Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 272

Transmissions From Baby-Town: Love In The Time Of Diaper-Changing

Nobody tells you the truth. Every parent upends buckets of advice upon the new parent's head, because, not for nothing, they've accumulated knowledge both good and bad that they feel is best to share. But what they never tell you as you're building a crib or painting a nursery or buying a small desert island comprising a hundred boxes of Pampers Swaddlers is this:

"You're building the walls of your own prison. And the baby, the baby is the warden. Oh, he's a cherub-cheeked warden, all right. He's cute. Chipmunk cheeks packing love and adorability the way real chipmunks store acorns. But don't misunderstand. He'll run you ragged. He'll punish you when you least expect it. And you can't predict it. Can't understand it. Because what we got here… is a failure to communicate."

* * *

The way this kid eats and destroys our sleep, he should be a goddamn Batman villain.

The Catnap Killer. Doctor Hypnos. Mister Dozer.

The Sinister Sandboy.

* * *

Seems right now he's maybe going through a growth spurt. That's what all the Internet forums say. Of course, all the Internet forums say we're probably three days away from accidentally smothering our child with crib bumpers or improbably infecting him with some kind of Baby Smallpox. The Internet is rarely a place to find sanity, but even still: most concur that three weeks is the time of a growth spurt, but right now it just feels like the only thing that's growing is the child's propensity to be a tiny pink dictator.

(And remember, the root word of "dictator" is "dick.")

Yesterday it's like someone stuck a crank in his back and just kept on winding it.

Cranky, cranky, cranky.

Oh, the tears.

The screams.

The lobster-faced apoplexy.

He wants to eat. All the time. GIVE ME THE BOOB, tiny dictator cries. He pounds the teat the way a frothing professor pounds his lectern. He grabs for it with witch nails. He draws it close in his taloned grip.

You know he's hungry. Because he'll try to eat anything. He shark-bites his own fists. He'll gum my thumb. He'll even try to eat my beard. Which is not recommended in any of the baby books. Especially since I save food in my beard like a diligent hobo should.

It's every hour. The storm of cluster feeding.

With each lightning strike, the baby descends once more to feed.

The lone piranha must eat enough for his whole concatenation.

* * *

We're supplementing. With formula. Doctor's orders. He wasn't gaining enough weight, she said. I mean, he wasn't some tiny peanut, either, some little kewpie doll. But of course he didn't conform to somebody's magical chart that says ALL BABIES ARE LIKE THIS ALWAYS FOREVER AND EVER. Those that don't conform to the Chart of Truth must submit for re-education immediately. She scares us with the comment, "We don't want him to have a failure to thrive." A failure to thrive sounds like the next thing to, y'know, death. "This is our child: the limp weed that clings to life but never flourishes. Don't hug him too closely. He may crumble like an over-baked cookie."

With formula, he did gain weight and gain length. (And not all of it in his penis. BA-DUM-BUM. I'm here all week. Don't forget to try the swordfish. And the vodka.)

Even still, after two weeks of gaining, the doc still wants us to supplement.

Then we wonder: maybe she's a shill for the formula companies. She goes home and goes into her bedroom and rolls around on all that sweet-ass Similac money. Big Formula sends her kids to school.

You look online — remember: never a good idea — breastfeeding advocates will make it very clear that supplementing is a death sentence. That we can now expect our child to be a rubicund, languid fatty sitting on a throne made of Happy Meals, his body lubricated by the grease of French Fries, his toddler diabetes running rampant through him like a wildfire. I'm surprised nobody's linked it to autism yet. That's another fun one. In the baby world, everything causes autism. Mercury. HFCS. Plastic toys. Chinese nipples. Funny looks from Mom. Dog hair. Oaken cribs. Rain on Tuesdays.

So, we straddle worlds between breast milk and formula.

Pariahs to both.

* * *

Formula makes him gassy. Where before his poop smelled like buttered popcorn drizzled with caramel (no, really), now it smells more like, well, poop. He's gassy like an old man is gassy. After eating Brussel sprouts. And his own poop. I don't even know how the tiny human can be this gassy. I couldn't let that much air out of a balloon. Formula helps to defeat a child's protective defense. A baby's breast-fed effluence smells pleasant so we don't decide, "You know what? This kid stinks, I'm going to go throw him in a river somewhere." Formula removes that protection. It's good we don't have a river nearby.

* * *

I kid, of course. I would never throw my child in a river.

I would put him in a box labeled FREE KITTENS.

Or maybe that's not exotic enough.

FREE PANDA.

Much better.

* * *

Oh, wait — look! A website that suggests both formula and breastfeeding could cause autism.

*punches the Internet*

* * *

We are, like most parents, deeply concerned about SIDS. Everything is SIDS this, SIDS that. Everything "causes" SIDS. Don't do this. Don't do that. No crib bumpers. No toys. No crib sheet. If you don't appease the beast with the ritual sleeping configuration, it shall steal into your home at the stroke of midnight and steal thine child's breath, and it shall use the stolen breath as a perfume for his own shadowy daughters.

Or something.

Don't let him sleep in bed. Don't let him sleep in the car seat. Don't let him sleep duct-taped to the ceiling. Don't let him sleep in a lion's mouth. (Well who else is going to clean the lion's teeth?)

They say, no sleep positioners. Of course, our nurse tells us to feel free to prop him up with rolled up blankets — a no-no in SIDSlandia — and in propping him up we're stopping him from rolling over and, y'know, contracting SIDS. So in attempting to defeat the demon we are simultaneously inviting the demon into our home. SIDS if you do. SIDS if you don't.

Some people say that our baby shouldn't be able to roll over yet.

They don't know our baby. The kid is like a tumbling boulder chasing after Indiana Jones.

They say, well, then, swaddle him. Swaddle him up tight.

They still don't know our baby. Our baby is fucking Houdini. He's not supposed to be able to get his arms free? Fuck you, he can get his arms free. He flexes his body, wriggling and writhing, until finally one hand sneaks out the top like a worm popping out of an apple. And with one free it's not long before the other is free, too — a pair of Devil's hands undoing all our good work. And inviting the SIDS angel with a come-hither finger.

This is one time when the Internet actually helped lessen my fear. I decided to actually look up SIDS, and it's not what everyone seems to think it is. It's very rare. It's a diagnosis of exclusion. It also necessitates that other factors be in play beyond merely, "Oh, shit, I let my baby sleep on his tummy and OH GOD THE SHADOW MAN CAME AT NIGHT AND STOLE HIS ESSENCE."

I'm not saying you shouldn't protect against it, but it feels like I'm shouting at the tides.

* * *

We have people over who want to see him, and nine times out of ten he's in a coma when they get here. Sure. Fine. Nice. That's when he sleeps. I say to them, he's like the tigers at the zoo. You go to the zoo you want to see the tigers doing all kinds of bitchin' tiger shit. Chasing goats. Eating Himalayan explorers. Playing with a massive ball of yarn. Watching funny cat videos on the Internet.

