Behind the Mask!

Oddly enough, not a Halloween-themed post. Although... maybe it is. It’s all perspective, I guess.

Since I first started taking this whole writing thing seriously, there’s been a general mindset I’ve seen bubble to the surface once a year or so. Maybe more in some places. It’s the idea that I can’t write about X if I haven’t personally experienced X. Can’t write it well, that’s for sure. If X hasn’t been an integral part of my life at some point or another, I’m just wasting everyone’s time by trying to write about it. Definitely by putting that writing out there. It’s a version of the old “write what you know” superball that gets bounced around. If you’ve never known X, you certainly can’t write about X.

Starting out in the horror community, I’d see this again and again. The folks who’d insist it just wasn’t possible to write horror without a horrific, awful background. You want to write horror? Real horror, not this weak “vampires and demons and zombies” crap? Well you better have fought in a war and had several people killed in front of you. Or had a horribly abusive family. All your pets better be dead, and most of your friends too, and if you’re not dealing with it through life-crippling addiction to something, you’re just a goddamn tourist who has no business in this genre.

Because of this, I’d see some folks get scared off from their chosen genre. Have I experienced real, soul-wrenching love? I mean, really experienced it? Maybe I shouldn’t be writing romance. My parents loved me a lot, I get along well with my brother, and I’ve got a bunch of really cool friends. Maybe I don’t have any business writing horror. And, heck, I’ve never even killed a human being before. I guess murder mysteries really aren’t for me.

At least, that’s what notorious serial killer Sue Grafton always said.

And a friend of mine recently pointed out this is such a pervasive idea that even some readers believe it. There’s no way I could write about a character that awful unless I myself am truly that awful, right? I mean, somebody couldn’t just make that stuff up, right? If one of my characters has sex more than twice, I’m clearly a sex addict (and let’s not even talk about what their chosen sex position says about me). Heck, I think I’ve talked before the weirdness that can happen when you name a character after a family member or friend without thinking about it.

Now, before I go any further... as I mentioned above, this has all been proven wrong again and again. Seriously. Yeah, there’s definitely some horror writers out there who’ve seen some awful stuff and I’ve known one or two folks over the years who’ve written intense erotica as an outlet when, y'know, no other outlet was available. There are some action writers out there who have very intense backgrounds in the military or private security, and a few sci-fi writers with pretty solid scientific credentials.

But I also know a ton of horror writers who had really nice childhoods and now live very happy lives, without a single dismemberment or traumatic beating or other ghastly event in their past or present. I know action writers who haven’t been in a single barfight or high speed chase or gun battle. I know people with no military experience  who write very successful military books. There are more than a few sci-fi writers who haven’t traveled in time or even left earth orbit once. And I know people who write sex scenes in their books who have, if I may be so bold, fairly vanilla sex lives. At least, going off all the pictures one of them showed me. Like, insisted on showing me.

That was a really weird brunch.

Anyway...

I think all of this ties back to a few things I’ve talked about here a few times. So I thought  maybe it’d be worth mentioning a few totally valid ways we can write about things we haven’t actually experienced. For example...

Voice—A big step for all of us is the day we realize midwestern grocery store clerks don’t talk the same way as third-generation bio-apocalypse survivors. Dwarven warrior queens have a different vocabulary than techbro CEOs. And fresh-out-of-grad-school schoolteachers don’t sound the same as battle-hardened Army sergeants. And getting that voice right, knowing how she’d say this vs. how he’d say it vs. how I'd say it is a big step in our growth as writers.

Research—seriously, we live in a freakin’ golden age of resources for writers. I’ve been doing this just long enough that I remember ads in the back of magazines for small press books about what it’s really like to be a doctor or a homicide detective . Or I’d spend hours in the library trying to find pictures of Paris that didn’t involve the Eiffel Tower or a museum. These days, if I need to know something I have access to so many sources. I can find research papers or anecdotal accounts or heck, even actual people who will answer my questions or help me find the answers, and usually tell me some other useful things if I’m paying attention.

Extrapolation-- I’ve never been shot in the knee, but I’ve had the meniscus behind my kneecap rupture (and collapse again and again and again). I’ve never done super heavy drugs but I’ve been very drunk a few times. I’ve never been able to fly, but when I was a kid there was a bridge in my hometown we all used to jump off into the river. Yeah, these experiences aren’t the same, but I can use them as building points. If this registers as a six, what would a nine be like? If it felt like this for ten seconds, what would it feel like after twenty? Or thirty? I stayed conscious here but would that much short out my brain for a few seconds (from pain or pleasure or excessive introduced chemicals)? It’s a basic creativity exercise. 

Empathy—I’ve talked about empathy here a few times, and I have to say once again it’s the most important trait a writer can have. Seriously. It’s what everything here really boils down to. Being able to put myself in someone else’s shoes. I’ve never had a parent die, but I’ve had friends who did. I’ve never served in the military, but I have family who did. I’ve never been married or had kids or burned dinner when someone’s coming over I really want to impress. But I look at my friends and family, I listen to them, I take note of what they’re saying and what they’re not saying, and I try to relate it to things I’ve gone through. I try to imagine how I’d feel in a similar situation, based off my own experiences. And I use some of that in stories.

In fact, let’s take this one step further and address one of the points that started this off. If I’m going to tell someone they can’t write great horror unless they’ve been through awful stuff (like I have)... well, isn’t that kind of implying I don’t have great empathy? I mean, think about it. I’m saying I can only write this because I experienced it, and I’m also admitting I can’t imagine being a person who can write it without experiencing it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think that’s something I should be bragging about.

