Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 266

J.C. Hutchins: The Terribleminds Interview

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This week the temporal streams have crossed. Bodies have perhaps been swapped, as if in a comedy starring Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron, or starring Lindsay Lohan and an incontinent horse. At the fore of this week, Mister J.C. "Hutch Snugglepants McGee" Hutchins interviewed me at his podcast (come and bathe in the soothing dulcet sounds of my weird voice), and in the same fell swoop turned in his answers for an interview here at Jolly Ol' Terribleminds. If you don't know Hutch, well, shame on you — podcaster, novelist, and above all else, consummate storyteller. I read a script of his and it knocked me on my ass. Here, then, is his interview. You can find his website here at jchutchins.net and you should, of course, follow his ass on the Twittertubes (@jchutchins). Remember: Momma gets a what-what.

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.

Back in the 1990s, I used to freelance for Wizard, a now-defunct print magazine that covered the comic book industry. I had the great fortune to interview some of my favorite comic writers — undisputed greats such as Will Eisner, Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis.

My favorite, and most memorable, interview was with writer Alan Moore. We talked about his new endeavor at the time, America's Best Comics … and about his incredible legacy as a creator: Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, Watchmen. I probably gushed a bit about my favorite Superman comic story, which he wrote: "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"

And then I asked him about his life as a practicing magician.

Now when I say "magician," I don't mean card tricks, smoke bombs and top hat rabbits. That's being an illusionist. What I was discussing with Moore was the real deal, the ancient shit — magic magic, the kind you conjure with sorcery and summonings. Moore was an earnest believer, and because I'm a wildly open-minded dude when it comes to this sort of thing because of some peculiar life experiences of my own, I didn't bat an eye at his belief.

My favorite part of the interview was when he recalled a conversation he once had with the an ancient and powerful entity — I think it was the god Mercury. Moore was fully aware of how mad it all sounded, but again, could only share his belief and the authenticity of his personal experience.

It was at this point when I asked him: "How do you know you were talking to the god Mercury?"

"Well, when it looks like a god, and it barks like a god, it's probably a god," he replied.

It was an awesome conversation. I still have the tape somewhere. I remember him having a great voice. Deep and raspy, like he gargled gravel.

So yes. Magic. Spells, communing with gods, awesome. What magic would you possess if you could?

All of the ultra-cool abilities of a Jedi master, but without the midi-chlorians.

What's great about being a writer, and conversely, what sucks about it?

There's plenty to love about being a writer. I reckon my favorite part of it is that a goodly chunk of my heart gets to stay young for, like, forever. I get to play make believe every day. It's nuts: People pay me to pretend for a living. That's a cool, blessed job to have.

It can get lonesome — it's just you and your puny words, desperately trying to do justice to the vision in your head. And it can get scary — as a freelance creator, I sometimes don't know where the next paycheck's coming from. It's intimidating too, as the kind of work I do can be experimental … which means I'm learning on-the-fly, under the gun. And it can be heartbreaking. There's a lot of rejection in this business.

The dreamer side of me — the part that concocts stories and writes them — is an ever-optimist. It's gotta be. I can't create when my heart is stony. I need my heart. I need to fall in love with whatever I'm writing about.

The entrepreneur side of me — the one that worries about hunting, and bills and day rates — it learned long ago the value of managed expectations. I ship, I rewrite if needed, I birddog the check. This side of me insists I'll never be more than what I presently am: a grease-grimed mechanic who's here to fucking work.

This actually delights my inner optimist, because being a grease-grimed wordherder is all I've ever wanted to be.

Let's talk about transmedia — you're both fan and practitioner. Care to define what it is in your own words?

Sure. "Transmedia" is an emerging, and usually technology-fueled, way to tell stories. Transmedia narratives are designed to unfold in multiple storytelling media, often simultaneously.

Think of a physical newspaper. You read a front page story and experience its nonfiction narrative in many ways: Through the high concept headline, the body text, the photos and cutlines, a colorful infographic or two. Even the "Continued on Page A3" jump prompt states there's more to consume if you expend the effort to find it … as does the boldfaced call to action to visit the newspaper's website for "breaking news updates" on this story, including audio recordings and more in-depth reporting.

Each medium here tells its part of the story in ways that best plays to its strengths. Complex expositions are best-left to text … but text can never capture a moment as exquisitely as a photograph. But photographs can't deliver the arresting immediacy of video or audio. And none of these media can rival experiencing the story first-hand, in the field.

That kind of packaged newspaper story is an ultra-simplistic example of what I consider transmedia: A cohesive narrative deliberately designed to be experienced through multiple media and multiple channels.

Now imagine building fictional narratives with this paradigm in mind: multiple media delivered through multiple channels — including live events that support the fictional conceit (in which your audience become participants) — all serving a common story. When you bake this compelling opportunity into the DNA of the stories you're telling, things get very interesting and cool very quickly.

I've got a whole chunk of my brain presently dedicated to developing ways to apply this ecumenical approach to expanding not just the storytelling methods within a narrative … but the kinds of transmedia narratives one can create within a larger storyworld.

I believe that a fictional universe need not cater to a single genre or demographic. I'm working on developing transmedia intellectual properties that can accommodate all genres and demographics — from hard SF for teenagers to rom-coms for Baby Boomers. It's very ambitious, but absolutely possible.

What's the power of transmedia? And what are its perils?

To be clear: There will always be stories best-told through a single medium. Folks need not worry about their novels or movies going away. But I believe transmedia narratives will crack open storytelling in new ways that we'll be exploring and experiencing for decades.

We're already at a point where storytellers can economically craft narratives in which their characters can receive and send emails and phone messages from real people (aka consumers), post video blog "confessionals" or handheld location shots, and leave behind "evidence" in real life locations that can be documented and shared online by audience members. What I just mentioned is kindergarten, low-cost stuff … but is widely considered revolutionary by average consumers who are accustomed to passively consuming broadcast-style entertainment.

The true and disruptive potential of transmedia storytelling is that nearly everything around us — your phone, a billboard, a mailed letter, a t-shirt, a tweet — can be used to contribute to a cohesive narrative. Your narrative. That'll blow your mind if you let it. And you should let it, because storytellers need to be thinking about this stuff.

The perils are as numerous as its promises. When you start adding additional media or channels to tell your story, you start adding time, effort and risk to the project. You also add expense, which can sharply decrease your number of achievable cross-media / cross-channel storytelling opportunities. I reckon this is why the most famous transmedia stories — such as the brilliant Alternate Reality Game Why So Serious? – are funded by mainstream entertainment entities as promotional vehicles for films, video games and TV shows. These stories have many moving parts. You gotta cough up cash for those parts, and for mechanics like me to make them go.

I also fear that transmedia storytelling will be forever linked to these event-like promotions, and won't be find wider creator and audience acceptance. We're getting there. There've been several downright genius indie transmedia experiences … and mainstream entertainment and video game studios are savvily exploring transmedia's potential. But I reckon that until we're on the cover of Newsweek, we'll still be underground Morlocks in the eyes of mainstream consumers.

Don't get me wrong, I kinda like being a Morlock. But I also want these stories to break out in wildly successful ways.

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

Cheerful. Cocksucker.

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

I'm not much of a boozer, but I consume astounding quantities of Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi. Oh Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi, I'd do anything for you.

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

I won't be recommending anything you or your brilliant peeps haven't already consumed, but sometimes it's nice to revisit a story to study the thing, and marvel at its execution. When I think about great taletelling, my mind zips immediately to:

Books: Scalzi's Old Man's War … King's The Stand, Pet Sematary and Bag of Bones … Deaver's The Coffin Dancer … Vinge's A Deepness In the Sky … Melzer's The First Daughter. All masterpieces, on their own terms.

Comics: Thompson's Blankets … much of Morrison's run on JLA … Waid's run on The Flash … Johns' early-to-mid Flash stuff … Gaiman's Sandman … Ennis' Preacher … Woods' DMZ … and nearly everything Ellis writes.

