Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 67

Random AMA, Ask Me Anything, Today

I’m kinda hovering around a couple different projects, so today, let’s devote it toward an AMA, aka, Ask Me Anything. Way this works is, you pop into the comments below, drop a question, and this afternoon I’ll go ahead and try to answer as many as I can. Note that jerky questions will be left unanswered, or worse, plunged into the Spam Oubliette where they will be left, screaming silently and pawing at the quivering pink walls of obscurity and oblivion.

That’s it. Easy-peasy play-Parcheesi.

Ask and ye shall receive answers. Probably. Maybe.

Setting Free The Sacred Cows Of Writing Advice

(I was going to go with, “Slaughtering the Sacred Cows,” which would have allowed me to segue neatly into a topical INTERNATIONAL HOUSE OF BURGERS MADE FROM SACRED COWS joke, but obviously I decided to go a nicer way with it.)

(Ahem.)

I did a thing on Twitter yesterday about this, but it also feels like a thing that should go here, in my blog, if only because I’m sure one day hackers will take down Twitter, and when they do, all of my wisdom — “wisdom,” he says, using vigorous bunny-ear air-quotes — will be flushed down the digital shitter. My post on Kill Your Darlings was sprung from a wellspring of wicked smart Twitter chatter from the likes of Jeannette Ng, Ann Leckie, Delilah S. Dawson, and it has since spun off further conversation about some of sacred cows of writing advice — the classics, the undefeated laws, the oft-repeated “rules” of writing stories. And of course like all so-called rules, they’re 49% truth, 51% bullshit — so I thought it’d be worth taking some time again to talk about which parts of them are bullshit, and why.

So, let’s SLAUGHTER

uhh I mean SET FREE?

the Sacred Cows of writing advice.

Let us begin.

Show, Don’t Tell

Nonsense! Shenanigans! Flim-flam banapants! Show, Don’t Tell isn’t a rule — it’s a trick. You literally cannot show something with your prose. All of prose is telling. It’s why we call it ‘storytelling.’ It is currently in vogue to write in a ‘cinematic’ way, especially through certain genres — thrillers, SFF, etc. — but that’s just a ruse. It’s a linguistic way to make the work seem more visual, and by proxy, open to some interpretation.

Example: you might not say, “Jessica was fucking pissed,” and instead, show the signs of her being mad. (She’s pacing, nostrils flaring, gritting her teeth, cursing under her breath, stomping her feet, kicking a trash can, punching a side of frozen beef, rage-eating lasagna, whatever.) So, as in reality, we don’t truly know her mind. We must make an interpretation of her emotional state, which is nice in that it forces the reader to do a little work. But also, sometimes, fuck that. Sometimes we just wanna say, “Jessica was fucking pissed.” That’s okay, too.

And sometimes we need to explain shit. Either in the text or through the mouths of characters as dialogue — but that leads us to our next sacred cow to slauuuuuhhh I mean set free —

Exposition Is Bad

Exposition is boring, people say. And so, therefore, it is bad, but I’d rather the argument be: Bad Exposition is Bad, Actually. It sucks when it sucks. When it’s done right, it’s artful as hell.

Listen, a good writer knows how to deliver information in an interesting, lively way — they can rewrite a lawnmower repair manual with vigor and tenacity. That’s literally our job: above all else, be interesting to the subset of people who form the backbone of our theoretical audience. (What I mean by that is, a so-called ‘literary’ writer would aim to be interesting to the ‘literary’ reader. A thriller writer would aim to be interesting to a thriller reader. Yes, ostensibly we aim to be interesting to ALL PEOPLE, but that’s impossible, so your first mark to hit is the reader that is intended to read your story.)

Exposition is often essential — the reader does not enter into a story with All The Information Ever, and so you cannot expect them to have the prerequisite knowledge. That information might be data on the social strata of the high school in which the story is set, or the mating habits of the Humboldt Squid (aka, the Vampire Squid). The reader doesn’t know, so you have to tell them. You can show some of it, sure. You can depict it, rather than explaining it. But sometimes, that takes too fucking long. Seriously. If you need the reader to understand, say, how antibiotics work, you could show it by doing some 3,000 word flashback chapter where Doctor Darla Q. Antibiotics (aka the inventor of antibiotics, I’m pretty sure) discovers penicillin, or you could just take a 100-word paragraph to get the job done in a quick, zero-fuckery way. And which path you choose really depends on the story you’re telling.

But more to the point, exposition is not bad.

Exposition is often necessary. We cannot show everything. Part of the power of a story written in prose is that we are granted an extra layer of story that visual media can only infer — we are allowed and even expected to visit the interior of narrative. Thoughts, ideas, narration, history — a lot of it bundled up as, yes, that’s right, motherfucking exposition.

Write What You Know

Oh, god, this one.

I don’t know anything, and yet I write a lot of things, because I am capable of learning stuff. I am not a hacker, but I wrote a book about hackers. I know very little about ants, but I wrote a book about ants. Featuring characters who are decidedly not me. You know how I do it?

a) I do research

b) I make shit up

Write What You Know is not a law — it’s an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to know more things, and it’s an opportunity to connect your current experiences with the work at hand, both out of a search for some authenticity and, well, because of basic laziness. Sometimes that means finding an emotional core to the story that connects to your emotional core. Sometimes it means taking your experiences in one hand (climbing a tree) and using that experience to inform a completely made up one (climbing a castle tower).

