Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 245

The Wreck Of The S.S. Censorship (Or, “How Writers Steer Their Careers Into The Rocks”)

Cause? Meet effect.

So, a couple days ago a video games freelancer, Ryan Perez, said some things on Twitter about delightful geek super-goddess (said without irony or sarcasm, as I am indeed a fan) Felicia Day.

He said:

Does Felicia Day matter at all? I mean does she actually contribute anything useful to this industry, besides retaining a geek persona?

— Ryan Perez (@PissedOffRyno) June 30, 2012

And then:

@feliciaday, I keep seeing everywhere. Question: Do you matter at all? Do you even provide anything useful to gaming, besides “personality?” — Ryan Perez (@PissedOffRyno) June 30, 2012

And then:

@feliciaday, could you be considered nothing more than a glorified booth babe? You don’t seem to add anything creative to the medium.

— Ryan Perez (@PissedOffRyno) June 30, 2012

Worth noting: by this point, Ryan Perez had about… ohh, 50 followers. I don’t know much about the dude, but it seems he’s fairly new to games journalism, and was writing for the site Destructoid at the time.

One wonders if he were tweeting to the relative vacuum of those 50 followers only, he wouldn’t have violently overturned the dinner table on which his food was waiting — ahh, but he tweeted directly to Miss Day, and therein dumped a Gatorade bucket of his own waste over top his own fool head. Because his misogynistic, dismissive opinion of her (and, apparently, drunken) got a fabulously epic signal boost in the form of Wil Wheaton via Veronica Belmont. (Here we are given an image of a schlubby mortal man, sitting on a throne made of his own emptied Pabst Blue Ribbon cans, shouting incessant invective and surly epithets at not the Greek Gods above but rather, the Geek Gods, and lo and behold one of them heard and oh shit she has friends and now they’re gonna tear open your breastbone and breathe fire and awesomeness and d20s upon your stupid drunken dipshit heart. VOOOOOOOOSH.)

(Sidenote, I now want to see art depicting a pantheon of current Geek Gods. SOMEBODY DO THAT.)

Wil called out Ryan’s current employer — Destructoid — and Destructoid said, basically, “Hey, everyone, be cool,” and that was just pee on top of poop because no, really, people weren’t going to be cool.

And so began the slow motion boat crash of Ryan Perez’s freelance career. At least, in the short term. I can’t speak for what will happen to him in the long run, as I am not an oracle — sure, sure, I like to play with pigeon guts and goat bones but that’s purely recreational quit lookin’ at me. For all I know Fox News will swoop in and hire the guy (“You speak for us!”), but for now, what happened is that a freelance writer who, I suspect, didn’t have a whole lotta career behind him now may not have a whole lotta career ahead of him because social media can give very big ripples to one poorly-thrown pebble.

Destructoid fired him, of course.

Now, this has an imperfect mirror in a situation that unfolded a little while ago about a dude not in the video games industry but rather the pen-and-paper games industry where said dude made some link-bait, button-pushing commentary about how rape is a wonderful plot device and how it’s okay because women have rape fantasies and — well, whatever. Point is, he was then surprised that his link-bait took and the buttons he pushed were actually hooked up to something (like, say, The Internet), and when the rain of shit was just a drizzle he found no shelter and instead kept pushing buttons. The shit-rain fell harder and harder until a petition arose to get him canned from one of his publishers. At that point said game-writer dude he dug his heels in even deeper as then made some comments about the very real rape-threats against the petition-writer that were ill-advised, and, lo and behold, he got canned from his publisher, oops.

There’s more to that story, just as there is and will be more to the Perez story, but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post isn’t even, “Don’t be a jizz-bag,” or, “The gaming industry has a deep, deep problem with puerile ass-hearted butt-trolls treating women like second-class citizens at best and doe-eyed sex-objects at worst.” Those things are, of course, true.

But that’s not my point. I’ve made those points already. You know that stuff already.

No, here the point is, writers? You can steer your career into the rocks with shenanigans like this. Now, you may assume that I’m telling writers to — eep, watch what they say, button up that language, don’t rock the boat with your opinions, be soft and moist and colorless like a pre-chewed glob of cardboard, but believe me, that’s not what I’m suggesting. Look at me: I’ve been a freelance writer for close to a decade-and-a-half now, and I could probably write a blog post with nothing but the word COCK-WAFFLE written a thousand times, each time in an incrementally-larger font-size, and no one would fire me. I could and have offered opinions about religion and politics, about health care and food politics, and I remain un-shitcanned.

You may also assume I’m saying, “Don’t piss off your employers,” AKA, “Don’t poop into the hand that feeds you,” but that’s not exactly it, either. That’s part of it, yes, but the heart of what I’m saying is, you need to watch out for the audience. The audience is mighty. The audience is all-seeing. The audience doesn’t want to stand for your tweaked and twisted opinion when it comes from a place of (real or imagined) hate. You turn on the audience and they will turn on you. This isn’t just about turning on a geek icon, about spitting in the eye of one of the Geek Gods. It’s about how one dude misread who his audience is — one assumes he thought the audience was just a bunch of high-fiving bro-heims like himself, when really, uh-oh, the audience has women in it, too. Women who matter. Women who will shank your ass in the shower for looking down on them and treating them like lessers when they’re an equal and awesome part of what we do and who we are as an army of gaming and geek and pop culture.

Ryan Perez took a bite out of Felicia Day.

The audience — not just women but all who recognize that they’re part of our tribe — bit back.

You can call it censorship if you like — and it is, in the sense that the audience will not stand for your bullshit anymore and would much rather see your mouth taped shut with tape and your body dumped in the trunk of an Oldsmobile swiftly sinking into the waters of a forgotten lake. But this isn’t legal censorship. This is the censorship of an angry audience. This is a vote-with-your-dollars-and-your-voice type of censorship. Natural and normal and part of the system.

Matt Wallace tweeted the very-true:

To all my TLC students: read @PissedOffRyno‘s feed for an example of how not to be a freelance writer. This is a free lesson. That is all.

— Matt Wallace (@MattFnWallace) July 1, 2012

And then, of course, Perez doubled-down (as they usually do) with:

@MattFnWallace It was a Twitter feed, not a column in the local paper. Dickhead.

— Ryan Perez (@PissedOffRyno) July 1, 2012

That is the sound of a boat crashing into the rocks, by the way. Remember it. Why do you think Perez has over 1000 followers, now? They’re rubber-necking. They want to see the body pulled out of the fire.

Writers, cut it with the hurtful and hateful crap.

The audience is listening.

The end.

P.S., Don’t be a jizz-bag.

P.P.S., We need more women in gaming, so, uhh, somebody make that happen.

P.P.P.S., Seriously, GEEK PANTHEON, someone get on that.

P.P.P.P.S., Yes, this is posting on a Sunday but it counts as my Monday post NO YOU SHUT UP.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Another Story In Three Sentences

Last week’s challenge: “.”

I want to give someone a copy of 500 Ways To Tell A Better Story.

As always, you gotta dance for your dinner, though. It’s fuck-or-walk around these parts, hoss.

Put your pants on. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s a metaphor. Or something.

ANYWAY.

You’re going to tell a story in three sentences.

You will post this story here, in the comments below.

Keep it under 100 words.

You only get one entry.

I will give away three copies of the book in either ePub, MOBI or PDF format. Your choice.

You’ve got one week. Due by noon EST, July 6th, 2012.

Three sentences. Beginning, middle, end, 1, 2, 3.

Do it.

Andrea Phillips: The Terribleminds Interview

I met Andrea Phillips one night at one of our local “Cult of Transmedia” meetings, which takes place across a blog, a smartphone, a movie screen, a walking tour of NYC, and a Denny’s diner menu downloaded into the brain of Abraham Lincoln. She is, quite plainly, a transmedia proselyte and guru all at the same time, and you must heed her words as a storyteller unless I break all the bones in your feet. And there are a great many bones in your feet. Her new book — A Creator’s Guide To Transmedia — is out and demands your attention. You can find her at her blog castle — deusexmachinatio.com/ — and on the Twitters (@andrhia).

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.

When the mouse moved in, the first thing it did was leave tiny, scalloped toothmarks all along the edge of a chocolate bar I’d carelessly left half-wrapped in front of the toaster oven. This was no cheap drugstore chocolate; no, this was the exotic kind from the organic foods store shot through with dried cherries and chili peppers. To this day, I wish I could have finished that particular chocolate bar. It was delicious, and I had only eaten two squares.

Living with a rodent was not to be tolerated, of course. Zero tolerance. But we are nothing if not kind to animals in this house! We read up on mice on the internet, as one does. We stuffed the crevices of our home with soapy steel wool and caulk. (To this day, our entry closet looks like it lost an encounter with a libertine tube of toothpaste.) We put all our food in the refrigerator, in the microwave, in plastic containers so new they probably contaminated every morsel with carcinogenic outgassing.

We devised elaborate traps with greased buckets and precariously balanced rulers. We went to sleep at night cocooned in the smug knowledge that these gentle, no-kill solutions were the right thing to do, from an ethical and academic perspective.

But they did not catch the mouse. We knew it was still with us; it gifted us with rich curls of sesame seed-like droppings on the kitchen counter every morning.