Y’see, Timmy, much like “write what you know,” this mindset assumes people can’t learn or grow or imagine anything. And if I want to be a good writer, I have to be able to do that. I can’t tell myself not to write about bank robbery until I’ve actually tried to rob a bank. Hell, where does that people who write murder mysteries? Or giant robot sci-fi? Or dark period fantasy. I mean, if you haven’t had sex with at least three people from the twelfth century, how do you expect to write medieval romance? I need to understand most writers research things, extrapolate feelings and reactions, get inside their character’s heads, and just try to have an honest sense of what someone else would feel in this situation.

Look, the truth is, if I’m doing my job right, you should feel like all my characters are real people in real situations. The janitor. The nymphomaniac barista. The half-human, reluctant cultist. The little kid with PTSD. The burned-out secret agent trying to forget most of his life. The world-ending cosmic event that they’re all tied up together in. And when we read a description of a real person, when we hear about the believable, relatable aspects of their life, it’s natural for us to assume they’re... well, real.

And the obvious real person is me, the author, telling you this story. So it’s not surprising some people think I must’ve experienced these things firsthand.

But I shouldn’t need to.

Anyway...

Next time, I want to throw a bunch of characters at the wall and see which ones stick.

Until then, go write.

Getting to Know You

I talk about characters here a lot. A real lot, going off the size of that tag over in the cloud on the right. Are the clouds even a thing anymore?

Anyway...

While I’ve talked a bunch of times about the traits of good characters, I don’t think I’ve really talked as much about how to get these traits across in a story. It’s all fine and good to say someone needs to be likable, but does that just mean I should have them shout “Like me, please like me!” up at the sky? How do I get across the kind of person Wakko is without falling back on him rattling off his resume and dating history?

I think most of the ways we establish characters tend to fall into three broad groups.

First is the easiest one—my characters establish themselves through their own words and actions. We’ve talked a bunch of times about the importance of voice, how someone talks and what they tend to talk about. If all Phoebe ever talks about is work, that tells us something about her. Likewise, if every conversation she has leads to talking about sex, that gives us a different insight. If every time she speaks it sounds like her Adderall just kicked in, that implies something about her, just like it does if every conversation tends to center on her and how great she is. Heck, even if someone doesn’t talk much—or maybe chooses to barely ever talk—that’s them telling us something about themselves.

In a similar way, if I show Wakko shooing away a stray dog, it says something about him. It says it a little louder if he throws something at the dog or shouts at it. And of course, if I see Wakko have a really crappy day at work and then he goes home to his crappy apartment and heads back out to give the stray a plate of dog food... that can say a lot about what kind of person he is. Good people do good things, bad people do bad things.

The second way we establish characters is by how other characters talk about them and react to them. If Phoebe’s talking in a calm, measured voice but her employees are nervous—or even terrified—that’s a big clue in to what kind of person they know she is. Likewise, if she’s trying to ream someone out over their poor job performance and they’re ignoring her, that also tells us something. Heck, if I’ve got multiple POVs, I might decide to show a bunch of her employees at the bar after work, and they might have a lot more to say once they’re out of the office. Until Phoebe walks in, anyway, and then their tone might change really fast... which again, tells us something about Phoebe.

It’s worth pointing out that most of the time my characters are going to know each other better than my audience knows them. So these interactions are going to work on a couple levels. They’re probably going to hint at how much history there is between characters, what that history’s like, what their current relationship is like. This is where I can use a lot of subtext and let my audience read between the lines a lot. People love that. Seriously.

The third way is how my character’s words and actions line up with my reader’s personal experience. You’ve probably heard that old adage, “actions speak louder than words.” If I tell you this is the smartest guy you’ll ever meet, but then constantly show him being outmatched and outsmarted... what does it actually say about this guy? Up above I mentioned Phoebe turning every conversation to sex? What does it say if she does it constantly at clubs and parties, but then we see her go home sad and alone every night? On the flipside, if she talks all the time about how she’s a bit of a conservative prude and very old fashioned, but then every other night we see her take someone new back to her place, that’s telling us something, too. And if the guy she’s chatting up at the bar talks about how much he loves animals, but then we see him throw a bottle at that stray dog on the way back to her place... well, we get a much better sense of who he is.

This sort of contrast (or open contradiction), can be a great way to get across those character traits. It can let us see who someone thinks they are versus who they actually are. It can show us who they want to be versus who they tend to be. Maybe even show us who someone really is as opposed to the person they keep trying to tell everyone they are.

That’s what I’ve got off the top of my head. If you’ve got some other ways to get character traits across to your readers, please let me know.

And next time is Halloween! And then NaNoWriMo. And then who knows what...

Until then, go write.

Can We Just Talk a Bit...?

            Well, this one’s going to be a little awkward.  We just said this weekend that we’d talk about dialogue next time at the Writers Coffeehouse.  But then we got a request for it here, so... overlap.  One way or the other, the second time is going to end up making me look a little lazy, little bit like a hack.

            I mean, more than usual.

            Ha ha ha, you’re welcome critics.  Just tossing that one out there for you.

            Anyway...

            Dialogue.

            I’ve  blabbed on once or thrice about how important dialogue is.  Yeah, I know I’ve said characters are the most important thing, but dialogue’s how we bring those characters to life.  It’s the fuel for the fancy sports car, the foam that hides the gigantic wave, the beautiful full moon that shows us a bloodthirsty werewolf.  You get the idea.  They’re interdependent.  I can’t have good characters without good dialogue, and bad dialogue is almost always going to lead to bad characters.  It’s the circle of fictional life.
            If a character doesn’t sound right, if their dialogue is stilted or unnatural, it’s going to keep me—the reader—from believing in them. And if I can’t believe in them, I cant get invested in them or their goals.  Which means I’m not invested in the story and I’m probably going to go listen to music while I organize my LEGO bricks or something like that.

            So here’s a bunch of elements/angles I try to keep in mind and watch out for when I’m writing dialogue.  Some things to watch out for, some things to make sure I have.  All sorts of stuff.  And I’ve talked about a lot of these before, so some of them may sound familiar...