You can experience stuff, you can research stuff, and you can make stuff up.

That’s writing. That’s it.

Writers Have To Write Every Day

WRITERS HAVE TO WRITE EVERY DAY OR THEY DO NOT APPEASE THE WORD GODS, AND IF THE WORD GODS GO UNAPPEASED, THEY SEND UNTO YOU THREE CROWS, AND THESE CROWS WILL SPEAK THE FORBIDDEN WHISPERS THAT ROB FROM YOU THE WILL TO CONTINUE, CURSING YOU WITH WRITER’S BLOCK UNTIL YOU AGAIN COMPLETE THE SACRIFICE OF 2000 WORDS PER DAY AND SO THAT IS WHY WRITERS MUST WRITE EVERY DAY —

Nope. They don’t. Some do. Others don’t. I think if you’re the kind of writer who can’t really get it going, then maybe trying to write every day has value — it can develop discipline and habit. But others might try it and move swiftly toward burnout. Find what works for you. Challenge your process. When your process isn’t yielding results, change your process.

Cut All The Fat Out Of Your Story

Except fat is often the most delicious part of our meal. A story isn’t a stainless steel tube that feeds you nutrient narrative gruel. Fat is flavor, and can also be in fiction. Sure, if you’re writing a high-test action scene or a scene of tension, you might undo some of the action or tension by suddenly pumping it full of unnecessary oleaginousness. But well-marbled, layered fat — meaning, bits of flavor text that may not directly contribute to PLOT PLOT PLOT — are welcome throughout most stories. Sometimes, the fat is the most interesting part.

All You Need To Be A Writer Is To Read And To Write

I hate this advice. I hate it like I hate poison ivy because it’s deeply dismissive toward what it takes to be a writer. Real talk? Reading and writing do not automagically make you a good writer. Yes, you have to do both of those things! They are essential. But sitting on chairs and whacking wood with a hammer doesn’t make you a carpenter. Driving a car and opening up the hood and fucking around with belts doesn’t make you a mechanic. You have to read, yes, but you also have to learn to read critically and read well-outside your chosen genre. You have to write, yes, but you also might need someone to instruct you in writing — a teacher, an editor, another writer. You also have to live a life. And think a lot. And a whole bunch of other things that may be unique to you: take walks, travel, fight bears.

Start Your Story With Action, Bang, Zoom, Kaboosh!

Or don’t? Starting with action is tough. Listen, action works because it’s conflict, it creates tension, but to have conflict and tension we need a reason to care about the characters involved — and we don’t get invested in those characters if the moment we see them they’re under fire or in a car chase or whatever. At that point, it’s purely a mechanical exercise, a rote scene placement, to get us to the supposedly “boring” character development.

But look at one of the biggest action thrillers of all time and you’ll find —

Die Hard doesn’t begin with action.

It’s not until the seventeen-minute mark that we get action — meaning, Hands Goober shows up with his wacky crew of party planners. Up until that point, it’s John McClane on a plane, in a limo, in a party, talking to his wife, in a box, with a fox. His character is established. His relationships, also established. So that when those things are threatened, we have a reason to care. That said, the movie also gives the faint hint of coming action: a literal Chekhov’s Gun on the plane when a passenger sees McClane’s service pistol. It’s a hint, a promise, a threat.

Prologues Are A Curse Upon This Earth, Never Do A Prologue, If You Do A Prologue, Your Urine Will Turn To Fire, And Ants Will Never Leave Your Skin As They Colonize You As Punishment For Deigning To Do A Prologue, You Monster

Except you should do a prologue if you need to do a prologue. As with exposition, the problem isn’t prologues — it’s bad prologues. It’s unnecessary or confusing prologues. Listen, part of why prologues can be problematic is that they’re context-free prequel text to the book someone is about to read, often featuring characters we don’t yet know or care about and who might not show up again until the end of the book. But they can be done right, and they can be necessary, and if you need one, you need one. Just make sure it’s both interesting and necessary.

Never Start With Weather —

But what if the weather is relevant? If the story starts during a hurricane, I better jolly well be told that there’s a fucking hurricane going on.

Never Start With A Character Beholding Herself In The Mirror —

Did it in Blackbirds. Book got published. Fuck you.

Characters Must Be Likable And —

Shut up. Also did that in Blackbirds. Also this is very often advice that seems to be demanded of women characters and/or women writers, as dudes can be as unlikable as they need to be, because then they’re complex and interesting and redemptive and

*weaponized eye roll*

Adverbs Are Evil, And They Are Hexes, Do Not Trigger The Ancient Hexes

Never use adverbs! Unless you want to use a word like “never,” because the word “never” is a fucking adverb. Adverbs are a huge swath of language, modifying verbs the way adjectives modify nouns. We need them. Just don’t over do it, for fuck’s sake.

“Always Use Said,” He Said

Nah. Mix it up. Authors use hissed, spat, shrieked, ordered, offered, commanded, explained, whispered, and so on and so forth. Long as you don’t use a non-dialogue verb with dialogue (“I went to the store,” he tickled), or a really awkward one (“I love cheese,” he ejaculated), you’re probably in good shape. Everything in moderation, I say. True in life. True in writing.

