Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 282

I Am The Luckiest Bag Of Dirt In The World, Because My Wife Rocks

It's Valentine's Day.

It is, depending on your perspective, some combination of day where you go above and beyond the call of duty to celebrate your love, or a day where you get on the Internet and bitch about how Valentine's Day is a crass holiday created by the greeting card companies and how you should be nice to your loved ones every day so blah blah blah now you're the Grinch That Had Venereal Disease And Stole Valentine's Day. Because, c'mon, Santa was invented by Coca-Cola. The Easter Bunny was invented by, I dunno, Cadbury. Jesus was invented by Toyota. It's all just marketing and advertising.

Listen, I get it, you think Valentine's Day is a stinky pink blossom of consumerist hate juice. I don't really care. Just shush about it and keep your head down while the rest of us love our respective others, yeah?

With that in mind, let me just announce it:

I love my wife.

I love my wife unmercifully, beyond the periphery of reason and sanity.

I met her online. Match-dot-com, actually. When I "online-dated," I met a small percentage of very cool and lovely ladies, and I also met a small battalion of total farking moonbats. I went on dates that concluded with me going home, locking all the doors, and corking the silverware. When I met my wife, however, we went out to a Chinese restaurant. And we stayed there for four hours. We closed the joint out. They were throwing fortune cookies at our heads to get us to leave.

It was then and there that I knew I would marry my wife.

Why do I love my wife so completely, so deeply, so dearly?

First: she's hot.

See? Hot.

Second: she is not an alcoholic, despite the inordinate number of photos I take of her where she is imbibing said alcohol. Which, for the record, seems to be most of the photos I take of her.

That's really just the tip of the iceberg. In my photos, she drinks a lot. In real life, not so much. Still, right now she deserves major kudos because, as a pregnant human being, she cannot consume her most favoritest drink in the world, the Dirty Vodka Martini. Me, I just tell her to drink it. Frankly, the baby's going to need booze to put up with us as parents. Even still, she perseveres.

My wife also puts up with my shit. Which is a really big deal, because I am a man who gives a lot of shit with up which that one would need to put. Or something. See? I can't even write a reasonable sentence. The fact that she has not yet snapped and taken a rifle up to a clocktower is a really good sign. A number of my ex-ladyfriends are now locked away in those white metal-free rooms like where they imprisoned Magneto. If you want to see my wife in the middle of putting up with my shit, here is an image. You can see it on her face how she is very kindly tolerating my nonsense:

That is her "Tolerate Husband" face. I know it well. Here is another:

One day, she'll probably stab me in the temple with a chopstick. And I'll totally let it happen. I won't even be mad. She'll be like, "Do you remember how you were acting?" And I'll be like, "Okay, yeah. Yeah. Yes."

My wife is funny. And, mysteriously, she thinks I'm funny. She also has the foulest mouth of any woman I know, which for me is a total win. The fact that she can occasionally out-profane my infernal tongue does not merely earn a check-mark in the box but rather a check-plus-plus. Seriously. You cut her off in traffic, she will tell you to eat a dick and die. She will curse you in ways that will wilt your heart like warm spinach.

She's kind-hearted. She's tolerant. She believes in me.

But even her negative traits are ones to love:

Her impatience matches my own, as does her raging river of snark.

Plus, if cajoled, she will kiss a tiki, which is not a metaphor for anything sexual but rather a literal truth:

Tiki Loving 101, kids.

She's got beautiful eyes and long gorgeous hair and legs that won't quit. Seriously, her legs — her getaway sticks, her lady-longs, her gams — are long. We're the same height but I go to drive her car and I have to spend two minutes and 37 seconds readjusting the seat to compensate for her long legs and my stumpy little clod-hoppers. By the way, I totally just made up "lady-longs," but you can have it for a dollar.

She is one half of the Husband And Wife Video-Game Super-Team.

She is beautiful even when she's picking something out of her eye:

She lets me thrust her into dubious Photoshop situations:

And she is beloved by all the creatures of the earth, as evidenced by unrequited looks of love and lust born by this… I dunno, amphibious Deep One frog dude.

Let's be very clear, here. The fact that this person –

Married me –

Is an indicator that she is both charitable and loving.

She is going to be a wonderful mother, but really, who cares? What I care about is that she's a beautiful, awesome, kick-ass wife. The kid's just going to have to take the back-seat on this one. Sorry, Upcoming Wee One. This hot chick is all mine.

I love you, wife of my life.

You make my world awesome.

It would turn gray and then black and then die without your presence.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Things You May Not Know About Little Chucky Wendig, Age Eight And A Half

It has come to my attention that a lot of you crazy people are reading this blog. Which, for the record, is awesome, though it does lead me to suspect that my words have some kind of narcotic effect, or that perhaps my blog exudes some kind of nicotine haze. I certainly don't know why you keep coming back. Or why you follow me on Twitter. I'm an ass.

I don't have the good sense God gave to a brain-damaged trilobite.

(For those of you with alternate religious beliefs, replace "God" with: Zeus, Buddha, Ahura Mazda, the Devil, genetics, Papa Legba, Shiva, Wash from Firefly, Godzilla, or John Quincy Adams.)

Regardless, here you are.

Which I totally appreciate.