Movies: Back to the Future, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Robocop, Aliens, Star Wars. Everything I learned about writing airtight plots, high-stakes conflicts and memorable characters came from studying these flicks.

Games: I loved the nontraditional, but very moving, storytelling in Ico and Portal, and how game company Valve brilliantly incorporated a more traditional narrative into Portal 2.

I've enjoyed the Mass Effect series' branching narrative and superbly realized storyworld. L.A. Noire's nuanced gameplay, and how that affects the unfolding story, is awfully cool.

Whenever I want inspiration for a great piss-and-vinegar, kill-em-all-deader-than-dead revenge story, I play some God of War III. I get to be a god slayer. How badass is that?

I've watched you recently get into video games (Uncharted, God of War, Portal 2). What's the trick to good storytelling in games?

Earlier this year, I bought a PlayStation 3 to replace an unreliable shitheap Samsung Blu-Ray player. On a lark, I fired up the complimentary game that came with the console — Killzone 3 — and within minutes, was literally getting weepy. I was absolutely humbled by the spectacle, and the quality of writing, music, sound effects and visuals.

I sucked at the game — it had been 10 years since I'd gamed — but I immediately saw video games as the legitimate storytelling frontier it in fact is. I made a decision right there, within 10 minutes of firing up that PS3, to do whatever I needed to do so's I could write video games someday.

That means gaming my ass off, which is what I've been doing ever since.

Games are a unique breed of storytelling. But they're still stories, so many of the "must-haves" in other media must be represented in games: interesting characters and conflicts, larger machinations that are revealed over the course of the narrative, a theme and emotional anchor driving the story, foreshadowing and payoff … that stuff.

The popular theory seems to be that video game players are there to play, not watch a movie. Savvy developers are catering to this. Games like Gears of War 3 have nailed a successful formula — brief cutscenes, with exposition delivered through gameplay dialogue. (As opposed to all exposition being delivered via cutscenes.) I read somewhere that the longest cutscene in Gears of War 3 was 40-odd seconds. The rest of the narrative was smartly delivered as the player explored the world.

Personally, I love cutscenes. I don't mind relinquishing control of the experience so long as my recent hard-fought victory (against a level boss, for instance) is rewarded with an appropriately cool plot twist or an emotionally resonant character arc.

To me, that's what games are: fun problem-solving experiences. The best game narratives understand that effort / reward dynamic, and effectively amp up your investment of effort as the game progresses … and rewards that effort with an equally amped-up story and stakes. I like my video game narratives to be jaw-dropping epics — but it's the emotional growth of the character (and needing to know what happens next) that keeps me coming back.

That's just like any other well-told story.

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

My horrified screams of mercy — and then my howls of suffering as the undead shred open my stomach and feast on my intestines (and I'll still be conscious through the whole thing, watching them feast, silently marveling, "How did all of that fit inside my body, oh my god, sausage, it looks like long ropes of sausage") — will undoubtedly inspire others to learn how to properly load a firearm.

You've committed crimes against humanity. They caught you. You get one last meal.

Angelina Jolie.

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

I'm collaborating with marketing agency Campfire on a few groundbreaking marketing campaigns. One is for a TV miniseries based on a bestselling horror novel; the other is for a multi-console video game. These are a lot of fun because I get to help expand the storyworlds of those universes and use my writing and research skills in many different ways. One of those campaigns will go live later this year.

I'm also the lead writer on a new tabletop miniatures game currently in development. That's a ton of fun because I get to do some serious worldbuilding. I've also got an ownership stake in that game, so I'm personally invested in its success — which always helps bring focus and one's best work to a project. That'll be out next year.

I'm also on the prowl for video game writing opportunities. I'll continue to pursue that in earnest in 2012.

As for my personal work, I'll release two novels, a short story anthology and probably a novella into several ebook marketplaces by year's end. There's also a mile-long list of stories and screenplays to write. It's never a dull moment around here. Inside my noggin, I mean.

Got any writing or storytelling advice for folks?

Humans are capable of making all kinds of cool stuff, but we can't make more time. Tick-tock, we can't get it back. Past tense, man. Gone baby, gone — forever.

How much of that gone-baby-gone time have you spent talking about writing, and not actually writing? How many hours, days, weeks, months, years — sweet Jesus, decades — have you spent telling others about all the stories you'll someday write? That novel. That comic book. That screenplay. Memoir. Whatever.

You'll never get that time back. Ever. That's time you could have spent living your dreams by writing your stories. Your lip-flapping is actively sabotaging your chances of achieving your dreams. Shame on you. You've talked enough.

That's my advice. You're either a writer or you aren't. Writers write. So write.

Let Us Speak Of Horror Novels

I love me some horror.

But I gotta be honest: I haven't read much great horror recently. In part because it's harder to find — like I mentioned yesterday, you don't see it with its own section anymore.

I want to read some kick-ass horror again.

So, recommend a horror book. Or, if you prefer, the oeuvre of an entire horror author. (I for one will, any day of the week, recommend the horror stylings of Robert McCammon. Uh, SWAN SONG, anyone?)

Here's the key, though. I don't want to hear only the recommendation. I want to know why. I want to know why it's scary and, beyond that, why it works for you as a great story. Let's crack this nut a little wider. What makes for effective horror fiction? Talk about it. Open up your Hellmouth and belch out some diabolical troofs.

And if you don't read horror: why not?

Get to it, little monsters.

25 Things You Should Know About Writing Horror

I grew up on horror fiction. Used to eat it up with a spoon. These days, not so much, but only I suspect because the horror releases just aren't coming as fast and furious as they once did.

But really, the novels I have coming out so far are all, in their own way, horror novels. DOUBLE DEAD takes place in a zombie-fucked America with its protagonist being a genuinely monstrous vampire. BLACKBIRDS and MOCKINGBIRD feature a girl who can touch you and see how and when you're going to die and then presents her with very few ways to do anything about it. Both are occasionally grisly and each puts to task a certain existential fear that horror does particularly well, asking who the hell are we, exactly?

And so it feels like a good time — with Halloween approaching, with DOUBLE DEAD in November and me writing MOCKINGBIRD at present — to visit the subject of writing horror.

None of this is meant to be hard and firm in terms of providing answers and advice. These are the things I think about writing horror. Good or bad. Right or wrong.

Peruse it. Add your own thoughts to the horror heap. And as always, enjoy.

1. At The Heart Of Every Tale, A Squirming Knot Of Worms

Every story is, in its tiny way, a horror story. Horror is about fear and tragedy, and whether or not one is capable of overcoming those things. It's not all about severed heads or blood-glutton vampires. It's an existential thing, a tragic thing, and somewhere in every story this dark heart beats. You feel horror when John McClane sees he's got to cross over a floor of broken glass in his bare feet. We feel the fear of Harry and Sally, a fear that they're going to ruin what they have by getting too close or by not getting too close, a fear that's multiplied by knowing you're growing older and have nobody to love you. In the Snooki book, we experience revulsion as we see Snooki bed countless bodybuilders and gym-sluts, her alien syphilis fast degrading their bodies until soon she can use their marrowless bones as straws with which to slurp up her latest Windex-colored drink. *insert Hannibal Lecter noise here*

2. Sing The Ululating Goat Song

Horror is best when it's about tragedy in its truest and most theatrical form: tragedy is born through character flaws, through bad choices, through grave missteps. When the girl in the horror movie goes to investigate the creepy noise rather than turn and flee like a motherfucker, that's a micro-moment of tragedy. We know that's a bad goddamn decision and yet she does it. It is her downfall — possibly literally, as the slasher tosses her down an elevator shaft where she's then impaled on a bunch of fixed spear-points or something. Sidenote: the original translation of tragedy is "goat song." So, whenever you're writing horror, just say, "I'M WRITING ANOTHER GOAT SONG, MOTHER." And the person will be like, "I'm not your mother. It's me, Steve." And you just bleat and scream.

