Keeping Our Heads Down

This is something I’ve talked about several times here on the ol’ ranty writing blog, but I realized I haven’t talked specifically about it in, well, many years. Too many years, really. Definitely not since I’ve tried to lean away from the more ranty, accusatory tone I tended to write in back at the start of this.

Look, reading all those movie scripts made me pull out a lot of hair.

I talked a month or so back about the idea of a contract between author and reader. There’s one other aspect to that contract, a sub clause, and I think it’s one of those “so obvious we don’t think about it” sort of things. To be blunt, nobody’s picking up one of my books to hear from me. Or to see me.

I mean, sure, they like a lot of the characters and worlds I’ve created. Some folks probably (hopefully!) like my style enough that they’re willing to try something new from me. But they still don’t want to see me. They want the story, and they definitely don’t want me getting between them and it.

Now, this doesn’t mean I’m going to follow you home from the bookstore and stick my hand between you and the page or sing nonsense in your ear. It’s just that nobody wants me distracting them from the fact they’re reading my story. They just want to sink into that world and get lost.

Yeah, of course, on one level you know I crafted each of those sentences and paragraphs, chose where all

the breaks

should go, but we have this quiet understanding that I won’t be leaning over your shoulder asking “Did you like that? Did you see what I did there? Wasn’t that clever?” You just want to immerse yourself and forget about the world for a little bit. Or at least get to look at it from a neater angle.

That was jarring, wasn’t it? That weird paragraph break? It was only two lines, but it broke the flow for a second, and you stopped hearing my voice and started hearing your own instead. Probably saying something like “was that a mistake? Is he doing beat poetry? Was he trying to do something funny there?”

And this is the worst thing that can happen to a writer. I don’t want you thinking about me. I want you to be thinking about Hector and Natalie and the people they’re running away from. If you’re noticing me, thinking about what I’m doing... it means I’ve done something wrong.

Think of it this way. It’s the difference between the tough guy in a story who commits unimaginable acts of excessive violence to look tough... and the tough guy who doesn’t need to commit those acts. The one we understand is more impressive without seeing a blatant demonstration. Being able to restrain myself is usually more impressive than how excessive I can be. Less of us is more of the story.

So here’s four easy ways I can keep my literary head down.

Vocabulary— When I started out, I know I desperately wanted to show I had a better vocabulary than the average person. Because that’s a hallmark of a good writer, yes? I didn’t want to use common, pedestrian words, the words just anyone would use. I was a skilled anecdotist, after all, not some mere amanuensis.

And let’s be honest—I wasn’t alone. This is a phase a lot of us go through as we’re starting out. We latch onto (or more often, look up) obscure and flowery words for our literary masterpiece, as if we’re going to get a quarter every time the reader has to look something up. And if the reader doesn’t enjoy going to the Miriam-Webster site every three paragraphs? Well that sounds like their problem, doesn’t it? Not my fault you’ve got such a limited vocabulary.

Truth is, any word I choose just to get attention—to prove I don’t need to use a common word—is the wrong word. Any word that makes my reader stop reading and start analyzing from context is the wrong word. I can try to justify my word choice any way I like, but nobody’s picking up my book hoping for a vocabulary lesson. When a reader can’t figure out what’s being said for the fourth or fifth time and just decides to toss my manuscript in the big pile on the left... there’s only one person to blame.

(It’s not them, in case you had any lingering thoughts on the matter)

Structure-- Just like obscure vocabulary, convoluted structure’s another common sign of writer ego. One of the most common forms of this is insisting on grammatical perfection. This usually mean a lot of rigid, formal text and very stiff dialogue. It’s when I get so insistent on proving I know the correct way to structure a sentence my words end up sounding forced and artificial. Also worth noting the flipside of this which is insisting I don’t need to follow any grammar or spelling conventions. Punctuation? Capitalization? Those are tired tropes for losers.

The second most common sign is needless complication. I can admit I used to write—or try to write—sprawling, impenetrable prose. Sentences that went on and on. Descriptions that never ended. It took someone two pages to step through a doorway because we had to know what kind of socks and underwear they were wearing and what flavor toothpaste they preferred. If they were mentioned in the text, I had to remind you of these facts and how they were posed at the exact moment they spoke. Believe me, if something could be explained or described in less than ten words, I’d find a way to do it in at least fifty.

And while I never got quite that bad, there are also some writers who choose arcane story structures or points of view or tenses. Just because they can. Things will go from non-linear first person musings to omniscient third person flashbacks to second person song lyrics and then to a telepathic gestalt mind that only speaks in one of those single, three page sentences I was just talking about. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things, in a general sense, but so often they’re not there to serve the story. It’s just an attempt to look cool and do cool things. If I want to do something like this, I should be able to explain why I’m doing it. And the explanation needs to better than “y’know... reasons,” or I’m just going to leave my readers confused and frustrated as they get knocked out of my story again and again.

Said—Sad admission, kind of going with the vocabulary point up above. For many, many years I didn’t use said. Said was, in my opinion, the lowest common denominator of dialogue descriptors. It’s the kind of word used by writers who weren’t going places, writers not destined for greatness, like I clearly was. Not only that, I’d try to never us the same descriptor on a page twice. So in my early work my characters would respond, retort, exclaim, demand, muse, mutter, sneer, snap, shout, snarl, grumble, growl, whimper, whisper, hiss, yelp, yell, exclaim, or ejaculate. 

Oh, grow up. It was a common dialogue descriptor for years. Really.

Of course, once I finally got to sit down and talk with a professional editor and show him a few pages, this was the very first thing he commented on. Truth is, nobody notices said on the page. It’s an invisible word. Yeah, of course there’s going to be times when my characters are hissing or shouting or gasping. But I should save those words for then so their impact hasn’t been used up and weakened. The vast majority of the  time... stick to said.

Names—If used in moderation, names are also invisible. If you think about it, they’re just a shorthand note for the mental image of my character or MacGuffin or whatever. And they help us keep things straight if I’ve got a bunch of people all talking together.

