Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 86

Emmie Mears: You Have Comrades In This Trench

Emmie Mears is the badass author of the Ayala Storme series. Please behold their guest post, which they wrote to let you know — you are not alone.

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You need to get out of bed.

Roll for initiative.

For some reason, you’re stuck in the perma-one.

But let’s look at this from a different angle.

***

You’re probably not like Ayala Storme. You likely don’t have bright orange hair or violet eyes that clash with it. If you do have those eyes, it’s probably not because you were born a Mediator—you’re just a super rare earthling.

You’re probably a norm. A Muggle, as it were. Stuck on this rock with all seven billion of the rest of us.

But you might have something in common with Ayala anyway.

***

You don’t know exactly how it picks you. Sure, maybe it’s in your genes. Science is pretty certain of that. But why you? Why your consciousness, your soul, your essential Platonic you-ness?

Just like Ayala’s eyes, you get it when you’re born. It might not wake up for a long time. You might go years or even decades before you see your first demon.

***

When Ayala is seconds old, the doctor scoops the mucous from her mouth and waits for her to yell. Clips the cord.

At that point it’s already done.

She gets taken away from her mother and brought to a place where everyone will come face to face with demons. As soon as she can lift a stick, they teach her how to fight with a sword.

Is that how it felt for you?

That’s how it felt for me. I learned early that there were demons out there. They invaded my home, sunk their claws in my family. They lurked in my room, stalked my sister and me both until we felt we’d never be rid of their slime. They don’t make a detergent strong enough for that.

Maybe for you it was different. Maybe you were older when you saw your first one. It could have been any number of things or none. When they linger long enough in your periphery, you start fighting just to exist, even if they don’t go directly for your throat.

***

Ayala kills her first demon when her age is still in the single digits. It’s a little, stubby thing. It makes her feel strong and scared and serious…for a while.

You understand that, don’t you?

The first one you kill feels like a triumph until the second one rears its head.

The second one is always bigger, always quicker. Any arrogance you let soak into your skin scrubs away when it appears.

You’ll probably beat that one, too. And the next one, and the next one.

You’ll learn that there are lots of different kinds. Some spit at you with corrosive venom. Others shoot you full of quills. Some just have claws and teeth, and those are bad enough. Some jump up and land on your back, heavy, pendulous.

You start to notice that some kinds scare you more than the others.

Ayala understands that. She learns early on that behind every demon is another one, waiting.

***

How do you fight when that is the truth? How does she keep picking up her sword, first as a terrified kid, later as a gawky adolescent, finally as a resigned adult?

How do you?

Ayala knows in every molecule of her being that her world is ever only inches away from sliding right into hell. Not even sliding. Becoming hell.

Even though she knows there are thousands of people just like her out there, picking up their swords day after day to stab the same slime over and over—even though she knows that, she believes she’s in this alone.

It’s easy to think that. So easy to feel it, and when you feel it, it feels true.

It feels true because we see people we love lose their lives to the demons. Sometimes people we see every day. Sometimes people we know through their art.

It feels true because of the endless scroll of social media. How could we feel anything but small in the face of a fragile world so often led by fear?

Ayala see that too.

But believing that we fight alone doesn’t make it true.

***

Ayala’s not the only person who sees demons and fights them. In her world, plenty of people don’t see what she sees.

The same happens here.

Telling Ayala to just buck up and look at the good in her life? She’ll laugh in your face. Telling her not to worry? She knows damn well the danger is real.

You know that too. It’s just harder when the demons you fight only show their faces to a relative few.

There’s no secret to surviving this fight. It gets harder every time we lose another one of the good folks. When you’re knee deep in the shit, it makes you sink a little bit more.

The best weapon we have, though, is one another.

I know, I know. Ayala’d say that’s cheesy too.

Here’s the thing: Ayala’s world needs her. Just like this one needs you.

Those demons you’re fighting? You’re not fighting them alone. They only come out in the dark, and they do it so we can’t see the soldiers around us. It’s their single best tactic, isolating you from your comrades.

Fuck that.

Fuck that right to all six and a half hells.

I’ve fallen on some black days these past few years, deeper still the past few months. One look at my social media feeds tells me I’m far from being the only one, but still so many times, I don’t know how to reach out a hand.

So I’m asking you: do you know that we’re here?

For anyone fighting demons, that’s one of the biggest lessons to learn. It’s not a one time deal, either. We learn it once, we forget, we learn it again. Sometimes with some bruises to show for it.

You don’t get to choose your genes, your brain chemistry, which traumas hit you and when. You don’t get to choose those things. Ayala doesn’t get that choice either.

If we can’t see the others fighting their own battles around us, what we can choose is to raise our voices. Let them hear us scream defiantly into the faces of our demons.

A couple weeks ago, I had a night where I wasn’t sure I’d see the morning.

I shared this on Instagram:

Depression is a motherfucker. I’m trying to be open about it because if you’re fighting the same monster I am, you deserve to know you have comrades in this. When you’re in the shit and depression blurs your vision and you’re up all night trying to hang on against the claws dug deep in your heart and mind, it’s hard to remember that mere inches away in this battle there are others. Depression isolates. It lies.

This is my face. I fought all night, and hands of friends held me up, and when dawn came, they cradled me.

You might think you have no one to do that for you. It’s not true. I may be fighting my own battle, but you can reach out your hand and we can fight together.

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Ayala’s story is complete, but it’s not over. When I wrote these four books, I didn’t consciously realize I was writing a big metaphor for depression, several hundred thousand words long.

She’s never alone in her fight.

Neither are you.

***

Ayala Storme’s series is complete at four books, countless butts, a lot of really cute bunnies, and heaps of hellkin—she’s also queer. She’ll fight you if that’s a problem. In her world, they’ve got bigger frahlig demons to fry.

All four books are now available at your choice of snazzy retailer. If you want a chance to win this entire series in paperback (signed!), audio, or ebook, enter here. (terms and conditions on page).

* * *

Emmie Mears is also M Evan Matyas. You can call them Evan or Emmie—they’ll answer to either. Their pronouns are they/them. Evan is about to puddle hop over to Scotland with their partner and two cats. If you want to catch an exclusive Stormeworld short story, check out their Patreon [patreon.com/emmiemears]. There’s a whole world of exclusive content over there that you can get your paws on for a dollar a month. It helps Evan keep writing and fighting.