As such, I figure it's a good time to get to know one another. Here, then, is a random slapdash written-in-no-sensible-order list of things you may not know about me. It bears no rhyme, no reason. It doesn't even strive to be all that interesting, really — it's more or less a conglomeration of meaningless facts about yours truly. With that in mind? Let us begin.

…

I only recently learned how to belch. Or burp — whatever term you prefer. Now I go around burping because I can, and because it is wonderful. This is not good news for my wife because I am like a kid with a new toy. What's interesting, and this may be entirely coincidental, is that once I learned how to burp, I no longer get heartburn. True story.

Mice ate my buttplug. To clarify, I did not have a buttplug for my own buttplug pleasures but rather, because a friend gave sex toys as gag gifts one year for the holidays. (Though I am not knocking said "buttplug pleasures." I think that in this world you do whatever you like to enjoy yourself — I make no judgments on your sexual peccadilloes.) I ended up with a buttplug which went into a drawer where I forgot about it. At the time I was living in a double-wide trailer ("the carriage house"), and I had mice. The mice, I discovered, had eaten into many objects of mine (including books, the little fuckers). I opened a drawer at one point to find that mice had eaten the buttplug package and the buttplug itself, and then made a nest out of the rubbery buttplug materials. Which makes them the weirdest mice in the history of mice, living in a nest made of a buttplug. Be advised: "Mice Ate My Buttplug" is a great name for a band. Be advised also: the mice shit on my silverware. Since I am not a fan of hantavirus salad, that earned the mice a death sentence.

Speaking of death sentence, it is Squirrel War up in this bitch. For the squeamish, you have my apologies, but so far two squirrels have… lost their lives in this war. The same principle is at work: they are shitting on our front porch. They leave a line of little squirrel turdlets along the railing. That is the lesson for all animals out there: if you shit on my things uninvited, you have written your own ticket. Actually, that's probably true for humans, too. If some dude wanders onto my driveway and takes a dump on my car, I'm going to shoot him. And I think that would be excused in a court of law.

I wrote a short story called "Squirrel Skin." It was about squirrels who steal the flesh of humans and wear dudes like suits. That story is in this anthology — Vermin — which is apparently out. I've seen no payment for this. I don't even think I realized it was out. It was a woefully mismanaged, long-delayed anthology. It's part of why getting short stories published is a pain in the ass. Worth the trouble sometimes, but not always.

Have you read "Hell's Bells"…? A short story about Coyote (like, the mythic character) in Hell. It features sandwiches. And the Devil. And Dybbuk. Is it any good? Eh. Funny, maybe. Wrote it five, six years ago.

I believe in ghosts and grew up in a haunted house and believe I have proof that ghosts exist. My earliest ghostly encounter was when I was about five years old as I emerged from the bathroom. I had not yet put my "boy parts" back in my pants when I saw footprints appear in the carpet in front of me. I ran. Correction: I ran without having put my "boy parts" back in my pants.

When I was a kid, I did not fear the supernatural or monsters or any of that. I feared two things very distinctly: serial killers and nuclear war. I shouldn't have been afraid of those things so early — frankly, I shouldn't have even been aware of them at that point. So it goes. Now I write fucked up horror stories.

The first horror book I read was Stephen King's The Shining, but I didn't really "get it." I was, I dunno. Ten? Eleven? After that, I didn't read any more King novels until high school — but I did read one helluva lot of Dean Koontz and Robert McCammon. Stinger, Swan Song, Watchers, Strangers.

I do not like eggplant. I used to not like tomatoes, fish, mushrooms, Brussel sprouts. I now pretty much like everything I didn't used to like. With one exception: eggplant. Because, really, fuck eggplant.

I used to run a BBS when I was in high school. It went by many names: Shadowlands, BizarroWorld, Unreality. There may have been a fourth name? I used to call BBSes, too. One time I ran up a $500 phone bill because I didn't realize calling Philadelphia was a "long distance call." To this day, I am genuinely surprised my father did not attack my computer with a hammer. The threat was made.

I once had a hedgehog, name of Poppy. She was not a happy animal. You see some hedgehogs being all cute and shit, but not her. Angry, xenophobic little lady. Cute, though, even still.

The first short story I had published was "Bourbon Street Lullaby," a kind of Poppy Z. Brite-esque ghost story about these dead twins and their older, still-living brother. It was a good early lesson on the value of editors and so-called "gatekeepers." Editor (John Benson) saw something good about it, but wanted changes — I made those changes gladly, resubmitted, and boom, my first publishing credit. That was, what, 16 years ago? And the pay rates for short stories haven't gotten better. They've gotten worse. But it did teach me that you can get paid for this crazy gig. And, more importantly, you should get paid.

I'm probably going to die of cancer one day.

I used to think I was going to be a cartoonist. I drew a comic called Odds N' Ends. Starring hedgehogs. One was a surfer. I had a copyright on it. Still do, I guess. Turns out, I wasn't very good at it. Or, maybe more importantly, I didn't want to become better. Writing, though — that's what eventually drew me.

Not sure why, but I used to be fascinated by surfing. And surfers. This despite the fact that I was somewhat hydrophobic. Hell, maybe because of it. Maybe because surfers conquered the ocean, and the ocean is basically one big scary hungry watery mouth. And there they are, astride the churning hell-waves. Or maybe it was because there were a lot of bad-ass surfer chicks in tight suits. Who can say?