            Transcription- Okay, some of you know that I used to be an entertainment journalist and I did lots and lots of interviews.  One thing that never really struck me until then was that, with very few exceptions, people trip over themselves a lot verbally.  We have false starts.  We repeat phrases.  We trail off.  We make odd noises while we try to think of words.  It’s very human.  However, anyone who’s ever read a strict word-for-word transcription of a conversation (or typed up a lot of them) will tell you it’s awkward, hard to follow, and a lot gets lost without the exact inflection of certain words.

            I don’t want to write dialogue in this kind of ultra-realistic manner.  It’ll drive my readers and editor nuts, plus it wastes my word count on dozens of unnecessary lines.  While this sort of rambling can work great in actual spoken dialogue, it’s almost  always horrible on the page. 

            Grammar – As you’ve probably noticed in your day to day life, very few people speak in perfect, grammatically correct English, aside from androids and a few interpretations of Sherlock Holmes.  The rest of us speak differing degrees of colloquial English.  Our verbs don't always line up with our nouns.  Tenses don't always match.  Like I just mentioned above, a lot of "spoken" English looks awful on the page.  And this makes some folks choke, because they can't reconcile the words on the page with the voice in their head.  When I do this I lose that natural aspect of language in favor of the strict rules of grammar, and I end up with a lot of characters speaking in a precise, regulated manner that just doesn’t flow.

            Contractions- This is kind of a loosely-connected, kissing-cousins issue with the grammar one I just mentioned.  A lot of people start out writing this way because they’re trying to follow all the rules of spelling and punctuation so they write out every word and every syllable.  They want to write correctly!

            Again, most of us use contractions in every day speech—scientists, politicians, professors, soldiers, everyone.  It’s in our nature to make things quick and simple.  Without contractions, dialogue just sounds stilted and wooden.  If there’s a reason for someone to speak that way (ESL, robots, Sherlock Holmes, what have you), then by all means do it.  If my characters are regular, native English-speaking mortals, though...

            As a bonus, using contractions also drops my word count and page count.

            On The Nose—Okay, in simple terms, this is when a character says exactly what they’re thinking without any subtlety whatsoever.  It’s the difference between “Hey, do you want to come up for a cup of coffee?” and “Would you like to come up and have sexual relations in my living room right now?”  There's no inference or implications, no innuendoes or layered meanings—no subtlety at all.  And the truth is, we’re always layering meaning into what we say.

            Pro tip—I’d guess nine times out of ten, if a character’s talking to themselves out loud, it’s on the nose dialogue.  It just works out that way.  I’d guess that at least half the time it’s just exposition (see below). 

            Similarity- People are individuals, and we’ve all got our own unique way of speaking.  People from California don’t talk like people from Maine (I’ve lived almost two decades in each state, I know), people living in the twelfth century don’t talk like people from the fortieth, and uneducated idiots don’t speak like innovative quadruple-doctorate holders. 

            My characters need to be individuals as well, with their own tics and habits that make them distinct from the people around them.  If a reader can’t tell who’s speaking without seeing the dialogue headers... I might need to get back to work.

            Let me follow this with a few specifics...

            Humor—Here’s a basic fact of human nature.  We make jokes at the worst possible times.  Breakups.  Office reviews.  Funerals.  It’s just the way we’re wired.  The more serious the situation, the more imperative that release valve is for us.  In fact, we kinda get suspicious or uneasy around people who never crack jokes.  Not everyone and not at every moment, but when there’s no joking at all... it just feels wrong.

            Plus, how we joke says something about us.  Does someone make non-stop raunchy jokes?  Do they have a dry sense of humor?  A completely awful sense of humor.  Do they have any sense of when it is and isn’t appropriate to tell a certain joke?

            Flirting—Similar to humor in that it’s almost universal.  We show affection for one another.  We flirt with friends and lovers and potential lovers, sometimes even at extremely inopportune times.  It's not always serious, it can take many forms, but that little bit of playfulness and innuendo is present in a lot of casual dialogue exchanges. 

            Flirting is a lot like joking because it's impossible to flirt with on the nose dialogue.  Flirting requires subtlety and implied meanings.  Flirting without subtlety sounds a lot more like propositioning, and that gives a very different tone to things.  If nobody in my story ever flirts with anyone on any level, there might be something to consider there.

            Profanity—another ugly fact of human nature.  We make emphatic, near-automatic statements sometimes.  We throw out insults.  How we swear and respond to things says something about us.  Phoebe does not swear like Wakko, and Phoebe doesn’t swear in front of Wakko the same way she swears in front of her mother.  Or maybe she does.  Either way, that’s telling us something about her and making her more of an individual.

            Fun fact—profanity is regional.  The way we swear and insult people here is not how they do it there.  So this can let me give a little more depth to characters and make them a bit more unique.

            Accents- Speaking of regional dialogue...  Writing in accents is a common rookie writer issue.  I made it a bunch of  times while I was starting out, and still do it now and then.  There are a handful of pro writers out there who can do truly amazing accented dialogue, yeah, but keep that in mind—only a handful.  The vast majority of the time, writing out accents and odd speech tics will drive readers and editors nuts. 

            I usually accent by picking out just one or two key words or sentence structures and making these the only words I show it with.  Just the bare minimum reminders that the character has an accent.  Like most character traits, my readers will fill in the rest.

            Weird note—this can become odd with audiobooks, because the narrator will most likely add an accent of some sort to differentiate the character. So the most subtle of written accents can almost become an uncomfortable stereotype once they’re combined.  Another reason to think about dialing things back.

            Extra descriptors—I’ve mentioned once or thrice that said is pretty much invisible on the page.  But it can still wear thin.  I don't always need to use it, because after a point it should be apparent who's talking.

            Plus with less words, dialogue gets leaner and faster.  Tension builds in the exchanges because the reader isn’t getting slowed down by ongoing reminders of who’s talking.