It’s worth mentioning many fledgling sci-fi or fantasy writers feel the need to rename a lot of things. Or everything. Characters have all-new, correct-for-this-world names and so do their pets. And their gods. And their elements. And their system of weights and measures, their money, their units of time...  It’s great worldbuilding, but I’d guess 83% of the time this is just wasted words.  My elaborate sci-fi empire won’t collapse if I call mind-to-mind communication telepathy, but it might if I keep calling it intralobeech, which, as we all know, is short for “intralobe speech.”

Which, as we all know, is telepathy.

Always remember that moderation is key. Even a simple name like Bob can stack up and get distracting really quick. Which is why the ancient ones created...

Pronouns--when those proper names start to stack up, we switch to pronouns.  Just like names are shorthand for story elements, pronouns are shorthand for those names. When nouns start to clutter up my writing, they’re there to leap in and shoulder the weight.  It’s how Hector becomes he, that mysterious island becomes there, and a Hudson Hornet becomes it.

The catch here is I need to make sure my pronouns are clear. No questions exceptionally clear, ‘cause the moment someone gets confused about which her I’m referring to, they’re going to stop reading my story and start studying the page. We’ve all had to do that, right? Feel our way though a paragraph so we’re clear who she is. Or work backwards through the dialogue, trying to figure out who’s speaking which lines. I’m always super-careful with pronouns, because I don’t want that happening to anyone in my books.

Again—pronouns good. Pronoun confusion—bad. And it’s a writing rule you can apply to real life.

So there they are.  Four simple ways to keep our collective heads down so readers don’t see us standing there. Staring at them. Waiting to be noticed.

Y’see, Timmy, every time I make my reader hesitate or pause just for a second, I’m breaking the flow of the story. I’m encouraging them to skim at best, put the book down at worst. My reader should forget they’re paging through the latest Peter Clines novel, hopefully forget they’re reading altogether. And the easiest way to make that happen is for them not to see the writing.

It’s tempting to wave our arms and shout and try to get the reader to admit they can see us, but all this does is ruin things for everyone. It’s like Sherlock Holmes showing how he came to his amazing deductions or a magician explaining their greatest illusion. That moment is when the whole thing falls apart.

As writers, we need to go unnoticed. We want our characters to be seen and our dialogue to be heard, yeah. We want our action and passion and suspense to leave people breathless, absolutely.

But we’re just distractions.

Next time... hmmmmm. Not sure. I’m open to requests or suggestions if anyone has any. If not, I might tell you about a conversation I recently had with someone about getting published.

Until then... don’t let me see you writing.

The Lesson of Flashdance

Oh, hey everyone. What's new with you? Anything cool going on?

I’ve had this idea on the backburner for... well, a few years now, but now that I’ve got a handle on it, I’d like to talk to you about one of the most important creative-arts films of the 1980s.

You read the title, so I’m pretty sure you can guess where I'm going with this.

Quick sum up, for those of you who’ve never seen Flashdance. Alex is an eighteen-year-old welder who dreams of being a professional dancer and makes side money as a... what would we call it? Exotic dancer? A non-nude provocative dancer. She’s got a friend who wants to be a professional ice skater and another one who wants to be a comedian. Alex also has a boyfriend who’s twice her age and also her boss at the steel mill, and there’s a lot to unpack there.

Actually, there’s so much to unpack in that relationship  it’s what a lot of reviews will focus on. That and, weirdly enough, how unrealistic it is someone could be a professional welder at eighteen in a union town. Probably the same people who complain about how lightsabers work and about how the military sets look in zombie movies.

Getting off topic. Sorry. Anyway...

In my opinion, those issues distract from the actual story, which—if you think about it—is a much more ‘90s story about a trio of young, aspiring performers all looking to break into their chosen fields. We’ve seen a few versions of that, yes? If we look at Flashdance in that light, what’s the story about?

Well, we have our trio of aspiring artistic friends. Alex gets a chance to audition for an exclusive dance conservatory and gets nervous and leaves without auditioning. Her friend enters an ice skating competition and fails (kinda horribly). Her other friend gets a chance to do his comedy routine at an open night mic and bombs (also horribly), but then he decides to move to LA where there are more comedy clubs to try performing at. Meanwhile, Alex’s boyfriend gets her another chance to audition for the conservatory and... she comes up with another excuse to not audition.

Seeing the pattern here? One of these things is not like the other. In this trio of aspiring artists, the other two are failing, but it’s only because they’re actually trying. Alex is the one who won’t take any risks. She’d rather stay in her safe, small pond where she’s a superstar rather than find out she’s not good enough to go higher. That’s her story—working up the courage to try. Because until she does that, nothing else changes. She stays where she is.

This happens to a lot of us in the arts. We get nervous about if we’re good enough and talk ourselves out of doing more. We can’t get rejected—we can’t fail—if we never put ourselves out there, right? Heck, there are even some folks who’ll twist failure into some sort of victory. “Yeah, I got rejected, but that just proves my writing’s too good for the homogenized publishing industry!”

As I’ve mentioned before, though, rejection’s just part of the process. Failure is how we learn and sharpen our craft. And we can’t fail if we never try to do more, to push ourselves higher. So if I’ve never failed... maybe it means I’ve just been playing it safe and not doing enough. Maybe it means, on some level, I stopped.

Y’see, Timmy, we need to push ourselves. We need to keep at it. Even when we get rejected. Even when someone says our chosen genre sucks. Even when they say our writing sucks. Like any art, the only way to improve is to keep doing it. To keep challenging ourselves again and again and again.

Ray Bradbury once said the only way you fail is if you stop writing. Which is the short form of this. So yes, I could’ve called this "the lesson of Bradbury," but half of you wouldn’t’ve paid attention.

Next time, I’d like to talk about why you rarely see a good writer.

Until then, go write.

Our Binding Contract

Enough holiday stuff for now. Let’s get back to what you’re all really here for—the thing you specifically came here for. Half-assed writing commentary! That’s the deal, right? You keep showing up, I prattle on for far too long and maybe make one or two useful points.

Which is, ho ho ho, what I wanted to talk about.