But when you get there, all they're doing is sleeping on a rock.

B-Dub is like that. When you get here to the Baby Zoo, he's gone. Oblivious to the world.

Dull as a saucer of cold milk.

* * *

Just moments ago, his reward for a long cluster feeding session was to throw up on his mother.

I suspect this will be a theme for the next 18 years.

"Thanks for the car keys, Dad. To pay you back I stole your Laphroaig Scotch. Dude, that stuff tastes like the burned pubes of a swamp hag. Also, I threw up in the glove compartment. See ya!" VROOOM.

* * *

I say all this but the reality is, it's worth it. All the spit-up and screaming and arcs of golden urine and sleeplessness and madness. All of it does little to defeat his puckish smiles, his big eyes, his searching tiny fingers, his waggling monkey toes, his look he gets when he sleeps where he laughs like he's remembering a joke he heard ("remember when I was coming out of the womb? yeah, good times"), his discovery of his feet, his coos and burbles, his gurgles and coyote yips, his funny faces, his Daddy look where he cocks one eyebrow and looks at you like you've lost your goddamn mind, his squirms and wiggles and flails.

All of it, the sheer measure of adorability.

Like a baby seal, we cannot club him.

* * *

"I said, what we have here is a failure to communic OH MY GOD YOU ARE SO CUTE I WANT TO PINCH YOUR CHEEKS AND PUT BUTTER ON THEM AND EAT THEM UP NOM NOM NOM."

I guess we're keeping him.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Dirty-Ass Sex Moves

Last week's challenge — "DOLL HEADS" — is ready to be read when you click the link.

Sex moves with hilarious nicknames.

The Cleveland Steamer. The Glass-Bottom Boat. The Dirty Sanchez.

That's the theme of this week's flash fiction challenge.

For a mega-complete-holy-shit list, check out this link: "List Of Sex Moves."

That link is NSFW, by the by. Uhh, big time. In case you couldn't figure that out, genius.

First, it's worth reading just… y'know. Because.

"Alligator Fuckhouse."

"Grumblefoot Grabapple."

"The Leprechaun's Revenge."

C'mon. C'moooon. You can't tell me those don't sound like killer short story titles, yeah? Yeah.

That's your task. Grab one such term, use it as the title to your fiction.

For this week, let's blow out the limit the way you might blow out your orifices if you tried half of these sex moves — no limit on word count. Big or small as you like.

I don't care if the story features the sex move or even refers to it outside the move-as-title.

But, then again, now's your opportunity to write some down-and-dirty fugged-up shiznit. After all, some of the descriptions on these sex moves are hilarious and disturbing. Use those as you see fit.

Peruse the list.

Choose a sex move.

Write a story with that sex move as the title.

No limit on word count. No limit to genre. You've got one week. Return the tale by Friday, 6/17, at 12 noon EST. Post on your blog, then drop a link to the story in the comments.

Go forth and get nasty.

Blinking Neon: Thursday Vacancy

I've decided that, whenever possible, I'm going to take Thursdays off.

I know what you're saying:

"Buh-buh-buh! But I am addicted to terribleminds. Every day I come here, I nibble open an artery with my bitey teeth, and I jack your sweet-ass motherfucking bloggery straight into my main vein."

To which I respond: "Main vein is a euphemism for a penis."

And you say: "I knew that."

And I'm all like, "I bet you didn't."

And you're like, "Nuh-uh!" And then you spit up on yourself and poop your pants.

No, no, wait, that's my newborn son. Which is part of why I'm taking some Thursdays off. Except, here's the thing: I won't leave you with a vacancy of content. I just can't do that. I won't do that to you. I'm not that cruel. My swollen deception-filled ego reminds me with whispered lies that without your daily dose of terribleminds, you will perish from grief. Your heart will be torn asunder like a notebook page ripped in half by angry pinching fingers. (Just shut up and let me pretend, goddamnit.)

I am thus opening up Thursdays to others, should they choose to fill its space. I've got a couple of great guest blogs that still need to go up, so you can look for those on upcoming Thursdays.

But I'll take more. I'd love posts from other storytellers, creative types, writers, what-have-you. I don't necessarily believe that posts can or should always be about writing, though certainly that's a fine theme if you feel you've got something to bring to the table. Really, though, the floor is yours, the forum is open.

I can't offer much by way of payment, and though this site does get a fair share of looky-loos these days, I don't how how meaningful "exposure" is.

I will say you're free to cross-post.

You can definitely use the post to pimp your work.

And if you don't already have it, I'll toss you a copy of IRREGULAR CREATURES or CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY in whatever e-book format you desire.

Also: if you're not down with a guest post, feel free on offering yourself up on the altar of sacr… I mean, the altar of interviewing. I'd love to interview some smart storytellin' folks about all kinds of shit.

On those days I don't have a guest post, I'll still charge in here and fill the void with my ceaseless jabbering and meandering waffle. Worry not, sad-faced sproglings.

So, if you're in, well, you have to let me know. Drop a note in the comments or hit me up in the contact form. Don't be shy. Creators gotta create, gotta put themselves out there. Invite yourselves. Be bold. Proactive. Waggle your genitals at the world and say, "Gaze upon my magnificence."

This is an experiment, so let's see how it goes.

Six Signs It's High Time To Give Up Writing

The saying goes, "be a fountain, not a drain."

By which they mean, "be nice, not mean, be optimistic, not pessimistic, be a shining beacon of light and positivity, not a searing enema of shadow and negativity."

Oh, I'll be a fountain, all right. I'll be a fountain of urine. In your eyeball. PSHHHH.

HA HA HA HA HA.

Sorry, a little punchy today. Sleep in this household has gone the way of the dodo, the yeti, the honest politician — it is extinct. Turns out, that only stokes the fire in my belly. It pokes the coals of madness.

And so I emerge, sleepless and enraged, full of battery acid and asparagus pee, ready to once more use your head like a football so that I may kick it through the goalposts of good clean penmonkey sense.

Everybody always wants to tell you how to be a writer. How to follow your dreams. How to follow your stinky bliss like a cracked-out beagle. Eh-eh. Nuh-uh. BZZT. Not here. Not today. Today I'm going to tell you how to quit following your dreams. How to abandon your writerly ambitions on the side of the road (like a broken freezer or a fat ugly baby) where they may very well belong. Think of me as the medical examiner, and we're going to look over your hopes and wishes and determine how precisely to determine the time of death via lividity, morbidity, and poop stench.

Trust me, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news. I hate to be the guy belching forth my septic tide, a tide that will thrash your tiny dream-boat against the black bleak rocks of reality. But, hey, fuck it, somebody has to. Last time I did a quick head count, the Internet is home to 45,691,213 writers. And you're multiplying. It's like a feral cat colony up in this motherfucker. You might be saying, "Chuck's just trying to thin the herd." Well, duh. I'm not just trying to get the dilettantes out of my way — I'm hoping maybe I get lucky and convince a few of you actually-talented-sumbitches to give up the ghost, too. C'mon. We can't all be writers.