In Conclusion

Writing advice, as I am fond of saying, is bullshit.

But bullshit fertilizes. It has function, if you want it to. These most common pieces of writing advice are useful for newer writers, but never good to keep as gospel, because for every piece of ironclad writing advice are ten writers who can snap that iron bar with their bare hands, breaking those rules left and right — with grace, aplomb, awards, and sales. None of this stuff is as simple as it seems on the surface, and demands a deeper scrutiny than just accepting them at shallow face-value. Dig deep. Challenge these ideas. Fuck ’em when they don’t work for you.

What are some pieces of super-common writing advice that you’ve realized are basically bullshit? Let’s hear it. Line ’em up, shoot ’em down.

* * *

[image error]

THE RAPTOR & THE WREN: Miriam Black, Book Five

Miriam Black, in lockstep with death, continues on her quest to control her own fate!

Having been desperate to rid herself of her psychic powers, Miriam now finds herself armed with the solution — a seemingly impossible one. But Miriam’s past is catching up to her, just as she’s trying to leave it behind. A copy-cat killer has caught the public’s attention. An old nemesis is back from the dead. And Louis, the ex she still loves, will commit an unforgivable act if she doesn’t change the future. 

Miriam knows that only a great sacrifice is enough to counter fate. Can she save Louis, stop the killer, and survive? 

Hunted and haunted, Miriam is coming to a crossroads, and nothing is going to stand in her way, not even the Trespasser.

Indiebound  |  Amazon  |  B&N

Macro Monday Is Now Zoom Lens Monday, To Hell With Your Laws

I got a new lens!

Er, for my camera, not like, some kind of cyborg shit for my eyeball. Thought that would be cool? Anyway. I’m talking about the Canon 100-400mm mk II (with IS!) zoom lens. Which lets me capture shots like that one above — a chipmunk, notoriously hard to capture because they’re basically tiny woodland ninjas, now easy to capture thanks to the lens. I intend to use it for birding, mostly, because I guess I turned into an old man? (The other day I spent a half-hour tracking a scarlet tanager through the woods. I saw it but failed to get off a snap, so that’s how I wasted my day.)

If you’d still rather macros —

Well, here is a picture of a jumping spider. It’s behind the cut because spider, but I really encourage you to look at it if only for those giant green fangs. Also here’s a mantis eating an ant — an ant I literally threw to the mantis and it caught because mantids are fucking rad —

And here’s an even more up-close-and-personal look at the ring-necked snake that lives by our cellar door — at a casual glance without the camera, the snake is a dull gray color. But with macro and flash, man, it’s like a Chromatic Dragon. Look at those blues! Really beautiful animal.

YAY BUGS AND SNAKES AND SPIDERS.

THE THINGS I AM MADE OF.

Whatever. Let’s see. What else is happening?

Well, the world is still falling to shit, so that’s great. Net neutrality is gone, Trump diarrheaed over all our allies while simultaneously fawning over Putin and giving a handjob to North Korea, so we’re in really great shape on the world stage and America totally hasn’t become a shitty-pantsed embarassment in a very short time, ha ha ha, oh good.

International House of Pancakes is now International House of Branding Fuckery, oh, I’m sorry, I mean, the B stands for Burgers, I guess?

Everything is deeply stupid, so read books, because they are a temporary escape from the pure liquid nonsense raining from the sky.

In that vein, I note that Zer0es is still $1.99 — for your Kindle, on B&N, on Kobo, even iBooks. Hackers plus surveillance plus body horror thriller.

Also, audio books for The Raptor & The Wren (Emily Beresford narrating, out July 3rd, preorder now) and Damn Fine Story are incoming (date: tba).

And I think that’s it for today.

Be good, humans, because our goodness is all we have.

The Opposite Of “Kill Your Darlings”

I like when a topic ping-pongs its way around Twitter. Particularly in the department of writing advice — because it nearly always zips about, this way and that, carrying with it different perspectives and scrutinizations of the topic at hand. And that helps me look at my own point-of-view on these things, and helps me pull the topic out, furrow my brow, and give it a hard, gnarly squint under the magnifying glass.

Current writing topic du jour:

Kill your darlings.

It is, as with all pieces of writing advice, good advice.

Until it’s not.

Meaning, no one single piece of writing advice is a one-size-fits-all unitasker. Nearly all pieces of writing advice — with maybe the exception of FINISH YOUR SHIT — can easily be Judo-flipped onto its back. Nearly every piece of writing advice and its opposite is true, at some point, for many writers. And it’s vital we not be rigorous with what we feel are these chestnuts of writing advice. These chestnuts must, in fact, be roasted time and time again to bring out their nuttiest, most delectable flavor. Or, put differently, take the words of writer Jeannette Ng, who is in fact a finalist for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer this year —

“But in general I feel like we don’t publically interrogate this paradigm enough: The idea that exposition is always bad. That ornate prose is just showing off. That we shouldn’t get too attached to bits of our own writing, that we should kill our darlings.”

What a great verb, by the way.

Interrogate.

[Also: read Ann Leckie and Delilah S. Dawson on the subject, today.]

Let’s rewind a little.

In writing, you have three tiers of putting together a story.

You have: technical sentence construction, which is to say, you put words together, gluing them hence with various fiddly bits of punctuation, and then they make sentences. And then you string sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into pages. This is the technical aspect of writing.