3. Horror's Been In Our Heart For A Long Time

From Beowulf to Nathaniel Hawthorne, from Greek myth to Horace Walpole, horror's been around for a long, long time. Everything's all crushed bodies and extracted tongues and doom and devils and demi-gods. This is our literary legacy: the flower-bed of our fiction is seeded with these kernels of horror and watered with gallons of blood and a sprinkling of tears. Horror is part of our narrative make-up.

4. Look To Ghost Stories And Urban Legends

You want to see the simplest heart of horror, you could do worse than by dissecting ghost stories and urban legends: two types of tale we tell even as young deviants and miscreants. They contain many of the elements that make horror what it is: subversion, admonition, fear of the unknown.

5. We're All Afraid Of The Dark

We fear the unknown because we fear the dark. We fear the dark because we're biologically programmed to do so: at some point we gain the awareness that outside the light of our fire lurks — well, who fucking knows? Sabretooth tigers. Serial killers. The Octomom. Horror often operates best when it plays off this core notion that the unknown is a far freakier quantity than the known. The more we know the less frightening it becomes. Lovecraft is like a really advanced version of this. Our sanity is the firelight, and beyond it lurks not sabretooth tigers but a whole giant squirming seething pantheon of madness whose very existence is too much for mortal man's mind to parse.

6. Plain Stakes, Stabbed Hard Through Breastbone

On the other hand, creating horror is easier and more effective when the stakes are so plain they're on the table for all to see. We must know what can be gained — and, more importantly, what can be lost — for horror to work. Fear is built off of understanding consequences. We can be afraid of the unknown of the dark, but horror works best when we know that the dark is worth fearing.

7. Dread And Revulsion In An Endless Tango

Beneath plot and beneath story is a greasy, grimy subtextual layer of pacing — the tension and recoil of dread and revulsion. Dread is a kind of septic fear, a grim certainty that bad things are coming. Revulsion occurs when we see how these bad things unfold. We know that the monster is coming, and at some point we must see the wretchedness of the beast laid bare. Dread, revulsion, dread, revulsion.

8. Stab The Gut, Spear The Heart, Sever The Head

Horror works on three levels: mind, heart, gut. Our mind reels at trying to dissect horror, and good horror asks troubling questions. Our heart feels a surge of emotion: terror and fear and suspense, all felt deep in the ventricles, like a wedge of rancid fat clogging our aorta. Our gut feels all the leftover, baser emotions: the bowel-churn, the stomach-turn, the saline rush of icy sepsis as if our intestinal contents have turned to some kind of wretched fecal slushie. Which, for the record, is the name of my new Satanic Ska band.

9. The Squick Factor

Something my father used to do: he'd walk up, hands cupped and closed so as to hide something, and then he'd tell me to open my hands, the goal being that he would dump whatever he was hiding into my palm. Could be anything. Cicada skin. A frog or frog's egg. The still-beating heart of a unicorn. The point was always the same: for me to find delight in being grossed out. Horror still plays on this. And why shouldn't it? It's both primal and fun. Sidenote: we should do a new gross-out reality show called The Squick Factor. Hollywood, call me. You know my number from the last time we made love under the overpass.

10. That Said, You Do Not Actually Require Buckets Of Overflowing Viscera

The Squick Factor is not actually a prerequisite for good horror. Some of the best and most insidious horror is devoid of any grossness at all: a great ghost story, for instance, is often without any blood-and-guts.

11. Characters You Love Making Choices You Hate

Suspense and tension are key components to the horror-making process. I've long thought that the best way to create these things is to have characters you love making choices you hate. When you see a beloved character about to step toward the closet where the unseen serial killer is hiding, your sphincter tightens so hard it could break someone's finger. We recoil at mistakes made by loved ones, and this is doubly true when these mistakes put their lives, souls and sanities in danger.

12. Horror And Humor Are Gym Buddies

Horror and humor, hanging out at the gym, snapping each other's asses with wet towels. Horror and humor both work to stimulate that same place in our gutty-works, a place that defies explanation. Sometimes you don't know why you think this thing is funny or that thing is scary. They just are. It's why it's hard to explain a horror story or a joke: you can't explain it, you can only tell it. And both are told similarly: both have a set up, ask a question, and respond with a punch line or a twist. It's just, they go in separate directions — one aims for amusement, the other for anxiety. But the reason you can find these two working sometimes in tandem is because they're ultimately kissing cousins.

13. Sex And Death Also Play Well Together

Two more kissing cousins: sex and death. Shakespeare didn't call the orgasm the "little death" for nothing. (I, on the other hand, refer to it as "The Donkey's Pinata.") Both are taboo subjects, both kept to the dark — and, as we know, horror lives in the dark, too. We all fear death and so sex — procreative and seductive — feels like an antidote to that, but then you also have the baggage where OMG SEX KILLS, whether it's via a venereal disease or as part of the unwritten rules contained within a slasher film. In this way, in horror, sex and death are the Ouroboros, the snake biting its own tail. Or maybe the double-dildo biting its own tail?

14. Car Crashes And Two Girls With One Cup

If you want to understand horror you have to understand the impulse that drives us to click on a video that everybody tells us we don't want to see, or the urge to slow down at car crashes and gawk at blood on the highway. That urge is part of what informs our need to write and read horror fiction. It's a baser impulse, but an important one. We deny it, but you ask me, it's universal.

15. The Real Horror Story Is What's Happening To The Horror Genre

Horror's once again a difficult genre. It had a heyday in the 80s and 90s, evidenced by the fact it had its very own shelf at most bookstores. That's no longer the case at Barnes & Noble, and Borders broke its leg in the woods and was eaten by hungry possums. I've heard that some self-published authors have pulled away from marketing their books as horror because they sell better when labeled as other genres.

16. Ripe For Resurgence?

That said, I wonder if it's not time for horror to rise again, a gore-caked phoenix screaming like a mad motherfucker. The times we live in often dictate the type of entertainment we seek — and we're starting to slide once more into a very dark and scary corner of American life. Horror may serve as a reflection of that, equal parts escapist and exploratory — maybe it's time again to let monsters be monsters, giving a fictional face to the fiends we see all around us. Then again, maybe shit's just too fucked up. Who can say? It's worth a shot, though. I submit that it's a good time to try writing horror.

17. Horror Writers Tend To Be Very Nice

I don't know what it is, but goddamn if horror writers aren't some of the nicest writers on the planet. I think it's because their fiction is like constantly lancing a boil: the poison is purged, and all that's left is smiles.

18. Horror Needs Hope

Good is known by its proximity to evil. You don't know what a great burger tastes like until you've eaten a shitty one. You can't know great sex from awful sex until you'd experienced both (pro-tip: the great sex is the one where you don't cry after and eat a whole container of cake frosting). And so it is that for horror to be horrific, it must also have hope. Unceasing and unflinching horror ceases to actually be horrific until we have its opposite present: that doesn't mean that hope needs to win out. Horror always asks that question of which will win the day: the eyes of hope or the jaws of hell?

19. Lessons Learned

Horror stories can serve as modern day fables. It works to convey messages and lessons, rules about truth and consequence. If you're looking to say something, really say something, you've worse ways of doing so than by going down the horror fiction route. Great example of this is the underrated DRAG ME TO HELL, by Sam Raimi: a grim parable about our present economic recession.

20. The Stick Of A Short Sharp Needle

Sometimes, horror needs to be really fucked up. It just can't do what it needs to do unless it's going to cut out one of your kidneys, bend you over a nightstand, and shove the kidney back up inside your nether-burrow. Horror all but demands you don't pull your punches, but that kind of unceasing assault on one's own senses and sanity cannot be easily sustained for a novel-length or film-length project. Hence: short fiction and short films do well to deliver the sharp shock that horror may require.