I was once stung by a lot of bees. Ran into a nest of bumblebees. I was more afraid of bees before that. Not sure why, but getting stung by a fuckton of bees (and being coated head to toe in pink Calamine lotion) cured me of my "bee fear." You don't hear that very often. "I was afraid of being trampled by wild boar and then stabbed in the face by natives. But when it actually happened, I was like, hey, this isn't so bad."

My Dad used to give me a .22 revolver as a kid, and we'd put .22 CCI shotshells in the cylinder, and I'd shoot carpenter bees who were trying to eat our barn. I still have that .22.

Someone bought our property a couple years back and tore it down and build a shitty-looking house. Our house was old. But, it's gone. And the dickwipe also tore down the barn. A red barn. If you live in this area, you know that red barns are kind of "a thing." Jacks the value of your house to have an original red barn and this guy kicks it to splinters. It'd be like buying a house with a Jacuzzi tub and then filling it with cement and then taking a crap on the cement. Nice job. Asshole.

I love bacon but I suspect it's becoming overrated. I think sausage is the next big thing.

That's not a dick joke.

That's it for now, folks. I think I've bored you enough.

Your turn, if you so desire.

Flit down the comments, and drop into them one thing about you that I probably don't know.

Gooey Gushy Smushy Woo Woo Tragic Sweet Kissy-Face Sex-Biscuit Love Stories

Today, two simple questions for you, the ever-glorious terribleminds audience.

Number One:

What are some good love stories? Books, film, games, real-life, what-have-you.

Number Two:

What, then, makes for a good love story?

Go.

(Happy Almost Valentine's Day, all y'all.)

The Irregular Creatures One-Month Annivalentine's Daysary Extravabonanza!

It's Valentine's Day weekend.

It's also the one-month anniversary ("monthiversary?") of the release of IRREGULAR CREATURES, my collection of nine short stories which features (but is not limited to): a family household that serves as ground zero for a battle of good versus evil fought by flying cats; a Bangkok dancer whose ahem nether regions are so spectacular that they surely do not belong to a mere human; a working man who learns the true cost of fighting zombies; and a boy who gets lost in an otherworldly auction where a mermaid's innocence is put on the chopping block.

To celebrate, I've decided to drop the price on the collection down to the so-low-I-just-pooped-my-pants price of ninety-nine cents ($0.99)!

(This is true only for the Kindle release.)

The price will hold true until cough-cough at some point on Monday or Tuesday. Sorry — it's hard to predict with Amazon. I'd so love it if I could change product descriptions and prices on the fly, but I can't — Amazon puts even the teeny-tiniest of changes ("I just added a comma to my product description!") through a review process, which takes 24-48 hours.

So –

Go now and procure the collection for the wild-and-wacky-bargain-basement-how-will-I-be-able-to-afford-my-heart-pills-and-by-heart-pills-I-mean-Pez-and-tequila price.

IRREGULAR CREATURES: $0.99.

Tell your friends. Hell, tell your enemies. Gift them a copy if you so desire.

Then leave a review on Amazon.

Decisions, Decisions

I mentioned this sale yesterday on the Twitter-Tubes and received a handful of comments (all welcome) that asked why I was doing this, or suggested that maybe it wasn't an ideal solution, or (the nicest of them all) noting that the collection was worth more than that. Seems then like a good idea to peel back the layer a little bit. Like an onion. Or a sunburn. Or a rejected skin graft.

I am not a fan of the ninety-nine cent price point. I am especially not a fan of it as the end-all be-all price of something. I'm not knocking any author who chooses that path — I just think that a novel or collection is worth more than a song on iTunes (but maybe less than an album on iTunes). I want authors to value their content and, further, I want readers to value the content, too. Is a race to the bottom really the way to go?

Further, if you go the bottom-bitch pricing at Amazon, Amazon takes a more robust cut. One assumes that this is because they're trying to train authors to keep their prices a little higher. Which is good for Amazon and good for the author and ultimately, I agree.

I sell the collection at $2.99, I get about two bucks. I sell it at $0.99, I get thirty cents.

And yet, other authors report surging numbers at the lower price. Some of that makes sense — you look at app-pricing, well, some apps are far lower than what I would consider to be their value. After having played Angry Birds, I'd tell you that the game is worth ten bucks, easy. But by pricing low, they got me to commit without thinking twice — and, given the humongous sales numbers, were able to hook millions of others accordingly. Price point isn't the only factor there, but I suspect it's a big one.

Lower your price on Amazon, you might convince uncertain buyers to take a risk because, shit, a buck is cheap. That's "taco truck" cheap. If enough buyers bite to put the product in the higher sales rankings, then the product becomes more discoverable. Then, if the price goes back up, it does so ideally while amongst those higher rankings. One assumes that some degree of psychology is at work here. I know it's true for me that when I check out paid apps on iTunes, I look to see what's in the Top 10 (or at least Top 50) first — I assume, however incorrectly, that the top rankings are likelier home to a greater percentage of quality apps. So too with Amazon. I find myself skimming the top rankings periodically just to see what's there. Getting into that echelon is not without value.

The big thing is, it will at least reveal the value — or the lack of value — in making such a move. If it doesn't yield significant results, I'm not likely to do it again. I view this collection as something of a canary in a coal mine — I want to see how the bird behaves when I throw it into a mine tunnel filled with different gases. It's not a perfect test, but it'll yield me some data. And at this stage, data is just as valuable as cold hard cash.

