Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 283

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Hotel

See that picture?

There's your flash fiction inspirado right there.

Once again, you have 1000 words and one week.

Any genre will do.

Don't forget to drop a link to your story in the comments below.

It's time to grab a pen and whip open your trenchcoat — flash fiction style.

(Am I right in assuming that you guys are digging these challenges? I hope so. Yell at me if you grow weary of it — though I can't lie and say I'm not enjoying the breadth and depth of the fiction that ends up here.)

Roasting Chestnuts: In Which This Heretic Tackles Common Writing Advice

I catch flak periodically because my writing advice on this site kind of pinballs and ricochets around — I'll say one thing one day, and another thing another day. My advice vacillates. Well, of course it does. Writing advice is not math. It is not laser-engraved in a titanium plate. Writers are beholden to very few inarguable rules. This isn't 2  + 2 = 4. It's 2 + 2 = anything you jolly well want it to be.

I have opinions. Those opinions change because I'm a human being with a crazy brain. Further, I am a writer, which means my already-crazy brain is shot through with whiskey, syphilis, and magical parasites. Writers are not born. They're made. By eating contaminated lunchmeat at a very early age.

Plus, I really like playing Devil's Advocate. Not for any intellectual reasons — it's just, hey, the Devil's awesome. He's all like, "Check out my suit, it's Versace," and then he's waxing his demonic 'stache and buying me a sweet-ass margarita machine in exchange for my soul and then next thing I know he's tickling my lips with the tines of his trident and he's like, "Yeah, go on, put it in your mouth. Put it in there. Suck it. Show the Devil how you suck it." And I'm like, "That's weird, Satan. Your trident tastes like maple syrup and sadness." Then I run and cry but he will always find me.

Wow, that went off the reservation, didn't it?

Point is, it's time to play Devil's Advocate. I thought, for poops and chuckles we could bandy about some classic "old chestnuts" of writing advice and see how accurate or useful they really are. From time to time it's good to flip it and switch it, look at things from a different perspective. Let us begin.

Writers Write (Run In Your Stupid Wheel, You Crappy Little Hamster!)

Damn, I opened with this one? Man. This one's gonna be hard to refute. I mean, this is the backbone of the writer's life, isn't it? And isn't this that one piece of super-critical advice that separates the wannabes from the definitely-dos? I guess the thing here is that writers are more than the sum of a day's writing. Writers are editors. Writers are marketers. Writers are thinkers. A given day of "writing" might constitute redrafting, outlining, answering emails, drinking Bourbon, wrestling with bonobo monkeys, pimping your work, book signings, imaginary laser battles, and, of course, endless sobbing.

(Related: "Writers Don't Do That")

Write What You Know, Lest Everything You Write Be Inauthentic Piffle

This is bad advice in that it really doesn't say what it means. Generally, simpler is better, and brevity is the soul of wit and all that bloo-dee-bloo. But here the advice is better written as:

"Write what you know, but make sure you recognize that you know a lot more stuff than you think you know and that in the struggle between fact and fiction, what matters is authenticity instead of hard data, so, no, while you've never been in a laser battle with a cyborg orangutan that doesn't mean you haven't undergone battles like hey remember that time in 9th grade when you and Roger Tyvock got into that sissy-slap fight in Mr. Grabknuckle's Phys-Ed class, so in other words, bring your real life human experience into your fictional storytelling and mostly you should be fine. And when that fails you, go fuck around on Wikipedia for 15 minutes. Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades!"

But I guess that advice is too long to fit on a cross-stitch sampler.

(Related: "Write What You Know, Yes Or No")

Adverbs Are Like Pus Globules Exuding From Satan's Nipples

Yeah! Fuck adverbs! Fuck them lustily and fuckily in their ears! … oh, wait, I'm supposed to be playing Devil's Advocate. Uhhh. Okay, listen, adverbs aren't the bad guy, here. Writers who overuse adverbs are the bad guys. Adverbs are fine — 'The toad hopped swiftly from plate to plate' is a not unreasonable sentence, nor is it a sentence devoid of rhythm. But, '"Go eat a dick and die," Tony said crankily' feels clunky (he said, clunkily) and frankly, unnecessary. Adverbs are okay when they're not redundant and when they don't break rhythm. Keep them away from the word "said."

Writers Must Be Voracious Readers: Bibliovores Say: "Nom Nom Nom"

Yes. But. But. This, like all things, demands balance. Lots of writers — like, say, Chaucer — used to struggle with the notion of whether it's more important to go out and live a life and find stories out there or whether it's more important to sit at home and read. Here's a bold proclamation from the Luciferan Advocacy Council: it's more important to go out and live your life. Books aren't telling you new stories. They're also not telling you your stories. I mean, sure, if you just want to retell everyone else's stories, by all means, sit at home and read. Okay, settle down — I'm not saying don't read. But you don't need to be some kind of gibbering bibliophile buried under books to be a writer. Read what you love, then go out and live your life.

Open With A Bang Or The Reader Will Fall Asleep And Drool On Your Book

Here's why this is nonsense. The Bestest Actionest Action Movie Of All Time, DIE HARD, does not open with a bang. It opens with a dude on a plane getting advice about his toes. You need to open with character awesomeness rather than event and explosions. Here's why opening on a bang is dangerous: because it assumes action, and action only matters when we give a rat's right foot about the characters involved. Now, you can create that kind of sympathy in that action scene, sure, but it's tricky. Just make sure that the character is what's getting the full attention in those opening moments. From the first sentence we need to care about the characters in any work — film, novel, game, pornography, pamphlet, placemat, what-have-you. Though, don't take this as an excuse to write some boring-ass ponderous intro, either.

Skip The Boring Parts Because The Reader Is Like A Crack-Addicted Housecat

Well, it's hard to disagree with this — would anybody say, "Leave the boring parts in?" Anybody who says that hates the audience. And anybody who hates the audience should have their nuts burned with lava.