Its laws are flexible, but firm. In other words, if I wrote, “It’s laws are flexible; but firm,” you could make a strong case that the construction of that, the grammar of it, are wrong.

Next level down: prose construction. This is the aspect of writing that probably gets the most attention, and it’s about constructing narrative at the language level. It’s about dialogue, it’s about exposition versus action, it’s the escalation of using writing not only to convey an idea, but also to convey a story. Right? And here, again, laws exist. The laws though are a little goofier. If grammar is fairly bedrock, then here we’re talking something that’s muddy and wet — a soft, gently moving earth. It’s stable… until it’s not. There are tectonic shifts. Gentle undulations. We claim that “good writing” is objective, but it’s very plainly not; our ideas of “good writing” will shift and warp as the months and years and decades go on.

Final level for purposes of this discussion is: all the story bits. Story being abstract. Story being narrative construction not at the language level, but the idea level. Character and theme, rhythm and flow, tension and release, the shape of narrative, and so on and so forth. This area probably gets the least total attention, which is understandable — it’s a PYROCLASTIC HELL REALM WHERE THE ONLY LAWS ARE MAD-MAXIAN IN PROPORTION.

Story is wigglier than a snake covered in fire ants. It’s slippery like an over-lubed dildo. It has few rules, if any. I dare say that if you show me any ironclad story rule, I can give you ten writers, right quick, that fucked that rule right in the ear.

One of the pieces of writing advice that is supposedly ironclad is the aforementioned:

KILL YOUR DARLINGS.

*crash of thunder*

And as I said above, it’s good advice, until it’s not.

More to the point, Kill Your Darlings (besides from being a great band name) is 101-class writing advice. It’s entry-level, as are most of the authorial platitudes. Show Don’t Tell? Sure, great, until the time comes when you need to tell the reader something. Write What You Know? Go for it, until you realize you don’t know a whole lotta shit, and if you take that advice too literally you’ll never write a goddamn thing that isn’t you sitting at the keyboard writing about writing about writing. Never Use Adverbs, For They Are Wizard Prisons! Great, great advice, perfectly golden always and forever, oh, except the words “always” and “forever” are motherfucking adverbs. Writers Write Every Day — except until they don’t, and some write every week, or every month, some write 2000 words a day, some write 15000 words once a month, some write for a couple hours, or four, or eight, some write to music, some write to the screams of the people they have trapped under their floorboards. Open With An Action Sequence, except action sequences don’t always give the proper context, and also, what if you’re not writing action?

On and on and on.

But today, we’re again tackling the old saw: kill them ding-dang darlings, darlin’.

It is, taken lightly, good advice.

It is, taken rigorously, very bad advice.

Why, taken rigorously, is it bad advice?

It’s bad because it presupposes to know what is essential in a story. A story, we are then lead to believe, is a concise series of narrative events, and anything that does not move them forward is chaff that must be separated from the wheat lest the story-food be chewy and unpleasant. And certainly, that can be true: if a part of the story truly stands in the way of the story, and most or all your readers feel it, then maybe that thing was truly a darling after all, a piece that was not only non-essential, but that blocked the story pipes like a flushed baby diaper.

But we run the risk of treating stories — or the idea of Story, big S — as something irrevocable and unswerving. It assumes that Story is a hard-and-fast blueprint pressed into well-set concrete. It demands we accept that Story is A+B+C, and onward, until Z. And any deviation from that alphabet is heresy: no imaginary numbers in there, no emoji, no X where the R should be, no cat’s-butt asterisk where the D would go, no series of FUs hunkered down in the middle like a glorious profane parade of middle-fucking-fingers.

It also assumes that Story is only, only, only for the audience.

And that isn’t true.

That can’t be true.

A story only for the audience is the worst kind of story — a soulless exercise. Maybe one that works! Maybe one that sells well, I dunno. But for my mileage as a creator, to remove me from that creation, to take myself and my ideas and my fears out of it, well, you might as well let Norman Rockwell paint over every Picasso, or vice versa. The artist is a presence in the art. The storyteller is part of the story. And so we must leave some room for the storyteller, and Kill Your Darlings narrows that space in some cases — and it can be constrictive.

Consider what is essential in all aspects of your life.

In a meal, what’s essential is, what? Nutrients. Food to survive. So, if food were reduced to a Soylent-like nutri-gruel, you’re fine, right? I mean, it’s totally cool not to live in a world with ice cream or snap peas or bacon or [insert your favorite food here], right??

In decor, what’s essential? Almost nothing. Decor isn’t essential. You don’t fucking need it. That painting on the wall doesn’t hold up the wall. It’s chaff. A darling. Kill it. Scour it with cleansing fire! Clarity is king! Burn down such frivolous rubbish HA HA HA HA *turns the flamethrower on the Bayeux Tapestry, also where did you get the Bayeux Tapestry, you thief?*

In a story, what’s essential?

Beginning, middle, end?

Character doing stuff, saying stuff?

Is a character’s description essential? How much is essential? One sentence? Three adjectives? A paragraph? A page? A whole chapter?