I recognize that this isn't purely scientific, but being a writer without a significant math brain, I don't see any great way of turning this into an officially official experiment. I don't have a control product. I can't account for an unholy host of uncontrollable (or indiscernible) elements. But one thing I have at my disposal is price — by changing it, I'm throwing a pebble in the water and watching the ripples.

I think it was Jeff Tidball who noted that Gameplaywright doesn't drop the price on their books or offer sales because it burns the early adopters. Which is true, to a point, and if anybody feels burned here — well, you have my uttermost apologies. My assumption, however, is that we as consumers are not that sensitive. I bought World of Goo for fifteen bucks on the PC, then it came onto the iPad for ten bucks. I waited, and it dropped to five bucks on a sale, and I picked it up. This weekend, it's ninety-nine cents. I'm not pissed. Hell, I bought it twice because I loved it and was happy to support the creators of the game.

The television I bought was more expensive the week before I bought it, and cheaper the month after I bought it. As a consumer, price wobbles like that occur. Sales or discounts are common. Still, if anybody feels stung over it, you have my apologies, and the next time I see you, I'll buy you a beer. Or give you a hug. Or hire a hobo to caress your junk with tickling calluses.

Quick Sales Update

Sales continue to be slow and steady. Three to five sales a day, with 280 sales after a month of being "out there." About 65% of my sales are through Amazon, and 35% of my sales are through here, via PDF/ePub.

Not bad, ultimately. We'll see what happens from here.

The flimsy self-publishing experiment continues.

Contain your mirth; this is a new carpet.

What Can You Do?

If you read the collection and liked it, definitely leave a review on Amazon. Further, please tell others — word of mouth is the best vector any author has of getting readership.

Otherwise, you just keep doing what you do best. Sit there, looking pretty, you handsome blog audience, you. With your lovely eyelashes and your lashing whip-like tail.

If My Mockingjay Don't Sing

Finished Mockingjay.

Loved Mockingjay.

But wondering: why all the middling reactions toward Mockingjay? I wouldn't call it "hate," exactly — but I was warned repeatedly that the third book was essentially a big disappointment from the high of the previous two. Lots of "ehh," "mehhh," "pbbbt" reactions.

To which my jaw drops, my eyes launch out on springs, my tongue rolls, and the floor drops out from under me. Dang, I did not find that to be the case.

Your job, then, is to explain your disappointment (if you desire) in the comments.

I will not fling aspersions toward your general character. The question is not subject to any wrong answers. I mean, sure, I'll throw flaming bags of poo at your head. I kid! I kid. They won't be on fire. Sheesh.

My thoughts (and this will contain some very light spoilers):

The book was unflinching. Unflinching. This is not a shiny happy book. It is a book about children and war. It is a book where lots of characters you care about die. It is a book that again puzzles me and haunts me with the question: "How the hell are they going to make this into a PG-13 movie?" Seriously. Blood. Gore. Children dying. Nightmarish images. Murder. War. It's not splatterpunk, but it's not Harry Potter, either. Any effort to water this down to an acceptable family-friendly rating potentially does harm to the story's message, a message carried on purpose by such grim, unceasing nastiness.

The book felt to me as the natural conclusion to the series — it carries the "game" motif back into play, this time on the battlefield. It pays off on things to which it was building. Nothing out of left field. For the most part the characters we care about are… concluded properly, I suppose you could say. Only one sticks out (Finnick) as feeling narratively inconclusive (and actually a little strange).

And yet, the book remained surprising, too. At no point did it feel rote.

The ending was pitch perfect, for me: like a shot of espresso, the book was super dark with a very bittersweet finish. I'll say it again: not a happy book. And it does exactly what I was exhorting the other day — the storyteller is an emotional manipulator and the best and most memorable stories are the ones that truly made us feel something. Collins doesn't fuck around. She's constantly kicking you in the spleen, punching you in the kidneys, wrapping her hands around your throat. The woman knows how to hurt her audience. And the ending doesn't do much to salve the wounds — a little. But not much.

So, chime in.

You read it?

You like it?

You find it disappointing?

Color me curious (which is actually a robin's egg blue!).

Choke On Anthony Neil Smith's Truth, Motherfuckers!

True fact: the writer's life is an unglamorous one. It's the furthest thing from sexy. It's not so much action-packed as it is a wisdom tooth socket packed with septic cotton. In case you didn't realize it, no, seriously, I'm not fucking around, you really don't want to be a writer.

Don't believe me?

Anthony Neil Smith knows the score, and he'd like to prove it to you.

A Day In The Life Of Anthony Neil Smith, ladies and gents (the entirely-accurate ether binge happens just after the two-minute mark — so, y'know, there's that).

A.N. Smith — aka @DocNoir on Twitter, which is my way of suggesting you follow the man — is the dude responsible for writing the entirely brilliant CHOKE ON YOUR LIES. (Or, if you want it on your Nook…) Which, by the way, is at the crazy-low price of $2.99. Book like this, book of this quality, should be ten bucks, easy. I'd pay ten bucks. I'd tell you to pay ten bucks. But fuck, it's not even three bucks. That's like — *does some quick math, dicks around with an abacus for an hour* — a 157% discount. That's amazing. Plus: Octavia. You will come to love Octavia. You will whisper her name into your pillow.