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Ways To Stay Motivated In This Shit-Shellacked Era Of Epic Stupid

Everything is dumb right now.

From nose to tail, we have become the dumbest, saddest pig at the county fair. Historians will not refer to this period as THE DARK AGES, but rather, THE DUMB AGES. The greatest question I get, right now, is how to simply persist creating art and staying motivated and creative in this epoch of syphilitic dipshittery, so I thought I’d bop in here and try my hand at answering that.

1. Stop staring at the news and at social media. This is hard, because presently the news is a series of constantly crashing cars right outside your window. One after the next, bang, smash, crash. The symphony of shrieking metal is very, very hard to turn away from. In many eras, the news is only marginally relevant to you on a day to day basis but, to me it seems that ratio is going up, up, up. The healthcare debacle alone affects me, um, rather significantly. If I don’t have access to healthcare via health insurance, then this thing that I do gets a whole lot harder. Just the same, I gotta know to turn away from it. The news is a vampire. It’ll bleed you dry and leave you a desiccated husk on the carpet. You can look at it, but pick your times. Write or make art first, then go and stare into the unswerving gaze of Sauron himself.

2. Writing is an act of resistance. Art is an act of resistance. Shit, just living your life in the maelstrom is resistance. Here’s how you know when something is a act of resistance: would the Shitty People, the Petty Men with Axes, want you to do it? No? Then do it. They want you showing your belly. They want you to stop contributing your ideas. They want you to shut the fuck up. So, don’t. Don’t get sad. Get mad. Get fucking pissed. And then —

3. Put that piss and vinegar into the work. Pour it right in. Glug, glug, splish-splash.

4. Do some real resistance, too. Make your calls. Join a protest. Contribute some cash to an organization who will carry the fight in ways you cannot. Key point: do this after you’re done doing the thing you need to do. You know how the airlines tell you to put on your own mask first? Put on your own mask first. Make the words. Art the art. Eat that cheese. Pluck that banjo. Then when you are done for the day, get down to the acts of resistance major and minor.

5. Hey, also, just take care of yourself. These are dumb times and dumb times often call for tireless marathons of beer and donuts and naps — and definitely do those things from time to time! — but also, like, eat some fucking vegetables, get some exercise, get some rest. Trust me, I get it, pretty much every day I hit a period where I’m like, “The best thing I can do right now would be to drink whiskey until I stop recognizing the world,” but I don’t, because I have to stay sharp. I have to stay sharp to make stuff and to be ready for whatever this era of epic stupid is going to throw at me. Take care of your shit.

6. Don’t dismiss what you do. If you’re making the words dance or you’re snapping photos or drawing pictures, and you worry that what you’re doing is somehow shallow or insignificant, fuck that right in the banana-pipe. Even at the barebones level, entertainment has value. In times far worse than these, people needed to be entertained — not in a bread and circuses way, but in a way where, if you wanna regain some sanity and light in the middle of deep fuckery, then you need something fun. If you’re writing to entertain, I salute you. No shame in that. You’re awesome. Keep doing it.

7. But also don’t be afraid to go bigger. If your mode is to use the work to carry a greater message or elevate your ideas or to even just contextualize the bees and murder that are currently living in your heart, hey, do that. Do whatever you gotta. Just make stuff. It feels good. And we need you to do it.

8. Art has meaning. Obama talked about the books that made him who he was. Most world leaders are readers. There are reasons that a book like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is so popular right now — art leaves its mark, indelible and essential, and it helps us both understand what has come before, what will come again, and what’s happening right now. It gives context and inspiration. It challenges and us and can unfuck our heads — even as it sometimes fucks with our heads in equal measure.

9. Talk to others like you. Sometimes you just have to be with your people. Either to commiserate about current global shenanigans or, better yet, just to talk shop. Talking shop energizes me. The news enervates me. Find your people. And together, you find your way.

10. Remain cautiously, grimly optimistic. Optimism is hard. So fucking hard. Optimism is in itself an act of resistance. But optimism, as long as it’s not blind and naive, has value — and can inspires others to be the same. I’m not saying to simply assume that everything will be magically fine. But optimism paired with a bit of realism and a lot of effort can actually do a world of good. The world has gone wonky in the last year, but we still live in a far better time than most other times throughout history. We still have dogs and otters. We still have shitloads of ice cream. We still have options and a way out of the storm. We have art, too — ours, and others. Train your brain to look for good stuff. And even better, train your brain to look for ways to make things better — in small ways, in big ways. And then, most importantly, train your brain to make art. Think about words. Think in images. Distract yourself with your work. Be hopeful, if not about the world, then about what you can contribute to it. Make cool shit. The end.

How do you stay motivated in this cauldron of shit-soup we call a world?

(Also, thanks to everyone who came by and commented yesterday. Rest assured, the blog ain’t going anywhere, and shall remain at normal operations, probably until I die of beer and donuts.)

* * *

Also, hey, here, have this: I’ll put my Mega-Ultra-Book-Bundle on sale, 50% off with coupon code MAKECOOLSTUFF. It’s got eight writing books and two novels, so ten books for ten bucks. Go grabby grabby if you so choose.

Macro Monday Changes Its Skin (Bonus Blog Question For Y’all)

That there is some snake skin.

I remember seeing my first snake when I was a kid — I was maybe six, wandering through the woods and fields behind my house, and my father was nearby but out of sight. I stumbled upon a rotten, hollowed-out stump, and sitting in the middle of that stump was a garter snake. I lost my shit. I fucking screamed like I had just seen someone get murdered. But I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with fear. That, or TRANSFIXED BY OPHIDIAN HYPNOSIS. Either/or.

Regardless, by father came running, certain that I was about to be eaten by a Yeti or something, but turns out, nope, just a li’l ol’ garter snake. He picked it up and showed it to me and it was of course harmless, and I wasn’t scared of snakes anymore. My kid has none of that fear that I possessed — because the other day, when I lifted up a stone, I found this fancy fellow:

It’s a milk snake.

(insert “my milksnake scares all the boys from the yard” joke here)

Folks around here tend to confuse them for copperheads, but we don’t get many (or even any) copperheads in this part of Pennsyltucky. We do get snakes people think are copperheads, like milk snakes and water snakes, and then they flip out and behead them with shovels or dispatch them with rifles because people are unnaturally scared of snakes, even though snakes are amazing and do a lot of good pest control work that would cost you a lot of money if you asked a human being to do it. (Sneks don’t care about your capitalism, yo.)