The only trick here is judging which part of the work is boring. It's hard. Don't judge this in the first draft because in the first draft, you're swirling down the drain in the hate spiral. You might hate something or find a piece boring that, frankly, is no such thing. Let a second read reveal that. Let editors reveal that. Let a hot cup of ayashuasca tea reveal that during intense hallucinations while also leading you on a jungle odyssey spirit quest where you eventually conquer and make love to the Jaguar Queen of Xibalba.

"Only Use The Word Said," He Said

Yeah, mostly? I'd say, 90% "said," 10% "some other entirely appropriate word." I've gone with protested, asked, exclaimed, stammered. But you start wandering too far afield — "I love pie," he ejaculated — and the reader's just going to think you're a weirdo.

Prologues? More Like "Prolapsed Anuses!" Am I Right? High-Five!

Ennnh. Eh. Okay, isn't this just because a lot of prologues suck? That's why the rule exists in the first damn place. Because mostly, they're garbage. "Here's 2000 words that don't immediately relate to the next 2000 words until you realize that later I've connected them but that doesn't happen until the end of the book and I am like the preening peacock, don't you like my elegant plumage?" Prologues are often a case of stunting, or writers showing off, and that's not that much fun for the audience.

But that's not to say prologues automatically suck balls by dint of them being prologues. Or that you shouldn't use them. One of my favorite books, LAMB (The Gospel According To Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal) by Christopher Moore has a very short, simple, and hilarious prologue. It works in the context of the piece. That's the key — does it work? Then use it. Does it not work? Well, duh. *smacks you in the chops* Then don't use it. I'd say, don't let a prologue be your default state. Write the book. If it needs a prologue, it will be revealed to you. Possibly in a dream after fornicating with the Jaguar Queen.

If You Touch A Thesaurus, You Will Get Monkey Gonorrhea

I fucking love the thesaurus. Not because I want to constantly look for the next ten-cent word but rather because my brain is total shit. I am constantly like, "What's the word I'm looking for here? What is it? It's a word, right? That means… this thing. I'm looking for a word about this thing." Finally, my wife is like, "Taco?" And I'm like, "Yes! Taco! This is why I married you."

Sometimes, you need the right word, and you have a word that's close but not dead on, and so you go to the thesaurus. And you shouldn't be punished for that. That's just sad for you. And by you, I mean me.

Defeat Indefatigable Rules!

Hey. You. Yeah, you. Your turn. Lob up a classic chestnut of writing advice, and let's see if we can't all dismantle it with our cynical, skeptical knives. Slicey-slice! Dicey-dice! Chestnut salad!

Food Me

It's like this: I'm slowly developing what I consider to be "my" versions of certain recipes. These are recipes that, by and large, I'm happy with. Last couple of weeks I've nailed down recipes for chili and Sloppy Joes — these are not ultimate recipes in an objective sense, but they're recipes that I'd make again following the same recipe I put forth.

I never used to operate this way: I generally made it up every time using some clumsy pastiche of recipes I already knew, and while that was certainly exciting, it left room for much variation. One day it was, "Gosh, this chicken is delicious!" Three weeks later it was, "This chicken mysteriously tastes like candle wax dripped on the perineum of a professional wrestler."

With a child on the way, I'm going to have less time to, as it were, fuck around at meal-time.

It is therefore time to establish some kind of culinary canon here at Der Wendighaus.

Every house eventually develops one, I think. Or, at least, families do. You always hear, "Oh, you need to try my Grandmother's gnocchi," or, "My mother's ham salad recipe will tear off your nipples and choke you with them it's so goddamn good." Hell, some people will get in fights about it. "My family's spaghetti recipe is the best!" "No, mine is!" "Get your axe, for now we go to war."

My Mom-Mom had a host of recipes that live in infamy: pierogies, bleenies, koshe. My mother had and has her own: apricot-glazed chicken, turkey tetrazini, slow-cooked coffee-marinated beef. Hell, my Dad made this elk-meat chili using itty-bitty Thai hot peppers that would melt your molars, but it was awesome.

Anyway, I think I'm orbiting around the point.

I'm opening this to the hive-mind:

What recipes are recipes you think everybody should know? Like, on a generic level, "Oh, everybody should know a meatloaf recipe." Or lasagna, or fried chicken.

Second follow-up question — if you say, "Everybody should totally know a kick-ass pancake recipe," then I further beseech you, what is your pancake recipe? Do you have one? (And by "pancake," I really mean, "whatever recipe you consider crucial." I'm not asking you specifically for a pancake recipe.)

What meals are canon at your house?

And, how do you make 'em?

Once more, I crowdsource to you because you people are smarter — and, let's be honest, much prettier — than I am. Hop into the comments if you're feeling kind, and jam your wisdom into my craw.

Lies Writers Tell

(Welcome back to Penmonkey Boot Camp, ink-heads and word-punks. Once again it's another dose of over-the-top tough love shoved unmercifully into your pie hole. As always, any dubious advice I dispense here should be taken not with a grain of salt but, in fact, an entire salt mine. Please to enjoy!)

Fact:

Writers are liars.

We are liars of such a magnitude that our pants are not merely on fire, but rather, they immolate in a bright hot flash, sacrificing themselves to some dark and ancient word goddess.

We don't mean to be, I suspect. It's just part of the craft. Authors spend their days and nights constantly making shit up. We become masters of verbal chicanery, of fictional legerdemain. Sure, some writers say, "Ah, but with our fiction we secretly tell truths," which I suppose is true, except those truths are wrapped in a dense layer of deception. It's like handing you an appetizer and saying, "It's prosciutto!" which is true, except for that little bundle of prosciutto is wrapped in a foul purse made from a moldering horse scrotum.