            Not only that, once I've got some of these speech patterns down for my characters, I should need descriptors even less.  In my book, Dead Moon, Tessa’s dialogue could almost never get confused with Cali’s or Jake’s or Waghid’s.  They’re all distinct, and their speech patterns identify them just as well as a header would.

            Names—If I don’t need them around the dialogue, I need them even less in the dialogue.  Pay attention the next time you’re on the phone with someone.  How often do they use your name?  How often do you use theirs?  Heck, if my friends call my cell phone I know who it is before I even answer—and they know I know—so I usually just say “Hey, what’s up?”  We don’t use our names, and  we definitely don’t use them again and again in the same conversation.

            Spoken names can also come across as a bit fake.  It's me acknowledging the audience may be having trouble keeping track, and throwing in a name is the easiest way to deal with it, rather than the best way.  Remember, if I’ve got two characters who’ve been introduced, it's really rare that they'll need to keep using each other's names.  Especially if they're the only ones there.

            Monologues – Here’s another observation.  We don’t talk for long.  People rarely speak in long paragraphs or pages.  We tend to talk in bursts—two or three sentences at best.  There’s always rare exceptions, sure, but for the most part we get our ideas out pretty quickly (if not always efficiently)

            When I have big blocks of dialogue, I should really think about breaking them up.  Is this person just talking to themselves (see above)?  Is nobody there to interrupt them with a counterpoint or question or a random snarky comment?  Is my monologue necessary?  Does it flow?  Is this a time or situation where Yakko should be giving a four paragraph speech?

            A good clue when examining a monologue--how many monologues have there already been.  One script I read a while back for a screenwriting contest had half-page dialogue blocks on almost every page.  If I’m on page forty-five and this is my fifth full-page monologue... odds are something needs to be reworked.
            I also shouldn’t try to get around this with a “sounding board” character who’s just there to bounce things off.  Talking is communication, which means it has to be a two-way street.  If I’ve got somebody who serves no purpose in my story except to be the other person in the room while someone thinks out loud... they’re not really serving a purpose.

            Cool lines--  Our latest ugly truth--everything becomes mundane when there's no baseline.  If everyone on my mercenary team is two hundred pounds of swollen muscle... who's the big guy?  When everyone owns a seven-bedroom mansion, owning a seven-bedroom mansion doesn't really mean anything.  If anybody can hit a bull’s-eye at 100 yards out, then hitting  a bull’s-eye isn't all that impressive, is it?

            The same holds for dialogue.  We all want to have a memorable line or three that sticks in the reader's mind forever.  The thing is, they're memorable because they stand out.  They’re rare.  If I try to make every line a cool line, or even most of them, none of them are going to stand out.  When everything's turned up to eleven, it's all at eleven-- it's monotone.

            Exposition—Remember being a kid in school and being bored by textbook lectures or filmstrips that talked to you like you were an idiot?  That’s what exposition is like to my readers.

            Use the Ignorant Stranger as a guideline and figure out how much of my dialogue is crossing that line. If any character ever gives an explanation of something that the other characters in the room already should know (or my reader should know), cut that line. If it’s filled with necessary facts, find a better way to get them across.

            "As you know..." – I’ve said this before, but... if you take nothing else from this rant, take this.  I need to find every sentence or paragraph in my writing that starts with this phrase or one of it's halfbreed cousins. 

            Once I've found them, I need to delete them.  Gone.  Destroyed.

            This is probably the clumsiest way to do exposition there is.  Think about it.  A character saying “As you know”  is openly acknowledging the people they’re talking to already know what’s about to be said.  I’m wasting time, I’m wasting space on the page, and I’m wasting my reader’s patience.    If I've got a rock-solid, lean-and-mean manuscript, I might be able to get away with doing this once.  Just once.  As long as I don't do it my first ten pages or so.  Past that, I need to get out my editorial knife and start cutting.

            What is that, fifteen tips? Here’s one more for a nice, hexadecimal sixteen.

            You’ve probably heard someone suggest reading your manuscript out loud to catch errors and see how things flow.  Personally, while I think this works great for catching errors, it’s not as good for catching dialogue issues.  We wrote these lines, so we know how they’re supposed to sound and what they’re supposed to convey.  There’s a chance we’ll be performing what’s not on the page, if that makes sense.

            So if you can stand to listen... get someone else to read it out loud.  Maybe just a chapter or two.  Let a friend or family member who doesn’t know it read it out loud and see what they do with it.

            And there you have it.  A big pile of tips which should help your dialogue seem a little more real.  Fictional-real, anyway.  Not real-real.

            Next week... I think it may be time to talk about superheroes.

            Until then, go write.

Dealing With Blockage

            This week, I wanted to talk a bit about a familiar malady we’ve all heard of—writer’s block.

            It happens to all of us. Y’know, four out of five writers experience writer’s block at some point in their career.  Almost 83% on average end up...

            Okay, that’s not true.

            None of it.

            I’ve got to be honest. I fall into the same camp as Isaac Asimov and Piers Anthony.  I just don’t believe in writer’s block.  Sorry.

            Now, let me be clear.  Yeah, there are days that I hate writing.  Of course there are.  This is a full time job for me, and guess what—like everyone else on Earth, there are days I hate my job. 

            Don’t get me wrong.  It’s a fantastic job, it’s the job I’ve wanted pretty much my whole life (aside from brief dabblings with “astronaut” and “giant robot pilot”)... but there are days it frustrates me. There are days I pull my hair out. There are days I still worry if I’m good enough, days I fret about my future, and days I wonder if I should’ve just sucked it up and found another job as a prop master.

            But... I never have writer’s block.

            There’s always something I want to write.  I never have a shortage of words or ideas.  I never stare at the screen and can’t come up with anything.