Anyway, this little snakey-fella or snakey-lady was underneath the stone, and B-Dub was like, oooooh, and he wanted to get close and look at it. So we did, within reason, without spooking the thing too terribly much. I got off a pic and then gently replaced the rock.

Days later, we found its skin.

(Another snap:)

And B-Dub kept the skin in a jar that also contains about two dozen cicada skins and some dragonfly and butterfly wings, and if he were an adult it would look like the kind of thing a serial killer keeps, but it’s a pretty cool jar. You can rattle his creepy cicada jar and it makes a sound:

THE WHISPER-RASP OF DEAD FLESH.

WHAT PRECIOUS NECROMUSIC.

Point of the story is, what? I dunno. Don’t be scared of snakes, I guess, because SNEKS BE COOL.

Also, though, there is a transformative element to a snake shedding its skin, and that leads me into the next question, where I ask you about THIS VERY BLOG.

The blog numbers here are waaaaay down.

This is not an exaggeration when I say November of last year (cough cough election time) came and went, and after it, my views went over a cliff. My purely anecdotal feeling on this is that it has less to do with what I’m posting and more to do with what’s going on in the world. People, to my delight, seem to be reading more actual articles and fewer ding-dong bloggers (cough cough like me), and given that humans only have so much reading time in them in a given day, one suspects that some more casual reading (cough cough terribleminds) may have fallen sacrifice to that. Plus, sometimes I’ll post something I think is cool, and ten minutes later, it’s all BREAKING NEWS: EL PRESIDENTE SEEN HIDING IN VLADIMIR PUTIN’S UNDERWEAR DRAWER or BREAKING NEWS: REPUBLICANS GATHER TOGETHER IN SECRET SORCEROUS CEREMONY TO SACRIFICE THE LAST UNICORN IN ORDER TO DISMANTLE THE FINAL SACRED PROTECTIVE LOCKS OF OBAMACARE, THUS DOOMING THEIR CONSTITUENTS TO WORSE AND MORE EXPENSIVE HEALTH CARE. Or just BREAKING NEWS: SHIT’S ON FIRE AGAIN. Eyeballs naturally flit toward the news, which these days is effectively a stock ticker that doesn’t track stock prices, but rather the highs and lows of our collective social anxieties.

So, it leaves me feeling like — well, what the hell do I do?

Seems I have a handful of options, and I’m happy to hear your thoughts on these, so feel free to swing your way down into the comments and add your two pennies:

a) Fuck it, blog less, turn this into a mostly promotional vehicle.

b) Fuck it, blog the same as I do now, because ultimately I don’t blog for eyeballs but because I cannot contain the stupid thoughts that exist inside my head so I might as well purge them here — even though I kinda pay a bit of a premium to host this sucker.

c) Turn it to a Patreon-kinda-gig.

d) Change the blog material — less writery stuff, more othery stuff (recipes, rants, whatever).

e) SHUT IT ALL DOWN

f) I dunno, cat pictures or something, even though I don’t have a cat.

Admittedly, some of my reduced blog numbers are because subscriptions are strong — over 6k subscribing means those people don’t need to “hit” the blog everyday to see what’s here. And guest posts seem to be holding their numbers, which is nice. Still, I get the overall feeling that engagement here is lower, and that coincidentally happened right around November.

If you have thoughts, pop ’em below.

OKAY BYE

Flash Fiction Challenge: A Five-Word Title

Your job this week is easy-peasy, oh-so-sleazy–

(Okay, not that sleazy.)

Go into the comments, come up with a title* comprising five words.

Not four.

Not six.

Not one.

Five words exactly.

Pop that sucker in the comments, and next week I’ll grab ten of them and that’ll form the basis of the challenge the following week. Get it? Got it? Good. Due by next Friday, noon.

Ramblers, let’s get ramblin.

* a title = one title, not several, thanks

Laura Lam: I Am On So Many Government Watchlists

The post title alone is one of the greatest things ever. Great in part because it’s true. I think of what I Google for research every single day, and I’m sure I’m currently being surveilled by drone. Laura Lam kicks ass here in this guest post talking about the research that went into her newest — Shattered Minds — and why she should probably expect SWAT to come kicking in her door any minute now.

* * *

In retrospect, I have no idea why I wrote a near future corporate espionage hacking thriller when I myself knew absolutely nothing about hacking. I used to be pretty good with computers back in the early 2000s. I created my own very tween pink and sparkly websites with HTML code typed into Notepad and uploaded via FTP. There’s a few broken remnants scattered on the internet via Wayback which I will never show a living soul. But I let those skills lapse, which is a shame.

When I sold False Hearts in a two-book deal I proposed Shattered Minds, a companion novel set in the same world, a dream drug addicted serial killer thriller with a large emphasis on hacking. I knew lots of books and films are famously bad at depicting hacking realistically, but I also knew I wanted to weave in interesting visuals using VR to hark back to older cyberpunk (and make those scenes more interesting to read about than a few people in a room typing frantically). I’ve researched loads of things outside my realm of experience. This is my fifth published book. I got this, I thought.

Ahahaha. Ahaha. Ha.

Shattered Minds is, to date, the hardest book I’ve written. My protagonist, Carina, is a serial killer addicted to dream drugs who wants to murder everyone around her. I don’t do drugs and I save spiders and take them outside. Not wasps though. Fuck wasps. I hate those things so much that I put them in my VR interface as the AI bugs that swarm and attack anomalies in the code. My love interest (and secondary viewpoint character) Dax is a Shoshone/Newe trans man doctor—again, nothing like me. This book has the most twisted villain, Roz, I’ve written yet. Think Rachel from Orphan Black and you’re not far off. I’d like to hope I’m nothing like her, as she’s pretty damn horrible.

Craft-wise, it was also a new challenge. It’s the first book I’ve written in third person, and it has three viewpoint characters plus two different flashback narratives threaded through. While writing, it felt like a puzzle with a hell of a lot of pieces that wouldn’t fit no matter how much I mashed them together. At about the halfway point, I wondered what the hell I’d gotten myself into and if I should just give the money back to the publishers.

What got me though it? 1. Chocolate. 2. Throwing myself even further into research. Write what you know means drawing on your own experience, but it also means going out and learning a bunch of stuff so you can lie convincingly about it. As a result, I’m probably on a bunch of government watchlists.