As days passed with no resolution, our humane concern for the well-being of the mouse darkened and broke. We could not live with a mouse. Zero tolerance! The mouse, we resolved, must die.

Too squeamish, we, to deploy snap traps or glue sheets where we might need to handle a rodent corpse. We obtained a mouse-size electrocution chamber from the shame-free privacy of the internet, loaded it with the provided kibble, and deployed it, trying not to think about the burnt fur aroma we might wake to one morning.

There was no dead mouse the next day, nor a live one. The mouse zapper showed no sign that a mouse had so much as passed it by. We fretted about what must be done next.

There were few further measures to take. We considered, again, snap traps and glue — so unsanitary (but so was the mouse.) So unsafe for the small children. So very personal.

But perhaps we had no choice. We must face our grisly responsibility. We would do it. We would do it tomorrow. No, tomorrow. …maybe on the weekend. Or next weekend.

One bright Saturday morning, I stumbled downstairs bleary-eyed and bushy-haired to make breakfast for the child. My eyes slowly focused on a tiny movement on the counter. There it was: the mouse. It stared me dead in the eye and held its ground.

For my part, I leapt back, knocking over a chair, and shrieked for aid from my male counterpart in the household, thereby abandoning all feminist ideology in the interest of avoiding this fearsome vermin-handling task.

The mouse did not turn tail and run. Instead, it stood there in the center of a plate of pancakes, surrounded by its own shit, quivering in fear, its huge black eyes fixed upon me. It was mousy blonde and white-bellied and terrified out of its almond-sized brain.

The child had left a half-eaten plate of pancakes and pooled syrup on the kitchen counter. We, long fatigued by the unaccustomed cleanliness imposed upon us by the mouse starvation regime, had let it sit overnight. The syrup had congealed into something thick, viscous, supernaturally sticky. The mouse, craving pancakes, had crept onto the plate and become hopelessly stuck.

My husband — o hero! — gathered together his thickest gloves, meant for yard work. He took the mouse and its unlikely trap to the hedge at the edge of our yard. There, be bravely pried the poor mouse off the plate with one of our second-best forks. The mouse shook itself, he said, and scampered off toward the neighbor’s house.

We never saw the mouse again. But we still wonder, sometimes, if a hawk or cat caught up with it that day, an easy snack half-dead already from fright, and wondered at its sweet, buttery flavor.

Why do you tell stories?

I could talk a good game and tell you it’s because I have something to say about the human condition or blah blah untapped potential fulfillment spiritual blah blah stories are the fabric of culture blah building consensus reality blah. This would be an egregious lie.

I tell stories because I desperately want people to like me. LOVE me, even. Growing up, I was good at stringing words together in a pleasing way, and so I got praise and affection and people telling me I should be a writer when I grew up. It was relentless. Since I want the other monkeys to like me, and this is the trick I’ve done that made them like me the most in the past… the logical thing is to keep doing that trick.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Ideas are cheap; execution is hard. It’s really easy to get hung up on the exceptional beauty of our ideas. So unique! So unprecedented! So brilliant! Writers are prone to jealously guarding even rough concepts for fear that they will be stolen by other, nefarious writers or movie execs or publishers who will take these brilliant brain-children and exploit them without credit or payment.

This is ridiculous. You and I and every single other Terrible Minds reader could all set out to write the same story, and odds are no two stories would be the same. For proof of that, just look at the variety that turns up here in the contests!

That’s because the story being told isn’t generally the thing an audience cares about, so much as the telling. The words and flow and pace and tension. The best idea in the world won’t shine through a brutal, inelegant telling. But we’ll read a whole book by Hemingway about a fisherman sitting in a boat by himself, and the whole romance industry is based around one basic plot. But we don’t care because the telling is all that matters.

Okay, so, how do you tell a story that’s all yours and in your voice?

I feel like ‘all yours’ and ‘in your voice’ are completely separate issues. I could be cute and say any story you write is yours, but that’s a little intellectually dishonest. I could say that writing a story that comes entirely from inside you makes it all yours… But there is no such thing as art in a vacuum. I don’t think there’s a writer alive capable of writing a story that comes 100% from within.

You can develop a sort of internal compass, though, to check whether you’re making creative decisions because they’re the right ones and you understand why you’re making them… Or if you’re using plots or phrases and so on because you think somebody else would make them. (Though if you’re writing satire or parody, even that’s the right thing to do!)

I had an experience just this year where I was trying to write a campy, funny James Bond-type story, and I was stuck on it for months. Every sentence I wrote came out wrong. Eventually I just let the words fall as they would. The story that came out of that (The Secret of Cielos Azules, in my e-published short story collection Shiva’s Mother and Other Stories) had the same basic plot I’d planned all along, but it wasn’t campy or funny at all. I wasted a lot of time trying to make the story what I thought it should be with my ego. I should have been just letting the story come out the way my id wanted it.

As for voice… let’s put a little controversy out there: I don’t believe there is such a thing as one true voice that is yours. All of us have a sort of cadence and flow when we speak, right? But even that changes depending on who you’re with and what kind of impression you’re trying to make. There’s the voice you use with your friends, the one you use at work, and if you go abroad you may find yourself adopting the same accent and speech patterns as the people you’re spending time with.

Just like that, for writing I have a sort of Twitter writing voice, a Snark Modern voice I use for some kinds of first person stories, a moody, literary voice for more somber work… And even that changes depending on who I’ve been reading. (You make me swear more in my head, Chuck, and I am not the swearing kind, either!)

In fact, in a transmedia project, it’s important to me to create distinct voices for each character, so they all feel like themselves. I’ve never been sure why “finding your voice” is even a goal for a writer. Voice is a tool, just like character and pacing. Nobody is telling you to find your one true protagonist or storyworld. So shouldn’t we be ventriloquists, using the voice that most effectively gets the job done, no matter what it might be?’

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

When I was a young, impressionable, blonde freshman in college, I took a creative writing course. That professor consistently told me my work was “too sentimental.” It took me until just last year, when I found some of those papers in an old box, to realize what he probably meant was, “your writing is too personal and contaminated with girly emotion cooties.”

My childhood was something of an adventure, and not always the fun kind. So in college I was working through some difficult things by writing about them; the pieces I turned in were very much about loss and choice and forgiveness, all themes that still show up in my work now. I was writing things that felt true — in some cases stories that were literally true. Writing about what was important to me! And I was told that was wrong.

I took his advice to heart and tried very hard to not be sentimental. Turns out I can’t not be sentimental unless I’m not writing, so for a long time after that I struggled to write anything. Years and years lost because an authority figure told me MY stories weren’t the right ones.

These days, I’ve been told that same sentimentality translates into depth of emotion in the stories I tell, and it’s one of the best things I have going as a writer. The moral of the story: absolutely let people teach you how to write better from a technical perspective… but never let anyone else dictate what you write. Only you know what stories you need to tell.

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

When I was a lass, my characters were visual: collections of facts about hair and eye color, maybe wardrobe, and maybe a place in the world like “healer” or “warrior” ripped straight from a paper RPG. Now, I see character as the sum of their experiences. A really strong character is a network of relationships to all kinds of people and things — and those relationships should influence everything the character does.

Let’s say we’re making a woman in her late 20s who is jealous of her sister. That means she’ll probably be competitive whenever that’s possible, try to steal the spotlight, try to undercut the sister’s accomplishments. You can get a lot of mileage out of just that.

But true strength of character comes when you build in more layers, more relationships, and you understand why they are the way they are. So instead of just ‘jealous,’ we could create a reason for it. Maybe a history where the sister had cancer when they were small children, and our character (let’s call her Susan) was ignored a lot. That means Susan had the recurring experience of wanting attention but feeling guilty about wanting it; so even when she gets it, she feels worse for taking the spotlight off the maybe-dying sister. And we might also see Susan showing a complex resentment of her parents, too, who gave everything they had to the child they were afraid of losing; but of course Susan still desperately wants their approval, too.

Nobody in the world has only one significant relationship or experience. And it’s rare to feel only one thing about another person (or anything else.) To me, strength of character means nuance and texture. Knowing not just how a character acts, but how it is they got there.

I’ve only just this year watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, fifteen years too late. I found it an exceptional education in writing, and particularly in writing great, strong characters. The main ensemble is just exquisitely written, because the more you discover about who these people are, the richer they get, and the more sense they make. Giles isn’t just the wise mentor trying to do right by his pupil; he has battle scars from a misspent youth, and that comes out in badass fighting skills and a way with a guitar. He has a romantic life beyond his role on the show. He’s sometimes impatient and lacking in faith; there is evidence everywhere that what you see on the show isn’t the only interesting thing about him.

That makes him something much more interesting than someone like, say, Yoda, who is basically lacking in personal history (at least in the films.) People are complicated and sometimes even inconsistent. A great writer will make hay with that.

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

I had a whole list to recommend, and then I stopped and thought about media that have really, deeply affected me, and came up with exactly one thing. It’s a Jason Rohrer game called Gravitation. It’s… basically it’s a metaphor for trying to balance the creative spark with life and a family. Go download it and play it now. I’m not 100% sure I’d call it a great story as such… but it is a really moving experience, and isn’t that one of the things we’re looking for when we read a story?