Anyway, let's go through the signs. If any of them apply to you, please hold up the little yellow card I'm giving you — *hands out aforementioned yellow card* — and I'll attend to you with this rifle. Thanks!

You'd Much Rather Talk About Writing Than Do Actual Writing

If the words you use to talk about writing outmatch the words you use in your actual writing by, say, 100:1, then you might be one of those types. The ones who would rather play pretend instead of actually wading into battle with a pistolero belt of fountain pens and ink phials forming an 'X' across their chests.

I mean, c'mon. You know if this is you. You know it. Someone — an aunt, your mother, your colonoscopy technician — asks you, "How's the writing going?" and you can talk at length about all the things you plan on writing, but what you can't talk about is all the things you're really truly writing? Can you remember the last time you commented on a writer's blog or wrote a post about writing advice but can't remember the last time you sat down and wrote a goddamn story? This is not good. This is a bad sign.

You Spent Your Time Doing Everything But Putting Words On Paper

Let's try a test.

Here's a video game. You can play this, or you can write. No, no, let's pretend it's one or the other or I'll shoot you in the face. I just picked "video game" out of a hat, but we could be talking about any activity, really, that you'd do for pleasure: watching TV, riding a dirtbike, dicking around on Twitter, reading blogs, planning your next roleplaying game session, hunting humans for their genital pelts, manually stimulating frost giants for their icy hoarfrost seed (used as a ritual component in various magical potions), etcetera.

If you always choose the fun thing over the writing thing, that's a hash-mark. That's a check-minus. That's a Mr. Yuk sticker slapped across the face of your future. Note that I'm not saying you shouldn't sometimes choose the activity of leisure — but if you spend more time with the "fun" than with the "writing," then doesn't that suggest that writing for you fails to be any fun?

Your Production Levels Are *Poop Noise*

Or, if you'd prefer — *sad trumpet*

Or — *lone coyote howling*

Or — *Pac Man dies*

Or — *wilting erection*

Sooo, uhh, what are you writing? Yeah? Nothing? What have you finished? Oooh. Also nothing? Really. So, all that's left in your wake is a trail of manuscript corpses? Empty pages? Unfinished stories? Nothing done? Did you write anything today? Yesterday? Last week? No, no, and no? Oooh. Zoinks. This isn't looking good.

You have heard the old chestnut that writers write, right? You wouldn't say, "I'm a mountain climber" without ever actually climbing a mountain? The thing you are presumes a sense of action, of presently doing. Not "never done" or "haven't done in a long-ass time."

"I'm a porn star."

"Wow. Wow! Really? Dude. I figured you were a bit old, but hey, whatever makes somebody's grapefruit squirt. Good for you. Good for you. What was your last movie?"

"The Nine Throbbing Fists of Adonis."

"I… have not heard of that. Is it out on Blu-Ray?"

"No. Super-8."

"…when did you make that movie?"

"1971."

Yeah, see? No longer a porn star. Writers write. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

That Teetering Tower Of Rejections Threatens To Crush You And Your Cats

You know by now if you're at least a little bit good. You know because someone's told you. Or because you got an acceptance on a short story or even a nice rejection. Or because in your heart you've cast aside the fog and seen into the truth of the matter: "I'm not great, but I'm good, and I can damn sure get better."

Then again, maybe you look over at the end of your desk and you see it. The rejections. All 9,000 of them. Not a single acceptance nestled in there, like a glittering brooch inside the nest of a foul diarrhea-having bird. You've sent your work to the far flung corners of the literary world — editors, agents, lit mags, Field & Stream — and it always returns with a big red stamp across it that reads, FUCK NO.

By now, just by dint of taking so many shots at the hoop one of them should have gone through the little hole. If you're having no luck, it might be time to set aside childish whims.

You Got The Wrong Idea About Writing

You think, "I really love books." Great. So go read some. I love cookies and porn, you don't see me starting up a career as "The Masturbating Pastry Chef" on PBS, do you?

You think, "Gosh, I really want to work-from-home." So stuff some envelopes. Writing isn't some pyramid scheme. You don't just come home and poop out a bestseller because you're tired of the cubicle farm.

You think, "I want to be famous someday." Writers aren't fame junkies. You want fame, go make a YouTube video where you get rammed in the balls by a charging donkey.

You think, "I want to be rich." Hahahaha. Heheheh. Ooooh. Oh. Woo. Yeah. No.

Writing is about writing. It's about telling stories. That's why you do it.

Writing Is An Endless Sisyphean Misery

If you don't like writing, stop writing.

Good goddamn I am amazed, astounded, astonished at how often I see writers bitching about writing. I don't mean bitching like, "Oh, shucks, I had a bad day," or, "Man, this story's a lot harder to write than I anticipated." But bitching like, an endless stream of complaining about the very act of putting words on paper, as if it strains them, as if it's a ceaseless misery, as if it's a colon full of fire ants.

If you hate to write, what the hell are you doing?

It's not like writing offers some myriad reward, some treasure trove of benefits. Like, you could hate working on Wall Street yet love the buckets of money that come pouring over your head. Fine. Writing ain't like that. Writing offers you one chief benefit: writing. If that is not a task you enjoy, if it's not a task that offers you a sense of long-term satisfaction (even if you don't feel immediate daily satisfaction), then nobody would judge you for not writing. It's a thankless career. Don't do it if you hate it. Why would you do that? Just be direct and eat a fistful of broken glass or something. The pain is faster and the blood is brighter.

"Hell No, We Won't Go!"

If you're over there, nodding along, saying, "Yeah, you know what? Maybe I'm not cut out for this," then good for you. Quit now. Other better dreams await you. The world needs more zookeepers, botanists, janitors, space janitors, snipers, professional video game players, cat ladies, drug mules, and porn stars. Go be one of those with a Longaberger basket full of my blessings.

If you're over there, your butthole clenching so tight it could break a broomstick, and you're growling, "You go to hell, Wendig, you go straight to Hell on the goddamn Disney monorail system," then good for you. Don't quit. Continue on this path. Be a writer. Embrace it, enjoy it, claim it as your own.

A writer's gotta go through this time and again. He's gotta walk through a series of gates over the course of his career and it's like a grabby TSA screening: sometimes they're going to lift your junk and check all your holes just to make sure you are who you say you are and that you want to continue forward to the next checkpoint. I've gone through this. You think I haven't? How can you not? Writing is a career that offers a tireless parade of moments emblazoned with self-doubt and uncertainty where you're forced to ever reevaluate who you are and why you do this. You'll often have to hold up your dream and examine it in the harsh light of day just to see how substantial it really is.

You have to look and say, "How far am I willing to go with this?"