You support smart self-publishing? Buy it.

You support kick-ass crime fiction? Buy it.

You support authors who are the bee's knees, the cat's pajamas, the monkey's tits? Buy it.

Don't make me drag out my sales pitch, goddamnit.

To Become A True Storyteller, You Must Cloak Yourself In The Mantle Of Evil Puppetmaster

Bold proclamation time:

The most critical thing that a story must do  —

the tippity-top of the narrative mountain!

— is make the audience feel something.

The key verb there is "make." As in, to force, to manipulate, to induce, compel, impel, coerce. As in, to turn the audience into your wide-eyed butt-puppets and demand that those suckers dance.

You are an emotional manipulator. You are a callous puppetmaster.

Think about it. The best stories — the ones you remember, the ones you tell again and again, the ones you keep coming back to — are the ones that made you feel something. You feel fear during a campfire tale. You feel shock and betrayal when Vader reveals his heritage and lops off his son's hand quick as thumbing the bloom off a daisy. You weep during Brian's Song. You masturbate vigorously during Career Opportunities starring Jennifer Connelly. What? Just me?

Uhhh. Then I was clearly just kidding. Ha ha! Ha. Heh. Shut up.

Point is, the real skill of a gifted storyteller is the ability to twist the emotions of the audience. To conjure feeling for — and please observe just how absurd this is — completely imaginary people.

"Here is a person that does not — and will never — exist," you say. "Now I will make you care for them more than you care for your own mother, at least for two hours or 300 pages or a handful of comic book panels. P.S., you are my butt-puppet. Or, if you'd prefer, rectal poppet. That is the one choice I will give you."

The Essential Toolkit

To achieve this, I suspect you must be:

An excellent liar.

Someone who is at least mildly disturbed.

Capable of thinking of profound evils and delirious virtues in equal measure.

Willing to commit acts of overwhelming cruelty to invisible, non-existent people.

Someone who had lots of imaginary friends as a child. And possibly as an adult.

The First Emotion Must Be Love

The core of every good story is a character for whom we care — and not just care a little, but care deeply. This alone is no easy task: Such a character must be likable, but not annoying. He must have virtues but remain imperfect. She must possess the potential for sacrifice, for selflessness, for selfishness, for evil. He may be funny, but not only that. She may be serious, but not only that. He comprises many dimensions but not so many that he seems unreal or unpindownable.

How do we foster love? How do we ask the audience to care for her (and by "ask" I mean, "twist up their emotions like a pair of frilly panties")?

I don't know that any one way exists, but I suspect it helps if you go in knowing why the audience is going to connect with a given character. Are they going to respect his honesty in the face of criminal tendencies? Will his warm heart buried beneath a crusty exoskeleton of calcified snark be their undoing? Is it her unexpected toughness, her motherly instincts, her witty sardonicism, her laser-shooting uterus?

Best figure that out. Identify it going in. Easy tip: pick three traits that will make the character lovable. "Irascible scamp," "charitable to a fault," and "photon ovaries."

Character magic, complete.

Now You Stab The Audience In The Kidney

First comes love, yes.

But after that? Sweet, sweet betrayal.

Hey! That handsome John McClane, he's going through some rough times — oh! Oh, he's trying out that toe thing. On the carpet. And then oh snap, terrorists and OH GOD HE'S RUNNING ACROSS BROKEN GLASS AND THERE'S FIRE AND A GUN GLUED TO HIS BACK WITH TAPE AND BLOOD EW.

That Buffy sure is a sassy little vampire slayer, isn't she? She's cute and snarky and has such great friends and HOLY CRAP SHE JUST HAD TO KILL HER VAMPIRE BOYFRIEND OH GOD NO.

Oh, that Elizabeth Bennett! Trapped in a stuffy society where status matters, the poor woman just wants to marry for love and YE GODS AND FISHES SHE'S BEING EATEN BY A KOMODO DRAGON.

Okay, I maybe made that last part up. But I dare any of you to claim that Jane Austen's novels would not be a smidgen more entertaining with the introduction of various ravenous reptiles.

Point is, that character you just made the audience love? Now you have to hurt that character. As badly as you can stomach, I suspect.You have earned the audience's love and trust. Now you betray it.

Trick is, audiences are both really stupid and damnably clever. They're stupid because, duh, they keep coming back for more. They keep walking back into bookstores and movie theaters all year 'round, expecting that something will be different, expecting for once that their love and trust will be rewarded.

(It won't.)

On the other hand, they're smart because they've wised up. They can see your machinations laid bare. They know you're not likely to kill the protagonist. They know you're not likely to irreversibly destroy some precious plot point. That forces you to either a) get creative or b) throw caution to the wind and do the exact thing that they think you can never do.

Getting creative suggests that you find secret in-roads that lead to a character's pain — sure, you can't kill the character, but you can kill their spirit! (Or appear to, at least.) Harm their loved ones! Take away everything they hold dear! Hobble their efforts at every turn!

It should become increasingly clear that the character is a voodoo doll representing the audience. You stab the character with pins — but the character is an imaginary proxy. The one who feels the sting of the prick (stop sniggering) is the audience. In fact, what you're doing to the audience — give them love, then stab the love with pointy evil — is the same thing that you're doing to the character, isn't it?