This game is so amazing that I can’t even think about it or describe it without getting tears in my eyes, it struck me that hard. Though we’ve already established I am sentimental! So there’s that!

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

My favorite word right now is “finished.” It’s very, very good to see things through to the end and bid them a fond adieu. Ask me tomorrow and it’ll probably be different, though. I hate picking a favorite anything!

My favorite curse word has been the same for several years now, though. It is “wanion.” It’s archaic and sort of piratey!

We stumbled on it working on a game called Perplex City, when a character was swearing in a 200-year-old diary. Typical period-appropriate swearing (your common “Jesu!” or even “‘Sblood!”) was all related to Christianity. But this particular society never had Christ, so we had to dig a little deeper for a non-religious curse word. Also it is fun to say! Now you’ll use it, too.

Tell us about Perplex City, and what you learned from that experience:

Maybe I should explain what the heck Perplex City was? It was a card game, a treasure hunt, a persistent online world. We created a fictional alternate place called Perplex City, a puzzle-driven society where intellect reigns supreme. A dangerous, priceless artifact was stolen from the city and they traced its location to Earth, so the Perplexians did the only logical thing (to them): they created a series of puzzle cards to intrigue Earth and persuade them to help find this missing Cube. I promise it was in no way hokey in the way that this sounds, and was rife with theft, conspiracy, dark histories, murder, torture, even genocide.

This played out in online media to make the city feel real — a weekly newspaper, characters who blogged and would email you back and ask your advice, a plot that would adapt to the suggestions of the audience. We also sold actual puzzle cards in packs of five, created a CD of music, a print magazine, and had several live events in London, San Francisco, and New York. And this missing Cube was a real thing. A gentleman named Andy Darley dug it up where it had been hidden in the woods at the end of the season, and got a $200,000 reward for his trouble.

Perplex City is my origin story, my formative experience. I learned how to be a professional from Perplex City. I learned about filing words even when you don’t feel any juice, which is most of the time. I wrote a quarter of a million words in two years on that project. And I learned that the end quality of the work is usually so much the same that when you look back a year later, you really can’t tell which pieces were a slog and which came to you like lightning straight into your brain.

I also learned to get it right the first time, because in two years I don’t think we ever did a second draft. We didn’t have the time. Learning to go back to something and refine it is still a skill I’m a little weak on, to be honest. I’m used to just writing something and sending it out into the world to see how it does.

It ran for two years. I worked on it for three. When the project was cancelled, I cried for three days solid. That’s another important lesson I learned. Don’t ever, ever get too invested in work-for-hire. Absolutely put in your best work and absolutely be proud of it, but don’t give it your heart, because once the curtain falls, it won’t belong to you anymore.

So, just what the hell is “transmedia” and why should anybody care?

Let’s get all academic up in here! Transmedia is the art of telling ONE story through MULTIPLE media, such that each medium is making a UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION to the whole story. That’s some Dr. Henry Jenkins right there.

What that means is: a story where Princess Leia and Han Solo fall in love in the films, but you need to read the books to see that love story through and find out that they get married and have twin babies. But when these stories begin to seep across social and interactive media, you see some interesting things happen: An online community “stealing a bus” for the Joker, they he then uses in the film as an escape vehicle for a bank heist, as with The Dark Knight. Or there are shows like How I Met Your Mother, where the TV sets up a joke and a one-off website or video (like the Robin Sparkles masterworks) delivers the punchline.

It’s about expansion and connection. It’s about making stories with more layers and textures to them than you could convey in one medium… and still tell a good story in that one medium.

But, you know, you don’t have to care? If you don’t want to? Single-medium stories are as powerful as they ever were, and they will always be with us. There’s nothing wrong with sticking to what you’re good at.

That said, I do advocate for every writer to try at least dabbling in transmedia techniques. One reason is the sheer joy of it. When you write a novel or a short story, you write, revise, publish, and then you bite your nails and hope somebody reads it and maybe tells you what they think someday. But reading is generally a solitary and not terribly social activity, and every writer I know yearns for good feedback.

One of the emergent properties of transmedia, though, is audience speculation. So as soon as you put a piece of a story out there, the audience huddles together to talk about it and how it all fits together and what it means. This kind of instant feedback is better than heroin. And then you can take this knowledge about what your audience is and isn’t responding to and tweak the next pieces to work a little better. Maybe a character you need to be sympathetic is coming off as a pompous jerk, so you insert a moment with a pet to add humanity. Maybe the audience loves your B-plot romance so you expand its significance. It’s so much fun, so much fun, and the work you do under those conditions always has a sort of fizzy, unpredictable magnificence.

And when you move into interactive media, you can work with a richer emotional palette than a flat medium like film or a novel. You can not only make people laugh and cry, you can make them feel proud or guilty about events in your narrative.

The other reason is a more calculating economic stance. When you tell a story, you’re sallying forth into a battlefield. See, there’s a pitched war going on for attention right now. There are audiences who will skim your work and move on, always. But there are also people who want to dive deep into your work and see what you’ve hidden beneath the surface. If you don’t have anything waiting to reward these people for loving you more and better, you’re taking a gamble that in between now and the next thing you publish or distribute, they won’t find something else to love more than you.

I see expanding a story into a transmedia execution as writing a love letter to your fans and telling them that yes, you love them back just as much as they love you, and you’ll always be there for them. Expanding your story across media is a way to make them feel more connected to that thing you made that they love, like there’s more of it, even in the gaps between major installments of a story. It builds loyalty, and that’s a precious resource in these times.

Where do a lot of creators go wrong with transmedia?

Not only could I write a whole book about this… I think I did! But let’s stick to just one of the Big Rookie Mistakes.

Basically the big, common mistake I see is thinking too much about the story, and not enough about the audience’s experience of that story. Transmedia doesn’t have to mean a footprint sprawling across half the internets, and if any piece isn’t adding specific and measurable value to your story for your audience, you need to cut it just like you’d murder your darlings in any other writing context. When you’re just adding on pieces of story willy-nilly, you risk confusing your audience, and when you confuse your audience, they go find something else to love more than you.

Sometimes you see a really complicated structure out there in a misguided effort to make something look realistic, but even that’s often a red herring. What creators are striving for is authenticity, that deep sort of emotional truth, and they try to obtain authenticity by making it look like all of this is Really Real.

Even early novels did this — searching for authenticity through realism, so we have all of these novels that were ‘collections of papers found in an attic’ and ‘a strange journal I bought at market.’ It’s something we’ll grow out of, too, once we become comfortable in our own legitimacy.

What’s one transmedia project that got it right, in your mind?

Only one?! Right this minute I’m enamored of The Lizzie Bennett Diaries, a web series adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that plays out on social media, too. The thing I love about it is it’s as deep as you want it to be. If you just want to watch the web series, great! If you want to see what’s happening on Twitter, that’s aggregated for you through Storify. If you want to follow them yourself on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and talk to the characters… You can! And each of these progressively more involved ways of consuming the story are rewarded. It’s great design.

And on top of that, the writing is hilarious, the actors are all fantastic, and it’s fun to see how this familiar story plays out despite a shift to a modern-day setting. So far I’ve been really impressed with it.

I’m also impressed with Dirty Work, an interactive web series out of Fourth Wall Studios in LA. I think they’re not yet exploiting the value of their tools to their fullest potential, and even what they have now is smart, funny, intensely creative, and absolutely nothing you’d see on network television. It’s practically custom-made for Terrible Minds readers to love it to little tiny pieces, in fact.

But there’s really so much great work out there right now, even work that might not call itself transmedia but has definite family resemblances. That’s the most exciting thing to me in all of this — this blossoming of experimentation. Sky’s the limit, and every one of us has a rocket to get there!

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

My favorite alcoholic beverages are the ones that come to me more or less complete. Usually this means juicy, meaty red wines. My method of choosing wines involves selecting the ones with the most attractive labels, figuring the vineyard has done their demographic research and the designs I like are specifically geared toward people like me. Also figuring that the vineyards who can afford great designers are doing pretty well and so maybe their wine does not suck. THIS METHOD IS FLAWLESS SHUT UP.

I am also very fond of tiki drinks made by tiki drink experts with garnishes so extreme they need permits from the city council and, ideally, are shooting flames. The whole point of those, though, is that I am not the one who makes them, but instead they have been carefully mixolified by a professional. No recipe for you!

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

Soldering. I’ve done it once before, and let me assure you, I am like some kind of solder ninja! When the robots come, I will be unstoppable as I relentlessly solder their wires and transistors into place based on the experience eked out in my single five-minute soldering session from three years ago!

– No, wait, that would help the robots and not the people, wouldn’t it? So then I got nothing. If humanity’s future is riding on me against the robots, we’re all screwed. Yeah, sorry.

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

Rainbows and unicorns and kittens! Hopefully?

So I have this book coming out on June 22: ‘A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling.’ I am excited and also terrified! That’s the big thing devouring my time and causing my crippling midnight anxiety for the next few weeks. Fingers crossed people get a lot out of the book.