The act of telling a story is sort of an unspoken agreement between two people. Kristi Charish has called it “the invisible handshake.” As audience members, we expect certain things from our story. As storytellers, we expect certain things from our audience. When we sit down together, even if we’re separated by a few months and a printed page, we’re both assuming the other half of this experience is going to follow certain conventions.

So let’s talk about this contract between writer and reader. Or storytellers and audience, if you’d like to keep it a little broader. I think this agreement is kind of universal in that regard.

As the writer, what am I promising you?

This Is Readable
I think we can all agree books come with different levels of reading difficulty. They get aimed at different age groups or demographics. So it’s not impossible to believe we could stumble across a book that seems too simple or too difficult for us.

But this should never be my goal as a writer. Nobody should struggle to get through a book, fighting through convoluted, never-ending sentences filled with obscure words that describe dozens of irrelevant characters. And if I’m writing specifically to exclude people (“Only the people who really understand art will enjoy this...”) I’m doing this wrong. If you pick up one of my books, I want you to feel welcome, and to actually enjoy the act of reading it.

This Makes Sense
It doesn’t matter if my book’s set on a cruise ship, in a Victorian mansion, or on a space station—it has to have an internal logic. Characters need to make decisions and take actions that fit within their world and their personal experience.

A simple test I always try to give myself is “would this book be enjoyable to read again?” If twists aren’t earned, if betrayals aren’t set up, if explanations don’t line up with what I’ve said before this... my story probably doesn’t make sense. And you deserve better than that as a reader.

This Finishes Arcs
Nobody likes getting to the end of a book and finding out ha ha maybe everything will get answered in the next book. If we’re going to get immersed in a story, one thing we’re inherently expecting is some kind of resolution at the end. That sense of closure is a natural part of storytelling. We expect the heroes to have a final showdown with the villains, for this year’s Hunger Games to end, or for them to perform the last exorcism. And when they don’t and everything’s left unresolved... it just doesn’t sit right.

And sure, there might be dangling threads or even an overall arc that needs to continue. But when we get to the end of this story we expect, well, an ending. Some aspect of this story has to be done and wrapped up in a satisfying way (to the reader if not the characters)

This Was Worth It
This is a twofold thing. One ties back to an idea I’ve mentioned before—we want our hero to win, even if it’s a pyrrhic victory. We need to see them have some level of success, because if not we’ve just read a book where the hero, the person we’re supposed to relate to and empathize with... loses.  Or doesn’t do anything. Or just has a textbook ending we’ve seen dozens of times before. After three hundred or so pages, these things can really make a book feel like it wasn’t worth reading.

Two is that, well, we want to feel like it was worth it financially. Nobody likes shelling out ten or fifteen bucks for a book that just wasn’t their thing, but shelling out that much for a book that’s incoherent, filled with typos, and half-copied from an old Doctor Who plot? And then has a bad ending? I mean, even a buck can feel like too much for something like that. If I’m trying to get you to give me money for this story, this story should be worth money.

In my opinion, that’s all the big promises we’re expecting on the writer side of things. Yeah, there might be more expectations depending on the genre, the author, the intended audience, but I think this is probably a good contractual boilerplate. From this direction.

Coming from the other side of the negotiating table, what should I expect from my storytelling audience? If someone’s willing to engage with the story, there should be a few basic things they’re promising me, the storyteller. Things like...

The Benefit of the Doubt
If I’m going to pick up a book, I should at least begin with the basic assumption the writer knows what they’re doing. They meant to use this word or that term, and yeah, there’s a reason these people have a collection of HD-DVDs and not Blu-rays. If something isn’t clear on page two, I should be assuming there’s a reason things aren’t clear on page two, not that the writer has somehow screwed up telling their story.

This doesn’t mean there can’t be problems in those first few pages or minutes. But if I see something I don’t understand I shouldn’t be immediately labeling it as a mistake or a problem and using that to guide my ongoing interpretation of things. There’s a term for that—it’s called hatewatching.

The Time to Tell Their Story
Related to the above, if I pick up a murder mystery, I shouldn’t be complaining that we still don’t know who the murderer is in chapter three. Those two cute folks may not have kissed by page forty-two. There’s a good chance the aliens’ true motives could still be unclear a third of the way in. 

Stories take time to unfold. We need build-up. We need to establish things. Some narrative devices just won’t work at certain parts of a story. If I’m reading a book, I need to be willing to accept that not everything’s going to be given to me in the first hundred pages—and that’s okay.

Judging It for What It Is, Not What I Want It to Be
It’s not uncommon to pick up a book not being 100% sure of what it is. What I thought was a sci-fi story might be more of a horror novel. This romance might involve a lot of historical drama. This superhero book might really be more of a superpowers thing. And sometimes this shift of genres and/or perspectives might be really annoying for us as readers.

But that doesn’t make the story wrong. Maybe it was poorly marketed or maybe I just don’t like horror novels. Maybe I wanted Dot to find true love or Yakko to go on a revenge-fuelled killing spree, and neither of these things happened in the book. But these things aren't inherently flaws in the story. The writer told story A, it isn’t wrong because I wanted story B.

That’s what I think we should be expecting from the other half of the contract. And again, we could probably add other things depending on the book, the genre, the author. That’s why contracts get adjusted. This is, as I mentioned before, the basic starting form that you get for free on the internet.

And I’m sure some of you think this has just been some silly, meta-writing thing that you skimmed over. But y’see, Timmy, when this doesn’t happen—when one side or the other breaks the contract—we get frustrated. As audience members, we hate it when we need to struggle through a story, not getting the relevant details or getting buried in irrelevant ones. As authors, we grind our teeth when someone gives negative criticism because “I didn’t know this was a horror novel” or “I quit reading after three chapters” or “Amazon delivered this with a folded cover.”

Okay, that last one has nothing to do with our storytelling contract, but we all still grind our teeth when we get a one star review for that kind of nonsense.

So remember the contract. Make sure you’re holding up your end of it. Because nobody wants to be known as the person who breaks it. That’s just not a good look from either side.

Next time... well, I want to talk about what you’re not getting for the holidays.