Here are some things I googled while writing this book (typed into full sentences rather than Boolean operators etc):

• Female serial killers (with a lot of focus on Aileen Wuornos, even though she’s different to Carina). A couple books I read as a result:

Kelleher, Michael D. & C.L. (1998). Murder Most Rare: The Female Serial Killer. Praeger.

Vronsky, Peter (2004). Serial Killers: The Methods and Madness of Monsters. Harvard University Press.

• Espionage (government and corporate). This led me to a few nonfiction books:

Greenwald, Glen (2014). No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt.

Isaacson, Walter (2014). The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. Simon & Schuster. (Espionage: SM)

Javers, Isaac (2010). Broker, Trader, Solider, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage. Collins Business.

• Virtual reality hacking

• How long does the heart keep beating after being cut out of a body? (usually just a few seconds)

• How many litres of blood in the human body (1.2 to 1.5)

• How hard is it to slit someone’s throat? (It always seemed really easy on TV/film, wondered if it was—it is better to stab through either side of the throat to hit the carotid artery than slit, but alas, my character didn’t realise this and made a mess)

• How to break into an encrypted company server

• Motivations for blackmail

• Wikileaks and other government leaks

• Corporate leaks

• The difference between sociopaths and psychopaths

• How to choke someone with a sleeper hold (watch your carotid artery, folks)

• Effects of drug addiction on the brain (not good)

• Effects of drug addiction on memory (bad)

• Video of open brain surgery (gross)

These are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. How many watchlists am I on? Probably all of them.

However, some of the best research was done without the magic of Google. I grew up in California but moved to Scotland eight years ago. In 2015, when I was in that halfway-oh-God-it’s-all-broken stage of drafting, I flew back and took a research trip to Los Angeles, wandering around the areas where I’d set scenes in the book and scoping out others. And in terms of hacking, I have a cousin who owns an IT security company with offices in Hawaii and San Francisco. I skyped him a few times and picked his brains and he gave me examples of how well known corporate espionage examples were pulled off and general approaches my characters might take. A lot of it was theoretical as the tech in Pacifica has moved on a lot from how we’d do things now.

The main thing I took away from our conversations was his phrase “there’s no patch on human stupidity.” You can have the best technical system out there, do everything right, but you can’t control a lazy human who writes their password down and hides it in their desk, or can be blackmailed with patriotism, sex, or fear. That’s the approach I took for a lot of the book. Have all the cool sci fi trappings, but focus on the people and their weaknesses and fears rather than the tech. The result is a book with a lot of blood, a fair amount of hacking that hopefully comes off relatively plausible, and a broken group of people just trying to do the right thing. More or less.

Every writer has researched something fairly dodgy. What Google search has likely gotten you on a watchlist?

(Dear NSA and other government officials: we’re writers. Promise.)

* * *

Laura Lam: Website | Twitter

Shattered Minds: Indiebound | Amazon

Linda Nagata: Five Things I Learned Writing The Last Good Man

Scarred by war. In pursuit of truth.

Army veteran True Brighton left the service when the development of robotic helicopters made her training as a pilot obsolete. Now she works at Requisite Operations, a private military company established by friend and former Special Ops soldier Lincoln Han. ReqOp has embraced the new technologies. Robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence are all tools used to augment the skills of veteran warfighters-for-hire. But the tragedy of war is still measured in human casualties, and when True makes a chance discovery during a rescue mission, old wounds are ripped open. She’s left questioning what she knows of the past, and resolves to pursue the truth, whatever the cost.

“…a thrilling novel that lays bare the imminent future of warfare.” —Publishers Weekly starred review

Some novels are hard to write and some novels are really, really hard. The Last Good Man was the latter type, hard-fought from beginning to end. It was also my fourteenth novel. You’d think I would have learned how to do this by now—but every novel presents a different challenge. These are some of the lessons I picked up from The Last Good Man.

Don’t look too far ahead.

I’m a plotter. Before I start a novel, I’ll create a rough (really rough) outline that includes some way of ending the story. So when I say, “Don’t look too far ahead,” I’m not talking about the bare bones of plot, but rather about all the shiny details that will put flesh on those bones.

This is a lesson I have to relearn with every novel. I think for some novelists, the great blank canvas at the start of a project is thrilling in an anything-is-possible way. But for some of us the knowledge that the blank canvas needs to be filled in with great story, compelling characters, and scintillating descriptions is overwhelming and intimidating. So I try not to look too far ahead. I try not to think too hard about all that will be required of me between the beginning and the end because that will only conjure fear: the fear of not living up to the project’s potential, of not being up to the task of bringing to life the work I want to create… and fear is debilitating. Far better to focus on the immediate task, the simple day-to-day accumulation of words.

That’s easy to say, of course, but often it’s hard to do. That’s why…

Sometimes it helps to lie to yourself.

My persistent lie as I was writing The Last Good Man was that this novel was going to be 100,000 words, no more. That’s a good length. Not a doorstop, but plenty of room for story. It’s also easy to measure progress—10,000 words? Hey, I’m already 10% done! (Wow, now that’s a lie so extreme—ignoring all the revision to come—that I shiver.) Still, if bogus cheerleading gets the job done, then cheer away! That’s my philosophy, even though, deep down, I knew this novel was destined to shoot right past that handy 100K mark.

It’s possible to start over while still moving ahead.

Hard-fought, remember? From the start, I was scrabbling through literary badlands, hunting for good words, gathering them up into paragraphs and chapters—but it all felt thin, inadequate, and bland. So, thirty thousand words in, I started over. Sort of.

I’d been writing in past tense, but one day I shifted to present tense and decided I liked the energy of it. So I stuck with it—and that meant I needed to rewrite everything that had come before. In other words, start over.

But I didn’t start over at the beginning. Instead, I spent my mornings writing the new parts in present tense, and then, at the end of the day, I dropped back to the most recent past-tense chapters and rewrote those, working backward toward the beginning.

Why did I work backward? I have no idea! But it worked, and I was far, far happier with the tone of the novel.

Escaping the clutches of the past takes time.

Writing a novel is an emotional process. It’s like being in a relationship. You think, this one is special. You give it your all. You just know it’s all going to work out. Your early readers agree. The reviews come in and it’s all great. Maybe you write another book or two, make it a series. But at some point, it’s over. You have to let go, you have to move on, and that’s not always easy.