Then in July I’ll be launching a Kickstarted project called Balance of Powers with some friends — Naomi Alderman, Adrian Hon, and David Varela. It’s an alt-history occult cold-war narrative told in episodes, and we’re also including some transmedia elements, like a printed newspaper and an online event. We can’t wait to share this world with an audience.

After that, I have a serial fiction project called Felicity that I’m just developing now as a part of my grand master plan to push out more independent work under my own flag. It’s a big step for me; most of my fiction to date has been commissioned for specific purposes (a marketing campaign, a show that was already pitched, that kind of thing.)

I bleed to just do my own thing for a while. The income stream is a lot less certain, but I’m trying to be brave and bet on myself for the long game. It’s all any of us can do, right?

Ask Me Questions About Writing And Storytelling (And I’ll Try To Answer)

I have a Tumblr page.

Have had it for a while. Don’t use it very often.

It’s here — terribleminds.tumblr.com.

I don’t really intend to use it any more frequently, really, but, I do want to make use of Tumblr’s “ask” function to solicit questions from you people on the subject of writing, storytelling, publishing, whatever.

I will answer said questions publicly. On this blog.

I may do this once a week, once a month — no idea. Whenever the mood strikes and I get a good question.

To ask a question, go here–> terribleminds.tumblr.com/ask

You can ask anonymously if you choose.

If I pick your question (and I know who you are), I’ll happily toss you a free e-book from my stable of self-published work. For all I know, nobody will ask a thing — so, we’ll see how this experiment plays out.

GO FORTH AND ASK, MY INKY LITTLE MONKEYS.

25 Things You Should Know About Writing Sex

1. Fifty Shades Of Splayed-Out Sex-Play

Sex is big again. Or it’s “okay” again. Or something. With 50 Shades of Grey out and appeasing desperate housewives the world around with its pseudo-kinky faux-S&M vibe, sex is suddenly a seller again. It’s like a switch got flipped — “We’re tired of repressed teenage lust with glittery vampire-types, bring on the penetrations.” Is it back to stay awhile? Not sure. But right now: sex sells.

2. But Also, We’re A Nation Of Puritanical Shitbirds

To write sex in America, you have to understand America’s problem with sex. Which is to say, we’re a nation of Puritanical douche-swabs who feign shock and horror any time we see something resembling a nipple, yet can giddly chomp on a bucket of Fiddle Faddle as we watch dudes blow other dudes (wait for it) apart with their chattering machine guns. We love violence, and fear sex. And yet we don’t really fear sex at all, we just pretend we do because — well, I don’t know why. Because we don’t want the neighbor to know we own a flavored lubricant? Because we’re afraid our bosses will find out we like to dress up as ponies with requisite pony-tail butt-plug? Utah is perhaps the best example of this conundrum: they’re constantly making laws against sex and perversion and yet they remain the biggest purveyor of Internet porn in the nation.

3. We’re All Riding The Sexual Train

And yet, sex links us all. We all do it — it’s human nature. And everybody got here somehow, which is to say, our parents slapped their genitals together until sexual fluids commingled together and resulted in — oops — us. (Sorry if that insults any of you secret clones out there. You’re just going to have to cope. YOU MONSTERS.) Sex is part of the common experience along with birth and death. We have to write about it. Most people will never shoot or stab another human, but most of us will insert Tab-A into Slot-B (or mash Slot-B against Slot-B or swordfight with both Tab-As). This is in part why we need to write about sex. This is our urge. This is our collective human experience. Being a prude doesn’t change who we are, how we got here, or how we want to swim in one another’s love-puddles all day long.

4. The Smashing-Two-Action-Figures-Together Approach

One approach to writing sex is to spell it all out. It’s action like any other and so you take the two characters and put them together — on a bed, on a train, in a treehouse, rolling around in the warm doughy colon of an ancient beast — and you show the act of these two people rubbing nubbins. Squish-squish-squish. It’s an act of clarity, of definition, of writing sex-as-action.

5. The Drop-Acid-And-Feel-The-Soul-of-Sex Approach

Or, you instead embrace what sex feels like –half of our sexual experience is the feeling of the act in addition to the act of the act. There we are, in the dark (literal or figurative), all our pleasure pistons firing at once — everything is probing fingers and tickled nerve endings. It’s sweat and little moans and then big moans and somewhere, a donkey brays? Sex written in this way can be disorienting, as this approach ignores the physical beat-by-beat action in favor of the physical abstractions and emotional impact.

6. Hybridize That Mofo

Personal opinion: good sex writing does both. It tells me what’s going on and who’s got their index finger where, but it also lets me feel the experience from the perspective of our POV character. I’m not just a little boat bobbing on a sea of sensation, nor am I watching two stick figures jab their dark marker lines into one another. So: do both! (Sidenote: “Hybridize That Mofo” is the command I’ll give on the bridge of my own starship when I want that motherfucker to enter warp speed. Please update your records.)

7. The Danger Of Throbbing, Purple Prose

Sex seems to lend itself to clumsy writing. It seems very easy to fall into the pattern of overdescribing or using words that would require Magnum-sized condoms to fit over them — “His turgid tumescence pressed into the dewy folds of her efflorescent humectation.” Part of this, I assume, springs again from our Puritanical origins: we’re squicky about sex, so we hide it under the robes of our own overwrought language. This “poetry” (not really poetry) seems to give us distance but what it also does it sound fucking awful. Cardinal rule of writing sex: put down that thesaurus.

8. The Danger Of Overly-Clinical, Gynecological Prose

Swinging too far the other way, you’ll end up with a Dick-And-Jane-sian VCR manual of sex: “Tony puts his penis inside Maria’s vagina. Maria massages Tony’s perineum. Tony ejaculates. Maria yawns.” This is probably better than the throbbing purple prose, but not by much. The big takeaway here is, just as you should never use “tumescent,” don’t call it a “penis,” either. If you were sexting to somebody, would you refer them to your penis? OMG MY PENIS IS HUNGRY FOR YOUR CLITORIS. LOL. Probably (er, hopefully) not. Find that balance: a poetic touch with clear descriptions. (Good writing advice in general.)

9. Take A Boat Trip On The Sex Ark!

That sounds like some kind of boat where Noah brings two of every race and nation and then they get onboard and bang like rabid lemurs while the world drowns. Then they repopulate the world with their beautiful little mocha babies but that’s not at all what I mean — rather, what I mean is, sex is itself a story. And, the general arc of a story matches the sexual arc — the way two people meet and flirt and tension builds, then the gravity becomes irresistible and then it’s foreplay and conflict and will she will I ow my hamstring ooh that feels good and — climax! It’s called climax in both modes, both in sex and in story. Then there’s the denouement of laying there in a mussed-up bed-tangle and one person falls asleep while the other feels shame or dissatisfaction or bliss. Sex is a story. And stories are like sex. Cool.

10. Implicit Instead Of Explicit

You can write sex without writing sex. Use negative space to create shape. You can write about all the elements surrounding sex, like the looks beforehand, the dizzy post-coital haze afterward, the puddles of clothes on the floor, the awkward looks from the cat — all of this showing the fact sex happened without having to devote word count toward the actual act itself.

11. Writing Fucking Is Like Writing Fighting

Learn how to write a fight scene, you gain clues as to how to write a sex scene. Two characters crash together in a very big physical and emotional way. One is violent. The other is (likely) not. But they share space just the same, and one can help inform the other.

12. Do Not Watch Porn, I Repeat, Do Not Watch Porn

Er, rather, do not watch it for inspiration. You can watch as much porn as you like. But mining it for your fiction is a grade-A dog-fuck of an idea because porn is to sex what McDonald’s is to food. Porn — rather, most porn — captures nothing of actual sex and everything about some overblown false fantasy of sex. Boobs that look like over-inflated kickballs. Dicks that look like leprechaun shillelaghs. Botox faces and needless zitty closeups of genitals cramming into orifices. No character, no emotion, no story. Just human inflatable dolls pawing at each other and performing acrobatic sex acts that are a surefire way to slip a disc.

13. Sexual Archaeology, Ooooh Yeah

Don’t look to porn for inspiration: look to (gasp) actual human contact. You’ve had sex, right? Use that. You can turn the dial up on the sexiness or aspire instead to capture the overall goofiness of the act, but look to your own sex-life — feelings, sensations, something someone did, the way the Hello Kitty dildo tasted (“It tasted like burnt plastic. Like cat milk and bourbon. It tasted like love”).

14. The Sex Isn’t Just The Sex

Sex isn’t just about the act. It’s about the ramp up. The before. The foreplay. The after. The snack. The nap. The toweling off. It’s all these little weird details — setting and mood and time and event. The Roma character in Glengarry Glen Ross has a great speech that keys into this: “I don’t know. For me, I’m saying, what it is, it’s probably not the orgasm. Some broad’s forearm on your neck, something her eyes did. There was a sound she made…or, me, lying, in the, I’ll tell you: me lying in bed; the next day she brought me café au lait. She gives me a cigarette, my balls feel like concrete.” I love that line.

