’s great meaning in discovering your own attraction to the characters, the story, the themes.

3. Draw The Map For The Journey Ahead

I don’t care if you write an outline (though it remains a skill you should possess as one day, someone will ask you to do so and a lack of familiarity will leave you twisting in the wind), but for the sake of sweet Saint Fuck, do something to map your journey. Listen, a novel? It’s a big deal. It’s many tens of thousands of words shoved together. And in there are all these moving parts: character, plot, theme, mood, past, present, future, text, subtext. Gears and flywheels and dildo widgets, spinning and sparking and hissing. Don’t go in totally blind. You don’t need to map every beat, but even three hastily-scrawled phrases on a bar napkin (“narwhale rebellion, yellow fever, Mitt Romney’s shiny grease-slick forehead”) will be better than nothing. Bonus link of some relevance: 25 Ways To Plot, Plan, Prep Your Story.

4. Become Wild West Scrivening Inkslinger “Quick-Note McGoat”

Have a way to take notes. Sounds obvious, so let me add another squirt to the salad: have a way to take notes quickly and unexpectedly. It is incredibly awful to wake up in the middle of the night, or while out walking your dog, or in the midst of one of your Satanic meetings in the basement of the local Arby’s and suddenly have an epiphany about your coming novel that you think you’ll remember but, of course, it’ll slip through one of the many mouse-holes in your mind-floor. You get it all figured out and then the idea is gone, baby, gone. So: fast notes. Notebook. Or a note app on your phone. Or a tattoo gun.

5. Know Thy Characters

I talked about this last week, but seriously, with your characters: get all up in them guts. It’s not the worst thing to recognize that all of our characters are in some small ways representative of the author — even if it’s just us chipping off the tiniest sliver of our intellectual granite to stick into the mix, it’s good for us to find ourselves in each character (and find the character inside us). Er, not sexually.

6. Test Drive Those Imaginary Motherfuckers

I will advocate this until the day I die. (Or the day someone clocks me with a shovel and turns me into the mental equivalent of a wagon full of cabbage.) Grab your main character, and take him for a test drive. (No, I said not sexually. Holy crap, tuck that thing back in your lederhosen, weirdo.) Write something, anything, featuring that character. Flash fiction. Short story. Random chapter from the book. Blog post. Don’t worry: you don’t have to show it to anybody. Look at it this way: it’s like taking a new car for a spin. First you sit down, everything feels uncomfortable — “How do I turn on the wipers? Where’s the A/C knob? Is there a place for my pet wombat, Roger?” But then after you take it down a few roads, you start to feel like you ‘get’ the car. It starts to feel like a part of you. And Roger likes it, too!

7. Dig Up All Those Glittery Conflict Diamonds

Every story is about a problem. A story without a problem is like a drive through Nebraska: flat, featureless, without form or meaning. Identify the problem engine pushing the story forward. Heist gone wrong! Spam-Bots gain sentience! Murderous husband! Lost wombat (ROGER NOOOOO)! Sidenote: Problems born of and driven by character are more interesting and organic than those created as external “plot events.”

8. Build An (Incomplete) World

Just as the story and plot need a map, the setting needs one, too — you’re god, here. This is your genesis expression  – no, we’re not talking about you, Phil Collins, get out of here! Shoo! Cripes, that guy’s like a rash. He just keeps turning up. ANYWAY. This is your let-there-be-light moment. But worldbuilding is like a game — you’re trying to predict what you’ll need without going overboard. You don’t want to create every last granular detail of the world (“Bob, there’s a section in your story bible titled THE TEETH-BRUSHING HABITS OF TREE-ELVES.”), but you also don’t want to hit a patch of the story where you feel like you’re floundering for details you totally forgot to determine. Try to build the world around the story instead of building the story around the world. That’ll provide a more focused — and more relevant — approach.

9. Identify The Major Rules

This is true more for genre fiction than anything else — but sometimes, a story’s got rules. The vampire drinks blood but doesn’t fear the sun. The spaceship is made of hyperintelligent fungus. All ghosts are lactose intolerant, unicorns are the Devil’s steeds, and when that dude from Nickelback marries Miley Cyrus or whoever it is he’s sticking it to, the child born of such a union will be a soulpatch-wearing robot bent on the domination of meat. Suss out the rules early on. Then cleave to them like a needy puppy.

10. Find Your Way Into The Tale

Every tale is a mountain and we have to figure out a way inside. When Day One of your novelstravaganza begins, you don’t want to shave off hours just staring at this massive wall of rock trying to figure out how the fuck you’re going to get into it. You should already know how it begins. First line, first chapter, whatever. Know your point of entry or spend your first day flailing around like a shock treatment spider monkey.