21. We Need New Monsters

The old monsters — vampires, zombies, ghosts, werewolves — have their place. They mean something. But they may also be monsters for another time. Never be afraid to find new monsters. Horror in this way is a pit without a bottom: you will always discover new creatures writhing in the depths, reflecting the time in which they are born. Just go to a Juggalo convocation or a Tea Party gathering. You'll see.

22. Never Tell The Audience They Should Be Scared

Show, Don't Tell is a critical rule in all of storytelling, so critical that you should probably have it tattooed on your forehead backward so that every time you look in the mirror, there it is. But in horror it's doubly important not to convey the fear that the audience is ideally supposed to feel. You can't tell someone to be scared. You just have to shove the reader outside the firelight and hope that what you've hidden there in the shadows does the trick. You can lead a horse to horror, but you can't make him piss his horsey diapers when something leaps out out of the depths to bite his face and plant eggs in the nose-holes.

23. Break Your Flashlight

You write horror, you're trying to shine a light in dark corners. Key word there is "trying" — the flashlight needs to be broken. A light too bright will burn the fear away — the beam must waver, the batteries half-dead, the bulb on the verge of popping like a glass blister. It's like, what the light finds is so unpleasant, you can't look at it for too long. Look too long it'll burn out your sanity sensors. In this way, horror isn't always concerned with the why or the how — but it is most certainly concerned with the what.

24. Horror Still Needs All The Things That Makes Stories Great

You can't just jam some scary shit into a book and be like, "Boom, done, game over." Slow down, slick. Come back to the story. You still need all the things that make a story great. Horror — really, any genre — ain't shit unless you can commit to the page a story filled with great characters, compelling ideas, strong writing, and a sensible plot. Don't just dump a bucket of blood on our heads and expect us to slurp it up.

25. Horror Is Personal

Horror needs to work on you, the author. You need to be troubled, a little unsettled, by your own material. Write about what scares you. Doesn't matter what it is or how absurd — hell, some people think that being terrified of clowns is ridiculous, until you realize how many people find clowns spooky as fuck. Dig deep into your own dark places. Tear off the manhole cover and stare down into the unanswered abyss. Speak to your own experiences, your own fears and frights. Shake up your anxieties and let them tumble onto the page. Because horror works best when horror is honest. The audience will feel that. The truth you bring to the genre will resonate, an eerie and unsettling echo that turns the mind upon itself.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

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

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

This Recipe Will Autumn Your Fucking Face Off

It's time for another NSFW recipe.

This time: sausage, apples and pasta in brown butter sauce.

It's delicious.

I mean, it'll fucking kill you. You'll eat this and a great big cholesterol-laden ball will lodge in your heart and you'll seize up but fuck it, you'll gurgle and coo happily while perishing.

Ready?

OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND YOUR MIND.

Here, then, is what you're going to do.

Soften a sweet onion. You do not soften an onion with kind words. You do not use Rohypnol. You dice that sumbitch and put it in a hot pan with oil and salt, then lower the heat, cook it down for five to eight minutes. Maybe splash a little water in there if you need further softening. Wilt the onions like a sad erection.

Then: get some ground country sausage. Crumble that shit up in a pan. Use your hands. Don't be afraid of germs. Raw meat is good for you. (Disclaimer: raw meat probably isn't good for you.)

Let it get to sizzling. Inhale the fat vapors. Experience a vision quest where you fight a pig-headed god for physical supremacy, and then you cut him open and bacon rains down upon you, crispy and wonderful.

Put a little salt and pepper on there. Sprinkle plenty.

As it browns, set a big ol' pot of water to boiling for pasta.

Also: chop up two portabello caps.

Grate one carrot. Really fine-like. So much so that the carrot now looks like little piles of bright orange dirt.

Dice up two apples. Two good tart apples that holds up to cooking. Choose an apple with some balls. I like Jonathan apples. Though, Jonathan is not a name that sounds like it has balls, so instead I call these apples "Wolf-Fang Chainsaw" apples. That gets across the sentiment I'm looking for.

Once the sausage is browned, get your veggies into the mix. Stir, stir, stir. Do I need to tell you that? I maybe do. I see you over there. Wearing your pants on your head. Sucking on a dirty shoelace. Weirdo.

Final piece of this: toss in two tablespoons of cider vinegar. Acid is your friend.

Now, pasta into the water.

What kind of pasta? JESUS YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING FOR YOURSELF CAN YOU. Okay. Okay. I'm calm. I don't care what kind of pasta you use as long as it's the kind with some texture, some nooks and crannies and spiral-twirls so it can hold the sauce. You use straight spaghetti or something and I'm going to come over there and burn your eyes shut with a fistful of searing hot sweet onions. Don't make me.

Cook the [INSERT PASTA CHOICE HERE] for as long as it demands, but cook it to al dente, right? You don't want to go all the way with the pasta. You want to go up under the shirt and stop there.

Reason being, you're going to want to cook the rest of it in the sauce.

"What sauce?" you ask.

To which I reply — well, I don't reply. Instead I take a palm full of cracked black pepper and blow it into your face in order to punish you for your crass impatience. It burns. I know it does.

Go get a tissue. Blow your nose. I'll wait.

Okay. Sauce.

Six to eight tablespoons of unsalted butter in a hot skillet.

Sprinkle salt over it.

Let it foam up and melt.

Lower heat to med-low, then let that cook while the pasta cooks. Maybe six minutes later, it should be looking brown and smelling nutty, and here you're thinking, "Chuck's going to make a poop joke now, right?" but I'm not. I'm really not. This sauce is too good for that. Too. Good. For. That.

Now, take 2 TBsp of creme fraiche — or sour cream, or heavy cream, whatever you have that's creamy (put your pants back on) — and stir it into the brown butter. Mix it up. Toss in some sage and other herbs. I don't care what herbs. Herbs de Provence are nice. But get a little rosemary and thyme at least.

Pasta goes into the sauce.

Let it cook in the sauce for another two or three minutes.

Plate the pasta.

Top with the sausage mixture.

Top that with a few crumbled walnuts.

Top that with a little song-and-dance.

Shove into your mouth.

Die happy.

Flash Fiction Challenge: "Brand New Monster"

If you missed it, last week's brand new worldbuilding challenge — "Blackbloom" — is still going strong at 100+ entries. Come, define a new world. I'll pick the best of the bunch on the last Friday of this month (and all worldbuilding challenges will fall to the last Friday of every month).

It's October.

Time of pumpkins, devils, and the flesh of the innocent stitched into a double-breasted tuxedo.

It's a month of horror.

And so I feel like the first flash challenge (and maybe all of 'em, who knows) should focus on horror. Right? Right. Or, at least, monsters. Here, then, is your task: I want to see a brand new monster. Something you've never seen before. Not a vampire. Fuck the zombies. No werewolves or ghouls or ghosts or demons or witches or Snookis. I want you to the best of your ability write a story featuring a Brand New Monster of your own creation.

Doesn't actually have to be a horror story. Monsters can feature in all manner of story, after all.

Maybe the story is from the perspective of the victims. Maybe it's from the POV of the monster.

I trust you to handle it with aplomb and awesomeness.

You have 1000 words or less.

You should complete your fiction by next Friday, October 14th, at noon EST.

I'll pick a random participant to receive –

Well, I don't really know what you'll receive.

It'll be a surprise to you. And to me, apparently.

Go forth, Doctor Penmonkeystein.

Conjure a new creature for us all to gaze upon.

In wonderment.

And in horror.

Joelle Charbonneau: The Terribleminds Interview

Joelle Charbonneau is one of the nicest and hardest working authors I know. She kicks ten kinds of ass. We share an agent — the uber-super-ultra-agent, Stacia Decker — but the sad thing is, without that connection I might not have read Joelle's delightful debut, SKATING AROUND THE LAW. Which would be an epic mistake on my part because it was a blast — and, for a bit of meaningless trivia, the first e-book I ever read (tied with Hilary Davidson's also-excellent THE DAMAGE DONE, both of which I read at the same time). Anyway — you can find Joelle's website here, and follow her on Twitter @jcharbonneau.