            I think--and this is all just my opinion, so YMMV—that writer’s block is kind of a made up thing, like the muse.  It’s an easy excuse not to write.  When I see people online talking about being blocked for months or years... I have to be honest, I just don’t buy it.

            I think writer’s block tends to boil down to three very real, very relatable things...

            First is a voice issue.  Or maybe an empathy issue.  Kinda the same thing, for our purposes here.

            Let me explain.

            A few weeks ago at the Writers Coffeehouse, we talked a bit about voice.  I think—especially when we start out—a lot of us tend to write the way we speak.  Maybe a little cleaner or clearer, but it’s not that odd for writing patterns to match up with speech patterns.  Our narrative voice uses all the same words and phrases and metaphors that we do in our day to day life, because that comes naturally.  Makes sense, right?

            Thing is, when we go to write... things stop matching up.  If we’re any good at this writing thing, we recognize that high elf ladies probably don’t talk like office drones from Dallas or check out clerks from Portland.  They’re going to have different vocabularies and cadences.  They’re not going to sound like me.

            Suddenly I’m not writing “naturally” anymore.  This takes effort!  It’s work.  It means I need to put myself in a different headspace and look at the world—even my fictional world—in different ways.

            I think this particular form of writer’s block eliminates a lot of folks from the pool, one way or another. Either they keep going, writing dozens of different characters that all sound pretty much the same... or they give up because they can’t make them sound different.  And those folks will talk about being blocked. How they couldn’t get the ideas to flow or the characters didn’t want to come out or something like that...

            The second thing behind writer’s block is fear.  Plain old-fashioned fear. 

            I’ve talked about this before.  I think a lot of times when people say they can’t write, it’s more that they’re worried the stuff they are writing isn’t good enough.  Is this page, this paragraph, this sentence as good as it could be?  Have I used the best words?  The best description?  Is this the best way to phrase this?  Will this win me a Pulitzer or get me mocked on GoodReads?

            I think most of us go through this phase at one point or another.  We start over-analyzing our work and second-guessing everything we put down.  I’ve mentioned the term paralysis by analysis before, which I think sums this up perfectly.  We get so scared at the thought of doing something wrong—something that isn’t perfect—that we don’t do anything.  We freeze up.  We get... blocked.

            But we already know the solution to this one, too.  It’s just admitting that my work isn’t going to be perfect the first time out.  Perhaps not the second, either. It’s going to need editing.  Second and third and fourth drafts.  Maybe even full rewrites.  That’s just the way writing goes. And once I realize this—once I can really admit it to myself—I can get past that fear and my productivity will go through the roof.

            And this brings us to the third thing behind writer’s block. And this is the tough one. The hardest one to deal with.

            Sometimes people have writer’s block because they don’t have anything to write.

            There’s a lot of reasons people sit down and try to write.  Sometimes they think it’s easy.  Often they have a clever idea, but no real story.  Maybe they want the adoration for a finished work more than they want to... well, finish something.

            This sounds harsh, I know, but I think most of us know someone like this.  Someone who isn’t suffering from writers block, they just like the idea of being a writer more than the reality of being a writer.  Because the reality is that this isn’t easy—it’s a lot of work.  Some people just aren’t cut out for it.

            And look, if that’s you... this is a good thing.  Personally, if this isn’t what I’m made for, I’d rather know sooner than later.  Maybe I love writing as a recreational thing, but I’m just not geared to do it professionally.  That’s how I am with cooking.  And drawing.  And cosplay.  And running.  I like it, I have some rough talent for it, but I freely admit I’m not mentally wired to do it as more than a pastime.  If I hit a rough patch... well, I just shift to something else.

            Like some folks do with writing.

            Y’see, Timmy, if you ask me, writer’s block is really just a big, catch-all name we throw over other problems.  Inexperience.  Fear.  Lack of interest. It’s intimidating when it’s a vague concept, but once we break it down into an actual issue, we can address it and deal with it.

            And beat it.

            Next time, I’d like to talk about the type of story I’m working on.

            Until then... go write.

But What Do You Think...?

            I know I said I’d talk about chefs when I got back from SDCC—which, granted, was two weeks ago—but I want to put that order on hold for a little bit.

            Over the past week or so, I’ve interacted with a few different folks online.  And while online interaction doesn’t work the same as face-to-face conversations, it still got me thinking about communication and points of view and characters.

            Which, of course, made me think about Go-Bots.

            I’ve got to be honest. When I was a kid, Go-Bots baffled me.  More to the point, people who liked Go-Bots baffled me.  I mean, seriously. Why would anyone play with Go-Bots when there were perfectly good Transformers to be had?  Go-Bots kind of sucked. No, not kind of. They were dumb and clunky and their robot-to-vehicle change usually amounted to standing them up. They had a lousy cartoon with a lousy theme song.

            Hell, there were Go-Bots that turned into rocks. Seriously.  Rock Lords turned from robots into lumpy, dull-gray balls.  That’s some serious, hardcore play action right there.

            Kids who liked Go-Bots were stupid.  No question about it.

            Thing is, as I got older, I actually came to realize why some people had this odd affection for Go-Bots, and still do to this day.  Their simplicity wasn’t a flaw, it was a feature. They had a different story behind them, and what they were worked fine for that narrative. In the end, they were just a different kind of toy for different kinds of kids (or nostalgic collectors).

            Of course, as adults we can argue about X-Box versus PlayStation.  Or Hunger Games versus Twilight.  Or socialism versus capitalism.

            As a writer, though, I need to be able to see both sides of any of these discussions.  That’s how I end up with a great cast of characters—a group of people who embody different beliefs and cultures.  They don’t all act and think and sound the same.

            I’ve talked about this a bit before with villains. Everybody in the story thinks they’re the hero, including the baddie.  They believe what they’re doing is right and just.  So to have a good villain, I need to be able to see things from their point of view. I need to be able to identify and understand with how they feel.