Until then, go write.

Where B-Movies Go to Die...

And now for something completely different...

Everyone else is talking about how soulless IP is, so since that’s covered I thought instead I’d answer a question sent to me over on Twitter. Which was... 

“As a bad movie expert, where does one find the good b-movies that come out nowadays? Is there a modern day Roger Corman?”

Okay, first off, there are people who’ve put far more study and hours into B-movies (bad and good) than I ever have (seriously, check out Patton Oswalt’s Silver Screen Fiend). I watch a lot of them, yeah, but I freely admit there are some holes in my education. On the other hand, I also have a much more rounded film education than a lot of folks—being a huge fan, having worked as a film journalist, and having worked both above and below the line on film projects. I worked on a movie that spent three weeks at number one at the box office, another movie that’s considered one of the worst films ever made, and a double-handful of movies I guarantee you’ve never, ever heard of.

All that said, I think B-movies have a fascinating history, and I think we need to consider it—and how we define them—in order to answer that question.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin...

On the off chance you didn’t know, B-movies started out as the lower-billed movie on a double ticket. You’d go to the movies for your big-budget studio picture (sometimes costing hundreds of thousands of dollars), but the studio’d also tack on something a little simplistic and low-brow so you felt like you were getting your full 40¢ worth. Usually this was a genre movie—westerns, horror, comedy, early sci-fi stuff. Some of it was even based on hahahhahhaaaa comic books.

Double-bills became less common in the ‘50s, but it turned out there was enough of a market for these lower-budget genre B-movies to keep producing them and putting them out on their own. They were cheap, usually aiming more to entertain than artistically enlighten, and they tended to at least make back the meager investment in them (a winning formula by almost anyone’s standards).

Plus, this became an entry point for writers, directors, actors... Move to Hollywood, start with small positions on small projects, learn stuff, work your way up. Lots of film icons and heavyweights started out in B-movies. Seriously, pick your favorite actor/director/screenwriter and scroll down IMDb to their first few credits. There’s probably some B-movies there. Look—here’s a very young Leonard Nimoy in the giant ant movie THEM (1954).

Then came the 1970s. The 70s blew the idea of “B-movies” out of the water and upended the whole film industry. Jaws. Halloween. Star Wars. There was a sci-fi boom and a horror boom. Suddenly what had been B-movies were dominating the box office.

So we had an early 80’s rush of people trying to copy that success. Lots of studios tried to manufacture B-movies with the intent of them becoming megahits. And within just a few years of that we had even more radical changes in the industry. Cable television and home video. Now there was a desperate need for content. We need to fill video store shelves and tens of cable channels!

So this, in my opinion, is the second golden age of what we tend to think of as B-movies. Once again, we need stuff so people feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. Lots of cheaper movies aimed at pure entertainment more than art.

BUT...

It’s important to note these were all still people with a degree of training. They weren’t grabbing people in Tulsa to make these movies, they were grabbing people in Hollywood. Because Hollywood was where all the crews and actors and equipment were. And those cameras are super-expensive, so the studios weren’t handing one over to just anyone. They went to the people who were dedicated filmmakers—who’d moved to Los Angeles to be in the film industry, taken PA jobs so they could learn and office jobs to be near the decision makers. Yeah, sure maybe you had an 8mm camera at your home in Tulsa, but that just wasn’t going to cut it in the 35mm age.

(minor segue—go read Bruce Campbell’s If Chins Could Kill for a great story of him, Sam Raimi, and Rob Tapert trying to screen an 8mm print of their movie that they’d already blown up to 16mm and then tried to blow up again to 35mm)

(go on—support your local bookstore!)

So, in my eyes, this second golden age (silver age?) re-established B-movies as stepping stones. Studios were now willing to take some gambles on lots of lower-budget stuff, and there were a lot of films that needed filmmakers. And even if they were less experienced, they still had basic, baseline experience.

I also think this is why there are so many great B movies from this era. It was a perfect confluence of lots of experienced, dedicated people waiting for an opportunity and studios willing to take lots of chances. Or at least say “Yeah, sure, whatever... just have it done by the 15th.” Which also meant some people had a chance to slip in a little art after all...

But as studios evolved, we began to see less and less of these low budget B-movies as execs leaned more and more into what we usually now call “tentpole” movies. Things either got larger budgets or... got forgotten. Heck, there was a brief-point in the late 90’s when horror movies almost broke out of their low-budget niche and started getting $40, $50, and even $60 million dollar budgets. But it didn’t last long and that’s a whole ‘nother story.

And that brings us to what I think was the last big B-movie boom. Our bronze age. And this is an odd one, I admit.

SyFy. Or, as it was known then, the Sci-Fi Channel.

There was a solid seven-eight year period where SciFi Pictures put out a new original movie every single week. Plus a few multi-part miniseries. Remember that? It was one of their claims to fame. Seriously, go look up Sci-Fi Pictures and see how many movies they put out. And then they became SyFy and put out that many more again. There’s close to a thousand movies altogether on those lists, spread over a little less than a decade. Sci-fi, horror, fantasy. Were they all winners? Hell no. But even if we only say 20% of them are worth watching, that’s still around 200 solid movies. More importantly, it created opportunities again and gave a lot of skilled (and, yeah, some not-so-skilled) people the chance to move up a notch or three on the Hollywood ladder.

Now, with all that in mind, the original question. Where do we find B-movies today?

I don’t think they really exist anymore. Sorry.

I shall now explain.

One thing that defined filmmaking for ages was a level of *gasp* gatekeeping. As I mentioned above, like most arts, filmmaking required a lot of rare, specialized equipment and the knowledge to use that equipment correctly. Plus I’d need to understand narrative storytelling and visual storytelling. One thing you’ll notice throughout this little history is that most B-movies, in all eras, came from people who already had a degree of experience. They’d been exposed to filmmaking. They understood concepts like framing, camera angles, coverage, crossing the line, and more. Yeah, we can always point to a few exceptions here and there, but the vast majority of folks making B-movies came out of Hollywood.