11. Also: Identify The Great Egress

This is a point of contention, and rightfully so — but BY GOSH and BY GOLLY I have my convictions and I’ll spread them before you like warm cheese on a crostini, and those convictions tell me to have your ending figured the fuck out before you even begin the story. Even if you don’t outline, even if the whole of the work is guideless and without aim, know your ending before you begin. Here’s why: the ending matters. Like, really matters. It’s you, sticking your landing. It’s the last bite of narrative food the reader gets, and if the meal has been good up until that last shitty bite, it means you ruined it with a bad ending. Planning an ending allows you to aim for that ending. To write to it. To lead your tale to that moment. Do you need to stick to it? Fuck no! You will almost certainly envision something better through the course of the writing, but that’s okay — but what you don’t want is to cross over into the final leg of your story with zero idea how to wrap things up. Because, you do that, next thing you know you’ll be all like, I DUNNO NOW THEY HAVE TO FIGHT A GIANT SPIDER OR SOMETHING AND QUIT LOOKIN’ AT ME.

12. Learn All The Appropriate Things

At some point I’m sure I could do a whole new “list of 25″ on the subject of research, but for now, just know that you need to get some of it out of the way before you actually suction your tush-meats to the office chair to begin the book. You can research as you go, too (and I’ve written drafts where whole sections get notes like, LOOK UP THE SEX RITUALS OF THE ALIEN ASTRONAUTS AND STUFF), but researching early gives you confidence. And also gives you new ideas. My means of researching is simple: identify topics I know that require researching, then, uhh, research the hell-fuck out of them.

13. Suss Out The Fiddly Bits

A novel has a lot of little fiddly bits: theme, title, mood, narrative tense, POV, and so forth. Know what’s what before you step into the draft. The more of these you have figured out, the more comfortable you are when stepping through that manuscript-shaped doorway the first time. And, by the way, that’s the entire purpose of this list: to give you comfort. Writing a novel can be a weird, dark time. Some discomfort is good, and knowing when to discard preparations is critical. But just the same, you want to walk into the thing with confidence, and confidence comes out of having your literary mise en place ready to rock.

14. The 13-Second Closing-Window-Of-Opportunity Pitch

I don’t know how often a logline or “elevator pitch” really helps new authors get a deal, so this isn’t about that. But learning to distill your story down to a single sentence is a powerful thing. It’s like squeezing it until you can fill a small phial with its most potent essence and that allows you to find out two things: first, just what the crap is this book about, and two, what makes it awesome? Plus, it gives you an easily spit-out-able line of information at parties. When someone asks, “What’s your book about?” you don’t want to be standing there for 20 minutes telling them. HA HA HA JUST KIDDING nobody’s ever going to ask you that. Silly writer.

15. Hell, Write The Whole Goddamn Query

As above: finding ways to express the most elemental elements (shut up) of your book is a clear win. Write the query letter. Yes, query letters suck — I’ve often said it’s like putting a 100-lb. pig in a 1-lb. bucket. Still, try it. Find clarity in brevity. Aim for two or three paragraphs explaining the hook, the story, the critical bits, and so forth. It’ll feel good. You may even have one of those moments where you’re like, “Ohhhh, that’s what the book is about. I didn’t even realize the whole thing was a metaphor for how the American political process would be improved by adding more ponies.”

16. Know Your Word Processor Intimately

I don’t mean you should actively “love up” your word processor — I use Microsoft Word and it’s far too cranky and ugly to ever be my digital lover. (Scrivener, on the other hand, keeps flashing me stretches of milky thigh.) What I mean is, know your tools. Work that word processor till you have its smell all up in your nose. You don’t want a day one question of, BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SAVE THIS DOCUMENT SWEET CRISPY CHRIST THE POWER JUST WENT OUT.

17. Establish A Daily Schedule

Write every day, sure, duh. But more importantly: figure out how much you’re going to write on each of those “every days.” Five hundred words? A thousand? Five thousand? FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND? Okay, don’t do that last part. I did that one time and my brain supernova’ed and formed its own Wendigian universe where all is beards and liquor and everyone watches porn based off the Saturday morning cartoons of the 1980s. Point is, establish your daily schedule. Then, uhh, stick to it.