Best thing we can do is try to keep our lies contained neatly within our work and not let it live outside of it — of course, that is sometimes easier said than done. Our lies sometimes creep out out of fiction and get inside our heads like an insidious parasite taken on by accidentally ingesting flecks of cat poop. That's when it gets problematic, when our lies become not a staple of our work but rather about our work.

And so it's time to shine a flashlight in dark corners and call out the lies we writers tell to ourselves, to one another, and to the rest of the world at large. Let's see if any of these sound familiar. (They certainly do to me — I know I've told most, if not all, of these whoppers once upon a time.)

"I Write Only For Me."

Bzzt! Wrongo, you wannabe Emily Dickinson, you. I'm sorry, are you tweeting from your dark, musty attic where your parents have squirreled away Grandmother's Victorian tampon collection in the hopes that one day it, like Beanie Babies, will see a resurgence in market value? The very act of writing is an act of communication. Communication is an act between two or more people. You don't write for yourself. Shut up. Shut it. Shh. What, do you write a poem and then sit and read it to your toesy-woesies? This little piggy went to market, and oh, by the way, here's my 10-book fantasy epic, The Fyre Lords of Slogmarn?

Stop lying. You don't write only for yourself. Writers write to be read. Go ahead, say it again — I will grab your slithery forked tongue and knot that fucker up good and tight so you may not speak that lie anew. We should be thankful writers write to be read by others. That attitude has produced some — really, all — of your favorite books. This lie exists perpetuated by authors who are afraid to be judged by an audience. It exists to make them feel bulletproof — "Oh, you didn't like that? Well, I liked it, and I write for me, so please enjoy my two middle fingers thrust upward, each kissed with a tincture made from my own tears."

Stop that. Stop that right now. Join the rest of the world. Communicate with your audience.

Come down out of the attic, for Chrissakes. Still telling this lie to yourself? Fine. Then here's your challenge: write in a notebook. Never show it to anyone. Die atop a mound of said notebooks in 100 years.

The End.

"It's Okay That I Didn't Write Today. Or Yesterday. Or The Day Before That."

Nope. Nuh-uh. Not buying it. "I spent a day just chilling out, getting my head around this book, man." No, you spent a day playing video games and drinking nail varnish to help kill your shame. I'm not saying every day has to be a 5,000-word slam-dunk-home-run-goal-unit-score-point-palooza, but if you didn't put down 500 words of story, or a handful of editorial comments, or some notes, you didn't accomplish Dick Butkus. It is a cliche for a reason: writers write. Is it the only thing they do? No, psshh, of course not. But isn't it the priority? Writers live in their heads so often, you need to lance that boil. Writing is an act of trepanation; free the demons with the power drill of your choice. (Er, not literally. Put the drill down. We're speaking in good old-fashioned metaphoricals here, y'see?)

Sad reality: we are all one day closer to death. If that day does not put you one day closer to finishing your manuscript, your screenplay, your transmedia epic opus, then this day of life is wasted.

We only get one go-round on this crazy carousel. Like I said the other day, that word count ain't gonna autoerotically asphyxiate itself. Time to tighten that belt, word whores!

"I Just Don't Have Time To Write."

Lies! Filthy, septic lies! You have the same 24 hours in your day as I do — the question is, how do you choose to fill them? I'm growing weary of the narrative that goes like, "Chuck, you're going to have a kid soon — say goodbye to your writing time, loser." What? Seriously? Nobody says that to someone with an office job. "Hey, cubicle monkey, you're going to have a kid soon — guess you're going to have to quit your job." Ohh, sure, okay, because my not writing is going to feed my child? I can conjure nega-words from the ether, and each word-not-yet-written will be like a draught of angel's milk sating my son's infant hunger.

I am fully aware that my sleep is going to get bombed out and any illusion of having an adult schedule is going to get squashed beneath a mound of dirty diapers. That doesn't mean I stop writing — it just means I reapportion my time accordingly. Here's the deal: nobody has time to write. Writers have to make time to write. You must take a meat cleaver and hack off a gobbet of your day and set that chunk of temporal viscera aside and say, "This is when I will write." Maybe it's two hours. Maybe it's fifteen minutes.

Stephen King wrote some of his earliest work in tiny snippets in the middle of his work day.

You must steal time like a thrifty, thieving magpie.

"I'll Write Later!"

You won't.

Write now.

End of story. Or, hopefully, just the beginning.

"This Helps Me Write (And I Need It)."

You don't need caffeine. You don't need diet soda. You don't need meth, heroin, video games, German poop-porn, an iPad, unicorn blood, the love of a good woman, a clean desk, probiotic yogurt, cat videos, Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, Tumblr, healthy self-esteem, double rainbows, a special pen, a lucky shirt, your blog, someone else's blog, this blog, the word "blog."

The only thing you need is you, a semi-functioning brain, a story, and a way to tell it.

Oh, and an ergonomic chair. Okay, you don't need it, but shit, you could damn well use one.

"I Don't Care About Money."

Oh, aren't you fucking special. You're above money, are you? You have transcended the need to exist in this material world? "I write my inky words on paper and then I eat that paper and live within the ether of mine own storytelling!" Hey, good for you, you crazy little Bodhisattva, you. I tried not paying my mortgage and when you do that, the bank sends ninjas.

I do not have the luxury of caring naught about currency.

This lie is the sneaky mule-kicked cousin to, "I Write Only For Myself." It is once more a deception sold by those who want to excuse their work not selling, who want to make themselves feel unique or somehow above other writers ("those greedy hacks!") because they don't care one whit about getting paid — it's all about the art, you see. Mind you, this is a lie of artistes, not artists. Artists need to eat. Starving is neither glorious nor honorable — in fact, it's not even that interesting, trust me.

Remember: Shakespeare got to get paid, son.

You don't have to care about being rich. But you damn sure better care about money. As said in the past: your writing has value, so claim value for your writing.

"I Have To Build My Platform First."

Sure you do, as long as you don't mind getting up onto it and having nothing to say.