What about the description of family crests and epic meals and massive amounts of diplomacy? That wouldn’t go well in a spare thriller, but in epic fantasy, it’s a feature, not a bug. In the very good zombie novel This Dark Earth by John Hornor Jacobs, he includes a chapter about characters getting a locomotive up and running, under siege by zombies — it is, in the technical sense, utterly non-essential. It’s also my favorite chapter in the novel, and it gives the book a kind of counterweight and heart that anchors it, despite doing nothing for the plot, or even for the characters we generally care about.

Next year, I have a novel out — Wanderers. One day, a young woman finds her sister sleepwalking down the road — the sister cannot be harmed, cannot be stopped, and every mile or three, she’s joined by another sleepwalker. On and on they go, the flock of sleepwalkers growing as their friends and families walk with them as shepherds. We don’t know where they’re going, or why, or for what purpose sinister or benevolent, and that’s what the book is about — that mystery, and those people. The book is 280,000 words. It’ll be in the 700-800 page range when it finally bursts its copy-editing cocoon and becomes its MIGHTY WINGED BOOK FORM. It’s a huge-ass book. And all along, I had to resist a single piece of writing advice:

Kill your darlings.

At every turn I wanted to slam my foot on the accelerator and just push the story forward as fast and furious as I could get it to go. But that wasn’t what the story needed. It wasn’t what I needed it to be. I needed it to sometimes slow down, to take strange exits off the highway, to deviate in unusual directions for a time. It needed to have an epic scope, to change shape, to be a thing that wasn’t just the rush to rise, the bang of climax, and then the fall. It had to be bigger, odder, more beastly in its form, and that’s how I wrote it, and my editor — thankfully! — kept me from turning away. She demanded I stay on that path to write the book that way, and given the response the book is getting in very early readers, I’m thankful I did.

On the developmental edit, you know how much total word count I cut?

Nothing.

In fact, I rewrote the beginning and then added another 10,000 words.

But if I had really listened to the advice, kill your darlings, the book wouldn’t be the book. The story wouldn’t be the story. It would be leaner, meaner, a prison shiv instead of the whole prison  — but a lot of things would’ve been murdered to make it that way. I would’ve lost so much. And therein lies too another problem with the phrasing of kill your darlings, as it presupposes that we need to cut things we like — which is kinda fucking bonkers, isn’t it? What we like is often important. It informs why we’re writing the story in the first place. Aren’t we better off instead looking for things to cut that we cannot defend, that at the end of the day aren’t bits we like very much at all? The things we love about a story, aren’t we served better by ultimately finding ways to make them work, to earn their place in the piece because, in fact, we love them so?

As such, I’ve learned what the opposite of kill your darlings is, and it’s this:

Know what hills you’re willing to die on.

What I mean is this: at the end of the day, it’s your name on that book. Not your beta readers’ names. Not your editor. Not your mom, your sister, your dog, your agent, your God, your favorite Star Wars character.

There, on the cover, is your name. A magic name. A seal of ownership.

So you gotta own what’s under the cover, too.

If a thing in the book is a so-called darling, you have to make a decision: is it a thing you thought you liked but doesn’t do anything for you? Then it can go. But if it’s a thing you truly love, a thing you truly need, keep it. Weld it to the fucking page with fire and lightning. I’ve had had reviews tell me that the interludes in Aftermath were utterly non-essential. I’ve had readers tell me the interludes in Aftermath were their favorite things in the book. And the only thing I can say about that is, I wanted them in there. Whether people loved them or hated them or both, I — me! — wanted them in there. Because they were mine, and a thing I loved, and a thing that was precious to me — they were part of the fabric of the narrative no matter how quote-unquote essential they were. Sometimes, the most interesting parts of a book are the darlings — the pieces that don’t conform. The pieces that stand out. Sometimes a thing stands out because it’s ugly and you gotta shave that wart off fast as you can. But sometimes a thing stands out because it’s the thing that defines the work — it’s a dignified stare, a bent nose, a beautiful imperfection that is far more compelling than all the expected, anticipated, overwrought bits.

Of course, the caveat is: you own it. Whether it works or it doesn’t, you own it.

But you own the story either way.

Might as well make it yours, in whatever fashion that feels most proper.

Kill your darlings when you must, yes.

But know too when they must remain, because they are yours, and they belong, no matter how much anyone tells you otherwise. Know when they are not merely a darling, but a beautiful bit to defend, to protect. Know when they are a hill you’re willing to die on, even if you do, in fact, die upon it. Know they they’re there. Why you must keep them. Then plant your feet, raise your sword, and demand your darlings be allowed to live.

* * *

[image error]

DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Out now!

Indiebound  |  Amazon  |  B&N

Flash Fiction Challenge: To Write About Food

The loss of Anthony Bourdain is staggering to me. I’ve said elsewhere, but I feel like Bourdain was the next evolution of Hunter. S. Thompson — a vicious, rigorous truth-teller, but far less performative than Thompson. And ultimately far gentler, in all the best ways. He was authentic and earnest and I’ll miss his voice, his writing, his everything.

He wasn’t just a chef, and he certainly didn’t write only about food, but I think connecting food to stories is one of the things he did, in a bigger, stranger way than you usually find with people. He really understood the cultural connections and ramifications of that.

So, that’s your job today, in honor of Bourdain.

Write a story and let it be about food, but about more than food, too. Connect the food to something larger. Reach. Extend your narrative muscles. Find out how food is about culture, about people, sometimes about safety, other times about transgression. Go big or go small, just go somewhere with it.