15. “I Think I Maybe Just Jizzed On Your Alarm Clock”

Sex can be really awkward. Fiction doesn’t usually show this approach (bonus points to HBO’s Girls for showing exactly that), but sex in storytelling is usually, well, sexy. And it doesn’t have to be, not at all — sex can be goofy and funny and awkward as all hell, limbs flailing and heads cracking headboards. Wrestling with condoms and cats on the bed. Hell, it can even be boring (though, be aware: the sex can be boring but the scene shouldn’t ever be). Sex can in fact be so many things besides and beyond sexy — why not go there?

16. The Definition Of “Gratuitous”

Sex for the sake of sex — and in spite of story — is gratuitous. (To mention HBO again, the sex in Game of Thrones tends to fall into the “gratuitous” column — it feels like the scripts often have AND NOW BOOBS AND FUCKERY BUT NO DICKS NO SIR inked hastily between scenes.) This doesn’t make it bad, per se, but it does disconnect it from character and story and is just as gratuitous as inserting a scene of violence for the sake of showing violence. Better perhaps to let it be organic and natural in the storytelling.

17. Exposing Character

Not “exposing” as in, WOO HERE’S MY JUNK but rather, as in how a character exposes her very characterness — persona, psyche, wants, fears — in bed. Sex doesn’t stop a character being who that character is. It reveals it. Selfish. Selfless. Nervous. Anxious. Afraid. Angry. Griefstruck. How characters, erm, “do the sex” says a helluva lot about them. They’re not automatons. Sex is raw, abrasive, illustrative. Sex tears away our barriers, our armor. Show that!

18. Fucking Is Never Just Fucking (AKA, The Sweet Subtext Of Fuckery)

(AKA, “Sub-Fuckery?” I dunno. Shut up, you.) Subtext is the distance between what we say and what we mean — and here, the subtext is between what happens in the bedroom and who we really are. What motivates the act? What lurks not just beneath the sheets but beneath the skin? Is the sexual act an act of revenge? Of distraction? Mutual commiseration and a refutation of shared sadness? Between two people (or, hell, whole orgy of motherfuckers) lurks all these invisible threads in the relationship — it’s not just about who the characters are but also who they are to one another. Sex exposes all that.

19. Ass To Ass — Er, I Mean, Tone To Tone

Any sex scene in your story should carry the tone of that story. If your story is one of melancholia, a porny happy goofy sex scene may feel entirely out of sorts.

20. Sexy Tension, Lusty Conflict, Libidinous Mystery

Sexual tension is just another version of narrative tension — there exists a question of will they won’t they — who will come, who won’t, what’s really going on, what does this scene say, what does it reveal, who put the goat in the corner, what’s that smell? Conflict lives in two characters furiously trying to reach a sense of fruition (which is how I refer to orgasms now: “Dearest, my plans are presently poised to achieve fruition — NNGH”). Whether the sex is frenzied and violent or slow and sad, it presents mysteries and conflict.

21. One Conflict: Sex Changes Everything

In real life — and thus, in most fiction — sex is a bunker buster bomb dropped on a relationship. People do the rumpy-pumpy and think it won’t change anything and ha ha ha you stupid fools, it most certainly will. Fiction thrives on conflict and change and the audience knows that sex is both of those things. It changes the game. It ups the stakes. Sex offers your story a lusty sex-slick pivot: use it to turn your story heel-to-toe.

22. Your Squicky Seat-Shifting Discomfort Shows

If sex makes you uncomfortable, don’t write it. We’ll know. It’ll rise off your words like a hot, funky miasma from a jock-strap left in the sun for days. Back away slowly from the sex scene. Or we’ll mock you.

23. Genre Can Dictate Sex

This is an “it is what it is” kinda thing, but some genres will demand sex in certain fashion — romance, for instance, has rules and sub-laws about what works and what doesn’t. I don’t write like that and I’m not sure that’s great for storytelling, but certain genres demand certain things and it’s a muddy uphill marathon to change that. Maybe a worthy battle to fight? That’s on you.

24. A Sad But Necessary Digression On The Subject Of Rape

Rape is a tough, troubling issue that fiction can explore; it should not be a cheap plot device an author exploits. Exploration over exploitation. Handle it with aplomb; don’t bash at it with a hammer.

25. Treat Sex Like It Isn’t Sex?

That’s weird advice, innit? But a sex scene is just a scene — it has a rise and a fall, it shares the same tone and tension of the story, it’s about character and not plot, and yet something must also happen (the best scenes do double-duty and operate as multi-taskers, after all). The sex part is — well, not incidental, it’s not merely a throwaway, but in the deeper treatment of the thing a scene is a scene is a scene. Maybe that’s the best way to look at a sex scene — not as a preening peacock operating under its own laws but rather, a scene like any other. Except, this scene involves, y’know, sweaty genitals. Which is the worst ice cream flavor ever.

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

Fresh Outta The Oven: 500 Ways To Tell A Better Story

And the final “Book of 500″ is out.

Let’s just get those pesky “How The Hell Do I Download This Into My Brain?” options outta the way:

Buy at Amazon (US)!

Buy at Amazon (UK)!

Buy at Barnes & Noble!

To buy direct from me, click the BUY button below — you will receive all three versions (MOBI, ePub, PDF). I generally fulfill orders soon as I see them, but just in case allow for 24 hours.

Wait, What The Hell Is This?

If you’re not aware, I like to do these (not-so-)little lists here at the site, my so-called “lists of 25.” In each I list 25 “things” about a specific subject related to storytelling, writing, or publishing.

I compile these lists into e-books for ease-of-use. That way they’re all in a single location should you choose to wiggle-waggle your toes in the waters of my dubious writing wisdom.

The other books include:

250 Things You Should Know About Writing

500 Ways To Be A Better Writer

500 More Ways To Be A Better Writer

And now, this one.

And Inside The Book I’ll Find What, Exactly?

This book aims to help you be a stronger writer and a savvier storyteller. You’ll learn how to infuse your narrative with mystery and gain tips on tackling the first chapter or mushy middle of your story. The book answers questions like, “What is transmedia? Why is now the coolest time to be a storyteller? How do I write a fantasy novel? What’s this guy’s fascination with unicorns, pornography, whiskey, and profanity?” And, finally, “Where are my pants? I was wearing pants when I started reading this book.”

The book roves giddily between advice that is practical, abstract, and downright satirical. Whether you’re a novelist, screenwriter or game designer, contained within you’ll find an exploration of what it is that we do – and how we do it better.

The book is, of course, very NSFW.

It may in fact be NSFL.

Those with heart conditions, weak constitutions, or frail dispositions should avoid, avoid, avoid.

The book contains the following lists (italics indicates never-before-published here):

25 Lies Writers Tell (And Start To Believe)
25 Realizations Writers Need To Have
25 Reasons I Hate Your Main Character
25 Reasons Now Is The Best Time To Be A Storyteller
25 Reasons You Should Quit Writing
25 Things All Writers Need
25 Things I Learned While Writing Blackbirds
25 Things I Want To Say To So-Called “Aspiring” Writers
25 Things To Know About Writing The First Chapter Of Your Novel
25 Things Writers Should Know About Creating Mystery
25 Things You Should Know About Creativity
25 Things You Should Know About Transmedia Storytelling
25 Things You Should Know About Word Choice
25 Things You Should Know About Writing Fantasy
25 Things You Should Know About Writing Sex
25 Things You Should Know About Writing Short Stories
25 Ways To Earn Your Audience
25 Ways To Fight Your Story’s Mushy Middle
25 Ways To Unfuck Your Story
25 Ways To Write Full-Time

Why Should I Buy This?

Because you’re a writer and you like to laugh and learn and think.

Because you like to binge on creative profanity.

Because you want to support this website and fund its continued existence.

Because you want to — by proxy — help feed my 13-month-old “human vacuum,” AKA “B-Dub.”

Because you’re an obsessive e-book hoarder.

Because you hate me and want to punish me with crass, filthy lucre, staining me with the sin of commerce.

Because you have three bucks and it’s this or, y’know, another phial of crack rock.

Because you like FREE BOOKS, MOTHERFUCKER (see below):

Free Book, Motherfucker!

For this week only (Monday June 24th to Monday, July 1st), if you buy this book, I’ll also comp you a copy of the last “book of 500,” 500 More Ways. If you buy direct via terribleminds (using the BUY button above), you need to take no additional steps — this “free book” is automatic and I’ll send it right along (and if you already own it, hey, send it to someone you know). However, if you buy via Amazon or B&N, you’ll need to send me some kind of receipt or proof of purchase, emailed to me at terribleminds at gmail dot com.

Dig? Dig.

Wait, Did You Say “Final Book?”

This is the final book of 500.

I aim to, by the end of this, have 2000 total “things” about writing out in the world. So, we’ve got 250 + 500 + 500 + 500 = BOOBS — er, no, wait, I mean, = 1750. So, we’ve got 250 to go.

So, you’ll see another 10 or so of these “lists of 25″

After that –? Well, who knows? I’ve got some writing books in the works that will be providing content not found at all here at the site, but time will tell when those come scratching at your electronic door.

More Wallpapers

Below, more wallpapers! Click the image to be taken to Flickr, where you may download and share to your heart’s delight. (At Flickr, click View All Sizes for variable size downloads.)

Please to enjoy, and thanks for helping to spread the word!

Flash Fiction Challenge: That’s My New Band Name

Last week’s challenge: “The Crooked Tree.” Go and see!