You want to be a writer? Then commit. You want to keep riding this dream pony? Then buckle the fuck up. Because writing is about patience and perseverance and above all else, writing through the nonsense.

Because writing takes more than wanting to be a writer. Writing isn't about making money or reading writing blogs or seeing your name in print. Those things will come, but they're side effects.

Writing is about writing.

Tautological enough for you?

Stop talking about writing and write. Stop reading about writing and write. Stop dicking around with your Xbox, with Netflix, with Facebook, your penis, and write. See where I'm going with this?

Go forth. Put down 100 words. A 1000. Whatever. Write something. Finish something.

The other stuff will follow. For now, embrace the purity of the dream you've chosen and do the thing it demands that you do. Put words on paper. Tell some stories. Be awesome.

And for fuck's sake, don't stop once you start.

* * *

If you dig on the apeshit crazy-face no-holds-barred profanity-soaked writing advice found here at terribleminds, then you may want to take a wee bitty gander-peek at: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY, which is available now! Buy for Kindle (US), Kindle (UK), Nook, or PDF.

25 Things You Should Know About Character

Previous iterations of the "25 Things" series:

25 Things Every Writer Should Know

25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling

And now…

Here you'll find the many things I believe — at this moment! — about characters:

1. The Character As Fulcrum: All Things Rest Upon Him

Without character, you have nothing. Great plot? Robust storyworld? Potent themes? Elegant font? Matters little if your character is a dud. The punch might be delicious, but not if someone threw up in it. The character is why we come to the table. The character is our way through all those other things. We engage with stories because we relate to them: they are mirrors. Characters are the mirror-side version of "us" staring back. Twisted, warped, uncertain — but still us through and through.

2. The Cure For All That Which Ails The Audience

A great character can be the line between narrative life and story death. She's a powerful Band-Aid, a strong swaddling of gauze to staunch the bleeding. Think of the character like duct tape: she can piece the whole thing back together. I will forgive your sins of a so-so plot, of muddy themes, of a meh-ehhh-enh storyworld if you're letting me live for a while with a great character. But don't think character will close truly grievous injuries. A sucking chest wound — meaning, poor writing, asinine plot or perhaps a duller-than-two-dead-goats storyworld — will only swallow your great character into its gory depths.

3. And Yet The Character Must Be Connected

Don't believe that all those other aspects are separate from the character. The character is — or should be — bound inextricably to those other elements. The character is your vehicle through the plot. The character carries the story. Theme, mood, description: focus them through the prism of character, not vice versa. The character is the DNA in every goddamn cell of your story.

4. You Are The Dealer; The Character Is The Drug

The audience will do anything to spend time with a great character. We're junkies for it. We'll gnaw our own arms off to hang out once more with a killer character. It's why sequels and series are so popular: because we want to see where the character's going. You give us a great character, our only desire becomes to lick him like he's a hallucinogenic toad and take the crazy trip-ass ride wherever he has to go.

5. Tell Us What She Wants

It is critical to know what a character wants from the start. She may not know what she wants, but the audience must have that information. Maybe she wants: her enemies destroyed, freedom from oppression, her child returned to her, true love, the perfect falafel, a pet monkey, the ultimate wedding, a secret subterranean base on the motherfucking moon. She can want a number of things, and it's of the uttermost importance that we know what it is. How else will we know how far she's come? How else can we see the stakes that are on the table? How else will you frustrate the piss out of the audience by standing in her way?

6. Not About Likability But Rather, Livability

It doesn't matter if we "like" your character, or in the parlance of junior high whether we even "like-like" your character. It only matters that we want to live with him. We must see something that makes us want to keep on keeping on, following the character into the jaws of Hell and out through the Devil's lava-encrusted keister. For the record, the "Lava Keister" sounds like either a roller coaster or a Starbucks drink.

7. The Give-A-Fuck Factor

It is critical to smack the audience in the crotchal region with an undeniable reason to give a fuck. Ask this up front as you're crafting the story: why will the audience care about this character? You have unlimited answers to this. Look to the narratives all around us to find reasons to care. Anything can fly. We love underdog stories. We love tales of redemption (and takes of failed redemption). We love bad boys, good girls, bad girls, good boys, we want to see characters punished, exalted, triumphant, rewarded, destroyed, stymied, puzzled, wounded. We gawk at car crashes. We swoon at love.

8. Rub Up Against Remarkability

You must prove this thesis: "This character is worth the audience's time." The character must deserve her own story — or, at least, her own part within it. You prove this thesis by making the character in some way remarkable. This is why you see a lot of stories about doctors, detectives, lawyers, cowboys, bounty hunters, wizards, space rangers, superheroes… but you don't see quite so many about copier repairmen, pharmaceutical assistants, piano tuners, or ophthalmologists. The former group is remarkable in part by their roles. The latter group can be just as remarkable, however, provided you discover their noteworthiness and put it on the page or the screen. What makes one remarkable can be a secret past, a current attitude, a future triumph. It can be internal or external. Infinite options. Choose one.

9. Act Upon The World Rather Than Have The World Act Upon Him

Don't let the character be a dingleberry stuck to the ass of a toad as he floats downriver on a bumpy log. We grow weary of characters who do nothing except react to whatever the world flings at their heads. That's not to say that characters shouldn't be forced to deal with unexpected challenges and left-field conflicts — but that doesn't prevent a character from being proactive, either. Passivity fails to be interesting for long. This is why crime fiction has power: the very nature of a crime is about doing. You don't passively rob a bank, kill your lover, or run a street gang. Simply put: characters do shit.

10. Bad Decisions Are A Good Decision

Nobody ever said an active character had to be a smart character. A character can and perhaps should be badly proactive, making all the wrong moves and affecting the world with his piss-poor decisions. At some point a character needs to take control, even if it means taking control in the worst possible way. In fact…

11. This Is Why Jesus Invented Suspense

Tension is created when characters you love make bad decisions. They lie, cheat, steal. They break laws or shatter taboos. They go into the haunted house. They don't run from the serial killer. They betray a friend. Sleep with an enemy. Eat a forbidden fruit. Jack off in a mad scientist's gizmotron thus accidentally creating an army of evil baby Hitlers. Tension is when the character sets free his chickens and we know full well that those chickens will come to roost. But the chickens will come home changed. They will have knives. Prison tats. And evil wizard powers. Don't let tension wriggle free, soft and pliable, from external events. Let the character create the circumstances of suspense.

12. How You Succeed Is By Not Having Them Succeed

You as storyteller are a malevolent presence blocking the character's bliss. You must be a total asshole. Imagine that the character is an ant over here, and over there is a nugget of food, a dollop of honey, and all the ant wants is to trot his little ant-y ass over to the food so that he may dine upon it. Think of the infinite ways you can stop him from getting to that food. Flick him into the grass. Block his path with twigs, rocks, a line of dishsoap, a squeeze of lighter fluid set aflame. Be the wolf to his little piggy and huff and puff and blow his house down. Pick him up, put him in the cup-holder in your car, and drive him 100 miles in the opposite direction while taunting him with insults. The audience will hate you. But they'll keep on hungering for more. Will the ant get to the food? Won't he? Will he find his friends again? Can he overcome? Primal, simple, declarative problem. You are the villain. The character is the hero. The audience thirsts for this most fundamental conflict of storyteller versus character.