It's an endless cycle of love and pain.

And That Is Only The Beginning

That simplest of equations (create love, betray love) is only the first and most direct way of instigating emotion in the reader. But the most accomplished storyteller has an unholy cabinet of torture tools and cruel curiosities. You can make the audience feel hatred. You can make them feel disgust. You can drag them into the depths of terror while elevating them to the heights of ecstatic relief.

What about the power of a loathsome villain?

The wrenching uncertainty of a love triangle?

The sting of defeat, the reverie of triumph?

A puppet might have a half-a-dozen strings, but the strings that lead from your story to that story's audience are nearly infinite. And in the next couple weeks, we'll be taking a look at more of those ways to tweak, twist, fold, spindle, mutilate, maul, and molest the tender emotions of your unwitting audience.

Stay tuned, story-slingers.

(Credit to Angela Perry who kicked my ass into this line of thinking with this comment.)

Little Chucky's Screenwriting Bible

You may note that, in my bio, I sometimes refer to myself as a "screenwriter" in addition to "novelist," or "game designer" or "freelance penmonkey." (Also in addition to: "bee wrangler," "canary in the coal mine," and "fluffer.") At this point I no longer consider the identifier a matter of wishful thinking: for years I've worked on scripts that remains unproduced, but  by this point my writing partner and I have worked on scripts that have, in fact, seen the light of day: Collapsus and Pandemic, just to name two. Plus, we have a feature film in development and a television show up for pilot consideration.

And yet, you may notice that I don't talk much about it.

Screenwriting, I mean, not the bee-wrangling or porn fluffing.

Reason being: I've only been doing this a few years. I can talk about fiction writer or game designer or the life of the slack-jawed freelancer because I've been living those roles for a long time. I'm no expert, but I can at least wade into such swampy waters without fear of being sucked under.

Still, I get a lot of requests to talk about screenwriting.

People say to me, "Talk about screenwriting! Do it now!"

And I try to reply to them and explain… but it's difficult what with the dirty panties duct-taped into my mouth. I mostly just want to go back to the grocery store from whence I was abducted.

Good news is, I've managed to bite through my panty-gag, and now I will regale you with my ahem-cough-cough "rules" of screenwriting, which are really just "guidelines with all the firmness of gravy-soaked bread." Again, I am no expert. Read this not with a grain of salt but rather an entire salt lick.

Ready? Let's roll.

Brevity Is The Soul Of Wit, Anything Else Is A Bowl Of Shit

The screenplay is a bucking horse, a rammy stallion — the first time it sees the barn door open, that fucker is going to be off like a shot. Before you know what's happening, you have a 300 page script in your hands. And, given that one page is equivalent to a minute of screen time, that's bad juju.

So, you have to make a concerted effort to rein that beast in, always aiming for that sweet spot between 90 and 120 words. This requires an almost religious devotion to brevity.

Conversations shouldn't go on too long. Descriptions should be terse; this isn't a novel. You're not Lovecraft. Do not spend two pages discussing the insane non-Euclidean geometry of a lamp. Find and report on only those most critical of details. You're not art directing the thing. Scenes shouldn't go more than three, four, maaaaybe five pages. Keep it tight. Fast. Loose.

It's like bad sex –  get in, see the sights, pop your cookies, get out.

Think Of It Like A "Story Blueprint"

Don't be married to the material. A novel is the end of the road. What you write is what ends up on the shelves (after edits, of course). Screenplays don't work like that. The work is always in flex. It's in flex up until the final director's edit (at which point you've long been out of the equation). You are writing more a story blueprint than a story. It's an architectural map. It's not yet a constructed building.

And Yet, It Needs To Be A Compelling Read

By the same token, it still has to read like a kick-ass compelling story. Characters must leap off the page. Descriptions must be vivid. Dialogue should be sharp, pointed, purposeful. And you must do so with that aforementioned devotion to brevity. Which, yes, is like saying, "I need you to spit liquid gold into this thimble," but fuck it, that's your job.

I write my scripts in accordance to screenwriting rules, but I also try to make them interesting. I want them to read a little bit like novels or short stories without conforming to those particular conventions. (Oh, and for the record, I do not believe that novel = screenplay. I believe short story or novella = screenplay. Anybody who tries to adapt a novel into a screenplay will find the challenging task of determining what massive cuts the novel will require. Just my two cents.)

Write so it will be read at the same time you write so it will be filmed.

No Matter How Much Your Struggle, Structure Matters

I read blogs or screenwriting advice and you hear a lot of, "Adhering to the three-act structure is a myth, blah blah blah, don't do it." Except very rarely do they cite films that don't adhere to this classic filmic structure. Most classic films do. Most modern films do. Seriously, you can check your watch during a film and predict the act turns.

For better or for worse, it is the accepted and expected structure in film-making. You can do differently, but you may be challenged. Just lie back and think of England, love.

Structure is a beautiful thing. The challenge — really, the art — is how you subvert structure, how you brainwash it to make it your own. That is, at least, how I see it.

Do Not Write A Shooting Script

You're a writer, not a director, so unless it's demanded of you, leave all the camera voodoo out of there. That also gums up a clean and compelling read. So. Uh. Don't do it.