It’s been a very music-themed week for me. I’ve been listening and connecting to music in ways I haven’t in a while, in terms of narrative — which reminds me, go get the new Fiona Apple album. For reals.

Anyway.

What that means is, in this challenge, I want you to write a story about a band.

The name of that band?

Well, .

There you’ll get a buncha random band names.

Choose one.

That’s the band.

You’ve got up to 1000 words.

Post it on your blog. Link back here so we can read it.

You’ve got one week. Due by noon EST on Friday, June 29th.

Let’s see whatchoo got, band geeks.

Meg Gardiner: The Terribleminds Interview

I suspect you already know Meg Gardiner. Or, at least, have read her crimey thrillers starring her lead characters Evan Delaney or Jo Beckett. Hell, while you have a free moment, go read what Stephen King said about her at Entertainment Weekly (“The Secret Gardiner“). In fact, she’s got a new book out in a couple weeks — RANSOM RIVER — that’s a standalone, and it’ll grab you by the short-and-curlies and pull you along for the ride. I had the chance to lock Meg in a room for a few weeks while I subjected her to a battery of psychological tests in the form of “interview questions,” and below are the results of that experiment. Oh, you can find her at MegGardiner.com, or on the Twitters @MegGardiner1.

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.

We were stuck at a traffic light and the kids were squirming. They’d had a long day at school. If we didn’t get home soon, they’d lose it. We were counting down to Battle Royale II: Honda of Mayhem.

The two older kids each held half a book in their hands. That was the spring they discovered The Lord of the Rings, and they’d fought over who got first crack at The Two Towers until they settled it by ripping the book down the middle. The novel would hold them for a few minutes more, but only that.

Then my son, the ten-year-old, looked up and said, “I’ve figured out how I want to die.”

The light turned green but I just sat there. “Really. Okay. Tell me.”

He straightened and faced me with great solemnity. “Riding out to meet the Orcs in battle.”

His eyes were wide and grave. I felt deeply moved, and desperate not to laugh with relief. He meant it. If he had to die, let it be in heroic sacrifice.

And in the back seat, his twelve year old sister snirked. “How stupid would that be? You should die riding back from battle after you’ve killed the Orcs.”

Her duh could be heard in outer space. He spun and told her she was the stupid one and the Orcs would eat her oh yes they would so. And another car honked, and I pulled away from the light, and the argument intensified, Orcs and Mordor and “No, you’re stupider,” until they had to stop to catch their breath.

Which is when their little brother said, “What’s your favorite James Bond gun sound? Is it crishhh, or shuuuk?” We all turned to him. He said, “Mine is Doofkah. Doofkah.”

In my house, stories are a matter of life and death.

Why do you tell stories?

Because holding people’s suspended disbelief in my hands is a beautiful, powerful kick. And when those people gasp, or laugh, or throw my book across the room, I think, Yeah. Thank you. Now tell me a story that makes me feel the same way.

So: how do you suspend someone’s disbelief? Any tricks?

I stand before a mirror in a darkened room and chant, “Chuck Wendig, Chuck Wendig, Chuck Wendig.”

Also:

- Create characters who talk and laugh and ache like people we know in real life.

- Keep the pace up. Readers who are flipping pages to see what happens next do not pause to mull the metaphysical unreality of fiction.

- Don’t commit any howlers. “Queen Elizabeth leaned out the window of the taxi, hoisted the Uzi, and cleared London traffic in her usual way.” Oh, come on. The Queen would never take a taxi.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Put your characters to the frickin’ test, and don’t let them get out of it by any means but their own grit and blood and pain.

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

Kill the guy in the wheelchair.

Seriously – an agent who wanted to represent me offered that piece of advice about the heroine’s boyfriend in the Evan Delaney series. Jesse Blackburn is a world class athlete who gets run down and left for dead by a hit-and-run driver. The story is partly about how he and Evan rebuild their lives in the wake of that violent crime. The would-be agent told me: “Nobody wants to hear about people with disabilities, because nobody normal knows anybody with a disability. Kill him off.”

After I pulled my jaw from the floor, I ignored that advice. And the first novel in the series, China Lake, won an Edgar Award.

Bonus round: the second worst piece of writing advice I’ve ever received! It came from a reader who complained: Stop using big words, showoff. She thought I was trying to belittle readers through my vocabulary, and advised: “Tame your writings to a more friendly word selection.” Unfortunately, (1) The novel was about forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett, who performs psychological autopsies for the San Francisco Police Department. Medical, psychiatric and legal terminology is gonna be part of her job. (2) The reader wrote from her work email address. Which was with the federal government.

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

A strong character needs a vivid personality, real presence on the page, and the determination to dig deep when it counts. He or she must find the resources and courage to rise to the challenge the story flings at them – in the face of ridicule, shame, exile, danger, or death.

A strong character: Atticus Finch. Bonus strong character: Ellen Ripley.

On writing a single character (Jo Beckett, Evan Delaney) over the course of many books: how do you sustain those characters and the audience’s interest in them? What is the difficulty — or, maybe, danger — of writing them again and again?

I give characters big personalities, distinctive voices, and families, friends, and lovers they care about. Then I put them in jeopardy and say, “You’re on your own, honey. Let’s see you get out of it this time.”

The risk is that you write series characters into a rut. A crazed killer traps the heroine in an alley yet again? Yawn. Keep it fresh. Mix it up. And have the characters grow from their experiences.

Cuts leave scars. Show them.

Characters should also face actual danger: the risk that their families, friends and lovers might suffer or even die. If you structure a thriller to keep your favorite characters safe, you hobble the story. So stop protecting them, and take the story as far as it should go.

Tell us a little about RANSOM RIVER. Where does it come from? How is it a story that only Meg Gardiner could tell?

Nobody looks forward to jury duty, not even lawyers. I know, because I used to be one. Jury duty makes us feel trapped. So in RANSOM RIVER I wrote about Rory Mackenzie, a juror who is literally trapped. The courtroom is attacked and she finds herself fighting for her life.

Maybe an attack on a courthouse is an attorney’s unconscious fear. It’s not off the radar – when I was a kid, gunmen stormed the Marin County courthouse and four people died in a shootout, including a judge. RANSOM RIVER let me unleash that dread as a story of suspense, and bring readers along for the ride.

In the novel, the courthouse attack is only the beginning of Rory’s nightmare. The police accuse her of working with the gunmen. She discovers that the attack is connected to an old case that was never solved. And getting to the bottom of it might destroy her.

RANSOM RIVER offers the audience a new protagonist: Rory Mackenzie. What does Rory bring to the table that your other characters don’t? For you as a writer and for the audience.

This story had to be told from the viewpoint of the woman at the center of the storm. It’s about her and her family. It’s about her childhood friend and ex-lover, the former cop who still loves her. And it’s about a sunny Southern California town with secrets just waiting to be dug out of the dark. It didn’t fit with either Jo Beckett or Evan Delaney. Rory had to bring an entire world to the table.

Creating it was a challenge. And I hope readers will feel that it’s real, and familiar, and scary – and that they’ll be in Rory’s corner. She has a pitch black sense of humor. She’s guarded but inherently trustworthy – stray dogs follow her home, knowing she’ll adopt them. She’s been knocked down, but she’s determined to get back up. She’s stronger than she knows.

Can we expect to see Rory again?

The novel is written as a stand alone, but Rory’s story could definitely continue.

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

The Stand.

Here’s how a friend described it, back when I’d never heard of the young writer named Stephen King: A plague kills 99% of the people in the world… and then the really bad stuff start to happen. Oh, my, yes.

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

Soar – it sounds smooth on the tongue, and if you’re going to fly, you might as well rocket above it all, whooping and performing barrel rolls. Favorite curse word: motherfucker. In a world where lesser curse words have become as ubiquitous as sprinkles on cupcakes and just as innocuous, this one still packs a punch. I take it out only on special occasions – I use it once in every novel, and only once.

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

Virgin margarita from Palo Alto Sol, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Palo Alto, California. Recipe: I’m guessing margarita mix, ice, and salt on the rim. This drink is so potent that it doesn’t need alcohol. It has given me amazing visions, even without the tequila. And I don’t mean I saw the Virgin on a tortilla – I saw Mark Zuckerberg at the next table, noshing on a burrito. Dude.

However, I have just read that Palo Alto Sol catered Zuckerberg’s recent wedding. So I guess my vision wasn’t due to la margarita after all. Now for unexpected apparitions I rely on strong coffee. All day long. How else do you think I come up with the crazy stuff in my novels?

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

I can short circuit anything without even trying. As proof, I refer you to the 2006 Laptop Logic Board Coffee Spill, and the 2010 Pepsi Keyboard Massacre. Bonus: Because I rely on coffee all day long, when the robots attack I will be primed for retaliation, perching on my desk with catlike readiness, mug in hand.

What do you enjoy about writing thrillers? Will you ever try your hand at another genre?

Thrillers throw characters in the soup. They demand that characters dig deep and fight back – or die trying. I love writing stories in which people have to do that.

Other genres? Adventure, comedy, dystopian sagas set during the savage reign of the marmots. The possibilities are endless.