"I Don't Need A Platform"

Sure you don't, as long as you don't mind mumbling about your project from down in that muddy hole.

Your first priority is writing. That's the first barbarian banging at the gate. But it's not the only one. Having a platform is like having a dinner table — the most important thing about dinner is making the food, but that doesn't mean you don't need somewhere to eat it.

"Oh, Drat, My Creative Spark Has Been Extinguished."

Translation: "Ye Gods, someone has hanged my imaginary friend by the neck until he perished!"

Working on a long-term writing project is like marriage, and the creative spark is analogous to romantic love (or, rather, boner-inducing sexual magnetism). The creative spark is just the thing that gets you together with your work the same way that your goggle-eyed romantic need for rumpy-pumpy is what got you drawn into the marriage. But it is not the thing that sustains.

Get shut of this notion and stop telling yourself — and everybody else — that you're clinging to this ludicrous and wholly imaginary idea. You don't need it. Push past it. Keep writing.

"I Never Find Writing Advice Helpful!"

*rolls eyes*

You're just that good, are you? You are a perfect Beryllium laser, cutting through the bullshit and crafting the mightiest tale to ever grace the minds of men.

Your work leaves no room for improvement, it seems. Well-done. Now, tell your son Jesus to come back to Earth and start cleaning up the mess we've all made.

Every writer needs advice. Maybe it's about commas. Maybe it's about query letters. Maybe you don't turn to books or blogs but rather to a friend. Could be that you find it just by reading books you love again and again looking for the secret advice buried within. But everyone needs advice. Don't pretend you're somehow outside of it. Don't act like merely the act of writing is enough to improve itself.

Hell with your cranky meme! Down with this lie!

*voids bowels upon it*

"I'm Just No Good."

Quitcher whining! The time for your boo-hoo ballyhoo is done. Here then, is the proclamation: shit or get off the pot. Really truly think you're no good and won't be any good and cannot write past the nagging self-doubt? Then stop being a writer. Right now! Let go. Loosen your mental grip on the notion and let it float away, downstream, where it will soon be eaten by angry carp.

Or — or! — shut up about it and keep on kicking ass.

If you keep writing, it's because you're good enough to keep writing. Stop telling the lie to yourself and to everybody else that you're just not good enough. Maybe you're not great. And certainly you have room to improve. So, drum roll please, improve. Don't whine. Don't cry. Don't wonder how your diaper got full and then moan about it without ever taking it off. You're good at something. You're an author, a writer, a storyteller — yours is the power of the divine. No deity got where he was going by blubbering about the ice cream cone he just dropped. Write, motherfucker! Write like you give a shit! Write without doubt, without fear, without lies — those, I assure you, will come in time.

You are good enough. Snap the neck of your self-doubt.

And write.

"Insert Penmonkey Deception Here"

What lies do you tell yourself? Why do you tell them, and how can you be rid of them?

Everybody Can Do Everything: DIY Days

[image error]Ahh. Another DIY Days come and gone.

If you don't know DIY Days, then simply put it's a free conference for people who really want to do shit — or, as I apparently said last year, "Make Shit, And Make It Awesome" (via mighty Guy "The Dread Pirate LeCharles" Gonzalez). This is a crowd who doesn't want to sit on their hands. Who doesn't want to kowtow to gatekeepers, who has no interested in asking for permission. Many are storytellers, but just as many are the makers of the tools that help storytellers tell their stories. As Guy said yesterday in a tweet, the energy there is different than at other conferences, and because of that, feels more inspiring.

I was afraid I wasn't even going to make it to the conference, honestly. Night prior I spent awake every hour or so with stomach problems — morning came and I felt hollowed-out. Like a gutted pumpkin. Could barely drink a cup of coffee, ate like, 1.5 pieces of sourdough toast. But I felt better than I did at night, so the wife sent me off with cookies and Gatorade (a good substitute for meth and Four Loko in a pinch!), and I drove to Jersey to catch a train into the city.

On the train, got to hear two strangers have a conversation, which is a thing that I love to witness. A Latino man and a black woman had a long conversation about all kinds of things — Facebook, child predators, gang initiations, how gangs used to leave civilians out of their business, movies new and old, etc. At the end of the train ride, they'd formed an actual connection as like, temporary friends. She asked him his name, he hers, they shook hands. She said to him, "God bless you," and he to her. It was this kind of neat, connective moment — which, perhaps unexpectedly, sits nicely in-theme with DIY Days.

City was great. Weather was — *mwah* — so good. Fifty-five, sunny. Fuck yeah, Spring. Put your earthen boot on Winter's icy neck and press down until you hear the crinkly snap of an icicle spine.

Still, got there later than I wanted. Missed Lance's talk about Storytelling Pandemic, though one supposed I didn't really need to see that talk given my involvement.

First person I met was Jeanne Bowerman — a truly rockin' Twitter pimp if ever there was one — and this would unfortunately be my only real encounter with her for most of the day. Actually, this is a theme: I met a number of people and really only got to spend so much time with them. Next time I'm in the city, I need to somehow earmark more time to actually be in the city. Which probably means staying over somehow. *makes note — start collecting couches in NYC and LA on which I can crash* I met Iris Blasi, Caitlin Burns, Nick Braccia, and of course Guy Gonzalez, Andrea Phillips and Jim Hanas. Dave Turner — @electricmeat — is an officer and a gentleman. Jonathan Reynolds — @therealjohnny5 — was not lying and did indeed sneak me a little bottle of 15-yr Glenfarclas. Fortunately, not before my talk.

Some takeaways from the day's events:

• Data can tell a story, says Nicholas Diakopoulos. Though, to play Devil's Advocate, does it really? Is that how data is intended? Human nature is such where we must draw connections — in many cases, narrative connections — between two unlike things to find understanding and context. But that also doesn't mean that human nature is correct. Data may tell a story, but seems just as possible that we create stories out of data, or find data to fit our stories. Or something. Here's some data for you: I wear pants only 35% of the time. What story does that tell? Either way, engaging presentation with some really awesome visuals.