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.

Why do you tell stories?  Because I always wanted to be a superhero and couldn't fly.  Okay – maybe that is taking it a little too far, but I have always wanted to do and be more than can be crammed into one lifetime.  Telling stories is a great way to walk in a really cool pair of shoes for a while.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Cut the boring stuff.

Of course, to do that you have to be willing to admit that some of what you have written is boring.  Everyone has their longwinded, boring, pacing stopping moments.  A writer has to take a step back and be willing to say that something they've written is crap.  That's the only way you can make a story shine.

What's great about being a writer, and conversely, what sucks about it?

The whole superhero thing is the great part about being a writer.  There are endless possibilities and as a writer I am able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and create sex-driven grandfathers and camels who wear hats without ever leaving the confines of my living room.  Of course, that being said there are things that totally suck.  The whole mentality of 'if you build it they will come' is total crap.  Just because you write something doesn't mean anyone will ever read it.  It doesn't matter how great your writing is, just because it is sitting on the shelf in a bookstore doesn't guarantee that a person will plunk down cold hard cash for the opportunity to visit your imagination.  Promotion is part of the writing business.  It takes away from the time you would rather spend writing and the worst part is that a writer never really knows what PR actually leads to sales.  You just have to keep throwing things against a wall and hoping something will stick.  And even then….  Yeah – it sucks.

You did it, you triggered the alarm by mentioning the word "superhero." That means it's time for that tried-and-true question: if you were a superhero, what would your powers be?

My first instinct is to say that I would fly, but that is a totally lame super power unless it comes package with super strength or something equally useful.  I mean, flying is great for a personal hobby, but what good are you to someone who falls off of a building or to a plane that loses an engine.  If you try to catch the person or help the plane you end up dead.  Dead is bad.  So, I'm scratching flying off the list.  Since the wave of the future is computers, I plan on being Data-girl – someone whose mind can meld with and manipulate computers without a single touch of a key.  I'm taking over the Matrix baby!

Follow-up: if you had the chance to write the stories of one superhero, which superhero would that be?

Firestar – I grew up an X-Men fan.  Firestar was always willing to torch some guy's ass for justice, but no one ever bothered to really deep dive into her character.  Maybe they just thought it was enough that she was a redhead and hot, but I think she got the short end of the stick.

Skating Around The Law and Skating Over The Line are your two mysteries featuring Rebecca Robbins, rink-owner and amateur detective. Can you talk about constructing those books. In particular: how do you engineer a great mystery for an audience?

I think a great mystery needs to have fast pacing, a fun puzzle and most of all it needs to play fair with the reader.  If the main detective (amateur or otherwise) knows something about the case then the reader needs to know it, too.  Which in my mind means that the reader has to have the puzzle pieces in front of them to solve the crime – especially if you are writing in first person.  Pointing the finger at a bad guy the reader has barely met or never had any real information on is cheating.  As a reader, there is nothing I hate more than investing my time in a book where the ending feels forced or comes out of left field.  Surprise is good, but the reader needs to be able to go back through the book and find the sprinkling of clues that in hindsight points them in the right direction.  If those clues aren't there, the mystery often falls flat.

The Rebecca Robbins mysteries are both mystery and character driven.  I want readers to be equally invested in both.  Each book has a stand alone mystery that should engage and entertain the reader, which means you don't have to start at the beginning of the series.  A reader can jump right into any book without feeling like they are playing catch up.  However, it is my hope that I've constructed the storylines to allow the characters to grow from book to book and that the readers will come back for those characters as much as they come back for the mysteries.

A lot of your characters are quirky and endearing. You write them well and so it forces me to ask, what's the secret in writing great characters?

Wow.  Thanks.  Now I feel the need to say something profound and earthshaking about characters.  One moment while I get a paper bag to stop my hyperventilation.

Ok – the bag worked so here goes.  I think the best characters are at the core people we can identify with.  If you start out with the intention to write a wacky, eccentric character, you come out with a caricature instead.  Characters aren't one dimensional.  They need to be well-rounded.  You have to start at the bottom, find the pieces of the character that everyone can identify with and build from there.  In my case, I didn't start out writing Skating Around The Law saying "I want Rebecca to have a lothario grandfather with a penchant for impersonating Elvis."  My intent was to create a touchstone for Rebecca in her old home town that she fought so hard to get out of.  I wanted her to have a caring presence in her life who supported her and at the same time wanted her to think twice before selling her deceased mother's roller rink.  At the core, he is the grandfather we all can identify with.  He loves his granddaughter, but he also is selfish enough to try and keep her close by.  It just turns out that he juggles multiple girlfriends and loves mimicking The King.

We need to talk about the camel. Elwood the camel is such a great character. Yet because he's a camel, he's built in very simple, straightforward strokes. Where'd you get the idea for Elwood?

Good question and I even have an answer to it!  When I'm not writing or chasing around after my toddler I'm a voice teacher.  A few days after I started noodling the idea for Skating Around The Law, I had a lesson with a student who owns horses.  While we were chatting, she let me know she wouldn't be able to make her next lesson because her horse had to go to the U of I.  Being the sarcastic sort I said, "Wow, smart horse."  She laughed and explained that she was taking her horse to the large animal veterinary clinic at the university.  She then went onto say that the last time she went to the clinic there was a guy there with a camel.  Stranger still, the guy wasn't the camel's owner.  Turns out the camel didn't like the farmer he lived with and caused problems whenever the farmer brought him to the clinic.  In fact, the last time the farmer brought him, the camel broke out of his carrier and went running down I57 in an eventually aborted jail break.  The image of the camel racing down the road flanked by cornstalks and soybean plants stayed with me long after the lesson and I couldn't quite figure out why anyone in the middle of Illinois would own a camel.  A few days later I wrote the opening to Skating Around The Law and at the end of chapter three there was a camel wearing a fedora – my explanation as to why a camel would be living in rural Illinois.

Both those books are "cozies." You ever want to write something totally opposite to that? Grim and gory and noir-soaked and blood-caked?

I would like to point out that my agent has labeled my books "Itchies"  – not quite cozy…kind of like a wool sweater that keeps you warm but makes you twitch a bit while wearing it.  I'm not sure if that is flattering, but it sounds about right since my sense of humor is a little edgier than the typical cozy.

And YES!  I have written and will hopefully continue to write stuff that is grimmer, gorier and more disturbing that what appears in Indian Falls.  I have no idea if those books will ever sell, but I think it is important for me to explore the darker ideas to keep my writing sharp and my imagination fresh.  Anyone will tell you that writing comedy is tough.  When you push too hard to get a laugh everything falls apart.  It's important to take a step away every now and then and remind yourself that you don't need to be funny.  You just need to write the characters and let them tell the story.  Writing something different always helps me take that step back.  Conversely, writing the lighter stuff makes me look forward to spending time in the shadows.

As for the stuff I've written that explores those shadows, well, I hope they will make an appearance on bookshelves.  In this business, it is tough to say what will sell and what won't.  As writers we just have to keep telling stories and hope that at some point someone will get a chance to read them.

Favorite word?

Outstanding.

And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

Craptastic –Does that count?

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

Sauvignon Blanc.

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

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.  It always reminds me of peeling an onion.  Layer by layer you learn that everyone on the train has a secret.  How cool is that?

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

Just line the zombies up like an alley full of bowling pins and I'll mow them down.  Me and my pretty blue bowling ball can do some damage.  (I can also sauté up a mean Zombie soufflé, but that's for after the war is won.)

You've committed crimes against humanity. They caught you. You get one last meal.

I knew those crimes would catch up to me.  Okay, if I'm going out I'm going out with a bang.  I'm thinking Crawfish etouffee over dirty rice and as much freshly baked cornbread as I can eat.