In TV, Characters Are Static; In Film, Characters Are Dynamic

The nigh-universality of it sucks, but in television, we don't like our characters to change. Yes, you can point to characters that have changed, but it's not common. In film, however, we are granted the opportunity to see change in our characters, and in my ego-fed megalomaniac humble opinion, you don't want to waste that opportunity.

Action Action Action Shit Be Happening Action Action Action

Novels offer the writer and reader a luxury that a script does not. In a novel, we are often treated to a sense of history, of thought, of internal monologues, of peeling away layers.

In scripts, you still have to think about all that stuff. But it just doesn't end up on the page. Characters with rich character histories will not find those rich histories on display like in a museum.

Screenplays are about shit happening. I don't mean "action" in the sense of "constant karate kicks and exploding F-14 Tomcats," I just mean, things must be in perpetual motion.

You don't have time to stop and wax poetic. That's not to say pacing fails to matter or that you don't get those same peaks and valleys — it's just that pacing does not account for 10 pages of talking about your fantasy kingdom's oh-so-fascinating history or five pages of a character's internal process.

Shove it all beneath a layer of wordsmithy and bury it there. Text must become subtext.

Writing Is Rewriting

Be ready to rewrite.

I enjoy it. I love rewriting scripts way more than I do rewriting novels. I guess it's because rewriting novels is like hauling stone. Editing a script is fast, light, loose — the tool is far more "scalpel" than "dumptruck."

Table Reads Are The Cat's Knees, The Bee's Pajamas

It's critical to read your novel aloud.

It's also critical for someone else — preferably lots of someone elses — to read your script aloud. We've had table reads for all our feature scripts and it is incredibly valuable. Your ear will pick up things: inadequacies, inadvertent alliterations, repetitions, linguistic quirks, muddy phrasing. The actors will do things with your words that you never expected, both for the awesome and for the unpleasant.

You do not merely want this. You need this.

Oh, And Have Fun

I adore screenwriting. It's like I've opened a gnome door, and all these little fun goblins are in there having a party, and I'm inviting them into my brain. Where they make a nest and drink goblin beer and have giddy goblin babies. I have a blast doing it, and in reading scripts, I can tell when fun (or excitement or engagement) is in the recipe. This is true of novels, too, but because a script is so spare, so bare, I personally think that it comes out more… distinctly?

So, rock out and have fun, will you?

And that's it. That's all she wrote.

But I want to hear from you. Anybody tinkering with scripts out there? Got any "golden rules" you care to share? Don't make me get the dirty panty-gag.

Crowdsourcing Our Child's Future

It has become increasingly clear to me that I am going to be an awful father.

(hold for applause)

I am only marginally capable as a human being. The very few things I am good at are simply not things that will help me raise a kid. Way I see it, I've got a 15-minute window daily where Daddy can kick a little ass — I'll be top of the pops when it comes time for the wee one to lay down and be transfixed by the weird magic of storytime. I'll probably be good at that. The rest of the time? Eeeesh.

In part, this is why I wanted a girl. Because then Daddy can just be Daddy — he doesn't have to teach the girl how to be a girl. (I recognize that this is a little myopic and perhaps even mildly sexist. But the father-son and mother-daughter axes are still prevalent, for good or evil.) But a son? Oh. Oh. Oh, shit. Oh, no. One day my son is going to look into my eyes and seek answers. He's going to want to know something about something, about anything, he's going to ask me "Why?" or "How do I do this?" or "What do I do now?" and I am likely to stand there, jaw beslackened, my mouth forming words that have no sound.

What the hell am I going to tell him?

"Son, here's how to write your way out of this problem. Bully at school? Punish him in your fiction!"

"My boy, to fix this problem, you must go, go be snarky on the Internet."

"Problems at school? Uhhhh. Here's how to make an omelet. Did that fix anything?"

I don't have any of my own answers. In fact, as I get older, I am increasingly bewildered. My once rock-solid certainty in things is turning to liver mush.

I'm clumsy. My practical skills are minimal. I'm an idiot. I'm lucky I don't piss myself in public. I should wear a bucket on my head so I don't damage the soft fontanelle of my skull.

I don't expect the child to realize it right away. I mean, I can fake it for a number of years. It's not like my son is going to be playing with his toy du jour at the age of five and realize Daddy put that shit together wrong. But over time, the reality of my overall incompetence is going to seep into his daily life and there will one day come a kind of illumination for him, a critical moment of revelation where a flashlight clicks suddenly on and highlights a spot on the wall that had before been cloaked in shadow, and on the wall will be written the words: "Daddy is a dipshit. Adults are suspect. Trust nothing."

You know what I did yesterday? I painted the nursery. It is, quite literally, the color of Winnie the Pooh. The end result? Whoo. Yeah. We should've just hired a chimp to paint it. I came out of that room looking like a paint bomb went off. No telling how much paint I actually ingested. (Answer: at least 8 ounces.)

This isn't going to go well.

Daily the boy shows deeper signs of his existence. He's punching and kicking like you wouldn't believe. Weeks back, I'd feel my wife's belly and the wee one's movements would be minimal — not more than a muscle twitch here, a nudge-nudge there. But now he's developing. He's got room to move. He's breaking bricks with karate chops in there. He's an action hero. I put my hand there, it's like that scene in Jurassic Park where [insert dinosaur here] tries to break through [insert object here] and [dents it, damages it, breaks it]. You can see the flesh move as he pivot-kicks off my wife's bladder and Ki-yaaaa!