Today we live in a world that’s both wonderful and, well, a little troublesome. Today most of us are carrying whole camera/editing packages around with us. You might even be reading this on one. It’s ridiculously easy to shoot a movie today. Anyone can, experienced or not.

And on one level, that’s fantastic. I’m a huge fan of giving everyone the tools to do the thing they love. I mean, how many fantastic filmmakers did we lose because they couldn’t make it out to Hollywood? It’s a huge, terrifying leap—said as someone who did it!

On another level, I think this easiness encourages a lot of folks to leap ahead before they’re really ready. They’re getting stuck in, as the Brits say, without understanding a lot of the concepts I mentioned above. And again—on many levels this is great. You can try different shots, experiment with lighting and effects, and find out if Wakko can really act or hasn’t improved since that fifth grade play. And you can do all this for free—no worrying about the price of film or equipment rentals or truck rentals to haul around the equipment.

But I think for a lot of folks the current mindset tells us this isn't practice, it's the finished product. It's done and ready to go. And there are lots of studios and distributors who are fine with slapping a logo on those practice shots, FX tests, and audition tapes and putting them out there. Honestly, if the technology existed back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, they probably would’ve done it then, too.

That’s why, in my opinion, we don’t see those kind of quality B movies being made right now. Not in any sort of quantity, anyway. Studio/ distributors aren’t dependant on the pool of people who already know how to make movies and just need someone to make an investment in them. Distributors can get lesser movies for pennies, fill all the empty spaces in those digital shelves, and easily make back the minimal amount they paid for it.

Again, for the people itching to fight—I’m not saying there aren’t any good movies made this way. But they’re very, very rare. Much rarer than they were when the requirements tended to favor filmmakers who already had a degree of experience. I’ve been doing this Saturday geekery thing for a little over three years now, probably close to 45 weekends a year, easily averaging three movies each time. And in all that time of watching “B-movies” made in the past twenty years I’ve stumbled across... six? Maybe seven where I said “Holy crap, you all need to watch this.”

And as far as being a stepping stone, well... This is already super-long, but let me close with a quick story.

Way back in the day, a friend and I had worked up a pitch for a potential series, and we were toying with the idea of shooting a quick teaser trailer for it. This was when “sizzle reels” were really common, to give producers a sense of what the finished product would be like. We talked about it with a producer friend of ours and she shook her head, vigorously, and told us it’d be a waste of money.

The problem, she explained (and I’m paraphrasing) is that the people who make the big money decisions rarely have great imaginations. They don’t look at something and see potential, they look at it and just see what it is. If we shot a super low-budget, semi-professional trailer for our high-concept sexy-vampire-wars series, they wouldn’t imagine it with better lighting or hotter actors or cooler stunt work. All most of them would see is... a super low-budget, semi-professional trailer.

Which meant we’d probably make a super low-budget, semi-professional show, right?

Which is why a lot of these films never really work as stepping stones.

And that’s waaaaaay too much about B-movies. But to be honest, it was something I’d been thinking about before the question was asked.

Take care of yourself, wear your mask, go write.

Behold—THE FUTURE

Welcome, travelers, to the far distant future of 2020. After orientation, each of you will be assigned a robot butler, a flying car, and a seasonal moon-bus pass.

I like to start the year with kind of  a quick reminder for all of us. How the ranty blog started, what it is, why I’m still doing it.

Easiest first. I more or less started this back in (gasp!) 2007. I was writing for a screenwriting magazine, and by nature of it I’d see tons of articles and websites about “helpful” tricks for networking, getting stuff in front of agents, producers, editors—all the sort of stuff you worry about after writing.  I’d guess at least two-thirds of the “writing” articles, even in our own magazine, fell into this category.

So I went to my editor with a few spec columns about... writing. Dialogue, character, just some thoughts based on my own years of many failures and a few successes (or, as some folks call it, experience). And they were rejected.  A few months later I went to another editor, he passed my would-be columns up the chain... and they were rejected again.

Eventually, I tossed them up here just so it felt like I’d done something with them. I thought they were fairly well-written and I didn’t want them to languish on my computer.  As I moved further into the full-time writer life, I was exposed to more and more people’s work. I read scripts for a couple different contests, which got me 400+ pages a day of exposure to it. And it struck me that I kept seeing the same basic mistakes being made again and again. So posting here became a regular thing.

It didn’t take long to realize a lot of aspiring writers fall into one of two groups. The first group thinks writing and storytelling are mechanical, quantifiable processes that can be broken down into definitive rules and formulas.  They quote pieces from Writers Digest and the MLA Handbook to show why their novel deserves to be published, or point to screenwriting books as proof their script is perfect.

The other group thinks spelling, formatting, and structure just hamper the creative process. People always ignore those things once they see the inherent beauty in the prose, right?  Nothing matters past the art flowing out of the writer’s fingertips, and anyone who says otherwise is a sellout who doesn’t understand what writing’s supposed to be about.  Don’t know how to spell that word?  Don’t know what the word means? Not in the mood to write? Someone said bad things about their writing? Absolutely none of it matters except being happy about their art.

Both of these groups are wrong, for the record. A lot of folks think writing’s all-or-nothing. The truth is, though, writing’s much more of a middle ground.

Y'see, Timmy, there are correct and incorrect things in writing. I have to know how to spell (me—not my spellchecker).  I have to understand grammar.  I need to have a sense of pacing and structure and format. As a writer, I can’t ignore any of these requirements, because these are things I can get wrong and I’ll be judged on them. By editors. By agents. By readers. 

On the other hand, there’s no “right” way to develop a character or outline or start my writing day. There’s only the way that’s right for me and my story.  Or you and your story. Or her and her story. This is the Golden Rule I’ve mentioned here once or thrice. If we ask twenty different writers about “how to write,” we’re going to get twenty different answers.  And all of these answers are valid, because all of these methods work for that writer. 

Again, that still doesn’t mean I can ignore every convention or rule I don’t like. I need to understand the rules if I want to break them successfully. Yeah, maybe there are ten or twenty people I can point at who broke the rules and succeeded.  But I need to remember there are thousands, probably millions, of people who broke the rules and failed miserably.