Length: ~2000 words

Due by: Friday, June 15th, noon EST

Post at your online space.

Drop a link below so we can read it.

Write.

The Awkward Author Photo Contest Strikes Back

It is time, once more, for the return of the

AWKWARD AUTHOR PHOTO CONTEST.

*drum roll*

*crash of thunder*

*ravens descend*

We’ve done a few iterations so far, and some of my favorites and past winners are riiiight here —

(You get the idea.)

Way this works is easy:

You take a photo of yourself. Or someone takes a photo of you. And this photo is meant to imitate a really bad, really weird, really awkward author photo. Some real authors have terrible, terrible photos on their book jackets, and your job is to outdo those at every turn. Funny is good. Weird is wonderful. Clever is excellent. (More examples here.)

And yes, there be prizes.

The rules are these:

The contest runs from today till Weds, June 27th, 2018, noon EST.

You get one entry. Just one. Multiple entries disqualifies you.

Email that entry — a photo of medium or greater size, at least 700px wide — to me at terribleminds at gmail dot com, and when you do…

Use the subject (and this is a must): AWKWARD AUTHOR PHOTO CONTEST SUBMISSION 2018.

I will search for that subject, and if it ain’t exact, I might miss your entry.

Your photo will be uploaded to a public Flickr page so that it can be seen and judged, and it may also end up here on the blog or other social media if it’s one of the winners. I don’t own the photo, though, and I claim no rights to it. If you want to share credit for who took the photo, please do! I’ll try to include any credit I get with the photo page.

Open to international (non-US) participants, but international winners pay their own shipping.

I will get the photos up and judged in the week following the contest deadline, which means the books will likely be out to you around or just after Christmas, but before New Years.

Photoshop is acceptable, provided you’re ‘shopping a real photo.

You do not need to be an actual writer/author to enter this contest. Though, actual writers and authors are obviously welcome and encouraged to join.

There will be two winners.

The first winner is chosen by ME, ME, ME — *raises fists to the sky as lightning is summoned to them* — because damnit this is my site and I get to pick the Grand Prize Winner.

The second winner is chosen by YOU, YOU, YOU — *the camera whirls about you in a dizzying pirouette* — because surely nothing can go wrong with crowdsourcing.

I will pick my winner by Monday, July 2nd.

And then I will open up the contest to a 7-day-voting period, which means the You-Chosen Winner will be picked by Monday, July 9th.

This is open only to those in the continental United States — international folks will have to pay their own shipping and handling.

The prizes be these:

The Me-Picked winner will win the following —

A full hardcover set of Star Wars: Aftermath, defaced with my signature.

A copy of Damn Fine Story, paperback, also ruined with my autograph.

A copy of The Raptor & The Wren, hardcover, also cursed with my inky name.

And a 3-book prize pack curated by Del Rey Books based on the winner’s tastes.

And a postcard where I inscribe for you a unique, and probably nonsense, piece of writing and/or life advice.

The You-Picked winner will win —

A 3-book prize pack curated by Del Rey Books based on the winner’s tastes.

And a postcard where I inscribe for you a unique, and probably nonsense, piece of writing and/or life advice.

And that’s it.

If you have questions, pop them in the comments below.

Otherwise:

BRING YOUR MOST AWKWARD AWKWARDNESS TO THE TABLE.

Macro Monday Magnifies The Moist Monster

Okay, that subject header sounds like I’m talking about one thing but I’m really talking about this thing. And before you click that link lemme just warn you — it’s a spider. I mean, not a real spider that will jump out of your screen and bite your face, but a spider photo, and it’s a spider covered in raindrops sitting on a flower. But some people are viciously arachnophobic, so I thought I’d hide it behind the jump there.

The same spider created the web in the header image above. The one that looks like something written in space in the language of raindrops.

Anyway.

HELLO.

I am back from BookCon and BEA, where I was able to rain copies of Damn Fine Story down on all those who would come near me — and as it turns out, many seemed to want the book, either because they knew what it was or because they were entranced by the monocled elk. So, if you have grabbed the book, or really any of my books, by garsh and by golly I could sure use the a review at the Review Location of your choice. Amazon! Goodreads! Carved onto the side of a mountain with a doom laser! Tattooed on your face! Whatever.

Here, for your service, have a creampuff:

Okay, it’s a photo of a creampuff, but you were okay with it not being real when it was a spider, so don’t complain now.

Let’s see, what other news nuggets of note?

Damn Fine Story will soon come to audio. More details when I have them.

Also coming to audio: The Raptor & The Wren and Vultures.

Zer0es is still a buck-ninety-nine.

Wanderers is out of copy-edits. Soon out for blurbs which is — ha ha, ohh man, that’s always a terrifying part of sending your book out.

Also, I’m really coming around to the idea of starting a Patreon/Drip (probably Drip) — it would focus on writing advice in an “advice column” way, where the column would, after a period of exclusivity, drift over here to the blog properly. I like the idea, but not sure how many readers here are really… interested in that? Give a shout in the comments if that’s a thing you’d dig.

And that’s it.

Have a good week.

Or don’t. I’m not your Mom.

I am your Weird Uncle though, so I feel I have some authority.

Flash Fiction Challenge: A Random Scattering Of Fresh Titles

BOOM. I’ll give you ten titles. You will either pick one of the ten or you will use a random number generator to select one, and then you will write some flash fiction paired to that title.