18. Build a Timetable

From there, you can build the first timetable. Because, if you know you’re going to write 1000 words a day and this is going to roughly be a 90,000-word novel, boo-yay, looks like the book will take about 90 days to write. Then, you can build secondary timetables — figure out how long it’ll take to edit, to write a second draft, to wallow in your own treacly misery and muddy despair.

19. Ensure That Life Accommodates The Book

Tell people you’re going to be writing the book. No, not because this way you establish a clear line to the shame associated with failure (“How’s that novel coming along, Dave?” “It’s fine, I’ve been writing it for sixteen years now and OKAY FINE I GAVE UP ON IT GO FUCK A DONKEY I’M GOING TO DROWN MYSELF IN THE PUNCHBOWL KAY THANKS BYE”). But rather because, you need the people in your life to know that This Is An Important Thing to you. That they’ll need to accommodate your writing hours. That if you don’t come out on Friday night, it’s because you’re masturb… I mean, writing. The people in your life deserve to know. And they deserve a chance to help you accomplish this thing you want to accomplish.

20. Have A Publication Path In Mind

It’s a bit “cart before the horse” (or, for a more futuristic metaphor, “the hover-rickshaw before the taxi-bot”) to think about publication before you’ve even written Word One of your Literary Masterpiece, but peep this, peeps: knowing a (rough) publication path helps you steer the story a little bit. Knowing you’re going to self-publish helps you know that you are not bound by any rules (which sadly can include “the rules of making a book readable,” but, y’know, don’t be that guy). Knowing you’re going to go the traditional path (agent, big publisher) tells you that you may want to write something more mainstream, hewing closer to genre convention. It is as with the narrative: knowing the ending helps define the journey.

21. Clean Your Shitty Desk, You Filthmonger

Is that a pair of dirty gym socks brining in a glass of Kool-Aid? Why all the receipts from Big Dan Don’s Dildo Emporium? Why does your desk smell like old jizz and Doritos? Clean your desk, you disgusting cave-dweller. Do so before you dive into the book. The desk will, over the course of the book’s writing, once more return to its primal state of divine chaos, but start clean lest you get distracted by all the science projects scattered around (“The gym socks have developed a nervous system. They respond when I call their names, which, incidentally, are ‘Loretta’ and ‘Vlornox the World-Eater.’”)

22. The Backup Plan

Figure out how you’re going to back up your novel. One backup should go to The Cloud. Another should be carved into the bedrock of an external device — and no, not your power drill dildo — I mean like, a USB key or hard drive, you silly sexy kook, you. A third might get carved into the back of a captive foe.

23. Set It And Forget It

In the weeks preceding the start of this book, use your brain like it’s an overnight slow-cooker. Go to bed thinking about the story at hand. Envision problems. Ask questions. Drum up the research of the day from the slurry of thoughts and focus on it. Then, slumber, young penmonkey. Your brain will absorb this stuff like a corpse taking on river-water. When it comes time to write, you will find it disgorges what it absorbed — and then some. (This isn’t backed by any kind of science or anything, but I believe it works, so there. I also believe in Bigfoot. So. Uhh. Maybe you shouldn’t trust my instincts.)

24. Commit, Motherfucker

Mentally commit. Seems simple. Kinda isn’t. Take this idea of writing this novel and then take your heart and all the willpower that lives in it and smash the two together in a flavor explosion that tastes like GETTING IT THE FUCK DONE. Sometimes there is great power in committing to something in an emotional, intellectual, even spiritual sense. I mean, what, you’re going to hit Day One and say, “Maybe I’ll finish this, maybe I won’t?” Piss on that flimsy whimsy — hunker down, dig your heels in, ball those soft hands into hard fists, and commit to writing this motherfucking book.

25. Stop Doing All This Other Stuff And Write Already

Just to be clear: you actually have to write the thing. Which means all this stuff? Do it. And then stop doing it. There comes a point when you have to stop outlining, stop researching, stop thinking and dicking around and fiddling with your intellectual privates in order to put pen to paper and finger to keys and write that book. Once any of these tasks becomes a distraction — a disease instead of the remedy — then it’s time to shovel that aside and get to work. Because at the end of the day, nothing is as clarifying as just going through the paces and building words into worlds and sentences into stories.

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

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500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING: $0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

On Cultivating Instinct As An Inkslinging Storyspinning Penmonkey Type

I get emails.

These emails, they’re drenched in impatience and uncertainty. Sopping with it. Drippy.

And I get it.

These are fundamental, deep-seated, stomach-squirming and gut-churning questions of, “Am I making a mistake? Can I do this? Should I do this? How do I know? Will I ever know? Am I really a writer? Am I any good? Will I ever get better? Do I smell burned toast? Do I hear ducks? Where are my pants?”