• Mistress of the DIY Empire known as "Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School," Molly Crabapple, is awesome and full of snark. She tells you how to deal with haters by imagining that the best and most wonderful artist that you love has, when Googled, someone out there calling them fat or telling them they suck or whatever. You would then respond, "That person is crazy," which is how you should envision your own haters — as crazy people. Love, too, that Dr. Sketchy's is basically an art-school version of Fight Club, with "franchises" worldwide. Doubly love that she makes sure the franchises pay their models. Finally, she notes that too many artists spend too much time on the "swoosh" in their logo and don't get down to business. This is true for writers, too — some writers become so obsessed with [fill-in-the-blank] (platform, strategy, worldbuilding, etc.) that they forget they need to actually write something and then get it out there.

• Brian Newman says that if you get involved in any one issue, let it be Net Neutrality. He notes that the name "Net Neutrality" sucks, and if you want to help fix it, then as an artist and a creative human being it's your job to help re-frame that problem in a way that people understand it. Because, right now? They don't. Also, don't let it be DIY — let it be DIWO. Do It With Others. Which sounds sexier than intended.

• Michael Margolis helps you reframe your bio online — the short form takeaway here is "Character Trumps Credentials."

• Ted Hope and Christine Vachon had a very organic back-and-forth: love the idea that and somewhere in the middle of art and business is where we find the way to get our work out there. Like too that neither producer is afraid of digital work, and notes that some of the work being done in that arena is better, sharper, stronger than what you find amongst Oscar hopefuls. Sidenote: if you haven't watched it, you really need to check out the SUPER trailer (Rainn Wilson, Nathan Fillion, Kevin Bacon). I want to see that pretty badly — in reference to it, Ted noted that girls are taught to be supermodels and boys are taught to be superheroes, and from this kind of diseased mindset comes the movie. Another true notion: creating art and putting your craft out there is an act of running full speed at a wall and praying for it to open. Sometimes, it does open for you.

• Andrea Phillips — of the excellent Deus Ex Machinatio — noted, in her Ethics of Transmedia talk, that her work has been denounced by NASA. This is awesome in ways that cannot be described. I long one day to be denounced by NASA. That's good press, right there. NASA's had it too good for too long. Also, in private conversation, Andrea and I talked about how what's important in fiction (whether in transmedia or in gaming or in the written word) what's most important isn't realism so much as it is authenticity. Stay true to the story you're telling and the world it lives in. Don't be so concerned with reality and fact.

• Transmedia is becoming an overused word, say some.

• From Faris Yakob and Brian Clark (who probably now thinks I think he's Mike Monello), an interesting idea: charge as much as possible for half your time so that the other half of your time you can create what you want to create. Basically, become your own investor.

• From Scott Lindenbaum, of Electric Literature and Broadcastr: "When not monetized, creative endeavors are mere hobbies. It's crucial we protect them as professions."

• Further proof why nobody should let me speak out loud to other human beings: I will discuss teabagging and hookers. Thankfully, Greg Trefry was there to balance me out. Greg's an awesome dude. In fact, he's the kind of awesome dude who runs roleplaying game sessions for his students and asks me questions like, "How important is it that they get to roll their own dice?"Anyway. I think our talk went well?

Overall, the theme of the day orbited around the democritization of creative tools — where once it was expensive and prohibitive to create music or film or transmedia endeavors, it's getting cheaper and cheaper. This mirrors the publishing world, obviously — where once big publishers were necessary to do X, Y, and Z, we're seeing a Renaissance (for good and bad) of DIY storytellers saying, fuck it, I don't need to pay the gatekeeper, I don't need to ask for permission, I'm going to do as I like — I can hire my own cover and book designers, I can get my own editor, I can find my own distribution channels online. The trick is, democritization of tools does not also mean the democritization of talent. There is in self-publishing communities the idea that the cream will rise to the top — what you might call "Talent Will Out" — but I don't know that this is proven yet. Which to me shows that the most important component to balance the democracy of tools is filter. We need more meaningful filters across the 'Net. Vast procedural filters from Google and Amazon and so forth just don't cut it.

Final takeaway:

Be energized. Get creative. Find a way to put your work into the world. And don't let me speak in public unless you want to hear about ramping a mini-bike over 100 hookers.

Gone Fishing

We here at terribleminds (and by "we" I mean myself and whatever multiple personalities have splintered from the core persona at any given moment in time) have decided to –

*crash of thunder*

Take weekends off from this point forward.

Dry your eyes, pretty ponies. Be still your trembling hearts. Do not wail! Gnash not your teeth. Okay, you can gnash them a little. It makes me feel loved when you tear clumps of hair from your head and punch holes in your dry wall. I will allow you this rage-fed luxury. Just take pictures.

But, yeah. Weekends from now on are, generally speaking, a "no new post" or, rather, "post-free" zone. Reason being, I'm busy as hell. That's only going to get worse when the Heir to Der Wendighaus — aka "Poop Monster" or "Chubbs McCoy" or any other host of unruly made-up nicknames — is born this spring. Ironically, I'm not actually taking the weekends off so much as I am using some of my weekend time to prep blog posts for the week. As it stands now I tend to tackle a new post the night before I post it, but I'd like a little extra dollop of lead-time whenever possible.

So, that's the scoop, lords and ladies.

 

Irregular Creatures: Flash Fiction Challenge

The Shackleton's Scotch challenge was pretty dang cool, and the results were, frankly, fun as hell to read. And a number of you said you'd be interested in more flash fiction challenges.

So, here I am, once more throwing down the gauntlet.

As you may know, I have a short story collection called IRREGULAR CREATURES (buy here), which features nine tales of bizarre-o beasties, mythological miscreants, and mad monsters — the creatures found in that collection (flying cats, Bigfoot, mermaids, mystic hobos, evil sex monkeys, the mesmerizing vagina of a fallen angel) are in many ways like the writer himself: an odd-seeming and often irregular entity.