13. The Code

Just as a storyworld is beholden to certain laws, norms, and ways, so too is a character: every character has an internal compass, an invisible set of morals and beliefs that comprise their "code." The audience senses this. They know when a character betrays his own code and violates the program — it's like a glitch in the Matrix, a disturbance in the dream you've crafted. That's not to say characters can't change. They can, and do. But a heroic fireman doesn't one day save a cat from a tree and the next day decide to cook and eat a baby. Changes in a character must come out of the story, not out of thin air.

14. A B C

The law of threes. Find three beats for your character — be they physical, social, emotional — with each beat graphing a change of the character of the course of a story. Selfish boy to exiled teen to heroic man. From maiden to mother to crone. Private, Lieutenant, General. Knows everything, everything in question, knows nothing. Birth, life, death. Beginning, middle, end.

15. Boom Goes The Dynamite

Blake Snyder calls this the "Save The Cat" moment, but it needn't be that shiny and happy. Point being: every character needs a kick-ass moment, a reason why we all think, "Fuck yeah, that's why I'm behind this dude." What moment will you give your character? Why will we pump our fists and hoot for him?

16. Beware The Everyman, Fear The Chosen One

I'm boring. So are you. We don't all make compelling protagonists despite what we feel in our own heads, and so the Everyman threatens to instead become the eye-wateringly-dull-motherfucker-man, flat as a coat of cheap paint. The Chosen One — arguably the opposite of the Everyman — has, appropriately, the opposite problem: he's too interesting, a preening peacock of special preciousness. Beware either. Both can work, but know the danger. Find complexity. Seek remarkability.

17. Nobody Sees Themselves As A Supporting Character

Thus, your supporting characters shouldn't act like supporting characters. They have full lives in which they are totally invested and where they are the protagonists. They're not puppets for fiction.

18. The Main MC, DJ Protag

That said, they don't call your "main character" the MC for nothing. Your protagonist at the center of the story should still be the most compelling motherfucker in the room.

19. You Are Not Your Character, Except For When You Are

Your character is not a proxy for you. If you see Mary Sue in the mirror, put your foot through the glass and use that reflection instead. But that old chestnut — "write what you know" — applies. You take the things that have happened to you and you bring them to the character. Look for those things in your memory that affected you: fought a bear,  won a surfing competition, lost a fist-fight with Dad, eradicated an insectile alien species. Pull out the feelings. Inject them into the face, neck, guts, brain and heart of the character.

20. Fugged Up

Everybody's a little fucked up inside. Some folks more than that. No character is a saint. Find the darkness inside. Draw their imperfections to the surface like a bead of blood. You don't have to give a rat's ass about Joseph Campbell, but he was right when he said we love people for their imperfections. Same holds true for characters. We love them for their problems.

21. A Tornado Beneath A Cool Breeze

A good character is both simple and complex: simplicity on the surface eradicates any barrier to entry, and complexity beneath rewards the reader and gives the character both depth and something to do. Complexity on the surface rings hollow and threatens to be confusing: ease the audience into the character the way you'd get into a clawfoot tub full of steaming hot water — one toe at a time, baby.

22. On The Subject Of Archetypes

You can begin with an archetype — or even a stereotype — because people find comfort there. It creates a sense of intimacy even when none exists. But the archetype should be like the leg braces worn by Forrest Gump as a kid — when that kid takes off running, he blasts through the braces and leaves them behind. So too with the "type." They'll help the character stand on his own until it's time to shatter 'em when running. Oh, and for the record, Forrest Gump was a fucking awful movie. In short: worst character ever.

23. Dialogue Over Description, Action Over Rumination

Don't bludgeon us over the head with description. A line or three about the character is good enough — and it doesn't need to be purely about their physical looks. It can be about movement and body language. It can be about what people think, about what goes on in her head. But throw out a couple-few lines and get out. Dialogue is where a character is revealed. And action. What a character says and does is the sum of her being. It doesn't need to be more than that: a character says shit, then does shit, then says shit about the shit she just did. In there lurks infinite possibilities — a confluence of atoms that reveals who she is.

24. Take The Test Drive

Write the character before you write the character. Take her on adventures that don't count. Canon can go suck itself. Fuck canon. Who cares about canon? Here I say, "to Hell with the audience." This isn't for them. This is for you. Joyride the character around some flash fiction, a short script, a blog post, a page of dialogue, a poem, whatever. Test her, try her out. That sounds porny, but what I mean to say is: cut off her skin, wear it, and dance around the goddamn room. Which leads me to…

25. Get All Up In Them Guts

Know your character. Every square inch. Empathize, don't sympathize. Understand the character but don't stand with the character. Get in their skin. The closer you get, the better off you are when a story goes sideways. Any rewriting or additional work comes easy when you know which way the character's gonna jump. Know them like you know yourself; when the character does something under your watch, you know it comes justified, with purpose, with meaning, with intimate knowledge that the thing she did is the thing she was always supposed to motherfucking do. Unrelated: I really like the word "motherfucker."

* * *

If you dig on the apeshit crazy-face no-holds-barred profanity-soaked writing advice found here at terribleminds, then you may want to take a wee bitty gander-peek at: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY, which is available now! Buy for Kindle (US), Kindle (UK), Nook, or PDF.

Unexpected Guest: Chuck's Picks

Here, then, are my Top Ten favorite flash fiction bits from the "Unexpected Guest" challenge. It was a hard pick — I had to keep whittling it down and down and down. I will say that some folks fell out of the running due to things like formatting: tiny font or muddy dark backgrounds make it very difficult to read the fiction. A few others had great stories but were a little messy in terms of writing (spelling, grammar, and so forth).

Anyway, here they be — if you're one of the ten, please hit me up using the contact form in the menu bar, and I'll swing you an e-book copy of either IRREGULAR CREATURES or CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY. Thanks all for diving in, this was awesome stuff.

http://damyantiwrites.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/flash-fiction-challenge-unexpected-guests/

http://www.falconesse.com/2011/06/03/flash-fiction-challenge-companys-coming/

http://jamiewyman.blogspot.com/2011/06/one-more-for-wendig.html

http://www.sydgill.com/flash-fiction-challenge/

http://lesannberry.blogspot.com/p/unexpected-guest.html

http://innocentsaccidentshints.blogspot.com/2011/05/terrible-minds-challenge-more-noodles.html

http://cjlemire.blogspot.com/2011/05/flash-fiction-unexpected-guest.html?zx=c5a59146f3b1dd13

http://sittingindarkness.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/an-unexpected-guest/

http://adiaryofawriter.blogspot.com/2011/05/chuck-wendigs-flash-fiction-challenge.html

http://shaunasspot.blogspot.com/2011/06/unexpected-guest.html

(Apologies for just making this a list of links — but with a baby on my lap, this is the easiest fastest way for me to get these links and this post out there!)