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

I'm about ready to start the second book in the Paige Marshall mystery series.  The heroine is a classical singer turned amateur sleuth.  One of my other professions is stage performing, so I'm looking forward to once again merging those two facets of my life.  As far as the future?  The hell if I know.  I'll just keep sitting my butt in the chair and getting words on the page.  Hopefully, people will continue to read them.  If not, you might find me racing around town in tights and a cape.  You just never know.

The Publishing Cart Before The Storytelling Horse

I got a little rant stuck between my teeth. It's like a caraway seed, or a beefy tendon, or a .22 shell casing (hey, fuck you, a boy's gotta get his vitamins and minerals somehow).

Self-publishers, I'm talking to you.

And I'm talking to the pundits, too. In fact, I'm talking more to the pundits than to those actually walking the self-publishing path. Not everybody. Just a handful.

If you get a little froth on your screen, here — *hands you a squeegee* — just wipe it away.

Here, then, is the core of my message to you:

It is time to upgrade the discussion.

Let's talk about what that means.

First, it means: we get it. Self-publishing is the path you've chosen and further, is a path you believe is lined with chocolate flowers and hoverboards and bags of money and the mealy bones of traditionally-published authors. Self-publishing is a proven commodity. You can stop selling the world on its power. This isn't Amway. You don't get a stipend every time another author decides to self-publish. You're not squatting atop the pinnacle of a pyramid scheme. (And if you are, you should climb down. One word: hemmorhoids.)

Instead of trying to convince people to self-publish, it may in fact be time to help people self-publish well. While self-publishing may by this point be a proven path it doesn't remain a guaranteed path. In fact it's no such thing: I know several self-published authors out in the world with great books, kick-ass covers, and they are certainly not selling to their potential. In fact, if they continue to sell as they appear to sell then I would suggest these books would have done much better had they been published — gasp — traditionally. Succeeding in an increasingly glutted space is no easy trick. Every bubble pops. Every gold rush either reveals a limited supply or instead ends up devaluing the gold one finds there. The reality is that it's going to become harder — note that I didn't say impossible — to succeed in that space and so it behooves the Wise Pundits With Their Long Beards to acknowledge the realities and help authors do well.

It may then be a good time to acknowledge some of the challenges of self-publishing rather than ignoring them. Filter, for instance? Dogshit. Total dogshit. Discovering new self-published authors is left almost completely to word of mouth or to the marketing efforts of one author's voice. The discovery of just browsing a bookstore and finding great new stuff to read is gone. Amazon offers little in recompense: browsing there is like trying to find a diamond in a dump truck full of cubic zirconiums. Marketing as a self-published author is a whole other problem: it's tricky as hell. Half the self-publishers out there still manage to sound like Snake Oil Salesman — myself included — and so why not try to discuss the best practices? Why not talk about the way forward?

Though, actually, let's take a step backward. Here's another problem: maybe we should stop putting the publishing cart before the storytelling horse. In self-publishing, I see so much that focuses on sales numbers and money earned, but I see alarmingly little that devotes itself toward telling good stories. After all, that's the point, right? Selling is, or should be, secondary. The quality of one's writing and the power of one's storytelling is key. It's primary. It's why we do this thing that we do. Any time you hear about the major self-publishers, it's always about the sales, the percentage, the money earned. What's rare is a comment about how good the books are. When the narrative was all about Amanda Hocking, everybody was buzzing about her numbers, but nobody I know was buzzing about how good those books were. Focus less on the delivery of the stories and more about the quality of what's being delivered.

It's worth too to try to foster a revolution not merely in format or distribution but also in what's being distributed. If DIY publishing is really going to assert itself, it has to stop mimicking other publishing. Exhort authors to take risks in format and in genre. This is the time to do some really new stuff — go big, get nuts, let what's going on inside the story be as iconoclastic and rebellious as the means by which you produced that story.

Really, though, the biggest thing that needs an upgrade is the attitude.

Traditionally-published authors are not slave labor. They're not idiots or fools. They've not made "the wrong choice." You went one way. They went another. Sometimes your paths converge; other times, they do not.

Yes, yes, I get it. Big Publishing has, in some instances, abused authors who have come into their stable. This is no secret and it is inexcusable. It's also not a universal phenomenon. And it's a phenomenon that a good agent — not a shitty agent, not an agent who is more in love with publishing than with authors — can help to protect against.

You do realize that some trad-pub authors are actually… happy, right? Note I didn't say "happy in the shackles of corporate slavery," I mean, they're actually pleased with the way they've been treated. They like their agents, they like their editors, and they're actually earning out. Hell, it's why you see some self-published authors take traditional contracts when offered — it's because the terms were right.

Publishing traditionally remains a choice, but many want to paint a false dichotomy as if any who travel that path are deluded slaves or desperate authors — as if self-publishing is an immediate and guaranteed path to success. It's not. Neither is traditional publishing. You pick your choice, you take your shot, and that's that.

Not every author is primed to go all DIY on their own asses. Many paint that self-pub choice as an easy one — the obvious choice, the "duh" choice, like you're some kind of brain-damaged window-licker if you didn't make it — but the reality is, publishing your own work is a hard row to hoe. It's more work than many authors want to accept, and I don't blame them. Covers and formatting and independent editors and marketing and hey-if-you-don't-mind-I'm-going-to-just-suck-on-this-shotgun-lollipop-for-a-while-BOOM.

Nobody should be punished for choosing either path as long as they walk the path wisely.

Self-published authors don't like to be dissed by the traditionally-published and the reverse remains true. Nobody's got a lock on the truth. Nobody's got their thumb on the pulse of the future (despite how much they love to trumpet their own oracular insight). Yes, things are changing. But the sky isn't falling — the ground is merely shifting beneath our feet.

Same way it shifted — and continues to shift — in other creative endeavors.

The rhetoric often assumes that we're all on our own side of the fence, but here's a newsflash for you: there's no goddamn fence. You're a storyteller. I'm a storyteller. Good books are good books no matter how they got to market. You make your choice, so why not let others do the same? Further: don't be a sanctimonious dick about it. Upgrade your attitude. Elevate the discussion. You should be proud of your own accomplishments and excited that the path you picked was the right path. Go any further than that and you do little to endear anybody toward your imaginary bullshit either/or dichotomy.

We should all be helping one another tell great stories.

Let's talk to one another not as publishers, but as writers and storytellers.

All of us, wondrously pantsless. And probably drunk.

Amen.

*drops mic off stage, disappears in a cloud of incredulity and oompah music*

25 Things You Should Know About NaNoWriMo

It's that time of the year, then, that normal everyday men and women get a hankering for the taste of ink and misery, thus choosing to step into the arena to tangle with the NaNoWriMo beast.

Here, then, are 25 of my thoughts regarding this month-long pilgrimage into the mouth of the novel — peruse, digest, then discuss. Feel free to hit the comments and add your own thoughts to the tangle.

1. Writing Requires Writing

The oft-repeated refrain, "Writers write," is as true a sentiment as one can find, and yet so many self-declared writers seem to ignore it just the same. National Novel Writing Month — NaNoWriMo, which sounds like like the more formalized greeting used by Mork when calling home to Ork — demands that writers shit or get off the pot. It says, you're a writer, so get to scrawling, motherfucker.

2. Writing Requires Finishing

The other giant sucking chest wound that afflicts a great many so-called writers is the inability to finish a single fucking thing. Not a novel, not a script, not a short story. (One wonders how many unfinished manuscripts sit collecting dust like a shelf full of Hummel figurines in an old cat lady's decrepit Victorian manse.) NaNoWriMo lays down the law: you have a goal and that goal is to finish.