So: if you’re a writer of any age, any experience level, any stripe-or-polka-dot, let me say: it’s totally reasonable to be asking these questions. It’s completely normal to feel like a fucking lunatic, to feel like a half-assed failure, to feel like it’s inevitable that this house of snowflakes and eggshells you’ve built for yourself will fall apart above your head just as soon as someone notices what a fake-ass freak you are.

It’s completely natural to just not know. To not know your skill level, your talent, your future. To not know what comes next. Everything a big neon question mark like all your life is The Riddler just fucking with you, throwing riddle and rhyme upon you to always keep you ever-guessing.

It’s fine.

It is. Really. It’s fine, and normal, and much as it sucks: it’s totally cool.

And I’m going to tell you how you get past all this.

I’m going to give you Yet Another Holy Shit Writing Secret, the kind handed down from the Ancient Ink-Dark Gods to the Ululating Monks of the Temple of the Intrepid Penmonkey. Ready? Here goes.

You need to cultivate your instincts.

You’re not born with them. Okay, fine, some writers seem like they hatch out of a Mother Egg with all the talent and instinct required to be a fully-formed-and-forged Bestselling Author. But most? Not so much. Not me. Probably not you. We enter into this thing with only the desire. We don’t come complete with the skill-sets. We don’t come with the talent, the experience. We just plum don’t have the instincts.

Two ways you get the instincts –

First, age. And there ain’t shit nor shoeshine you can do about that. We all age one minute at a time, the days passing at the same rate for everybody, so — put that one out of your mind. Just know that as you get older, your instincts for most things sharpen (which is often in equal measure a recognition of how little we actually know, for our lack of certainty gives way to the birth of instinct).

The second way?

By doing it. By making it happen. By daily taking the dream and dragging in into the light of day where you make that sonofabitch as real as you can make it. What that means on a practical level is:

Reading and writing.

(And, to a degree, just living your life. But living is like intellectual fuel for your writing and storytelling and here I’m talking more about the talents and instincts needed, and those only come from the act of completing your desire by acting, of evoking talent by the very dint of doing that shit.)

You read, and you read critically.

You write, and you write critically.

And you do both of these things as often as humanly possible.

Which means: daily.

DAILY.

Daily!

This isn’t a thing that happens overnight. It’s not like you spend three months writing a novel and it’s suddenly — bam! “I get it now! I’m like Saul on the Road to Damascus! The hard crust of sleep-boogers has fallen from my eyes! I AM WRITER, BEHOLD MY GOLDEN STORY VOMIT.”

I didn’t just sit down and write Blackbirds out of nowhere. It didn’t just fall out of my fool head like yams out of an upended can. I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I started trying to write professionally at the age of 18 (and that’s when my first story was published). This has taken well over half of my life. I wrote six books before Blackbirds, all of them easily described with the quality of “mostly ass.”

And this is why the hardest but straightest-arrow advice for all writers is: write your way through it. Write your way through writer’s block, through plot problems, through everything. Write every day. Write unceasingly, without fear, without the need for certainty. Write blogs, tweets, short stories, short-short stories, novels, comic scripts, film scripts, drug scripts, whatever you can. Because over time, you find that you… just get better. And not only that: you start to know why and how you’re getting better. That’s instinct forming — equal parts callus and built-muscle. You soon start to get a handle on how words can and should go together. You start to not just see story as a mechanical clockwork thing, but rather, you start to get a feel for it. Less intellectual, more emotional.

And then, when you read, that makes more sense, too. You start to see the layers behind the layers. All the sub rosa shit that goes into a story — stuff that’s conscious and not-so-conscious and that forms the fabric of good story, bad story, and all the qualities in between. You write to put it in practice.

You read to see how others do the same.

Reading and writing, reading and writing.

Not just for pleasure. But to understand. To know what the fuck it all means.

But, like I said: doesn’t happen overnight.

Takes time. Often lots of it.

Which makes this the hardest advice of them all. Everyone wants a short-cut. Everyone wants an easy answer, like you can just take an aptitude test or go visit a fucking palm-reader or haruspex to give you the truth you seek. But the only truth is, it takes the time that it takes. Five, ten, twenty years. You can’t accelerate your age (at least not without evil science). But you can accelerate the other part. You can read as much as you can. And you can write as much as you can.

You do both of those things every day, and soon you’ll feel eyes opening that had long been closed.

That’s the secret.

TELL NO ONE.

(shhhh)