And that’s kinda what the ranty blog is about. I talk about writing.  Not the after-the-fact-stuff, just...writing. I talk about the rules we all need to learn and follow (until we’ve got the experience to bend or break them). I offer various tips and suggestions I’ve heard over the years that may (or may not) help out when it comes to crafting a story or shaping a character or sharpening some dialogue. If there’s something you’ve been beating your head against that you’d like me to blab about, let me know down in the comments. I’ve been doing this for a long time now—there aren’t many topics I haven’t had a painful learning experience with, and I’m always willing to share.

Which I guess leaves “why.” And that’s pretty simple. Like I said, I’ve made lots and lots of mistakes on my path to “published, semi-successful, quasi-known author.” If I can help some of you get past them—or maybe just not spend so much time splashing around in them—I’d like to do it. I mean, people helped me, I should pass it on. And it’s not like writing is a zero-sum game. Helping you improve your chances doesn’t lessen anybody else’s chances. Really. I can show you the math if you like.

Simply put, I want you to succeed. And I’ll do what I can to help make it happen.

And that's why I'm posting writing advice here every Thursday, and a bunch of stuff on Tuesdays too.

On a semi related note, I’d also like to recommend the Writers Coffeehouse to you.  It’s a monthly meeting of writers of all types and levels to talk about... well, writing.  All aspects from first ideas and editing to pitching and marketing.  It’s completely free—no obligations or requirements of any kind—it’s kinda fun, and it’s open to everyone. If you’re in the LA area, I host it on the second Sunday of every month (which would be ten days from now) at the wonderful Dark Delicacies bookstore in Burbank.  If you’re closer to San Diego, Jonathan Maberry (the guy behind V-Wars and the Joe Ledger books) hosts one on the first Sunday of every month (for example this Sunday) at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore. And I think at this point there are a dozen others scattered across the country. Boston, San Francisco, Durham NC, Sacramento... I should really dig up the full list. Please check one of them out if you’re in the area.

Next time, I’d like to talk about the process of writing. Your process, actually.

Until then... go write.

Some Artsy Thoughts

It’s getting near the end of the year and I figured I could get out one or two of the Deep Thoughts About Writing that have been marinating in my brain for a few months. Will they be any good? I don’t know. Marinating can be tricky sometimes. Leave stuff in to long and it just becomes this weird-tasting mush.

Anyway...

If you’ve followed this collection of rants for a while, you’ve probably noticed that I don’t talk about the art of writing that much. It’s not an accident. I believe that most art is highly subjective. I’m also a big believer that this subjectivity means any attempt to deliberately create Art (capital A) is usually wasted effort and, well, kinda pretentious. I also tend to think that sometimes when people talk about Art they’re... hmmmmmmm how to say this politely?

I think they’re making excuses. I think sometimes Art becomes an easy shield to protect a writer from criticism. If art is highly subjective in and of itself, whether or not it’s any good is very subjective. And if any of you have ever visited the internet (surprise—you’re there now) you’ve probably encountered one or two thousand people who are more than willing to explain how and why THIS is the greatest achievement of all mankind. Don’t agree? Well then you just don’t get it.

What I wanted to do was talk a little bit about where I think most attempts at Art go off the rails. Not all attempts, sure, because there’s a bunch of ways, but maybe the top two. Out of, y’know... a hundred and eight or so.

Also, as I have once or thrice in the past, you may see me using tale a lot here. I’m not trying to sound epic or artsy (oh the irony), I’m just trying to cut down on confusion in a couple places. Consider this your warning.

Once or thrice I’ve mentioned Shane Black and his ideas on plot vs. story. I’ve explored them a few different ways, but for time’s sake let’s just say plot is what’s going on outside my character, story is what goes on inside my characters. My own corollary to this is that plot tends to be active, whereas story tends to be reactive.

Now, again, it’s not a 100% every time thing (maybe 83%), but I’ve noticed that most attempts to be artistic lean really heavily on the story side of things. Plot is all but ignored in favor of long monologues about feelings and relationships and purpose and maybe even Art (yeah, seriously meta, I know). In the movie world these sometimes get called character pieces, and they’re usually about people sitting around airports or restaurants or taking long road trips and just... talking.

Nothing ever really happens in these stories. People talk about things that did happen, or might happen, or they’d like to happen, but at the end of the day.. they’re just talking. A key sign is that the characters in most of these tales have no arc, mostly because there’s no plot pushing them to change or develop. Their story never really goes anywhere because, without a plot, there’s no reason for it to go anywhere.

And that’s the catch. Every tale worth telling is a careful balance between plot and story. It’s the things happening outside that my characters are actively engaging in, and how these things are actively affecting and changing my characters. Key word there—active. When I upset that balance, things stop happening. Either my character stops doing things or they stop developing. Or both.

For the record, either one of these is bad. Both is just downright awful. We want active characters who grow and change. I mean... everybody gets that, right?

The other big thing in attempts to be artistic is language. Excessively elaborate descriptions using increasingly arcane vocabulary. Labyrinthine sentence structure in which one could perhaps lose a minotaur. Like, a full-size minotaur.

There’s probably something to be said for the fact that most attempts at writing art lean toward complexity over simplicity. And again, this is one of those times when defensive writers tend to whip around and say this failure is the reader’s fault. “Do you think I should lower the quality of my writing just because you got such a pathetic education you don’t know what uxorious, mytacism, or atramentous mean?”

When I’m writing my primary goal has to be that my readers understand what I’m trying to say. If they don’t understand page one, I can’t blame them for not going to page two. There are ways to make these things work, sure, but I’ve got to accept nobody’s picking up my books hoping for a vocabulary lesson or that they'll need a spreadsheet to keep track of my spiraling plot.

Fun note. When I went looking for the most obscure adjectives I could find, one of the first results was a list titled “100 Exquisite Adjectives” (emphasis mine) which I’d guess was about 20% rare and obscure words most readers wouldn’t know. So let me just ask you... how exquisite is sallisthorian as words go? Do you think most readers would find me pretentious for describing a character that way? Is it too on the nose? If they’ve got no idea what it means, is it their fault for not knowing or my fault for using it?