This week's challenge, which runs from today till next Friday (3/11/11) at noon, asks you to take those two words — "irregular creature" — and craft some flash fiction around it.

Whatever that phrase means to you, run with it.

You've got 1000 words.

Doesn't mean you need to stay inside the margins of genre — while fantasy, sci-fi, horror and humor are apropos, anything goes in terms of the inspiration you take from that pair of words.

I'll once more compile them at the end of the seven days.

Well, what the hell are you waiting around for? Get thee to the word mines!

Your own irregular creatures await.

Once Upon A Playtime, Redux

Yesterday, producer (who is also the producer, along with , on our upcoming feature film, HiM), was gracious enough to let me come and stomp around his sandbox with a short post called, "Where Storytelling And Gaming Collide." There, I said the following:

Traditional storytelling seeks to tell the story of the author, the director, the creator.

But storytelling in games is about empowering the player to experience and tell her own narrative.

I believe this more and more. I believe that games — from the smallest "casual" game to the hardest of the purportedly "hardcore" — are powerful and compelling to us as players because from the experience of playing games we gain narrative, and from that narrative we gain… well, all kinds of things, really. We gain perspective. We gain entertainment. We can be enlightened, amused, disturbed, challenged. And this is true of games even without a traditional narrative. It's true of a game of checkers, or chess: the two opponents sitting over a board, learning about one another, traversing the peaks and valleys of competition, exploring strategy. You come out of a game of chess, you have a story — and often the way we see and retell it (in our own heads or to others) bears the elements of escalation, climax, and resolution.

(I play a killer round of Angry Birds or Words With Friends, I'll tell my wife. It's probably an awful story in terms of what I'm telling her, but in my head? It's the shit.)

Anyway. Go read that post, if you please, but here, also, consider the question: how can you allow a game to tell a meaningful story? To me, the key word there is "allow." Emergent gameplay is ultimately about emergent storytelling, and maybe that's how we need to frame it: games do not need to tell a straightforward narrative as much as they need to leave room for emergent play and emergent narrative.

Emergent narrative.

I like that.

How's it sit with you? Swish it around your mouth. Bulge your cheeks, get it in between your teeth. Is it minty fresh? Or is it sewery spew? If you dig on it, what can help a game offer greater opportunity for emergent narrative? I could make a case that Minecraft is hella good at this "emergent narrative" thing I just made up two minutes ago, and that I didn't actually make up at all — turns out wiser minds than mine (which is to say, most) already conceived of it and use it for games like The Sims or Deus Ex, though I'd argue the idea suits games that go beyond the expected roster.

It also occurs to me that sometimes, when I talk about games, I don't even know if I make any damn sense. But it's fun, innit? I mean, sure, my extremities have gone numb, and my shirt is missing.

Ultimately, what I'm saying is –

Aren't the stories born from gameplay just as important — if not more important — than the stories the games purport to tell in the first place? Isn't that what playtime is all about?

How can game designers and game writers facilitate this?

(Remember, if you're in NYC, to swing by DIY Days. There I'll be talking about the collision of gameplay and storytelling with game designer Greg Trefry. Don't be afraid to introduce yourself, of course. More information can be found here: DIY Days.)

Can't Finish That Novel? Try Dopamine!

So, you're writing a novel.

Sure, sure.

Let's see if this has happened to you.

Somewhere around the 20,000 word mark, or maybe at 40,000, a slow, creeping dread settles in your bones. It's cold, like saline in your arteries.

You stop and think:

"Okay, let's figure this out. I'm going to write this novel for three months. Then I'm going to need another month, maybe two, maybe three, to get it read, get it cleaned up, get a second draft out. Might need to do a third draft. Or a fourth. This could take me a year. And then what? A month to find an agent? Six months? Then it'll take that agent the same amount of time to sell — or, more likely, not sell — the book. Then it'll be a year before it comes out. God only knows how well it'll even sell. Is it original? What if someone beats me to market? Dolphin Vampires are hot right now, but in… let's do some math here… two years? Advances are shrinking. Borders just fell into a pile of its own sick. I heard a rumor that nobody's publishing any new authors. This book isn't even that good. I'm not really that good. I'm, what, C+ at best? What am I doing? Who are these characters? Why are they saying these things? Are these even sentences? Should three commas be shoved together like that? Where are my pants? Why can't I feel my legs? My mouth is dry. I need a drink. I need a gun. I need a gun that will shoot a drink into my brain. The Scotch-Gun. The Wine-O-Blaster. I don't think I want to write this novel anymore. By god, what's the fucking point?"

Then you kind of melt into a puddle of insignificant goo.

Problem is, writing a novel is like a walk across an endless expanse. You only start to see the end when you're, duh, near the end. The rest of the time, you're left wandering. Uncertain. The sun is bright. The land is bleached. The peaks and valleys you found when you started have evened out.

It's time for –

No, wait, I need to do this in all caps.

IT'S TIME FOR SOME MOTHERFUCKING DOPAMINE.

Dopamine is released when we complete or achieve something. It's why those stupid Xbox achievements are small but meaningful — that little bubble window that lets us know bloop, we just earned the 10 point achievement for "Donkey Wrangler" gives us a tiny spike of dopamine. Video games mete out achievements and successes in a smart way — a mini-boss here, a new weapon there.

Writing a novel has none of that.

Not really, anyway.

So, we need to trick our brains into releasing some dopamine along the way, into convincing us that this is indeed a worthwhile endeavor. Because it is. Because telling a story is a glorious thing deserving of mighty praise. You are laying down legendary footprints. You are ripping open the Bigfoot's stomach and showing the world its contents for the first time. Storytelling is some awesome shit.