Get it? Got it? Great.

The titles are:

Crying in the Wind
The Dreamer’s Door
Mist and Light
The Hustler
Absent Elves
The Bridge and the Rose
The Dweller
The Reaper’s Rope
Into The Parlor We Screamed
Star Blight

(All randomly generated titles, by the by.)

Length: ~1500 words

Due by: Friday, June 8th, noon EST

Post at your online space.

Give us a link below to that post.

The end.

Fonda Lee: So, You Think You Know How To Write A Sequel

You cannot go wrong with Fonda Lee, as has been proven time and time again. That’s true with her books, and true with her guest posts here at terribleminds. And if you require further example, she’s back — this time, talking about how you think you know how to write a sequel, ha ha ha oh no. Ohhhh no.

* * *

STEP ONE: DELUSIONAL OPTIMISM

Congratulations! You wrote a book and now your publisher and your readers are eagerly clamoring for the sequel. No problem, you’ve got this. You spent a long time, maybe years, creating the world and developing the characters, so all the hard work is already done. Now you just have to continue the story, and you have plenty of ideas about how to do that because you cleverly left some threads untied in the first book and also scribbled some stuff on a Post-It note when your agent asked you for a summary of book two. Start by making an outline. Pat yourself on the back; it looks good. You’re a fucking professional now. Be sure to agree to an aggressive deadline. After all, the market rewards momentum and you don’t want to keep fans waiting!

STEP TWO: DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

Huh. You were sailing along in your writing, humming a merry tune, but now something’s wrong. You’re doing what you’re supposed to, you’re continuing the story, but there’s a nagging suspicion growing in your gut that you’ve been following the figurative path with your eyes on your feet and now as you slowly raise your head, you realize the sun has gone down in the woods and the trail has vanished, and the glowing red eyes are beginning to circle round.

What happened, you ask yourself. You analyze your choices. The sequel you’re writing is too similar to the first book; you’re just retreading ground and not being inventive enough. Or it’s too different from the first book; you’re not delivering any of the stuff that readers will want after reading the series opener. You’re spending too much time dealing with the events of the first book. Or not spending enough. You have too many new characters. You have too few. You step back and compare what you’ve done so far with your first book. Terrible mistake. The first book—in all its edited, revised, beautifully published glory—is perfect. This is dog vomit. You decide you would like to burn the manuscript, pretend this never happened, and start on a new project about something completely different. You can’t. You’re committed not just to the sequel, but to the canon you’ve already written. Also, you’ve already spent the advance money. By writing the first book, you made a very nice, sturdy sandbox, and now you’re trapped in the damn sandbox, and no one can hear you claw at the inside surfaces with your bloody fingernails.

Dazed and at a loss, you get on the Internet hoping for panda videos. Hey, people are talking about your first book! It’s doing well, getting good reviews, being nominated for awards, going into subsequent printings! You despair; you can’t possibly deliver a sequel that will live up. Or there’s silence; the first book’s not doing as well as you’d hoped. You despair; no one is going to read your second book anyway, so all you’re struggles are for nothing. You see-saw between these two states multiple times in a single day. You call up your writer friends. Oh yeah, they say, didn’t we tell you? Writing the sequel is a bitch. No, you scream, you didn’t tell me! No one told me! This is supposed to be easier! You rend your hair and crawl under the table.

STEP THREE: UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF SEQUELS

Okay, you’ve calmed down with the narcotic substance of your choice and have emerged from under the table to re-evaluate your situation. Slowly, you come to the realization that sequels are a unique challenge: You’re trying to write a new story (difficult at the best of times) within the scope of a larger story. You need to stay true to the events and the characters of the first book while also bringing in new elements, raising the stakes, and going deeper into the layers of the narrative, all at the same time. All with the shadow of public expectation hovering over you.

Take heart; you haven’t become a shittier writer between your first and second book. This is hard stuff and you haven’t faced this particular set of constraints and pressures before. Take a deep breath. You can do this. There are people who believe in you: your agent, your editor, your readers—they believe in you. To start with, let go of your first book. Just a little. You need some mental distance from it and how it’s performing. Stop reading reviews of what people liked and didn’t like about it and what they want or don’t want in the sequel. Pretend someone else wrote that book and you’re picking up where they left off. You can’t lose sight of the story canon that’s been established, but this new book is its own thing. What’s the story you want to tell now?

The characters, wherever they were at the end of the first book, need new goals and story arcs and/or new layers or complications in the motivations they’ve carried forward. The plot needs to make sense in the context of what’s already happened but also go in fresh and unexpected directions. Think about some of the best movie sequels: Terminator 2 flipped expectations by making the villain of the first movie the hero of the second. The tone of The Empire Strikes Back is dramatically different from the space opera candy of A New Hope. The Godfather Part II cut back in time. Alien was an atmospheric horror story; Aliens was a rousing action flick.

Put yourself in the sequel’s shoes for a minute. Just as every villain is the hero of their own story, the sequel doesn’t think of itself as a second player. The sequel thinks of the first book as the opener, and itself as the main event. “Thanks for warming up the crowd for me, buddy, let me take over from here,” says your sequel, confidently throwing its cape over its shoulder. Sequel acknowledges what was cool about First Book, but it isn’t afraid to do its own thing. With that in mind, you stop obsessing over writing a good sequel, and focus on simply writing a good story.