            We all know what it’s like when every character sounds just like the author. Or when they all agree with all the author’s beliefs.  We’ve all read that short story or the first few chapters of that book or sat through the first half of that movie.  It usually means I’m pounding home a message.  Or I’m just not a very good writer.  Sometimes both.  And if this is the kind of story I’m writing, I almost always end up with muah-ha-hah, mustache-twirling villains that feel like they’re... well, straight out of a Go-Bots cartoon.

            Female or male.  Progressive or conservative.  Pro-life or pro-choice.  Young or old.  Rich or poor.  Christian or atheist.  Black, brown, white, or Asian.  Omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan.  Straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or asexual.

            Y’see, Timmy, in order to be a good writer, I need to be able to see things more than one way.  This just isn’t a profession for the narrow-minded, unless I’m looking to only appeal to a similarly narrow-minded audience.  I have to be open. I have to be willing to learn.  I have to be able to see other viewpoints

            One of the main characters of my Ex-Heroes series is a black, bisexual woman.  I work like hell to make sure she sounds as real as possible, despite the fact that I am not one of these things myself.  It's important to me.  And I worry constantly that I’ll have her do or say something that will offend somebody.  But I don’t want to be the straight, progressive white guy who only writes about other straight, progressive white guys and makes everyone else a secondary character at best.

            Because if I couldn’t see anyone else’s viewpoint... that’s all I’d be able to write.

            Next time—unless somebody wants to make a request in the comments—I’m probably going to go all passive-aggressive on you.

            Until then... go write.

Q-n-A Bonanza Extravaganza

            Spectacular spectacular!

            What I’m going to do this week is run through a few questions and requests that have shown up here this summer.  A few of them I can do a full post on, but some of them are things I’ve touched on before (or, at least, I think I have) so I think I can answer them with a few paragraphs and links.

            So... let’s get to it.

How similar are your drafts in terms of character arcs and overall plot? 

            Tricky question that’s going to be a little different for every writer and for every project.  For me, once I get a pretty solid draft, it’s really rare for things to change that much.  It happens sometimes, but not often.  I think once the plot and story are solid, for most writers, there won’t be any real changes to them.

            Please note, though, that I didn’t say no changes.  Every draft is going to be a little different as I tweak and cut and make other adjustments.  But all of these adjustments serve the plot and the characters.  Things are just getting tighter and clearer.  Maybe it means omitting a few story beats or changing someone’s second language from French to Spanish.  But these changes aren’t changing the bigger picture, they’re enhancing it.

           It’s probably worth mentioning that if I’m making changes that do radically alter my plot or characters, what it really means is that I don’t have a solid draft yet.  Yeah, even if I’ve done six drafts before this.  If I suddenly realize Yakko should be my main character while Dot’s the supporting character who dies in the second act... that’s a big change.  That’s a lot of changes.  It means different interactions between different characters, new motivations, possibly a whole new linear structure.  And it also means I’m kind of going back to square one.  Now I need to tweak and cut and make adjustments to this plot and story.

            Do you have any thoughts on working on multiple projects at once? Like editing one, drafting another, plotting a third? Is that something you do?

            Yeah, I do this, but in a bit more limited sense.  When I’m working on a first draft of something, I focus pretty much exclusively on that.  Once I’m out of that, though, and into the editing, I’m always jotting down character ideas, lines, beats—all sorts of elements—for whatever I’m going to be working on next.  So while I’m doing drafts on one I’m setting all the groundwork for another.  I’ve also  found this helps me as far as any kind of block goes—being able to dip my toes into something else helps keep my brain from getting stuck on a project.

            Overall, though, this is one of those things that’s definitely more advice than rules, because it’s all going to come down to the individual.  Am I someone who can split their attention or not?  And to what extent?  Some folks can do it (to different degrees), some folks can’t.  Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to try it once or thrice.  I’m comfortable at the level I just described.  You might be able to do two or three  things side by side.  Someone else might need to focus on one thing at a time.   

            I do think it’s worth noting that “another project” can easily be a distraction, too.  Sort of like eating when you’re bored.  I’ve also seen some folks use multiple projects (consciously or not) as an excuse to never finish anything. Sooooo... something to keep in mind.

I'm still struggling with how writers develop an interesting narrative voice - character voice I think I'm getting the hang of, but the narrative bits still sound like me reading a grocery list. 

            Narrative voice can be tough.  Part of it depends on how much I want to insert myself as the author. Some folks do this extremely well, others... not so much.

            As far developing a narrative voice goes, think of it like a narrator. Who’s actually telling this story to the reader?  I’m not saying my book or short story has to be in first person, or that a narrator even has to exist, but in my perfect world, who’s reading this aloud?  Christopher Lee?  Felicia Day?  Doug, the guy down at the garage?  Ms. Phoebe, my college English professor?  Knowing the narrator tells me how they talk and what kind of words my narrative voice will use. 

            So, from a certain point of view, the narrative voice is another character. Even if it’s me, it’s the version of me I’m choosing to project through my writing (a friendly me who wants you to enjoy the story and is going to tell it in fun, simple terms, and who also has much better abs...).  So narrative voice is a lot like character voice, which is something I mentioned here just a few months back.  Well, okay, a year and a half ago...

            It’s probably worth mentioning that if there isn’t some kind of narrative voice in my head to start with, that might be a sign of a bigger problem.  If I have no sense of how my story should be told—how my audience should be hearing the words in their heads—I may need to stop and think about things some more.   Maybe the plot or the story aren’t as solid as I thought, and if they’re not clicking with me, there’s a good chance they won’t click with anyone else.

            Do you feel  an author should stick to one genre for the most part?  I want to go write something as far from my current genre as possible. Will that throw my fans for a loop?  I notice that you and most other authors pretty much stick to one thing.