My project prior to The Last Good Man was the Red trilogy and I was proud of those books. For a while it looked like the trilogy would be my breakout work…but somehow that didn’t quite happen, and like a bad breakup, it took time to really accept that and to move on, and to let myself connect emotionally with another project. I was over 65,000 words into The Last Good Man before I reached that point. So keep going! It will happen.

Every novel is different, so be prepared to break your own rules.

Every writer is different, for sure. We all have our own methods, our own rules. Since the beginning of time, one of my rules has been don’t show a partial draft to anyone.

Okay. I admit that when required—and it’s been rare in my career—I’ve sent a synopsis and maybe a few thousand words to editor or agent. But I don’t think I’ve ever shared partials with writers groups or critique partners, partly because I’m shy about my unfinished work, but more importantly, it’s my belief that an early draft is a fragile thing. Sharing it is a risk. If an early beta reader tells me that the-story-so-far is boring, or silly, or incomprehensible, or whatever, there’s a good chance I’ll believe them. Self-doubt is always lurking, ready to grow more powerful with the least encouragement. So my philosophy is to finish the story first, then face the beast. Er, I mean my very helpful beta readers.

But with The Last Good Man I reached a point where I was stuck. I’d been struggling with it for months and though I had over 70,000 words I also had two contending protagonists and I still didn’t know whose story it really was—which meant that I didn’t know how to end it. So I broke my rule and sent what I had to my freelance editor, Judith Tarr, who’d worked with me on the Red trilogy. Judy did a terrible thing. She read and responded to the partial in about three days when I wanted to take at least a week off! But her feedback proved to be the turning point. It made me consider more deeply what the novel was about and what the ending might be, and from then on I made swift progress through to the end—which I reached just shy of 140,000 words.

* * *

Linda is a Nebula and Locus-award-winning writer, best known for her high-tech science fiction, including the Red trilogy, a series of near-future military thrillers. The first book in the trilogy, The Red: First Light, was a Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial-award finalist, and named as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015. Her short fiction has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and several anthologies.

Linda has lived most of her life in Hawaii, where she’s been a writer, a mom, a programmer of database-driven websites, and an independent publisher. She lives with her husband in their long-time home on the island of Maui.

Linda Nagata: Website | Twitter

The Last Good Man: Amazon | Kobo | B&N | iBooks

Robyn Bennis: Five Things I Learned Writing The Guns Above

They say it’s not the fall that kills you.

For Josette Dupre, the Corps’ first female airship captain, it might just be a bullet in the back.

On top of patrolling the front lines, she must also contend with a crew who doubts her expertise, a new airship that is an untested deathtrap, and the foppish aristocrat Lord Bernat, a gambler and shameless flirt with the military know-how of a thimble. Bernat’s own secret assignment is to catalog her every moment of weakness and indecision.

So when the enemy makes an unprecedented move that could turn the tide of the war, can Josette deal with Bernat, rally her crew, and survive long enough to prove herself?

* * *

Math, It’s Not Just for Science Anymore

I’m a scientist, so I already get to use math for all kinds of cool stuff. From multivariate dynamic regression models to a simple count of how many intelligence-boosted rats escaped from the lab this week, math is an essential part of my research.

Until I started The Guns Above, however, I didn’t realize how useful math could be for my writing. With the power of math, I was able to estimate my airship’s carrying capacity, her top speed, the rate of buoyancy lost from various types of battle damage, and the distance to the horizon at any given altitude. Trigonometry even allowed me to draw carefully scaled sketches of airships, people, and other potential targets, so I could stand in my apartment and see them as Mistral‘s crew would, at any arbitrary distance.

Math! Who knew?

Love Is Hell

I love to write. A lot of you love to write, I bet. But, as with any love, there are days you hate it. Some days, writing feels like endless toil. There are days when writing acts distant for no apparent reason, because writing can be a passive-aggressive jerk. Writing is the sort of lover who breaks up with you, then slinks in naked while you’re taking a shower, like nothing happened. You’ll stay up all night with writing and regret it when you have to go to work in the morning. There’ll even be times when you’re trying to focus on something else, but writing won’t stop talking to you no matter how politely you ask.

Simply put, writing is an asshole. Writing steals your money and spends it on stupid things, like another gimmicky book on how to write better, and then it acts like it bought that book for both of you. Writing will take you to heaven and back all day long, but the next morning it’ll be gone without even leaving a note.

Because writing is love, and love is hell.

The Secret to Reader Immersion

In the course of writing The Guns Above, I discovered the secret to keeping readers immersed in a complex, unfamiliar fantasy world. It requires two steps:

1. Research or invent every single possible detail of every single aspect of the world you can think of.

2. Put the absolute minimum of that detail into the book.

For example, I didn’t just research steam engines when I was working out the mechanics of Mistral‘s powerplant. I also considered the history of steam power itself, and what economic and technological forces might have resulted in earlier development of an efficient, powerful steam turbine. I eventually settled on a history in which spitjacks—an obscure, 500-year-old kitchen gadget used to turn meat on a spit—were adapted to power a whole host of convenience and industrial items, such as ventilation fans and powered spinning jennies. The drive to improve power output led to a better understanding of the aerodynamics of fan blades—sadly absent in our world, where we were still mucking about with the piston engine at this point. This understanding hurried the invention of Mistral‘s powerful “steamjack.”

Almost none of that can be found in the final novel, because, while I’m sure it’s absolutely fascinating to the rest of your nerds, you don’t want a page of it interrupting your action scene.

Writing the Damn Thing is Just the Beginning

I started writing The Guns Above in 2013 and finished in 2014. It took until 2017 to see it heading to bookstores. I put more time, work, and effort into the book after I finished it than I did while writing. I suspect this would have been true even if I was one of those freaks of nature who can write a perfect first draft, because there was still the question of publishing, production, and promotion. I knew these would be a big part of the job going in, but I had no idea how big.

This Is What I Want To Do Forever

For the past year and a half, I’ve been sorta-kinda living the life of a pro writer, and there’s a lot to hate about that life.

I know that’s a weird way to follow such a heartwarming heading, but stick with me here. As I write this article, I have no idea how well my book will do. It may be a humiliating failure. This year may prove to be a stain on my resume, forcing me to explain why I neglected my career to chase after a silly childhood fantasy. Or my book may be a success, the opening chapter of a prolific new career as an author. My entire future stands poised over the abyss, ready to fall or fly. Worse still, I may not know whether it’s falling or flying for years, because it can take that long for a debut author to build an audience large enough to pay the rent.