As writers, we need something that rewards us — like how when the rat does something good, he gets a food pellet or a mouse comes out and tickles his nuts with a feather.

Part of me thinks, dang, those god-awful goblins that plague a writer — lack of discipline, procrastination, self-doubt — could be cured if we just figured out a way to trigger dopamine in our penmonkey brains.

Some of it we can do ourselves, right? We set benchmarks and, at each benchmark, gain rewards. Could be graded like experience points in a game. "When I get to 1,000 words, I get a cookie. When I get to 5,000 words, I get an ice cream cone. When I get to 10,000 words, I get a handjob." And the rewards continue to escalate from there: oral sex, new video game, ice cream cake, a day off, a pet komodo dragon.

And what-have-you.

We can certainly incorporate others into our Quest For Dopamine, too. Have friends, loved ones, sex monkey partners and writing buddies help you out — high-fives and offered rewards for achieving certain milestones."Get to 5k, I'll send you an e-card. Get to 50k, I'll send you a bushel of apples. Finish the novel, I will grant you the power of God." Or whatever.

But dang, it'd be great if we could programmatically do that. Like, when you literally hit that mark, your computer bings and you get some kind of Storyteller Badge. You could get achievements for using a certain rare word or for utilizing alliteration without appearing like a douche. (Shut up, I love alliteration, stop dumping pig's blood on me at the Prom.) This sounds like a hot mod for Scrivener.

I'm not just being glib. I'm actually serious.

We writers need to trick our brains into ejaculating a creamy packet of dopamine.

And so I put it to you, Internets. Let's talk about this. Let's figure out how to set up rewards to get us through the grim, tireless expanse of writing a novel. We need to crowdsource this bee-yotch. We need to hive-mind it. We should smash all our brains together until it is one treacly ball of mind-clay.

Writing.

Rewards.

Go.

(Sidenote: I now want to create and market a new brand of candies called DOPAMINTS. They will be crisp peppermint suckling candies that dissolve sweet, sweet dopamine into your body. Nobody can take that idea from me. I call dibs. I call dibs! By the Law of Dibs, it shall be mine!)

Pantser Versus Plotter

Ever go into a room and you forget why you went in there?

Yeah. Me too.

Used to happen when I would go into record stores, too. Remember those? You'd saddle up the ol' Triceratops and head on out to buy some "used CDs?" I'd go into the store with a head full of bands and albums I wanted to check out, and soon as I stepped through that threshold — whoof. Gone. Kaput. Brain: tabula rasa. Then the clerk would point to my crotch and be like, "Dude, you just wet yourself." And I'd be like, "Shut up!" and he'd be like, "I'm just saying," and then I'd get some urine on my hand and go quick wipe it on his face. Hipster asshole. Now you got pee on your face! Boom!

It's easy to forget little things. Especially if you're me. If I try to go to the grocery store without a list, dude, I am fucked three ways from Sunday. I will come home with an armload of jelly beans, Swiss chard, cat food, and Clamato juice. Meanwhile, all the stuff we needed — milk, bread, eggs, uranium for my particle accelerator — is stuff we still goddamn need because I didn't pick it up.

What the hell am I trying to say, here?

I'm saying, if I can't remember what the hell I was supposed to do in the kitchen, if I can't remember a band's name or that we need to pick up milk, how the crap am I supposed to keep an entire unwritten novel straight in my head? Short answer: I'm not. And neither are you.

My name is Chuck Wendig.

I am a reformed Pantser.

The Disclaimer Before The Froth Flies

Many excellent writers are pantsers. (If you aren't familiar with the definition — a "pantser" writes without doing outlines or other prep-work, while a "plotter" tends to outline and perform other preliminary planning efforts before diving into the book. Good? Golden.) Stephen King reportedly writes without an outline. Great writers and great minds tend to have no problem just springing forth like a whipped gazelle and tearing ass across the open meadow without fear, without concern, without a plan in sight.

For them, I say, well done.

I am not a great writer. I think I'm a good one. As a good-but-not-great writer, and similarly as a guy with a brain like a porous swatch of moth-eaten cheesecloth, I must advocate planning over pantsing.

I have in the past gotten a little zealous over the subject, and in this post I will again get a little zealous. Because who wants to read wishy-washy advice? Isn't it more fun for you if I pound the lectern and throw chairs at the students? Well, it's more fun for me, anyway. That said –

I do not seriously believe that pantsers cannot write excellent novels. They can. They do.

What I do believe however is that while some writers are natural pantsers, others are pantsers-by-default, pantsers-by-laziness. They do not plan, they do not outline. They don't because it's hard. And frustrating. And irritating. That's why I didn't used to do it.

But if not writing an outline works for you and has earned you the result you're looking for (ideally, publication), then keep doing that. I don't care if you wear a hat made of raccoons when you write — if that hat gets you the stories you want, wear the hat. But if you find yourself hitting a wall, if you find yourself spinning around in circles until you throw up, may I offer a suggestion?

Try doing some planning.

Now? Time to throw some chairs!

Stand Up Straight, You Lazy Slobbering Muckabout!

I wrote… mm, I guess five or six novels via the Pantser's Execution. Actually, the novel that's on submission with my agent, Blackbirds, was initially written without plan or direction, too. This is in addition to the two or three dozen completely unfinished novels that, you guessed it, all underwent the "Let's Just Open The Word Processor And Run Amok!" method of writing.

They were all awful. Only when I finally was told to step back and outline Blackbirds did I suddenly gain the ability to see the story for what it was. Only then could I line up all the pieces and make the plot work. Since it has at its core a kind of reverse murder mystery, the plot elements needed to line up for it to make sense and 'click.' By plotting, I drew a path through the maze before I had to walk it. Before I could get lost.

But I resisted. Oh, Lawds A Mercy, did I resist. My gut trembled. My sphincter tightened so hard I could've shattered a ruby. I had my excuses. "But it'll steal the creative spark." "But I'm not writing a term paper." "But then there's no sense of discovery!" What it really translated to was:

"I'm actually quite lazy. I might even be allergic to work. Also: I don't wanna."