            Well, I’d argue not much of my work falls in the same genre, unless we’re talking in broad, sweeping terms.  I’ve got a superheroes vs. zombies series (sci-fi fantasy with some soft horror), a suspense-mystery-horror novel, a sci-fi thriller, a classic mash-up where I share credit with Daniel Defoe, and I just started work on a historical time-travel road trip story.  I’ve also got some short stories out there that are straight horror, some that are straight sci-fi, and even a pulp action war story.

            And I’m not alone.  The majority of writers work in a bunch of genres.  They may be known for one thing, but they’ve usually got a lot of other stuff past that.  Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Scott Sigler, Craig DiLouie, Eloise Knapp, Timothy Long—and these are just the ones I know personally. All of them have written in at least two or three genres.

            Heck, look at Stephen King.  He’s known as a horror writer, but Firestarter and The Dead Zone, two of his earliest works, are pretty much straight sci-fi when you really look at them (there’s a post in that alone).  Under the Dome and 11/22/63 are both pretty solidly sci-fi, too.  The Dark Tower series is an epic fantasy.  Eyes of the Dragon is a young adult novel.  And then there’s “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” a  prison drama/character study that was adapted into a wildly popular film by Frank Darabont.

            So, no.  I don’t think an author needs to stick to one genre.  Yeah, there are some fans who might get upset I’ve moved away from their particular interest, but there’ll be just as many who’ll be intrigued to see how I deal with something else, and new ones who’ll come to me because of that something else.  And it’s my opinion that flexing those other muscles, so to speak, usually makes someone a better writer overall.

            I will say, though (there’s a “however...” on almost all of these, isn’t there?), that I don’t recommend chasing the popular trend.  It’s tempting to jump on the nymphomaniac-android-biker-school-romance bandwagon, I know.  But it rarely works out well in the long run.
           

            And I think that’s everything for now, yes?  Okay, I went over three or four paragraphs for some of them, but if you’re going to complain about that... Also, if I misread your question somehow, or if my answer just wasn’t complete enough, please say so down in the comments and I’ll try to answer there.  Or maybe bump it up to a full post.

            Next time, I’m going to answer one of those larger questions I mentioned up at the top. 

            Until then... go write.

Let’s Talk About Spaceships. Or Anything.

            Pop culture reference. Well, okay, ten-year-old pop culture reference.

            This week I wanted to talk about... well, talking.  Which I haven’t done in a while. 

            Dialogue's the lifeblood of fiction.  It’s how my characters move beyond the page and become living, breathing people.  In any sort of storytelling, it’s going to be the key to making them memorable.  In screenplays, it’s going to be what makes them quotable. Sounds corny, I know, but it's true. 

            Bad dialogue is the fastest way to make sure characters are dead to my readers. It's almost always the second element of my writing to get picked apart (spelling will be the first).   All of us know what people sound like, so when someone speaks in flat, clumsy, expositional dialogue, it makes them unbelievable. And when a reader can’t believe in my characters, it means they can’t believe in my story.

            Here’s a dozen things I should be keeping an eye out for in my dialogue.  Some of them are related.  Others are unique to themselves

            On The Nose—You may have heard people talk about dialogue that’s “on the nose.”  In simple terms, this is when a character says precisely what they mean or what they’re doing without any subtlety whatsoever.   Nine times out of ten, if someone’s talking to themselves out loud, it’s on the nose.  I’d guess that at least half the time I stumble across it, on the nose dialogue is just exposition (see below). 

            A good way to think of this is old radio-shows, when people had no visuals at all and had to depend on doing everything with only dialogue.  If my characters are speaking like that, I’m doing something wrong.

            Grammatically Correct - Very few people speak in perfect, grammatically correct English, aside from a few freaks with inferiority complexes.  Or Sherlock Holmes.  Or robots.  As for the rest of us, we all speak differing degrees of colloquial English.  Our verbs don't always line up with our nouns.  Tenses don't always match.  Truth be told, a lot of "spoken" English looks awful on the page (see transcribing down below).  This is where some folks choke, because they can't reconcile the words on the page with the voice in their head.  Which is how I end up with several characters, all of whom speak in a precisely regulated manner which seems highly affected and does not flow by any definition of the term.

            Lack of Contractions- Often found with the grammar issue I just mentioned.  A lot of people start out writing this way because they’re trying to follow all the rules of spelling and punctuation so they don’t get branded a rookie, and ironically... 

            While this is a good practice for your prose, dialogue drags and sounds forced when every word is spelled out in full.  As I said above, most of us use contractions in every day speech—scientists, politicians, teachers, and even military personnel.  Without contractions, dialogue sounds stilted and wooden.  If there’s a reason for someone to speak that way (ESL, robots, aliens, or what have you), then by all means do it.  If my characters are regular, English-speaking mortals, though...

            As a bonus, using contractions also drops your word count and page count.

            Similarity- People are individuals, and we all have our own unique way of speaking.  People from California don’t talk like people from Maine (I’ve lived almost two decades in each state, I know), people living in poverty don’t talk like billionaires, and medieval idiots don’t speak like futuristic mega-geniuses. 

            In my writing, my characters need to be individuals as well, with their own tics and habits that make them distinct from the people around them.  If a reader can’t tell who’s speaking without knowing the complete context or seeing the dialogue headers, I need to get back to work.

            Extra descriptors—I just hinted at this, but it’s worth mentioning again.  Even if I’m using said with a character’s name, it can still wear thin.  I don't always need to use it, because after a point it should be apparent who's talking.

            Plus with less words, dialogue gets leaner and faster.  Tension builds in the exchanges because the reader isn’t getting slowed down..

            Not only that, once I've got speech patterns down for my characters, I should need descriptors even less.  In my book, Ex-Communication, Stealth’s dialogue could never get confused with Madelyn’s or Barry’s or Freedom’s.  They’re all distinct, and their speech patterns identify them just as well as a header would.