Adolescence Sucks, Which Is Why YA Rocks

When I was in high school, my father told me, "Be happy, this is the best time of your life."

Later, when I reminded him that he said this, he laughed, then said, "I was lying. I hated high school."

Being a kid bites. Adolescence sucks.

The other day, the Wall Street Journal shat in its own mouth in declaring Young Adult fiction too dark and too ugly for kids. One assumes that's because when we hear the word "kids" we receive with it various associations: lollipops, ponies, pigtails, carousels, squealing giggles as children play in a twilit meadow whose golden wheat sways and where everything is cast behind the gauzy Vaseline smear of youth.

Except, the reality is, the associations that come part and parcel with adolescence aren't like that. Or, at the very least, it comes with some far grimmer associations standing in stark opposition.

Consider, then, these associations: rape, suicide, drugs, bullying, domestic abuse, homelessness, abortion, failure, self-loathing, cutting, peer pressure, gangs, and so on, and so forth.

Adolescence is fucked up.

Let me say that again, but with more letters and syllables for emphasis.

Adolescence is fuuuuuu-huuuuuuuuh-uuuuuuuuuuucked up.

All that shit hits like a perfect storm. That's life in the high school, kids. The depredations of the real world have been hanging above your head for years, just out of sight. You reach a certain age, that's it. The string snaps. The sword comes plunging down. And there's not much you can damn well do about it.

People say, "Oh, the news on TV is so terrible, with the terrorism and what-not." Well, yeah, it is, but that's not the problem. The news is out there. But what goes on with adolescents isn't out there, but rather, right here. Smack dab in front of them. Complex, troubling issues are suddenly flung in the face of human beings whose brain chemistry isn't yet fully developed, whose hormones are tossed about in a storm-swept cauldron, whose emotions aren't yet ripe on the vine.

Here, then, is why Young Adult (YA) fiction is awesome: because it takes all that hard, nasty, awful stuff and it never looks away. It doesn't flinch. It doesn't bullshit anybody — and if there's anybody who can smell bullshit, it's a teenager. It has the courage and compassion to not treat teens like coddled pinheads and instead gives them fiction that represents them. These aren't protagonists who are unfamiliar to young readers. These aren't stories and situations that seem alien. This is shit that's happening to them, their friends, their acquaintances online — but here, the fiction allows them to see it, hold it, deal with it both at the ground level and from a sky's eye view. They see protagonists who are able to suffer the slings and arrows of youth — and Sweet Jesus are those some poisonous arrows — and who are then capable of rising beyond and above, persevering and above all else, surviving.

Because that's what adolescents need to know: that they can survive this time of their life, a time that could easily be noted as the "Dark Ages" of one's own personal history.

Like I said yesterday on the Twitters, YA is the fiction-born equivalent of the "It Gets Better" phenomenon. It brings meaning and context to the most troubling time of one's life.

Do we really believe that teens don't embrace darkness to make sense of darkness? To see the power that comes from mastering it?

When I was a very young child, I had a dream with old classic movie monsters that scared the piss out of me — but eventually, I learned to control the dream and master the monsters and in doing so, stole the power away. The dream then ceased to be scary. Why would we want to rob teens (or pre-teens, or adults, or anybody) the chance to look into darkness to understand and master it? Why does WSJ pretend that the issues and "ugliness" put forth by YA fiction aren't the same things that teenagers are thinking about, worrying about, talking about, and above all else dealing with day to day? To take that away, to give them sanitized, bleach-washed fiction that fails to speak truth would be a true crime, and would represent a far more serious danger. That's not to say there's anything wrong with escapist entertainment, I just don't know that adolescents always want an escape. I think they'd rather find a way to understand.

At least, that's how I was when I was that age. When I was a teenager I left my "reading level" behind and read scads of horror, thriller, and crime books. Because it felt more real. Now, the "reading level" has caught up with the expectations of the age, which sounds to me like a great thing. A brave thing, even.

It's why I wish we saw more bravery in terms of Hollywood. Films sanitize where (at present) fiction reveals. One pretends the scab isn't there; the other rips it off and lets it bleed fresh blood.

Right now, some of the strongest, strangest material being done right now in fiction is being done in the realms of YA. It's good to get outside that comfort zone, because trust me, teenagers have no comfort zone.

I don't think they're afforded that luxury.

So you can suck it, WSJ.

(Be advised, normally I don't do a Sunday post and instead post on Mondays — let's just pretend this is Monday's post that has ended up traveling backward in time and posting on Sunday. Shut up.)

Flash Fiction Challenge: "Doll Heads"

That picture is your challenge.

Take it. Absorb picture into your brain-meats. Let it pickle.

Then post the resulting flash fiction.

As always, 1000 words.

Due in one week (6/10/11) at 12 noon EST.

Post fic at your blog.

Link back to here.

Drop a comment linking to your blog below.

Any genre will do.

Get creative.

Get insane.

Go apeshit.

Write.

(The 10 favorite challengers of last week's "Unexpected Guest" challenge will go up sometime this afternoon. Those folks will get some free e-books, should they choose to accept 'em.)

Blue Eggs From Bitch Chickens (Or, "Scenes From A Farmer's Market")

I fucking love the farmer's market.

It's not just that I'm some kind of food snob. It's not just that I'd rather think local and eat local and support the little guy farmer over and above the aggro "big agra" executive. It's not just that I like playing a game where I tally the number of Suburus, designer dogs, yuppies, hippies, old folks, and strollers.

It's that sometimes, crazy shit happens at the farmer's market. Maybe it's something in the air. Maybe everybody's goofy on rhubarb. No idea what it is, only that it is.

* * *

He's the Honey Man, but also, the Egg Man.

(Coo-coo-ca-choo.)

The guy's a ninja with his bees and bee-hives, and he's got every type of honey you could imagine. Clover, wildflower, blueberry, knotweed. It's the knotweed that's most interesting and most complex: it's thick and dark and tastes like scorched molasses (er, except, in a good way — it's like the espresso of honeys). But he's got the honeycomb and the bee pollen and all that shit.

But, as noted, he's also got eggs.

His eggs are sublime. Farm eggs are like eggs pooped out of chicken-shaped angels. You get an egg from the grocery store, it's fine, it's suitable, it does the trick. But you don't know real eggs until you've had one straight from a healthy itinerant chicken — the whites are whiter, the yolks are a sun-bright orange instead of a sad ochre, and overall the eggs just taste more… well, eggy. (This is the truest thing I can say regarding meat from healthy, well-bred livestock. It always tastes like the thing it already is, only moreso. Pork is porkier. Beef is beefier. And so on and so forth. It's like the flavor volume goes to 11.)