On The Subject Of Being Offensive

I’ve had this unformed post in my head for a while, and I’m tired of it racing around the ol’ skull-track like a squirrel with a lit firecracker up its ass. So, here’s the post in all its unformed, uncertain glory.

Last week, I wrote a thing about Tomb Raider and Lara Croft. And I saw some comments around the Internet — not so much in reference to anything I wrote, but rather to the overall negative reaction to Lara Croft being used, abused, and downgraded — that chalked up the outrage to “political correctness.”

In a totally different thing, sometimes people send me things — via email, tweet, Facebook, psychic transmission — written by other people, and they’ll say things like, “This sounds like Chuck Wendig wrote it!” And what they send often has a certain whiskey-and-rage-sodden vibe to it, but also often uses pejoratives like “retarded” or “gay” or “fag” in the process. Which, to my mind, doesn’t sound like me at all.

And again, you might be thinking, “Well, sure. Political correctness.”

Let me stop you. Hand planted on your chest, me clucking my tongue.

Political correctness is a desire to minimize or eradicate offense.

I care very little about minimizing or eradicating offense.

I’m okay with offending. I don’t find that traipsing too gingerly about a subject does that subject any good. I’d rather expose something for what I feel that it is rather than swaddle it in gauzy, soft-focus layers.

Clearly, this blog is part of that. I’m happy to use sexual imagery or profanity — not as a means to an end but because it’s just part of the way I like to say things.

And yet, I no longer use words like “retarded” or “gay” or “fag” in my posts or my daily parlance (though once upon a time I, quite lazily, did in fact use those terms as clumsy and inept shorthand).

The reason I don’t use those words, however, has nothing to do with political correctness. It has nothing to do with me hoping to not offend you. Strike that from your mind. I’m not trying to “not get caught” saying those words. Some parents teach their kids not to say those things because of what people will think when they hear them — as if, were it more politically acceptable, the kid could say “faggy” all he wanted.

Rather, what it has to do with is that I don’t want to hurt anybody. That’s the thing. Offending people? Happy to do it. With a shit-eating grin, as a matter of fact (and there is a turn of phrase that deserves reexamination — why am I smiling if I’m eating shit? What’s wrong with me? Is the shit mysteriously delicious?). But I don’t want to be mean. Or cruel. Or conjure up words that ding a person’s armor. I care little about minimizing offense, but I care quite a lot about minimizing people.

That’s why I don’t think the Tomb Raider thing is about political correctness — because I think it’s about minimizing women and, in a way, minimizing the men who play those games. That’s also why I don’t think that profane “in-your-face” blog posts that use words like the ones I noted are in what you might call “terribleminds-style” — sure, I’ll mock things within the industry or the bad habits of writers, but I won’t call those “retarded.” First, because it’s lazy. Second, because while that word may not seem to mean what it says, it still says what it means — and it’s short-code for being mentally handicapped no matter how you slice it. Third, and most importantly, because I don’t want to hurt people.

These words may still live in my fiction. Characters, after all, needn’t be so enlightened — my characters will say and do things I’d never do. They’re not models of civility. Nor would we want them to be.

But me, well, you’ll find I try to catch myself from falling into those patterns of ugly word-use.

You, of course, may do as you like.

I stop myself not because I don’t want to offend you.

Not because I care one rat pube about political correctness.

I stop myself because I don’t want to hurt anybody. Because it’s mean.

And because the world has enough of all that.

That’s what I’ll tell my son, too. Plenty of meanness out there without adding to it.

Just wanted to put that out there. Do with it as you will.

25 Things You Should Know About Writing Fantasy

I don’t write fantasy. Not really. I’ve written it from time to time (my short story collection, Irregular Creatures, has some). And Blackbirds apparently counts as “urban fantasy.”

Just the same, I am woefully underqualified to write this list. But by golly, that’s never stopped me before. So here I am, offering up my “list of 25″ in the fantasy arena. Though I write with a certain authoritative sense of gavel-bangery, please understand that these are just my opinions–

– and shaky, unproven opinions, at that.

Accept. Discuss. Discard.

Do as thou wilt.

1. Nobody Knows What The Fuck Fantasy Is

Fantasy is a bullseye painted on a horse’s rump just before someone fired a magical spell up under the nag’s tail and set her to stampeding. We can all agree that something that has dragons in it and castles and a great deal of faux Medieval frippery is likely to be considered “fantasy,” but beyond that, it’s hard to say. It probably has magic or deals with the supernatural. It likely avoids science. It might be scary, but not so scary that it be labeled “horror” instead. It’s a fuzzy, muzzy, gauzy, hazy fog-clogged hollow, this genre. As it should be. Genre does best when its definition is decidedly low-fi rather than high-def.

2. Fantastical Fiefdoms

Fantasy is vivisected into various gobbets, limbs and organs — sword-and-sorcery does battle with epic or high fantasy, horror-tinged fantasy used to be “dark fantasy” but now it’s “urban fantasy” or maybe “paranormal fantasy” or maybe “fantasy with vampires and werewolves looking sexy while clad in genital-crushing leathers.” There’s fantasy of myth and fantasy that’s funny and fantasy that’s laced with a thread of science-fiction. You have magic realism and one day we’ll probably have real magicalism and I’m sure there’s a genre of fantasy where lots of fantasy creatures bang the whimsy right out of one another (hot centaur-on-goblin action, yow). Sub-genres have value as marketing tools and as a way to give you some direction and fencing as you write. Otherwise: ignore as you see fit. Or create your own!

3. Rooted In The Real

Reality is fantasy’s best friend. We, the audience, and you, the writer, all live in reality. The problems we understand are real problems. Genuine conflicts. True drama. The drama of families, of lost loves, of financial woes. Cruel neighbors and callow bullies and loved ones dead. This is the nature of write what you know, and the fantasy writer’s version of that is, write what’s real. Which sounds like very bad advice, because last time I checked, none of us were plagued by dragons or sentient fungal cities or old gods come back to haunt us. But that’s not the point — the point is, you use the fantasy to highlight the reality. The dragon is the callow bully. The lease on your fungal apartment is up and your financial woes puts you in tithe to the old gods who in turn make for very bad neighbors. You grab the core essence of a true problem and swaddle it in the mad glittery ribbons of fantasy — and therein you find glorious new permutations of conflict. Reality expressed in mind-boggling ways. Reach for fantasy. Find the reality.

4. Break Reality With Your Magic Hammer, Rearrange The Resultant Shards

Reality also offers up awesomeness in the form of data. You may think, “Well, I can’t research a fantasy world because it doesn’t exist, dummy” but again — root fantasy in the real. Look to actual events. Look to history. Look to culture and religion. Mine truth for fiction. Some cultures (Asian in particular) have a practice where friends and family and villagers help pay for each other’s funerals. Right there, you can take that, tweak it, use it. Drama lives there. What if the village won’t pay for someone’s funeral? Why? What’s the stigma? Why the exile? Adherence to dark magic? Broken oath? Cranky centaur bastard child?

5. Woebetide The Faux Medieval Frippery

Kings and knights and dragons and oaths and tithes and princesses and plumbers rescuing those princesses from giant rage-apes and — okay, wait, maybe not that last part. What I’m saying is, European Medievality (not a word) is the meat-and-potatoes of the fantasy genre. And I think we can do better than meat-and-potatoes. Look beyond that single slice of time and space for your inspiration. What about the 18th century bloody rivalry between chiefs and kings in Hawaii? Or the French Resistance in WWII? Or Masada? Or that time the Ewoks repelled the Empire and blew up the Death Star in their space gliders?

6. Go Weird Or Go Home

The power of fantasy is that you can do anything. Anything at all. You start with that core of reality and from there you’re allowed to grow anything from that fertile seed-bed. And yet, so much fantasy looks like so much other fantasy. Stop that. Embrace the wide open openness of the genre. The power of magic is that it’s motherfucking magic. You are beholden only to that which you yourself create. Go big. Dream weird. Be original. Why do what everyone else has already done?

7. Opinion: The Bravest Fantasy Right Now Is In The Young Adult Space

I’m just putting that out there. Discuss amongst yourselves.

8. People, Man, People

It’s easy to get lost in the shiny crazy bits — dragon undertakers and goblin butlers and the culinary traditions of the Autochthonic Worm Lords. It’s easy to be dizzily dazzled by the sheer overwhelming potential fantasy affords. But at the end of the day, fantasy has to be about characters above ideas, above culture, above all the fiddly fantasy bits. Great characters are our vehicle through the fantasy.

9. The Heart’s Bane

Fantasy fiction often seems to be about external conflict — sieges and escaped gods and blasphemous magic and, I dunno, unicorn orgies. But what we connect to in storytelling is the internal conflict. What lies in the heart of a character is what we understand — and, in fact, relate to — most. Yes, the battlefield is a muddy bloody hell-ground of decapitations and magic missiles, but those two forces are clashing based on the motives of characters — characters who feel betrayed or vengeful, who send nations to die to rescue one lost love, who risk it all because of some real or imagined slight decades before. The human heart — even when encased in an ogre king’s chest — drives fantasy fiction.