Indeed, with the industry as it stands, many authors are destined to live at the quivering edge of financial viability forever. If I end up in the lost souls room with them, every launch and every reprint will leave me wondering whether I get to continue as an author or be forced, hat in hand, back to a day job. Between sweating sales of the current book, preparing for the launch of the next, trying to get a deal on the one after that, and writing the one after the one after that, I’ll be lucky if I have two days a year that aren’t spent in terror, waiting to see if I still have a career in the morning.

But, then again, wouldn’t it be worth it? Because it would mean I’m a writer in love with writing, and there are few things as wonderful as that.

Robyn Bennis is an author and scientist living in Mountain View, California, where she consults in biotech but dreams of airships. She has done research and development involving cancer diagnostics, gene synthesis, genome sequencing, being so preoccupied with whether she could that she never stopped to think if she should, and systems integration. Her apartment lies within blocks of Moffett Airfield’s historic Hanger One, which once sheltered America’s largest flying machines. The sight of it rising above its surroundings served as daily inspiration while she wrote her debut novel, The Guns Above.

Robyn Bennis: Website

The Guns Above: Indiebound | Amazon

Carnival and Chess and Boxes of Bees: Politics In America, 2017

Nobody wants another hot take on yesterday’s marginal-yet-special-yet-still-marginal elections, and yet here I am, with a take as hot as a plate of cold fajita meat. Just the same, I use this space to spout off mouthily — or mouth off spoutily? — and so here I am, doing exactly that.

A thousand things vex me about politics today, and that’s right, I said vex, so you know it’s fucking serious. Politics in America is a mess. There aren’t two Americas — there are three, or ten, or twenty, and it’s made all the worse by having only two parties to represent them. (And no, this is not a plea for more third-parties, because at this point, we can’t figure out two of these groups much else accommodate another gaggle of assholes.) The GOP side is — well, listen, I have no idea what’s going on there. I feel like I’m watching a train barrel down one track toward a cliff. A cliff whose valley below is full of biomedical waste and werewolves. They’re doing this all so ineptly, so indelicately, without any awareness or fear. It’s like I’m witnessing adults running around town hitting babies with hammers and we all know it’s happening and we all know it’s bad — and in theory there will be punishment for the baby-whacking monsters, but they seem to be doing it so brashly, so brazenly, that you’re afraid consequences may not be forthcoming? “Who will save those babies?” we ask. “Will anyone demand justice for the hammerstruck children?” And all of us stand around shrugging. “Hopefully? Shit.”

I’ve posited that the GOP either is:

a) stupid

b) compromised / kompromat

c) greedy

d) aware of something we aren’t, like, say, secret vote hacking

e) in possession of a secret moon base to which they will retire

f) some untasty combination of the above flavors

Because they just keep going. They’ve got Trumpcare, which is somehow less popular than anal cankers, and yet they’re like, YEP, WE’RE FUCKING GOOD, WE’RE GONNA PUT THIS OUT THERE AND WE’RE GONNA VOTE ON THIS GURGLING SHIT BUCKET AND I’M SURE IT’LL BE FINE. Further, they continue to tie themselves to Trump again and again, which feels a lot like trying to ride an elderly bison through quicksand. It’s sinking. The old-ass bison is sinking, get off the bison. Get off the bison, you guys. But they whistle and ki-yaa the bison further and further into the muck. Blissfully ignorant.

So, at this point, I dunno what to think about the GOP, except that it’s fucked up and I’m pretty sure at this point they hate us and will rip off their faces to reveal the reptilian Visitors from the ‘V’ TV show. And even there maybe I’m being too optimistic.

On the other side, the Democrats.

The heart and soul of the Democrats are up for renewal.

They need that, some kind of revival.

Problem is, nobody can agree what that means.

Shit, I don’t know what it means. I have no real answers.

Do the Dems move further left? Maybe, but remember, “left” is less a direction and more a gaggle of subjective principles. Bernie is super liberal, until you realize he’s soft on guns and soft on women’s rights and grouses about identity politics, which makes him economically progressive but not socially progressive. So, do the Dems move away from social and identity politics? Sure, if they don’t mind alienating a fantastic chunk of human real estate called everybody who is not white, cis-male, straight. Do they stress Medicare-for-All instead of Let’s-Make-The-ACA-Work? Do they stress Free College despite that sounding like Dreaded Socialism? Where do they focus their efforts? If they move to the middle, to where much of the country reportedly sits, we view them as too milquetoast, too easy, too middling meh bleh poop noise. Do they focus on climate change? It’s essential, mighty essential, because literally nothing else matters if the seas are boiling and the skies are made of lightning, but climate change isn’t sexy, either. “We need to save our increasingly doomed planet” is starting off on a broken foot. Essential as the message is, hey maybe we won’t die, wow, what a sexy-sexy message, god, I’ve got such a voting boner now that I am reminded that we’re sprinting merrily toward our own extinction!

So then, to the soul of the party —

Not the topics, but how they approach those topics —

Do the Dems embrace a more populist approach?

Do they fight dirty?

Do they finally take the low road?

I see that again and again, this plea to the Democrats, do more, do more, fight more, get nasty, break the rules, fuck the system. And I feel that, too. One day I want Kamala Harris to walk into Congress with a shipping container full of bees that she opens like in that essential Oprah GIF (referenced so neatly at the fore of this post). I want them to throw batteries at Santa. I want to hear, Tammy Duckworth sends her regards just before some serious shit goes down. (Never mind the fact that the problem with this all is, asking the Dems to “do more” before we’ve voted them into power is dishonest, at best.)

At the same time, maintaining decorum and walking the high road is… kinda why we like them, isn’t it? At least a little? We like that they’re the adults in the room. It’s kinda part of their brand — it didn’t used to be a thing you had to say, “Hey, I’m not a diaperbaby who will sell the nuclear codes for a handjob by a winking Russian,” but now, maybe you need to say that. Getting down in the mud with the pigs just makes you another pig. On the other hand, politics has become — or perhaps has always been — a nasty pig-wrestling contest, and you don’t win it by sitting in a nice chair two miles from the mud-hole. You win it in the mud. With the pigs.

And that really is the only thing I think that I know:

Government is complex and full of nuance. Like life. Like most things.

And politics is complicated, too — it’s a filthy, overgrown pubic tangle. It has lice. It has an old lollipop stuck in there. It has early, sinister, truly Satanic drafts of the Constitution tucked up under its snarl, along with the bones of Nicolas Cage from National Treasure.