Then I cried and threw my sippy-cup across the room.

Then I did the outline.

Then I learned the truth:

Planning and prep-work may cure what ails you as a writer. How, you ask?

First, Let Me Shoot Some Myths In The Head

Outlining does not steal your creative spark. In part because "creative spark" is not a real thing. It is a myth, like Bigfoot, Nessie, the Muse, and Writer's Block.

I liken it to the notion that finding out the sex of your baby before the birth somehow "ruins the surprise." Pfft. It does not ruin anything. It merely changes the timing of that surprise. So too with outlining and prep-work. You're still "writing" the novel and still going on that path of discovery, you're just doing it in a tighter, more truncated way.

Planning doesn't limit your sense of discovery. It isn't a prison. You don't have to religiously stick to your plan. Planning won't write the book for you. It just puts down trail-markers. I planned a drive and hike for us in Kauai, but planning isn't the same as experiencing. I didn't experience beauty in the planning phase, but I did during its execution. Your writing is still a journey. Doesn't hurt to have a map is all.

So, then, how does planning help soothe your ills?

Planning Helps Strike Down The Fear Of The Blank Page

One of the worst feelings is the "Blank Page Syndrome." You open the story in the morning. You stare at the white snowy expanse of screen. You are overwhelmed by both the raw potential your story holds and your inability to pluck a single cogent thread from that hoary no-nothing nowhere void. You void your bowels. You take a nap, quivering in your sleep. You dream of your mother's safe bosom.

An outline will go to great lengths to defeat this.

Imagine that in the morning you open the file, then you look to your left and you see, "Oh, here I am, on Chapter 14: The Dragon's Barbed Nipples, wherein the hero must steal the goblin milk from the craggy peaks where the Hell-Harpies hold their infernal book club." You know where you left off. You know your place. You know roughly where you're going next.

You have a map. You have a safety net. Every day is not a sudden crush of cold water as you dive in to deep, dark channels. You have breadcrumbs. You have torches. Move forward without fear.

Planning Will Crotch-Kick Your Self-Doubt

You get in the middle of a longer work and next thing you know, you're crippled by uncertainty and self-loathing. You just want to close the file, delete it, format your hard drive, then hit yourself in the nuts with a ball peen hammer. No. No. Don't do that. Fuck that shit. Get shut of the doubt. Don't let the doubt crotch-kick you. You need to crotch-kick your doubt.

Planning will help you do that.

When you plan, you lay the story out. You build confidence in it before you even truly begin. It's like this — say you have to get up and give a talk in front of 1000 people. Would you rather give that talk utterly unprepared? No notes? No research? Nothing? "Just gonna wing it!" As you can confidence in the topic, you gain confidence in your ability to execute.

Further, you can have others look at your outline, make sure it gets a thumbs-up.

It dissolves some or all of your doubt. Trust me on this.

Planning Helps You Write Faster, Like Meth-Cranked Ninja

Without planning, some of your time must be spent in deep thought. Often a day of unprepared writing is accompanied by that period of, "Uhhh. Well. Hmmm." But, with a map, with an outline and some prep-work around characters and worldbuilding, you can move more swiftly. You already spent time in the contemplation chambers. Now it's just time to write, write, write.

Planning Will Cut Down Number Of Drafts With A Machine Gun

Your first draft is your worst draft. This is true whether or not you're a pantser or a plotter. Ah, but, your first draft will often be a better draft if you're a plotter. Why? Because you had a map. Because you had focus and direction from the get-go. What this means generally is that you won't need as many drafts to get to the final one. It'll tighten the draft. It'll cinch up the middle (generally, the second act). A little work on the front end saves you a lot of nasty gruntwork on the back-end.

(Heh. Back-end. Grunt!)

(Shut up.)

Planning Will Hone Your Discipline To A Hair-Splitting Sharpness

Writing requires discipline.

Creativity is raw and flickering like fire — you want to make use of it, you have to bring often ugly, unpleasant metals to it and forge that shit into the shape you desire. It's hard, sweaty, sometimes grumpy work. Nobody wants writing to be about discipline. We all would love it if it were the equivalent of catching fireflies in a moonlight meadow. We wish it were fun and goofy, like icing cupcakes in zero gravity.

But it's not. It's tough work. Satisfying work, yes. But tough just the same.

What many writers struggle with is the ability to find the sticktoitiveness necessary to complete something. Discipline isn't gained overnight. It's farmed over time — sown, seeded, grown, harvested.

Discipline is the product of your habits.

You plan your work, you've started a habit. That habit is itself a kind of discipline. It reinforces itself. Discipline begets discipline. No, really, it does. You feel good for having completed something — an outline, a synopsis, character notes — and that impels you forward. It helps you put your ass in the chair every day and write. It's what helps you belly crawl through the mud and the blood.

And that means, ultimately…

Planning Will Help You Finish

Planning draws the map. Outlining shows you the end of the road. And it helps you get there.

After all, that's the ultimate goal, isn't it? To finish something?

Try planning. Never mind the fact that someone is going to ask you to do it someday anyway and so you might as well be prepared (no, really, someone will demand it of you — don't believe me? I've often been asked to provide an outline before committing to the work). It's good for you as a writer. It's good for the story, too. You don't have to be an outline lawyer. Nobody's forcing you to marry it. I'm just saying –

Try it.

I hate to do it. I still do. But I'm always happy when I have it, and cranky when I don't.

Fuck laziness. Eat your vegetables. Drink your milk. Do the writing.

And if planning doesn't give you the results, then I would say… fuck it, try pantsing that bad-boy, instead. (Pants it good and hard. Nnnngggh. Yeah. You like that? You like that.)

Do what must be done to complete the work.

ABW.

Always. Be. Writing.