STEP FOUR: ALL THE WORK AND HALF THE FUN

You recommit. You write the damn book. You rewrite it. You revise it. Many times. You probably go through more drafts than you did with the first book (but you set that fact aside, because you’ve resolved to stop comparing this manuscript to the first book, remember?) You’re under time pressure, but if you need to, you ask for an extension because it’s more important that the book is good than that it’s released on a precise schedule, no matter what they say.

At last, you’re done. It was a ton of work, and guess what? The sequel will likely less attention that the first book did, especially if the first was your debut. Odds are it will get less hype, fewer trade and reader reviews, lower sales, and have less chance of being nominated for awards. Woop-de- friggin’-do! So…why do people do this again? Why don’t we all write standalones?

Because the reward for both the author and the reader is just too good to pass up: a chance to go back to a world we’ve fallen in love with, to spend more time with characters who’ve captured our hearts, to tell a bigger story on a bigger canvas, to answer the burning question, “What happens next?” With luck, your badass sequel goes out into the world and makes your existing readers very happy, and to the new readers, it says, “Hey, you’re missing out, but you can still get in on the party. Let me introduce you to my buddy over here, First Book.”

Ahhh, you did it, you wrote a sequel! Flush with victory, you sit down to write the third book!

Don’t talk to me about the third book.

* * *

Fonda Lee’s new young adult science fiction novel, Cross Fire, is the sequel to Exo, which was a Junior Library Guild Selection and Andre Norton Award finalist. Fonda is also the author of the YA novel Zeroboxer. Her recent adult debut, the fantasy saga Jade City, was a finalist for the Nebula and Locus Awards and named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s Books, Syfy Wire, Den of Geek, and the Verge.

In the stunning follow-up to Exo, Earth’s century of peace as a colony of an alien race has been shattered. As the government navigates peace talks with the human terrorist group Sapience, Donovan Reyes tries to put his life back together and return to his duty as a member of the security forces. But a new order comes from the home planet: withdraw. Earth has proven too costly and unstable to maintain as a colony, so the aliens, along with a small selection of humans, begin to make plans to leave. As word of the withdrawal spreads through the galaxy, Earth suddenly becomes vulnerable to a takeover from other alien races. Invaders who do not seek to live in harmony with humans, but to ravage and destroy the planet for its resources.

As a galactic invasion threatens, Donovan realizes that Sapience holds the key that could stop the pending war. Yet in order to save Earth, all species will have to work together, and Donovan might just have to make the ultimate sacrifice to convince them. But can one person save an entire planet from total extinction?

Fonda Lee: Website | Twitter

Crossfire: Exo Excerpt | Indiebound | Amazon | B&N | Powells (Signed Copies)

[image error]

Macro Montuesday Is Back From The Heat Death Of The Universe

I HAVE RETURNED FROM THE DESERT, HAVING HAD A VISION OF A BUNCH OF WEIRDO AUTHORS GATHERING THERE TO DRINK FANCY COCKTAILS AND TALK NERD SHIT and lo, it was good.

I met those randos above, which include, from L to R: Brandon Sanderson, Mark Coal, James Joyce, Stevia McGee, and me in the center: Chnurk Mandog.

*checks notes*

Okay that can’t be right.

Fine fine fine, it’s a handful of WONDERPALS, the storytellers: Sam Sykes, Myke Cole, Aaron Mahnke, and Delilah S. Dawson. We were loosed onto the streets of the city to roam and wreak havoc. (Oh and P.S., Aaron Mahnke’s newest Lore tome is out today. Go grabby Wicked Mortals — print or e-book. Don’t make me come over there.)

Seriously, Phoenix Comic-Con — wait, Comic Fest? — wait, Fan Fusion? — was rad. Such a wonderful crowd of fans and writers, really some of my favorite people in the whole damn universe. Trips like this make me realize how lucky I am to do what I do and to surround myself with such talented, kind, and utterly strange people.

*throws mug to the ground; it shatters*

ANOTHER, I SAY.

(More photos below.)

Let’s see, what else is going on?

OOH OOH OOH, Tor.com revealed the newest and last Miriam Black cover — Vultures, which comes out in January 2019, now has what has easily become one of my favorite covers of all my books, courtesy of Adam Doyle. Tor has the exclusive. They also have the exclusive cover copy/story description — but I’ll warn you, if you’re not caught up, it’s hella spoilery. Good news is, you can bop over and see the cover without reading that. But it will give away the events of prior books, as the last book in a series ultimately must. Vultures is not a book to read if you’ve not read the five books that precede it.

I also have some cover designs rolling in for Wanderers, and some ARCs have already started to go out — even though the book doesn’t come out until April of next year, Del Rey wants to get an early promotional jump, so that’s exciting. I’ll show the cover when we’ve settle on one but it is looking really amazing. I’m honestly nervous to have people read the book.

Hm. What else?

Some nice sales or price-drops on my books in digital —

Blackbirds is now $5.99.

Invasive is also $5.99, but also is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited.

Zer0es is on sale for $1.99 — not sure how long that lasts, so go grabby grabby.

And I think that’s it.

More photos from the con below:

(photo courtesy of either Kris Morris or Janelle Badali — not sure which of them took the shot!)