But people are fundamentally dumb.

I don’t mean individual people.

I just mean people-people. The collective. The aggregate.

An ant colony is as good as its best members. But humanity is only as good as our worst, and we will always have the worst among us. Those people are loud and dumb and they vote.

Politics needs to look simple, for the simpletons. And it needs to look simple even for us smartletons, too, because sometimes we don’t like nuance. Sometimes we want to pretend that everything really is Black and White, Good and Evil.

We don’t want nuance. We don’t want all the fiddly bits.

It comes down to this, I think:

The Democrats are playing a chess game.

The Republicans are running a carnival.

Only problem:

Nobody likes chess, and everybody loves the carnival. I don’t want to watch Knight to Fuckface 4, I want to eat cotton candy and ride the Gravitron until I vomit on a small child. I want to eat fried foods until I shit my pants. It’s not smart. It’s a bad instinct.

But chess is dumb and the carnival is fun.

Trump is a carnival barker.

He gets up there, and he yells and he claps his hands. Clap, clap, clap, yaaaaaay. Look at me, look at me, he says. He tells us, this way to the great egress, and we follow, doo-dee-doo.

The Dems are telling us about their chess moves. They’re explaining to us, in great detail, the many moves they could make — they’re strategy nerds. Min-maxing D&D players. They’ve got decks of Magic cards and deep thoughts about Excel spreadsheets.

And we tune out.

(Okay, I don’t tune out, because I once had a red-blue deck that was aces, man.)

But here’s the trick:

We need that.

We need smart people running this government.

We don’t need carnival barkers. A carnival barker doesn’t run anything. He just looks like the guy who runs the carnival, but really, he’s the guy who convinces you to spend your money at the Games You Can’t Win booth. The carnival barker is a con-man. We love him even as he cons us.

And yet, we also need carnival barkers.

To win elections.

That’s the twofold fuckery of this process — we need someone to both win elections and then run government. Clinton didn’t win the election (though to her credit, she, uhh, won the entire popular vote), but could’ve run the hell out of our government. Trump won the election, but runs the government the way a baby runs a diaper: which is to say, he just cries and fills the white sack around his hip with shit. Trump can’t read a memo that isn’t written on a fridge in magnetic letters, for fuck’s sake — but he could talk, and he could lie, and he could promise the sun and the moon and the sky, all delivered on the backs of coal-crapping taco-bowl-eating bald eagles. Ossoff didn’t win an election because he didn’t have that carnival-barker hook*. Handel did, or at least, had more of it — and the circus of PAC propaganda bought around her filled the gap.

We need someone who sounds like a carnival barker, but who is really a chess player. I don’t know who that is, mind you. I know that Bill Clinton was that guy: a car salesman but also a strategist. Obama was that guy: he had the cadence of a preacher but the mind of a Star Trek captain. I think someone like Kamala Harris has that. Cory Booker, too, maybe. And here I’m not even getting into their politics or their platforms, only who they are and if they have that right sausage mix of charisma-and-cleverness. I don’t know. I don’t know a damn thing**, honestly, except that I’m ready to find a cave to live in until either the world blows up or voters come to their senses. I do know that all of us, of each party, is looking for the heart-and-soul of who we are and where we want to be, and until we find it, until we find both unity inside our groups and unity between the groups, this train is gonna continue toward the cliff. And if we’re not careful, we’ll all be drinking biomedical waste as we’re getting mauled by werewolves.

Good luck to us all.

Fight on. Find our heart, find our soul.

Resist.

* okay, Ossoff also didn’t win because of gerrymandering and dirty tricks, which is to say, more con-artist chicanery, and we need to address that shit post-haste, lest it keep on happening — and maybe this speaks to the ace that the GOP have up their sleeve — they can continue to play dirty and we expect it and worse, we allow it.

** I know nothing, Jon Snow, except the fact that if you were only able to change one thing ever about our political system, the biggest thing is not climate change, but rather, Getting Money Out Of Politics — the moment you stop money from literally purchasing the affections of our politicians and the system, the sooner we can start having uncorrupted efforts to make things better for all and not just better for the selfish motherfuckers holding the biggest checkbooks.

Spider Pals, A Twitter Adventure

Sometimes, authors talk on Twitter and when they do it’s totally normal and not at all weird and hey where are you going? (High-five to Maureen Johnson, who is now a spider nesting in my ear. Which is totally fine.)

Ahem.

[View the story “Spider Pals, Starring Maureen Johnson” on Storify]

And, Scene: Some Thoughts On Writing A Scene

What, exactly, is a scene? I ask.

And you say, “It’s that thing you made at Arby’s last week when you got really drunk and attacked that nice man by rubbing Horsey Sauce into his eyes.”

And I respond with, I was not drunk, I was high on wasp spray, and that “nice man” was actually an “evil centaur” which is why I rubbed Horsey Sauce into his eyes, you idiot, because Horsey Sauce is how you fucking defeat a fucking centaur. And also, no, that’s not what we’re talking about when we talk about scenes. Rather, a scene in this context is a unit of narrative measurement that unifies a moment in the story by binding it together with common characters, common setting, and common purpose.

A scene is your most vital building block of fiction — it’s not just a brick, but rather, a whole wall, and of course, walls are what hold up houses. I mean, that and necromancy ha ha just kidding I’m not a necromancer, I’ve just been huffing more wasp spray.

Understanding scenes and their construction is so very vital — and yet I feel like writing a book is often this act of clumsily speed-running through a story with great, woeful inelegance, all pinwheeling arms and clomping feet. As such, I know I often pass by the invisible demarcations between scenes and don’t really give as much pause to that as I should. A scene requires thought. A scene requires some construction. Maybe not in the first draft, and maybe over time it’s something we intuit rather than architecture we actively build.

Just the same, I think there’s value in highlighting what goes into making a [insert overly positive adjective here like “bad-ass” or “radical” or even “totally tubular”] scene.

SO HERE HAVE SOME TIPS.

*loads some tips into the WRITING ADVICE cannon*

*fires it into your face, boom*

0. As always, writing advice is bullshit, but bullshit can be fertilizer. Maybe this page of scene-writing advice helps something grow in your narrative garden, or maybe it’s just something to shovel out of the way. Use or discard at your leisure.