Oh, and for the record, I just made up sallisthorian while writing this. I’m saying it means “like the Man-Thing” (who was, of course, known as Ted Sallis when he was human). And if anybody wants to argue about how were we supposed to know what that means... well, that’s kinda my point, isn’t it?

Y’see, Timmy, that’s the catch with all these sort of artistic additions. I can stick in deep, emotional monologues or elaborate descriptions or super-obscure words just to show how smart or artistic I am, but at the end of the day there needs to be an actual story that my readers understand. It’s a lot like easter eggs—in the end, my story needs to work despite all this stuff. If I’m hoping my story’s going to get by on pretty vocabulary and one long speech about what freedom means to me... it’s probably not going to happen.

Next time, it’s the season and all, so I’d like to talk to you about the holiday season.

Until then, go write.

The Big Lead-Up To...

Hahahhaaa... okay, so I had this post that I’d been working on for a while, but I never got it quite right and I kept pushing it back and pushing it back. And it just posted because, jeeez, mid-November? I won’t have to worry about that for a while.

Time is funny. Anyway... what I wanted to talk to you about.

A little earlier this year, I set down a book without finishing it. Might not sound big to you, but it’s big for me. It’s really rare for me to pick a book up and not finish it.  Don’t think it’s happened in over a year, easy, and I read around forty or fifty books a year, on average.

One of the big reasons I put it down is... well, to be honest, I’ve got no idea what’s going on. I’m more than halfway through and the plot in the book bears no resemblance to the one described on the back of the book.  Or anything  else really. When I set it down the other night, I described it to my partner as “watching a crime scene investigation where I don’t know who any of the people are, what their jobs are, what crime was committed, or what sort of legal system this is.”  There were things happening, but I had no idea what any of it meant or implied. It was just... stuff happening

Okay, I’m lying, I did finish the book. I have a problem,okay? I went back and read the last 117 pages and it went... I mean, pretty much just like I thought. We finally had the big reveal (which was the story described on the back of the book) and then had a minor twist to add a tiny bit more flavor.

Anyway, I thought it might be worth addressing this—the book’s problem, not my own compulsive need to consume bad things—because it’s something I’ve seen before. It’s an unusual issue because it’s a story problem I can only fully identify in retrospect.

So, quick recap on reveals and twists. I’ve talked about them here before a few times, so I don’t think we need more than that. I want to get to the heart of this particular issue.

The reveal is pretty much the standard way we get information across to our readers. New facts are presented to them, and depending on exactly what it is and what kind of ramifications it could have, these facts can have different levels of impact. We might just nod and accept it, or maybe it’ll have a ton of weight and impact.

A twist is a very specific type of reveal. Again, talked about them at length before, but the short form is that twists are information that the characters and the reader didn’t know was out there, and (importantly) this information forces us to look at a lot of previous facts in a new light. It’s also worth noting that twists almost always come later in my story because I need to establish those facts that need twisting. Make sense?

It’s the “later in the story” aspect of this I wanted to talk about. The issue I’ve been seeing is that a story will have a later twist, but it doesn’t establish any of the things its (hypothetically) twisting. I just tell you “Yakko is a redhead!” and expect that to have some kind of emotional or narrative weight. These stories try to tell us X is the really important thing, but they’d never really gone out of their way to convince anything else was important.

This is even worse in longer-form stories like novels or movies. We essentially go through two thirds or more of the story to get to “the good stuff,” but there’s nothing supporting it. There’s just been a lot of stalling and not talking about things until we get to that point.

Like... okay, imagine an old Twilight Zone episode where we see a spaceship land on a planet and they get out, wander around, and then maybe find a sign that basically says “hey, losers, you’ve been on Earth this whole time.” You know this episode, right? Is it even an actual episode? You know this archetypal story, right?

But here’s the thing—these stories have a lot more than that. They have assumptions and discussions about which planet this is and what did or didn’t happen here. Maybe even about who the astronauts are. We need to have strong reason to think this isn’t Earth for that twist to have any impact. Make sense? Up until that reveal everyone should be acting like it’s an alien world. Yeah, we’re going to find out the thing scratching at the door’s  just a beagle. But for now, before we get to that reveal... it’s a hideous alien monster. No, it can’t really hurt my characters, but they don’t know that. And they need to act accordingly.

I think a lot of this tends to come down to... well, not having an actual story. There’s nothing going on except that big reveal, so all my characters just sort of stand around twiddling their thumbs until we get to it. I’ve been so focused on what happens after the reveal that I haven’t considered what everyone’s supposed to be thinking or doing before that moment.

Just to be clear—I’m not saying mid-book twists aren’t cool. They’re super-cool.  They’re fantastic and I love ‘em. But y’see Timmy, there has to be a story before we get there.  Even if it’s all a bunch of misconceptions or faulty beliefs—my characters have to be doing something somewhat motivated in a world we can at least vaguely understand.

Have you read (or maybe seen) Wayward Pines? It was a fun series by Blake Crouch that became a pretty good television series. And it had a pretty solid twist quite a ways into it. A really perfect, made-you-reconsider-everything twist. But the main character, Ethan, is still doing stuff before then. He makes his own assessments of the small town he finds himself in, based off all the information he has, and he acts. He does things. Ethan treats the world he’s in like... well, the world he’s in, and not just a glorified waiting room until the “real” story begins.

I can have the cool twist. I can have a great reveal. But these things don’t stand alone. They need to be carefully woven into my story. There needs to be elements supporting them and guiding my readers to them.

Because nobody wants to read about a bunch of people standing around waiting for the big reveal.

Next time... well, we haven’t talked about how stupid I am for a while now.

Until then, go write.

Getting Paid To Do It

A funny title, yeah, but I freely admit I’m kinda lifting it from a somewhat-similarly themed book by Peter Lefcourt and Laura J Shapiro.