Point is, the Honey Man, he also sells eggs, and this is why we dig him.

He's a quirky dude, this Bee Guy. Ex-Marine. Ex-chemist. Built like an M1 tank. Teeth like a busted-ass jack-o-lantern. He frequently wears cut-off denim shorts so cut off they might as well be Daisy Dukes.

He's a good guy, though. Quick with a story and a chat. Friendly as anything.

I went to the farmer's market yesterday.

There, sitting at his booth is his girlfriend. Attractive. Maybe in her early 40s — and he's in his 60s, I'd guess. She's hay-blonde, and doing something that I thought blondes only did in books or movies: twirling her hair around her finger and staring blankly at nothing. I try talking to her, but she just calls for the Honey Man, and by "calls for" I mean, "lamely mumbles his name so he can't hear her."

Then I hear clucking. I look over and next to the table in the back is a big chicken cage where the Honey Man — acting as Egg Man — brought some chickens. The chickens begin to freak out. They're chickens, after all, which pretty much means they're dicks. Stupid dicks, at that. The fact you can lop a clucker's head off and he'll still live for days is a sign. Any creature whose only true need in this world is a barely-functioning brain-stem is not high on the intelligence list (though somehow Snooki still got a book deal).

See, the Egg Man, some the eggs he sells are blue. Not robin's egg blue, but rather, a blue-gray hue — pretty, but you wouldn't hang them from your ears or anything. Even still, the guy gets a lot of questions: "What kind of animal lays the blue egs?" as if he's got a secret dodo farm off of the Turnpike. Thus he decided to bring in two of his hens since they're a unique lot — the "Araucana" chicken.

Well, these two hens are, as noted, being dicks.

So, Egg Man storms over, grabs the cage with both hands, and gives it a violent shake.

CLANG CLANG CLANG.

Then he yells — loudly, in a farmer's market full of sensitive yuppie-types and their delicate progeny –

"SHUT UP, YOU BITCH!"

And a chill filled the air.

Everyone paused. The bakery lady in the booth next had a look on her face like she just saw a circus geek bite the head off a poodle. People either stopped to stare or instead chose to hurry past.

It was awesome.

I don't know if he was mad at the hair-twirling girlfriend and was yelling at her via her proxy, the exotic chicken. I don't know if he just had some momentary PTSD. Maybe he's just pissed off at chickens.

God knows we remember what happens when I got mad at a chicken.

Egg Man then took the Araucana out of the cage and brought over this gnarly-footed lion-maned chicken to coo and burble in his denim-clad lap. Then I bought my eggs, chatted for a while, and went on my way.

But I love that moment where he dropped — in effect — a turd in the otherwise serene punchbowl of the farmer's market. Blue eggs from bitch chickens.

You don't see that shit at the grocery store.

25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling

1. Stories Have Power

Outside the air we breathe and the blood in our bodies, the one thing that connects us modern humans today with the shamans and emperors and serfs and alien astronauts of our past is a heritage — a lineage — of stories. Stories move the world at the same time they explain our place in it. They help us understand ourselves and those near to us. Never treat a story as a shallow, wan little thing. A good story is as powerful as the bullet fired from an assassin's gun.

2. Effect Above Entertainment

We love to be entertained. Bread and circuses! Clowns and monkeys! Decapitations and ice cream! A good story entertains but a great story knows that it has in its arsenal the ability to do so much more. The best stories make us feel something. They fuck with our emotions. They make us give a flying fuck about characters and places and concepts that don't exist and won't ever exist. The way a story stabs us with sadness, harangues us with happiness, runs us through the gauntlet of rage and jealousy and denial and underoo-shellacking lust and fear (together, lust and fear may stir a "scaredy-boner") is parallel to none. Anybody can entertain. A juggler entertains. A storyteller makes us feel something. Makes us give a shit when we have no good reason to do so. Fun is not the last stop on the story train. The storyteller is master manipulator. The storyteller is cackling puppetmaster.

3. A Good Story Is A Good Story Regardless Of Genre Or Form

Segmentation. Checking off little boxes. Putting stories in the appropriate story slots and narrative cubby-holes. Is it a sci-fi TV show? A fantasy novel? A superhero comic? A video game about duck hunting? An ARG about the unicorn sex trade? We like to think that the walls we throw up matter. But they're practically insubstantial, and once you get them in your mouth they're like cotton candy, melting away to a meaningless slurry. Good story is good story. Those who cleave to genre and form — whether as teller or as audience — limit the truth and joy the tale can present. Cast wide and find great stories everywhere.

4. That's Not To Say Form Doesn't Matter

Story is also not a square peg jammed in a circle hole. Every tale has an organic fit. The medium matters in that it lets you operate within known walls and described boundaries.

5. Stories Have Shape, Even When They Don't Mean To

You put your hand in a whirling clod of wet clay, you're shaping it. Even when you don't mean to. Sometimes you find a shape the way a blind man studies a face. Other times you know the shape at the outset and move your hands to mold the tale you choose to tell. Neither way is better than the other. But the story never doesn't have a shape. A story always has structure, even when you resist such taxonomy.

6. The Story Is A Map; Plot Is The Route You Choose

A story is so much more than the thing you think it is. I lay down a map, that map has a host of possibilities. Sights unseen. Unexpected turns. The plot is just the course I… well, plot upon that map. It's a sequence. Of events. Of turns. Of landmarks. The story goes beyond mere sequence. The story is about what I'll experience. About who I'll meet. The story is the world, the characters, the feel, the time, the context. Trouble lies in conflating plot with story. (Even though I've done it here already. See how easy it is to do?)

7. On The Subject Of Originality

The storyteller will find no original plots. But original stories are limitless. It's like LEGO blocks. Go buy a box of LEGO bricks and you'll discover that you have no unique pieces — by which I mean, these are the same pieces that everybody gets. But how you arrange them is where it gets interesting. That's where it's all fingerprints and snowflakes and unicorn scat. Plot is just a building block. Story is that which you build.

8. The Bridge Between Author And Audience

The audience wants to feel connected to the story. They want to see themselves inside it. Whether as mirror image or as doppelganger (or as sinister mustachio'ed Bizarroworld villain!). The story draws a line between the storyteller and the audience — you're letting them see into you and they're unknowingly finding you inside them. Uhh, not sexually, of course. You little dirty birdies, you.