1. A scene is a microcosm for the greater whole. Meaning, a scene is a little story in and of itself. It should have shape. It should have a beginning and an ending. It should have conflict, characters, and drama. The scene should begin, and then escalate. It ideally presents a challenge unique to the scene, but reflective of the larger story. It should have characters in the scene who want shit — and the scene is a power dynamic expressing characters working together or against one another to solve their own particular problems.

2. More to the point, a scene represents a bend in the maze. Characters have problems, and they have solutions, and between the problem and the solution lies the maze — the maze is thing you put there, as storyteller, and the best version of that maze is one that is grown organically out of the character. In other words, the bends of the maze are what happens when the characters do shit and say shit — taking action and grabbing agency! — and effectively make problems for themselves. That’s not to say these problems are self-destructive, only that in solving a problem, one experiences difficulties, right? No good deed in fiction goes unpunished. It’s like trying to clean off your desk — the idea is good, and maybe you succeed, but you still accidentally spill coffee onto your Roomba and then the Roomba goes mad and murders the cat and then the Cat Council wants revenge and next thing you know, you’re being hunted by the Cat Council’s most talented assassins (sorry, meowsassins) all just because you wanted to clean your desk. MORE TO THE POINT, the bends of this maze — these flashpoints of conflict, action, dialogue, decision, agency — are best examined in scenes.

3. Never let a scene go on too long. A scene is rope. Too much and readers will hang themselves with it. It should be taut, like a strangling cord — not loose, like loops of elephant bowel.

4. As with the story, start the scene as late as you can. Every scene doesn’t need to happen omg in the middle of some real shit, but you also don’t need to start every scene at, like, the character’s birth. Think of it like a challenge: how late can you start the scene while it still makes sense and feels vital? Enter the scene at a point that’s interesting. Begin at a point that affords us a question: why are we here, what is the character doing, who is that dead guy, is that cheese, I love cheese, mmm, cheese.

5. Speaking of vital, consider how the status quo breaks. Storytelling is an act of contextualizing a breach of the status quo. Story begins when something has changed — *thunder rumbles* — and the narrative that unspools from that seeks to explore and exploit that shift in the status quo. Something is broken. Things are not as they were. And so the story begins. But scene shifts represent smaller pivot points, too — at the fore of each scene, consider either how the status quo has changed and led to the scene, or how the scene will change the status quo by its end. A good story constantly pushes-and-pulls with this fundamental narrative motion: it breaks normal, establishes a new normal, and then breaks that new normal once again. Sometimes in big, brash ways. Other times in more subtle ways.

6. Don’t fuck with centaurs. I know it has nothing to do with scenes, but I just wanted you all to know that. I mean, I guess if you want advice, go ahead and write a scene involving centaurs? Or the fucking and/or not-fucking-with of centaurs? Shit, I dunno. *sprays more wasp spray into mouth* *eats cheese to cover up wasp spray taste*

7. Present You can do Future You a big honking favor. Future You is stupid, but Present You can make Future You smart if Present You does his, er, your fucking job. What I mean is this: at the end of the day’s writing, noodle on the next scene you’re going to write. Then jot down like, three quick sentences for tomorrow’s work. Leave your desk. Turn off your monitor. Pull up your pants. Then go walk, shower, mow the lawn, whatever you need to do to get the blood moving. Think about the scene, then think about it some more, then push like you’re pooping and think even harder about it. Before bed, think about the scene one more time — set your brain like a slow-cooker, then plunge into the dark waters of sleep. What needs to happen in that scene? What if this happens? Or that? What if centaurs?! Wake up. Go write. Look at your notes from the day before. Summon your DREAM SOUP and see what lies in that turbid broth. Past You left you a present. Seize the information and the energy and go write.

8. Visit earlier scenes. Before writing a new scene, go back and re-read the scene that happens chronologically before it. Not necessarily the one that happens in the draft, but the one that connects most directly with character and setting. This will help you launch into the new scene. Y’know what will also help you? Wasp spray. *rattles can* *rattles it harder* Mmm.

9. Don’t overdo the scene. Just as earlier I say to get in as late as you can, you also want to get out as early as you can. That doesn’t mean you need to make a scene short and stumpy, and some scenes do need to breathe — breathe yes, barf no, so you need to control how much you’re regurgitating into that narrative space. Give the audience just as much as they need to continue. Storytelling is often an act of ushering the audience through a dark forest — you need to give them some light in the dark to help them find their way, but too much light leaves them blinded, and it exposes the mystery. It’s like a haunted house attraction with the lights on. Not enough light, and the reader becomes lost and frustrated. A scene succeeds by finding that balance of how much they need versus how much you can leave out. Further, if a scene is going to be transitional — getting characters from Point A to Point B, or getting them to understand Plot Point X, consider ways to fold those scenes into something more active, more dynamic. Try not to let a scene be purely transitional. Double-duty is welcome. No unitaskers. Let the scene multi-task — it can transition us, but also explore character, advance plot, and tongue its theme seductively in the reader’s ear. DID IT JUST GET HOT IN HERE

10. Scenes do not exist in isolation. They are part of a chain — maybe the start, maybe the end, or maybe one of the many motherfucking links in the middle. Either way: they braid together. They are not isolated. They are pockets of cause-and-effect. One scene is a cause. Another demonstrates the effect. One scene reveals truth, and the next three scenes deal with the consequences stemming from that truth. Scenes introducing questions are quantum-entangled with scenes demanding or providing answers. Scenes of lies told will lead to scenes of the outcomes of that lie — and those outcomes will create new directions of the story, which are written as, drum roll please, more scenes. (See earlier comments re: “the maze.”) Scenes must impact the story — which means scenes create other scenes. They are generative. If you write a scene and no other scenes suggest themselves as a result, you have not done enough. You have not asked enough questions or introduced enough conflict. Characters make plot. Which is to say, characters make scenes, quite literally: they create the context for why a scene is happening, and are driven by the character actions. Sometimes it involves an evil centaur at Arby’s, sometimes it doesn’t, I dunno. Point is: characters make scenes, and then, scenes beget scenes. Scenes facehug the plot and plant other scene-eggs that will burst out of the chest of the story. That’s just good narrative science, is what that is.

Now, go read this bit by John August.

And don’t forget to check out my book, The Kick-Ass Writer, whose initial cover once had a wonky font on it and made it look like it was instead called The Kick-Ass Waiter, which one assumes is a very different book.

P.S. don’t actually huff wasp spray, jeez