            Extra Names—Let’s come down on names a little more. If I don’t need them around the dialogue, I need them even less in the dialogue.  Pay attention the next time you get on the phone with someone.  How often do they use your name?  How often do you use theirs?  Heck, when my friends call my cell phone I know who it is before I even answer—and they know I know—so I usually just say “Hey, what’s up?”  We don’t use our names, and  we definitely don’t use them again and again in the same conversation.

            Spoken names can also come across as a bit fake.  It's me acknowledging the audience may be having trouble keeping track, and throwing in a name is the easiest way to deal with it, rather than the best way.  Remember, if I’ve got two characters who’ve been introduced, it's really rare that they'll need to keep using each other's names.  Especially if they're the only ones there.

            Accents- This is a common mistake by beginning writers.  I made it a bunch of times while I was starting out, and still do now and then.  Writing out accents and odd speech tics will drive readers and editors nuts.  There are a handful of professional writers who can do truly amazing dialogue, yes, but keep that conditional in mind—only a handful.  

            I show an accent by picking out one or two key words  at most and making those the only words I show it with.  If my character’s Jamaican, stick with “mah” instead of “my.”  For the Cockney fellow, keep the dropped H when he speaks.  Past that, just write straight dialogue.   Just the bare minimum reminders that the character has an accent.  Like most character traits, my readers will fill in the rest.

            Transcription- One thing years of interviews have taught me is that, with very few exceptions, people trip over themselves a lot verbally.  We have false starts.  We repeat phrases.  We trail off.  We make odd noises while we try to think of words.  It’s very human.  However, anyone who’s ever read a strict word-for-word transcription of a conversation will tell you it’s awkward, hard to follow, and a lot gets lost without the exact inflection of certain words.

            One of the worst things I can do is try to write dialogue in such an ultra-realistic manner.  It will drive my editor nuts and waste my word count on dozens of unnecessary lines.  While this sort of rambling can work great in actual spoken dialogue, when it’s written on the page it’s almost always horrible.  I want to keep it simple so I don’t scare off readers.

            Cool lines--  D'you remember in The Incredibles when Syndrome reveals his master plan?  “And when everybody's super... no one will be.” 

            It's an ugly truth--everything becomes mundane when there's no baseline.  If everyone on my basketball team is eight feet tall, who's the tall guy?  When everyone owns a Lamborghini, owning a Lamborghini doesn't really mean anything.    If anybody can hit a bull’s-eye at 100 yards out, hitting  a bull’s-eye isn't all that impressive.

            The same holds for dialogue.  We all want to have a memorable line or three that sticks in the reader's mind forever.  The thing is, they're memorable because they stand out.  For every fun, quotable line in Iron Man 3, there are also pages of dialogue that just advanced the story.  We all remember Tony mocking Rhodey about his friend’s new code name, but how much do we remember about Aldrich Killian’s business pitch about Extremis?

            If I try to make every line a cool line, or even most of them, I’m shooting myself in the foot because none of them are going to stand out.  When everything's turned up to eleven, it's all at eleven-- it's monotone.

            Exposition—Remember being a kid in school and being bored by textbook lectures or filmstrips that talked to you like you were an idiot?  That’s what exposition is like to readers.

            I should use something like the Ignorant Stranger method as a guideline and figure out how much of my dialogue is crossing that line. If any character ever gives an explanation of something that the other characters in the room already should know (see below) or my reader should know, I need to cut that line. If it’s filled with necessary facts, find a better way to get them across.

            Monologues—This one’s closely related to exposition.  A good monologue can be a major point in any story or film.  By the same token, though, a bad one can bring your story to a screeching halt.

            Is my monologue necessary?  Does it read naturally?  Is it flowing?  Does it fit the moment?  If I’m breaking one of these guidelines and doing it with a 750 word monologue, my manuscript is going to end up in the ever-growing left hand pile.

            Second clue if it’s bad is to count how many monologues there’ve already been.  Yes, that may sound laughable, but you’d be amazed at some of the things I’ve seen.  One script I read for a screenwriting contest had half-page dialogue blocks on almost every page.  If I’m on page forty-five and this is my seventh full-page monologue... odds are something needs to be reworked.

            "As you know..." - If you take nothing else from today's rant, take this.  I need to find every sentence or paragraph in my writing that starts with this phrase or one of it's halfbreed cousins. 

            Once I've found them, I need to delete them all.  Gone.  Destroyed.

             Think about it.  If I’m saying “As you know,” I’m openly acknowledging that the people I’m talking to know what I’m about to say.  I’m wasting time, I’m wasting space on the page, and I’m wasting my reader’s patience.  This is probably the clumsiest way to do exposition there is.  If I've got a rock-solid, lean-and-mean manuscript, I might be able to get away with doing this once.  Just once.  As long as I don't do it my first ten pages or so.  Past that, I need to get out my editorial knife and start cutting.

            And here’s a bonus tip.  One idea you may have heard is to read your dialogue out loud to find where it trips.  It’s not bad, but if I really want to find out how it reads, I should ask someone else to read it out loud—preferably somebody who hasn’t seen it before or heard me talk about it.  If I’m reading it myself, I know how it’s supposed to sound, where the breaks should be, and what gets the emphasis.  Let a friend or family member who doesn’t know it read it out loud and see what they do with it.

            And there you have it.  A baker’s dozen of dialogue tips which should help your fictional dialogue seem a little more real.  Fictional-real, anyway.  Not real-real.

            Next week...

            I’m going to have to skip next week, I’m afraid.  Rewrites are due on Ex-Isle so odds are I’ll be up late second-guessing myself.  I may put up one of the photo tips.

            After that, I’m open to suggestions, if anyone has any.  Or if anyone made some good ones I’ve misplaced.  If not, maybe I’ll offer a quick idea about drafts.

            Until then, go write.