A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 6

A. LEE’S STRANGE CHINESE MOVIE ADVENTURE

First thing:

MONSTER RUN, the Chinese language movie based on my novel, MONSTER, is currently streaming on Netflix. Probably worth checking out if you’re the kind of person that would drop in on this site. And if you’re a new visitor drawn here by whatever strange forces of fate compelled you to visit an unfamiliar author’s website, you can feel free to check it out as well. I won’t stand in your way.

I’ve been a professional novelist for 16 years now, an aspiring novelist for another 13 years before that. Yes, I’ve been writing, professionally or otherwise, for nearly 30 years now. Which is pretty crazy when I pause to think about it. Fortunately, I don’t do that very often.

When first pursuing this career, I had simple aspirations. Write stories. Get paid for them. Hopefully earn enough that I didn’t starve.… Read the rest “A. LEE’S STRANGE CHINESE MOVIE ADVENTURE”

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(Don’t) Just Think About It

I hate when characters think in books.

Let me clarify.

I hate when the writer stops the story dead in its tracks so a character can think. It doesn’t really matter what thee character thinks about. It’s usually plot or conflict or character. But, jeepers, it is boring having a character just think for pages at a time.

Sometimes, it isn’t even a character thinking. Sometimes, it’s just the narrator stopping the story to explain something. That’s just as dull.

Characters in books will have think, and narrators will have to explain sometimes. It’s not these moments that I find dull. One of the great things about novels is that they allow the reader to experience a story on so many levels at once. One of those levels is the thoughts and feelings of the characters. This is such a potent tool that movies created voiceover in jealous imitation.… Read the rest “(Don’t) Just Think About It”

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The Last Days of the Apocalypse

Happy A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!!

In celebration, here’s some free short fiction. Enjoy!

 

Grandpa got that faraway look as they drove past the solar farm. “Right here is where I strangled a raider for a can of gas.”

Shane said, “You’ve told us, Gramps.”

His sister Lenore, sitting in the seat beside him, shook her head and smiled. The world was still rebuilding. There were the irradiated wastelands to the south and the dwindling cannibals to the east. But things were better and getting better.

“Saw my best friend get eaten by a giant scorpion there,” said Grampa from the backseat.

“The last giant scorpion died fifteen years ago, Gramps,” said Lenore.

Grampa grumbled. Mom said it was hard to understand what his generation went through. After the bombs and barbarism, when the human race was reduced to pockets of warring tribe fighting over scarce resources.… Read the rest “The Last Days of the Apocalypse”

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How Do You Do It?

A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!! is approaching. January 12th, as you’re already aware. In celebration, I’m endeavoring to post a blog a day up to the run up. Have a question or thought you’d like to share? You can reach me at Hipstercthulhu@hotmail.com.

 

“Where do you get your ideas?”

There’s a list of questions fiction writers hear regularly, and this is near the top of that list. It comes from a good place. Writing fiction can seem like a daunting task, and the most daunting to most is the search for something worth writing about.

This is probably why fanfiction continues to thrive on the internet. It takes a lot of the pressure off to begin with something already fully formed, even if only used as a jumping off point. There is plenty of fanfiction that is just retelling of stories already written, but there’s also lots and lots of variants.… Read the rest “How Do You Do It?”

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Other People’s Toys

A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!! is approaching. January 12th, as you’re already aware. In celebration, I’m endeavoring to post a blog a day up to the run up. Have a question or thought you’d like to share? You can reach me at Hipstercthulhu@hotmail.com.

A question writers get asked, especially in these days of franchises and expansive intellectual property domination, is “What existing character / universe / idea would you like to write something for?”

I’ve always found the question fairly complex. I like writing my own stuff. Not just because I think my ideas are cool, but they’re mine, so I can do whatever I want with them. Any existing media comes with its own baggage, and while I know many writers will ignore that baggage in favor of what they want to do, I’ve always felt that was basically cheating.… Read the rest “Other People’s Toys”

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The Audience is Watching

When people talk about elements of a story, it’s common to talk about plot, pacing, character arcs, adverbs and adjectives, conflict, characterization, and so on and so on. And all those things are important to a story, but one element that isn’t talked about often is Audience. Because every story has an Audience.

To clarify, I’m not talking about who a story is intended for. That is one definition of audience, and it isn’t irrelevant. Most stories have an audience in mind, even if that audience is only the person who is writing the story. And most commercial art has an audience it is aiming for. Whether it succeeds with that audience or not is often a measure of how successful it is. Generally speaking.

But I’m not writing about that when I refer to Audience as an element. I’m referring instead to the person outside the story that is engaging with the story.… Read the rest “The Audience is Watching”

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Does Your Story Need That?

A lot of these blog posts are fairly light, but we’re about to dive into some more serious subject matter. Prejudice, Sexual Politics, and Violence. I’m not planning on getting too specific, but if it’s the thing you might not want to read about, you have been warned.

Part of writing a story is knowing what you need to put into it and what you can do without. Among all the talk of plotting and character arcs and worldbuilding and theme, we often don’t get down to specifics. Every story is its own animal, and every story has its own needs.

The foundation of fiction is that it is imagined. This truth is usually sidestepped by both author and audience because if we acknowledge that a story isn’t “real” in even the smallest way it can be seen as robbing of it of its value.… Read the rest “Does Your Story Need That?”

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Mission Statements

Let’s talk Mission Statements.

The term has become a cliche, one that’s hard to take seriously. But I’m here to try to redeem the idea because good writing almost always has a mission statement, even if that isn’t immediately obvious.

Stripping away most of the baggage from the word, a mission statement is a driving goal, a thing to focus on when in doubt. It doesn’t have to be the only purpose, but it is an important purpose. Generally, I think it’s important that when I write I have a mission statement in mind.

Not always, and not always at the beginning of a story. It doesn’t have to be there right away, but that goal should show up eventually and it almost always ends up affecting my rewrites and editing process. Once I know what a story is trying to accomplish, I know where to focus my energies, and storytelling is all about focus.… Read the rest “Mission Statements”

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The Prophecies of Kimberly, From Accounts Payable

I asked Twitter to give me a cliche they were particularly tired of to see if I could do anything interesting with it without having to completely subvert it. This is the result.

The chosen tropes are Destiny, The Chosen One, and Secret Relative. Hope you like it.

 

The interviewer sat behind a small metal desk in a cramped brightly lit room. She glanced at her paperwork, then at Hanifa, then wrote something down.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Hanifa, catching the nervous energy in her own voice. Her inability to tamp it down didn’t trouble her. People were nervous during job interviews. It was normal, expected. “I couldn’t catch a cab. And when I did catch a cab, I left my phone in it by accident and wasn’t sure which building it was.”

The interviewer said nothing, only scribbled on her papers.… Read the rest “The Prophecies of Kimberly, From Accounts Payable”

Women and Other Alien Creatures

FROM THE MAILBAG:

I’m in the process of rereading your catalogue, studying how you put a story together and how it has changed over time. I’m intrigued that you write using female protagonists, and do so quite well nearly all the times you do so. Would you expand upon this and its process?

 

There’s a lot to this question, and I can’t possibly break it all down in one post, but I can cover the generalities.

Yes, I use a lot of female protagonists in my stories. This wasn’t always true. My first efforts, all those unpublished novels I wrote while in the aspiring phase of my career, had male protagonists. They had female characters in them, but they were always in a supporting character role, and while female characters tended to get more of the spotlight with each story, it wasn’t until I wrote A Nameless Witch that I went with a female protagonist.… Read the rest “Women and Other Alien Creatures”