So, we are now receiving daily reminders that this is real.

This is happening.

I'm going to be a Daddy, and I am woefully unprepared.

I figure that, in order to fill in the gaps of my striking lack of knowledge, I'd better turn to you, the brain trust, the hive-mind, the group-think, to figure some shit out.

Today is fairly light, but it's really time to start hunkering down and procuring the mountain of objects reportedly necessary to have a baby. We have a crib, but we don't have much else. No high chair, no car seat, no play pen, no nothing. Dipping our toes into the waters, we are learning alarming truths: did you know, for instance, that car seats have expiration dates? As if the car seat were a jug of milk? True fact.

So, what I'd like to know is whether or not you have any advice — anything at all — to share regarding our preparations for the baby's upcoming existence. It's a daunting task just trying to buy the objects that the baby will use for like, 10 minutes ("This high-chair is good for ages 3 months to 3 months and 7 days"). It's just as daunting trying to figure out the items the baby won't need. You go to a place like Babies R' Us and it is truly overwhelming. I don't need that many objects to survive. They have like, 50,000 strollers available. It is awesome, and not in the "Dude, Bro, Awesome" way, but rather in the, "I have seen great Cthulhu rise from the ocean's depths to consume us all and lo it is awesome."

Any help is appreciated because, well, as noted earlier, I am doe-eyed and confused. But the truck is coming, and no matter how hypnotized I am by the pretty lights, I have to get cracking.

On This Day Of The Foot And The Ball, We Will Instead Speak Of Puppies

Yep. I'm one of those guys who watches the Puppy Bowl, not the Super Bowl.

That may put my masculinity in question, I dunno. Here, let me fix that: I also like Sarah McLachlan and one of my favorite TV shows of all time is Gilmore Girls.

Wait, that probably didn't fix anything. Shit.

Uhhh.

I like guns?

My favorite movie is Die Hard?

I have a mighty beard that destroys my enemies in its tangle of choking vines?

I dunno. It may be too late for me.

Well, whatever. The Super Bowl hasn't really ever been a thing in any incarnation of Der Wendighaus. We were a baseball family, which is not to say we were a family made of anthropomorphic baseballs but rather, we watched a lot of baseball. I still dig the World Series. And I also love the Oscars. The Oscars are my own Nerd Super Bowl.

I've tried watching the Super Bowl. Ehhh? Muh? I just don't get it. I get bored. Is that weird? I watch it, I get bored. It seems like the game is mostly about not playing the game. Dang, a football game is 60 minutes, split into four 15-minute quarters, right? So, why then does the game start at 6PM and end at 10:30PM (provided it doesn't run over)? It takes four-and-a-half hours to play an hour-long game? The rest of it is commercials and time-outs and replays and analysis and more commercials and then there's a flurry of activity for 30 seconds where someone kicks over the bee-hive and then it's back to commercials and time-outs and guys punching each other in the balls or whatever. Plus, that doesn't even account for the two hour "pre-game." Which is not, as the term suggests, the game before the game.

The Wall Street Journal estimates that in every football game, the ball is actually only in play for 11 minutes. Counter that with hockey, where it's action action action at every turn.

When I watch the Super Bowl, I mostly want to take a nap. I'd rather watch a game of Monopoly.

Played by old people and children.

But again, everybody's got their thing. Hell, I like the Oscars. The last Oscar telecast was, I think, 17 hours long. And they estimated that at least 21% of the audience committed suicide during the show. I mean, goddamn, getting through the Oscars is like watching snot dry on a little kid's face. And the World Series next year is supposed to be "Best Out Of 31." God forbid they play one game to settle anything.

Really, what I'm saying is, fuck yeah, puppies.

Man, if I'm having a bad day, the only thing I need to do is look at puppies. Puppies are a panacea. If I ever get cancer — and, given my family history, that day is coming — I plan on engaging in my own personal form of puppy therapy, which is to say I will be watching an endless loop of puppy videos. Hell, I might even buy a bunch of puppies and live with them as their pack mentor. I wonder: if you rub puppies on cancer tumors, do the cancer tumors go "Awwww!" and then slowly deflate?

Science is slow to pick up on the "puppy panacea" theory, which is why I say, screw you, science. America doesn't need you. We only need puppies, baseball, and Jesus. And Democracy. But mostly Jesus.

Man, I'm rambling this morning.

Really, what I'm saying is, fuck yeah, puppies.

Take a moment out of your day, if you care, and deposit into the comments below something — anything, really — about puppies. What's the cutest puppy? Got a puppy picture with a high-larious caption? Puppy video? Anything at all. Let's engage in a little puppy therapy.

Here, let me get the ball rolling.

First: courtesy of Stacia Decker and Matthew Funk, the cutest designer puppy ever: the Pomeranian Husky mix, also known as the "Pomsky."

Second: Lab puppies in slow motion.

Third: Iso, the dachshund puppy, playing in the snow (also in slow motion).

Fourth: "Puppy Can't Get Up."

Fifth and finally: Puppy Wakes Up.

There. A little puppy therapy.

Now, your turn. Then go shoot some guns and grow beards and watch Gilmore Girls.

I mean, uhhh, enjoy the Super Bowl.