9. But Also, Fuck The Audience Right In Its Ear

The audience isn't stupid. It just doesn't know want it wants. Oh, it thinks it knows. The desires of the audience are ever at war with the story's needs, and the story's needs are, in a curious conundrum, the audience's needs. You read that right: this means it's the audience versus the audience, with the storyteller as grim-faced officiant. In this struggle, fiction is born. The conflict of audience versus writer and audience versus itself is the most fundamental conflict of them all. The audience wants the protagonist to be happy, to be well. They want things to work out. They want conflict to resolve. The story cannot have these things and still be a good story. Good story thrives on protagonists in pain. On things failing to go the way everyone hopes. On what is born from conflict and struggle, not merely from the resolution. The audience wants a safety blanket. It's the storyteller's job to take that safety blanket and choke them with it until they experience a profound narrative orgasm. … did I just compare storytelling to erotic asphyxiation? I did, didn't I? Eeesh. Let's just pretend I said something else and move on.

10. No Tale Survives A Vacuum Of Conflict

Conflict is the food that feeds the reader. It's a spicy hell-broth that nourishes. A story without conflict is a story without story. As the saying goes, there's no 'there' there. The storyteller has truly profound powers, though: he can create conflict in the audience by making them feel a battle of emotions, by driving them forward with mystery, by angering them. The storyteller operates best when he's a little bit of a dick.

11. The Battle Between Tension and Release

Tension is how you ramp to conflict, how you play with it, how you maneuver around it, how you tap-dance up to the cliff's edge, do a perilous pirouette, and pull back from the precipice. You're constantly tightening the screws. Escalation of tension is how a story builds. From bad to worse. From worse to it can't get any worse. From it can't get any worse to, no, no, we were wrong, it's still getting worse because now I'm being stampeded by horses that are also covered in burning napalm. But it isn't just a straight line from bad to awful. It rises to a new plateau, then falls. Having just witnessed it, birth is a great (if gooey) analog. Each contraction has its own tension and release, but the contractions also establish a steady pattern upward. Some have said narrative arcs are sexual, ejaculatory, climactic. True, in some ways. But birth has more pain. More blood. More mad euphoria. And stories always need those things.

12. Peaks, Valleys, Slashes And Whorls

It's not just tension. All parts of a story are subject to ups and downs. Rhythm and pacing are meaningful. A good story is never a straight line. The narrative is best when organically erratic. One might suggest that a story's narrative rhythm is its fingerprint: unique to it alone.

13. In A Story, Tell Only The Story

The story you tell should be the story you tell. Don't wander far afield. That's not to say you cannot digress. Digressions are their own kind of peak (or, in many cases, valley). But those digressions serve the whole. Think of stories then not as one line but rather, a skein of many lines. Lines that come together to form a pattern, a blanket, a shirt, a hilarious novelty welcome mat. Only lines that serve the end are woven into play. Digressions, yes. Deviations, no.

14. Big Ideas Do Well In Small Spaces

The audience cannot relate to big ideas. A big idea is, well, too big. Like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Or Unicron, the giant Transformer-that-is-also-a-planet. (I wonder if anyone ever calls him "Unicorn," and if so, does that irritate him?) You must go macro to micro. Big ideas are shown through small stories: a single character's experience through the story is so much better than the 30,000-foot-view.

15. Backstory Is A Frozen Lake Whose Ice Is Wafer Thin

Backstory in narrative — and, ultimately, exposition in general — is sometimes a grim necessity, but it is best to approach it like a lake of thin ice. Quick delicate steps across to get to the other side. Linger too long or grow heavy in the telling and the ice will crack and you will plunge into the frigid depths. And then you get hypothermia. And then you will be eaten by an Ice Hag. True story.

16. Characters Are The Vehicle That Carry Us Into (And Through) The Tale

The best stories are the stories of people, and that means it's people — characters — that get us through the story. They are the dune buggies and Wave Runners on which the audience rides. Like Yoda on Luke's back. Above all else, a story must have interesting characters, characters who the audience can see themselves in, even if only in a small way. Failing that, what's the point?

17. Villains Have Mothers

Unless we're talking about SkyNet, villains were children once upon a time. Which means they have mothers. Imagine that: even the meanest characters have mothers, mothers who may even have loved them once. They're people, not mustache-twirling sociopaths born free from a vagina made of fiery evil. Nobody sees themselves as a villain. We're all solipsistic. We're all the heroes of our own tales. Even villains.

18. Heroes Have Broken Toys

Just as villains see themselves doing good, heroes are capable of doing or being bad. Complexity of character — believable complexity — is a feature, not a bug. Nothing should be so simple as unswerving heroism, nor should it be as cut-and-dry as straight-up-malefic motherfuckery. Black and white grows weary. More interesting is how dark the character's many shades of gray may become before brightening.

19. Strip Skin Off Bones To See How It Works

A story can be cut to a thin slice of steak and still be juicy as anything. To learn how to tell stories, tell small stories as well as large ones. Find a way to tell a story in as few beats as possible. Look for its constituent parts. Put them together, take them apart. See how it plays and lays. Some limbs are vestigial.

20. Beginnings Are For Assholes…

The audience begins where you tell them. They don't need to begin at the beginning. If I tell the story of a Brooklynite, I don't need to speak of his birth, or the origins of Brooklyn, or how the Big Bang barfed up asteroids and dinosaurs and a flock of incestuous gods. You start where it matters. You start where it's most interesting. You begin as late in the tale as you can. The party guest who comes late is always the most interesting one. Even still, it's worth noting…

21. …If You Jump Too Fast Into Waters Too Deep And The Audience Drowns

Jump too swiftly into a narrative and the story grows muddled. We have to become invested first. Go all high-karate-action and we have no context for the characters who are in danger, and no context means we don't care, and if we don't care then we're already packing our bags in the first five minutes or five pages. The audience always needs something very early to get their hands around. This always comes back to the character. Give them reason to care right at the gate. Otherwise, why would they walk through it?

22. Treat Place Like Character

For setting to matter, it must come alive. It must be made to get up and dance, so shoot at its feet. It has a face. It has a personality. It has life. When setting becomes character, the audience will care.

23. Always Ask, Why Do I Want To Tell This?

Storytellers tell specific stories for a reason. You want to scare the kids around a campfire. You want to impress your friends with your exploits. You want to get in somebody's pants. You hope to make someone cry, or make them cheer, or convey to them a message. Know why you're telling it. Know what its about — to you above all else, because then you can show everybody else what it's about. Find that invisible tether that ties you to the story. That tether matters.

24. It's Okay To Bury The Lede

Every story is about something. Man's inhumanity to man. How history repeats itself. How karate-ghosts are awesome and how you don't fuck with a karate-ghost. But you don't need to slap the audience about the head and neck with it. The truth of the story lives between the lines. This is why Jesus invented "subtext."

25. Writing Is A Craft, But Storytelling Is An Art

Writing isn't magic. Writing is math. It's placing letters and words and sentences after one another to form a grand equation. Writing is the abracadabra — the power word made manifest — but the story that results is the magic. That equation we piece together tells a tale and the arrangement that leads to that tale is where the true art lies, because it takes an ice scraper to pretense and throws an invisible-yet-present tow line from present to past. Writing is craft and mechanics. Storytelling is art and magic.