3. Discipline, With A Capital "Do That Shit Every Day, Son"

The way you survive NaNoWriMo is the same way any novelist survives: by spot-welding one's ass to the office chair every day and putting the words to screen and paper no matter what. Got a headache? Better write. Kid won't stop crying? Better write. Life is hard and weepy-pissy-sadfaced-panda-noises? Fuck you and write. Covered in killer bees? Maybe today's not the best day to write. You might want to call somebody. Just don't pee in fear. Bees can smell fear-urine. Pee is to bees as catnip is to cats.

4. The Magic Number Is 1666

Ahh. The Devil's vintage. Ahem. Anyway. To hit 50,000 words in one month, you must write at least 1,666 words per day over the 30 day period. I write about 1000 words in an hour, so you're probably looking at two to three hours worth of work per day. If you choose to not work weekends, you'll probably need to hit around 2300 words per day. If you're only working weekends, then ~6000 per day.

5. The Problem With 50,000 Words

Be advised: 50,000 words does not a novel make. It may technically count, but publishers don't want to hear it. Even in the young adult market I'd say that most novels hover around 60,000 words. You go to a publisher with 50k in hand and call it a novel, they're going to laugh at you. And whip your naked ass with a towel. And put that shit on YouTube so everybody can have a chortle or three. Someone out there is surely saying, "Yes, but what if I'm self-publishing?" Oh, don't worry, you intrepid DIY'ers. I'll get to you.

6. The True Nature Of "Finishing"

For the record, I'm not a fan of referring to one's sexual climax as "finishing." It's so… final. "I have finished. I am complete. Snooze Mode, engaged!" I prefer "arrived." Sounds so much more festive! As if there's more on the way! This party's just getting started! … wait, I'm talking about the wrong type of finishing, aren't I? Hm. Damn. Ah, yes, NaNoWriMo. Writing 50,000 words is your technical goal — completing a novel in those 50,000 words is not. You can turn in an unfinished novel and be good to go. The only concern there is that 50,000 words serves only as a milestone and come December it again becomes oh-so-easy to settle in with the "I've Written Part Of A Novel" crowd. Always remember: the only way through is through.

7. Draft Zero

It helps to look at your NaNoWriMo novel as the zero draft — it has a beginning, it has an ending, it has a whole lot of something in the middle. The puzzle pieces are all on the table and, at the very least, you've got an image starting to come together ("is that a dolphin riding side-saddle on a mechanical warhorse through a hail of lasers?"). But the zero draft isn't done cooking. A proper first draft awaits. A first draft that will see more meat slapped onto those exposed bones, taking your word count into more realistic territory.

8. Quanity Above Quality

Put differently, the end result of any written novel is quality. You're looking for that thing to shine like a stiletto and be just as sharp. NaNoWriMo doesn't ask for or judge quality as part of its end goal. To "win" the month, you could theoretically write the phrase "nipple sandwich" 25,000 times and earn yourself a little certificate. Quantity must be spun into quality. You've got all the sticks. Now build yourself a house.

9. Beware "Win" Conditions

If you complete NaNoWriMo, I give you permission to feel like a winner. If you don't, I do not — repeat, awooga, awooga, do not — give you permission to feel like a loser. This is one of the perils of the gamification of novel-writing, the belief that by racking up a certain score (word count) in a pre-set time-frame (one month for everybody), you win. And by not doing this, well, fuck you, put another quarter in the machine, dongface. Which leads me to:

10. We're Not All Robots Who Follow The Same Pre-Described Program

NaNoWriMo assumes a single way of writing a novel. Part of this equation — "smash brain against keyboard until story bleeds out" — is fairly universal. The rest is not. For every novelist comes a new path cut through the jungle. Some novelists write 1000 words a day. Some 5000 words a day. Some spend more time on planning, others spend a year or more writing. Be advised that NaNoWriMo is not a guaranteed solution, nor is your "failure to thrive" in that program in any way meaningful. I tried it years back and found it just didn't fit for me. (And yet I remain!) It is not a bellwether of your ability or talent.

11. November Is A Shitty Month

November. The month of Thanksgiving. The month where people start shopping for Christmas. The month where we celebrate National Pomegranate Month (NaPoGraMo?). Yeah. Not a great month to pick to get stuff done. Just be aware that November presents its own unique challenges to novelists of any stripe, much less those doing a combat landing during NaNoWriMo. Know this going in.

12. The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good

NaNoWriMo gets one lesson right: writing can at times be like a sprint and you can't hover over every day's worth of writing, picking ticks and mites from its hair — you will always find more ticks, more mites. The desire for perfection is like a pit of wet coal silt: it will grab your boots like iron hands and never let you go.

13. Total Suckity-Ass Donkey Crap Is Also The Enemy Of The Good

On the other hand, is this novel is the equivalent of you shitting your diaper and then rubbing your poopy butt up against the walls of your plexiglass enclosure, then what's the fucking point?

14. You Have Permission To Suck — Temporarily

The point is, you're not aiming to be a shitty writer with prose on par with a mouthful of toilet water, but you must allow yourself permission to embrace imperfection. You're not trying to write irreparable fiction, you're trying to make a go at a flawed story whose bones are good but whose components may need rebuilding. Imperfect is not the same as impossible.

15. NaStoPlaMo

Take October. Name it "National Story Planning Month." Whatever you're going to do in November, you don't have to go in blind. You've no requirement, after all, to suddenly leap out of bed on November 1st, crack open your head with an ice ax, and let the story come pouring from the cleft. Spontaneous generation is a myth in science as it is in creative spheres. Plan. Prep. Take a month. Get your mise en place in place.

16. NaEdYoShiMo

December then becomes "National Edit Your Shit Month." Or, if you need a month away from it, maybe you come back to it in January — but the point is, always come back to it. If you want to do this novel writing thing then you must come to terms with the fact that rewriting is part of a novel's life-cycle. Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty.

17. The Stats Bear Ogling

In 2009, NaNo had 167,150 participants, and 32,178 "winners." That's a pretty good rate, just shy of 20% completion. The numbers get a bit more telling when you look at the number of published novels that have come out of the entire ten-year program, and that number appears to be below 200 books. Out of the 500,000 or so total participants of NaNo over the years, that's a very minor 0.04%. This isn't an indictment against NaNoWriMo but is, however, an illustrative number just the same: it's harder than the Devil's dangle-rod in a cobalt-tungsten condom to get published these days.

18. Why Some Authors Dismiss NaNoWriMo

Professional authors — perhaps unfairly — sometimes look at the program with a dismissive sniff or a condescending eye roll. Look at it from their perspective: NaNo participants might seem on par with tourists. Professional authors live here all year. We are what we are all the time. And then others come along and, for one month, dance around on our beaches and poop in the water and pretend to be native. The point is, don't act like a haole, haole. Don't be like that girl in college who kissed girls and called herself a lesbian even though she was really just doing it to get other guys hot under the scrotum collar. And pro authors, don't act like prigs and pricks, either. Drop the dismissal. Most of us are all trying to share the same weird wordmonkey dream, and that's a thing to be celebrated, not denigrated.

19. Why Some Agents And Editors Despise NaNoWriMo

If the story holds true, agents and editors receive a flush of slush from NaNoWriMo in the months following November. A heaping midden pile of bad prose which, for the record, only serves to block the door for everybody else with its stinky robustness. You may say, "But I'm not going to do that." Of course you're not, but somebody probably is. And those that spam every agent or editor with their half-cocked garbage novel should be dragged around by their balls or labia and then fed to a pen full of rutting pigs.

20. The Self-Publishing Marketplace Is Not Your Vomit Bag

Just as you should not run to agents and editors with your fetal draft, you should not instantly fling it like a booger into the marketplace. Novels, like whisky and wine, need time.

21. The NaNoWriMo Website Isn't Doing Itself Any Favors

The text on the NaNoWriMo website is, for me, a point of dismissal and does little to engender respect from professional writers (as opposed to, say, the participants, who often do earn that respect). Check, for example, the text identifying why you should participate: "The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work." Yes, we stupid novelists, what with our interest in quality and our inability to produce a perfect draft in 30 days. Sometimes I want to kick the NaNoWriMo website in its non-existent digital crotch.