10. Dolls Nesting In Dolls

Put differently: find the little story in the big story because the little story needs to actually be the big story. Did you follow that? Let me explain: fantasy is often about epic motherfucking stuff. Quest for the magic boomerang! Dragon Parliament is going to war with the Unicorn Tribe of the Northern Blood Red Shadow Death Crescent-Steppe! Evil has awakened from its thousand year nap and now stumbles drunkenly toward our villages — oh by the gods he’s stubbed his toe and now Evil is very very angry. Those are big stories. And they don’t matter. Not without a compelling little story. The story of a boy in love. The story of a fractured family pulling itself together (or further apart). A coming-of-age tale! The tale of redemption and regret! The big stuff is just a trapping — epic shadows cast on the wall, thrown there by firelight.

11. Building A World Where Nobody Lives

Though the stage is essential, theater is not about the stage. All the pieces on it contribute to the action, the blocking. But theater is not about the stage. Theater is about the stories of people, and so too is fantasy. Fantasy is not about the worldbuilding, though it’s tempting to make it so. It’s a tantalizing proposition, to slide down that muddy chute (get your head out of the gutters, and also, out of other people’s mud-chutes, I mean, unless they invited you) and to keep on going — designing forest ecologies and ossuary cities (bone-o-polis!) and the mating dances of the randy tumescent Ettins. And weeks later you’ve forgotten the story. You’ve lost the characters (if you ever had them). Worldbuilding supports story, but is not itself the story. Worldbuilding is just the stage. It demands attention. But not all of it.

12. The Seduction Of Detail

Fantasy gives itself over to detail very easily. Exposition. Explanation. It feels like, “Well, the readers have never experienced this world before and so I must paint for them every inch.” You can spend a whole page on describing the pommel of a knight’s mighty sword or the density and temperature of pegasus cloaca, and I’ll admit that there exists an audience for that sort of thing — readers who want to be immersed so fully in a world’s minutiae that it bubbles up into their nose. For my money, if the fantasy is more about those details than it is about the story or the characters within it, I’m done. I’m Audi 5000, son.

13. Free Range Cage-Free Fantasy

Grow your world and its many details organically. Meaning, describe it when you need it. The test is easy: can the audience continue without this information? If the answer is no, describe as simply and clearly as you can manage. If the answer is yes, the move on to the stuff we care about.

14. Reality Versus Authenticity

Fantasy would seem the opposite of reality as in, “My reality does not feature merfolk flea markets or werewolves having sex-wars with vampires, and this book has those things aplenty.” And yet, each tale of fantasy must have its own reality and the way you accomplish this is by embracing authenticity. Authenticity makes everything feel real, even when it most certainly is not. Authenticity comes from consistency and confidence in your writing. (Logic and common sense don’t hurt, either.) Authenticity is a nice glass of warm milk that puts any reader’s disbelief down for a long, comfortable nap.

15. This Thing’s Got Rules, You See

Part of that consistency I’m talking about is maintaining a level of consistency in the rules of your fantasy worlds. Your sex-dragons and sentient blimp-creatures don’t need to act like my sex-dragons and sentient blimp-creatures, but they do need to act in a way we find consistent and believable. Discover the rules of your magic systems. Find out what the zombie magus can and cannot do. What happens if a werewolf tries to make a baby with a mummy? Hell, that’s a good question for all of us to answer whether we’re writing fantasy or not. I don’t want to be sandbagged by some squalling wolf-mummy. Fuck that, man.

16. The School Of Cool Has Been Shut Down For Serving Re-Heated Poop Mash To Students And Is Pending Investigation Thanks For Your Patience

Don’t put something in your story just because it’s cool. Won’t work. It’ll feel like a third nipple just sitting there, squirting scalding hell-milk in your eye. Elements of fantasy should be cool and work in the greater context of character, setting, theme, whatever. “DUDE SO AWESOME” is not a justification for inclusion.

17. Gone Off The Reservation

Yes, I’m exhorting you to go big, go weird, or go home. But you can go too weird. You can conjure an insurmountable distance between your world and the audience by being too abstract, for embracing weird just for the sake of it. Byzantine abstractions are fascinating, but they don’t do well in protracted storytelling unless you can somehow help the audience relate to it. We need to find our story in your story. If we can find no recognizable landmarks, if we can find no familiar paths — even murky ones — we won’t connect with your story. The weirder you go the harder you must strive to connect with us.

18. The Chosen One Is Done, Son, Unless He Got Buns, Hon

Personal opinion: the chosen one is over. Kaput. *poop noise* Jesus, King Arthur, Paul Atreides, Rand al’Thor, Spongebob Squarepants, whatever. Fuck the prophecy. It’s over! It’s a puerile convention in a genre that’s matured well beyond the need for such over-common trappings. Anytime I read, “He’s the one person who can save the kingdom / defeat the monstrous monster-thing / wield the magic sword known as Lion-Tickler,” I just roll my eyes and gently close the book. I no longer buy it. It’s lazy. Do better. (Oh, unless you’re subverting that meme. Then you get a fist bump. And a genital bump, if you’re into it. *eyebrow waggle* Oh, hey okay, since you’re getting out the Taser, maybe not.)

19. If Your Character’s Name Has More Than Six Apostrophes I Will Choke You

If your character’s name has a bunch of consonants jammed together, I will slap your face. If I need a ten-page pronunciation guide to sound out your hero’s name, I will kung-fu your soul. If you’re desperate to make your character names sound “exotic” and “weird” without any cultural underpinnings or consistency, I will clone you and make you fight yourself in a McDonald’s ball pit. If all your fantasy names sound the same (Galen Galorn Galendal Galendel Galendole Gaileen Crystal Gayle GALEYGALEGOOBYGALE) I will pull out your heart, stuff it with acorns, and leave it for the squirrels.

20. This Way To The Great Egress Ha Ha It’s Actually An Owlbear Lair You Fool

One of the things I really like about fantasy is that it pretends to be escapism. Even the word fantasy suggests an imagined escape. But fantasy can — and perhaps should — be used to explore some really deep, really profound stuff. By stripping away the faculties of real life you crack open bone and open up the marrow. No topic is too weighty for fantasy — life, love, death, marriage, social norms, violence, politics, government, commerce, sex — and yet fantasy is a honeypot, luring you in with promises of a trouble-free escape. That is, in the truest sense of the word, fantastic. (See what I did there?)

21. Maybe You Don’t Need To Write A Ten-Book Epic Cycle

You will not get your giant epic fantasy series (with accompanying 1000-page mythic dictionary) published if you’re a new writer. Some authors can get away with this. Most can’t. Before I tackle any big fantasy series, I wait until it’s all finished. Because suddenly the author starts taking five year breaks between books and then gets hit by a bus before Book Eight and suddenly I’m up poop river without hip-waders.”But now I’ll never find out what becomes of Lady Braidly Manabozho of the Shadowdark Hegemony! Will she be forced to marry Lord Krommng’kar? Will she accept her destiny as one of the Sandmurai and join the Magenta Falconer’s Guild?” Maybe calm down. Start smaller.

22. Read Broadly Lest Ye Regurgitate A Thin Slurry

Don’t read only fantasy. Read histories and mysteries. Read biographies and mythologies, thrillers and chillers. Reading only in your genre ensures you regurgitate your genre.

23. Fuck Tolkien

Tolkien deserves kudos. High-five to him. And now we’re done. Stop emulating him. No more elves and orcs and dwarves. No more slavish D&D devotion. Fantasy isn’t beholden to this dude. Nobody’s forcing you to trample the same grass over and over again. He is not the only example (and fantasy needs few examples, anyway). As a sidenote, “fuck Tolkien” sounds like “fuck token,” which I think is how one properly accesses an orgy. “Ahm, yes, I’m here for the unicorn orgy.” “Do you have your fuck token?” “I seem to have… lost it.” “Then get lost, pervo.” “But I have this copy of the Silmarillion.” “I said get lost.”

24. Also: No More Hot-Pants Vampires

I like vampires. I do. And I like tight leather pants. Hell, you put a vampire into some tight leather pants and give her a katana, I’m good to go. But, urban fantasy — it’s time. It’s time to back away from the beleathered bloodsuckers and sexy vampire hunters and their hirsute lycanthrope lovers. All the romance and the vampire clans and swords and the two pistols and the sexy tattoos and — I mean, we’re done here, right? Is there nowhere else to go? Can’t you at least file off some serial numbers?

25. Write Down Your Dreams

We dream at night unfettered. Our minds unmoored from the known, lifting and drifting into the unknown. Anything is possible in our dreams. That’s why our dreams are so powerful — we feel something strong upon waking even as the dream breaks apart in our hands like a crust of beach sand. It’s why I encourage writers to write down their dreams if they found them so affecting, and it’s now why I think our dreams serve as an excellent model for fantasy fiction. The same feel I get when dreaming is the same feel I hope to reach when reading fantasy fiction — the sense of being out of my head, of entering territory that is unknown and so becomes both beautiful and frightening in equal measure. I want to believe that the author is not fixed by the rigors of reality or the reagents of the genre and that here, All Things Are Possible. The power of the fantasy is in its limitlessness to explore human imagination. Stop walking the same paths. Stop feeling trapped. Find the dream. Write what you want to write and let that free your fiction.

Fantasy or otherwise.

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