22. Engage The Community (But Realize That Writing Is Up To You)

November sees a flurry of activity on the novel-writing front, and you can harness that energy by engaging with the community. Just the same — at the end of the day it's you and your word count. Nobody can do this shit for you. When it all comes down to it, you're the one motherfucker who can slay this dragon and make a hat from his skull, a coat from his scales, and a tale from his tongue.

23. Fuck The Police

NaNoWriMo has a lot of rules: you're supposed to "start fresh," you're not really meant to work on non-fiction, blah blah blah. This is all just made-up stuff. It's not government mandated. This isn't taxes, for fuck's sake. Do what you like. Even better: do what the story needs. Hell with the rules. Fuck the police. Write. Write endlessly. Don't be constrained by this program. It's just a springboard: use it to launch your way to awesomeness. Anything you don't like about it, toss it out the window. That certificate you get at the end doesn't mean dog dick. The only thing that matters is you and your writing.

24. Be Aware Of Variants

Have you seen ROW80, or, A Round of Words in 80 Days? I've also seen smaller variants about writing scripts and non-fiction projects. Come up with your own variant if you must. NaNoWriMo is just a means to an end — it's just one path up the mountain. Other exist, so find them if this one doesn't seem your speed.

25. November Is Just Your Beginning

If you get to the end of the month with a manuscript — finished or not — in hand, celebrate. Do a little dance. Eat a microwaved pizza, do a shot of tequila, take off your pants and burn them in the fireplace. And then think, "Tomorrow, I've got more to do." Because this is just the start. I don't mean that to sound punishing — if it sounds punishing, you shouldn't be a writer. It should be fucking liberating. It should fill your heart with a flutter of eager wings: "Holy shit! I can do this tomorrow, too! I can do this in December and January and any day of the goddamn week I so choose." Don't stop on November 30th. You want to do this thing, do this thing. Your energy and effort can turn NaNoWriMo from a month-long gimmick to a life-long love and possibly even a career. Let this foster in you a love of storytelling made real through discipline — and don't let that love or that discipline wither on the vine come December 1st.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

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

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Forging Weapons For The Penmonkey's Pilgrimage

Some of you might be doing NaNoWriMo next month. Others of you are just writing novels because that's what you do. It's in your blood. Like flatworms and syphilis.

I'd like to offer myself to be your penmonkey sherpa. Let me guide you and your word-mules up the mountainous ascent, into the whorling flakes and keening winds, where we shall plant our manuscripts into the snow with a delightful crunch, probably only moments before we freeze to death and our frosted corpses are sexually violated by lonely Wampa creatures. At least our dead colonic flesh-stockings will serve as a place to incubate the Wampa's squealing pups, and we may take some solace that the novels that grew out of this treacherous journey may one day go on to be bestsellers or, at least, help fix a crooked table.

All this month shall be geared toward the act of writing a novel in preparation for you crazy kids who are going to step into the breach and tango with the NaNoWriMo bear.

As such, the purpose of this post is tri-fold.

One: New Penmonkey Promotion

If you during the month of October you buy either CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY or its follow-up, REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY, then I will toss you a free PDF copy of 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING. All three books contain a squirming burlap sack of advice for those of you writing novels. The books cover everything from plot to characters to theme to query letters to drinking to self-despair to did I mention drinking? They will light firecrackers of inspiration and shove them elbow-deep into your your nether-hole. You will come out smelling like printer ink and bathtub bourbon.

If you buy the PDF of COAFPM or ROTPM, then you don't need to do anything. You will receive your free PDF of 250 THINGS without you batting an additional eyelash.

If you buy COAFPM or ROTPM over Amazon or B&N, then you will need to contact me at terribleminds at gmail dot com and include proof-of-purchase. From there I'll get you set up right.

Be advised also that there exists a secondary ongoing promotion for COAFPM – the "Penmonkey Incitement Program." The more copies I sell, the more stuff I give away.

For every 50 copies, I send out a postcard with a unique piece of writing advice on it.

For every 100 copies, I give someone a PENMONKEY t-shirt.

For every 200 copies, I offer up a critique of the chosen's writing.

For every 500 copies, I will buy someone a brand new Kindle.

We are at 385 copies sold out of the 1000.

Which means it's time to give away a postcard, doesn't it?

The random generator at Random.org has chosen:

Kerry Freeman!

Kerry, I'll be contacting you.

Two: Recommended Posts

I'll be posting a new NaNoWriMo post tomorrow ("25 Things You Should Know About NaNoWriMo") but in the meantime, here's ten posts at this site I think NaNoWriMo'ers could use:

25 Things You Should Know About Writing A Novel

25 Ways To Fuck With Your Characters

25 Ways To Defeat Writer's Block

25 Ways To Make Exposition Your Bitch

Jumpstarting A Stalled Novel

Storytelling And The Art Of Sadness

Storytelling: The Foremost Fundamentals And Elemental Essentials

What Novelists Can Learn From Screenwriters

Why You Won't Finish That Novel

And, of course — The Writer's Prayer.

If you like 'em, feel free to spread them around to others.

Like flatforms and/or syphilis.

Three: What Do You Wanna Talk About?

So, those of you writing novels in or out of NaNoWrimo –

What do you want to talk about? Hit me up.

Let me know what troubles you're having, what questions plague you in the darkest nadir of the night, what topics you think deserves attention from a mouthy fuck such as yours truly.

Worldbuilding Challenge: Welcome To Blackbloom

Last week's "three-sentence challenge" is ready for your eyes to behold.

This week's challenge is a little different.

You'll note that it does not say "flash fiction."

It says "worldbuilding."

Here's the deal. You and me, we're going to build a world. Out of scratch. This is tabula rasa, and by smashing our faces against the screen and leaving upon it a gooey streak of blood and brain matter (aka "imagination grease") we are going to birth a world out of zippity-zero-nada-nichts. From nothing to something, from chaos comes order.

We're not going to do it all today.

We will, in fact, do it once a month. Every last Friday of the month for one year, or… until this thought experiment fails miserably and crashes into the mountains where it's forced to eat its friends.

Sometimes we'll be doing some straight-up worldbuilding, other times we'll dig deeper and start telling stories set in this world. But before the stories, the world itself must be made.

What are the aims of this weird little experiment? I don't even know. Part of it is just to see if we can build a world that is a place where fiction can live — can a series of strangers collaborate on a world in such a way to generate a seed bed where stories can grow and thrive? I don't know. But I'm here to find out.

We'll play in this crazy generative playground, see what happens.

Let's begin.

These are the only things you know about Blackbloom.

First, that is its name. Blackbloom.

Second, it is a place where human and non-humans alike dwell.

That's it. That's all we know. Everything else is up in the air. Everything else is suspect. Nothing is canonical. All is apocryphal. Like I said: chaos. From chaos we shall draw a deep syringe filled with truth.

Today's mission is for each of you to provide one aspect of the world in under 100 words. This aspect is a point of status quo: it defines the world as it is now. Not as it will become.

You might say: "It has two suns." Or, "Water is a precious resource." Or, "Two warring factions fight over the world's largest city." Define the reality as it is now. Define Blackbloom's current existence.

You can say whatever you'd like. Given that so little is defined, you've nothing to build from — but also, nothing to hold you back. This is the act of creation, the weird Genesis of a made-up world.

Thus, feel free to be as creative as you'd like. As weird as you must be.

I will pick… we'll say 10 of these, but if I see more that are really awesome, I'll up to… let's say "20." That's my job in all of this: to serve not as deity but rather as adjuticator.

I'll pick those by the time the next Worldbuilding Challenge rolls around.

Which will be…

October 28th.

Now, get your pick-axes and encyclopedias.

Go nuts.

Create a world.

And welcome to Blackbloom.