Look, nobody likes talking about this sort of stuff. It makes us all feel a bit uneasy, because our Puritan ancestors beat this sort of thing into us so hard we’re all still feeling it 400 years later. “Money is the root of all evil! Hard work is its own reward! Money won’t buy you happiness!” I’ll be honest—I’m aware of all of this, this kinda societal indoctrination—and I’m still feeling kinda weird sitting here writing about it.

A lot of folks are talking about this right now and I think that’s good. Different facets of this topic keep coming up to the surface every few months it seems, and a few versions have been bouncing around the internet just the past week or two. It’s like the little dodecahedron inside a Magic 8-Ball, and every time we swirl it a new face pops up in the window and says something along the lines of IF YOU WERE A REAL ARTIST THE MONEY WOULDN’T MATTER

So let’s toss the Magic 8-Ball aside for now (you know we’re just going to pick it up again—they’re always so tempting) and try to have an honest talk about art and money. Because there’s a number of folks on both sides of the artist/audience line that have kinda... skewed views on, well, doing it for money.

One thing we don’t talk about is the fact that a lot of the art that gets created is inevitably shaped by financial factors. I know a ton of artists. Comic artists, painters, sculptors, actors, singers, and yeah a ton of writers of all types.  Fiction writers of pretty much any genre you can think of, screenwriters, playwrights... I’m even really good friends with a published poet.

A truly stunning thing these folks all have in common is that they’re real people. Just like the people you see on the street and work with. Artists have all sorts of bills to pay. Rents and mortgages. Utilities. Credit cards. Car repairs. Groceries. Medical bills (with and without coverage). A fair number of them have kids! I don’t, but I’m guessing  kids cost at least as much as cats, money-wise, so... wow.  So, like everybody else, artists have to make some of our decisions based on how much is in the bank.

Now, to be very clear right up front, I’m not saying any of my friends or acquaintances don’t care about art. These people love what they do, they care how things turn out, they want the things they create to be amazing.  And they turn out some amazing stuff and they (deservedly) make money off it.

Which is something a lot of people don’t get. This isn’t a binary thing. I can care about the art AND think about the money. Cause the truth is, if I’m going to do this—especially as any sort of job or career—money’s going to be a factor in my decision making process. It’s unavoidable. We can talk about the muse all you want, but at the end of the day, artists have to pay the bills just like everybody else.

There’s a Richard Matheson quote many of you have heard me mangle at some point or another-- “Writing is art,  publishing is the business of selling as many copies of that art as possible.”  The minute I’m dealing with publishing—traditional publishing, self publishing, hybrid, small press, whatever—I’m talking about business. and business means money is changing hands and certain expectations need to be met.

Money’s a huge factor in self publishing because... well, I’m the publisher. That’s the money side of the equation. Copyedits, layouts, cover art, marketing—it all costs money if I want it done right.  And if this is about the art, I want to do it right, don’t I? Which means I’m probably starting my self-publishing venture at a loss.

Even when things are going great in traditional publishing, money’s a factor.  I’ve gone to an editor with three or four things I’d like to write and they’ve said “Well... we’ll pay you X for this one, or 5X for that one.” I ask you, kind reader, if you had the choice between a six month job that pays you $10/hour or a six month job that pays $50/hour, and they’re both jobs you’re interested in... which one are you going to pick?

I know which one I picked when I got stuck with that choice. This is my job. This is how I earn money for all those bills and expenses. So I made a choice and I got to write a story I really wanted to write and get paid for it. And the other one... I didn’t write.

”But isn’t that what Kickstarters and Patreon are for? So you can just make any art you want?” says random internet user twenty two, cleverly countering me.

Well... sort of.  I don’t have a Patreon, but, I feel reasonably sure if I started one I could get a couple folks backing me for a buck or two. People who want to see me write more books and stories they like in the genres they like.

Which is kinda the catch. These folks would be sponsoring me because they want to see more of this weird cross-genre stuff I write. I back maybe a dozen people on Patreon, and I can honestly say that there isn’t one of them where I said “the past is irrelevant—I want to see what completely different thing they do next!”  I’m not against them doing new things, but the simple truth is I sponsored all of them because I liked their work and thought “I hope they’ll keep doing this.” I bet most of you are the same way with anyone you back.  If I thanked my hypothetical patrons tomorrow and announced that now I can finally write the Mediterranean romance trilogy I’ve always dreamed of... well, I wouldn’t be too shocked if that patron count dropped a bit over the next month  or so.  Sure, some folks would stay, absolutely. But most of them... they’re understandably going to move on and find something they like.

Same with a Kickstarter—it’s for one specific thing. If I tell you I’m doing a Kickstarter for X, I can’t change my mind and deliver Y. So it’s soooort of artistic freedom.  I can try something and hope people want to back it.  But I’m not really deciding what I get to do. I’m throwing options out there and letting other people choose for me.

Sooooooo yeah. Financial considerations, again.

And, to be very clear—I’m NOT saying Kickstarter or Patreon are bad things. They’re fantastic things. They let a lot of artists do a lot of work they otherwise wouldn’t get to. But using them doesn’t mean these artists are suddenly free of any and all financial constraints on their art.

There are costs to making art.  Always are, always have been.  And a lot of artists never recoup those costs. And waaaayy too many people think they shouldn’t. Think they’re bad artists for even wanting to make money. Or asking for money. Where the hell do I get off, hoping for some sort of compensation for that thing I spent six months of my life working on?

”Well, I don’t mind suffering a bit for my art and giving up a few hours of sleep!” says random internet user number seventeen. That’s cool. You do you. But the simple truth is, if that’s my path it’s eventually going to affect my health, which will mean medical expenses, which brings us back to... money. And probably time, too. Which means it cuts into the art.

And let’s have a moment of frank honesty. There are some folks who loudly insist “the money doesn’t matter” because... well, they’re not making any money. So this becomes kind of a well-padded moral armor for them. “I haven’t failed or been rejected— I just care more about the ART than about your filthy lucre.”

Look, the point I’m trying to make is... don’t be any of these people.  Don’t berate artists for wanting to make a living. Don’t mock them for having financial concerns. Don’t come up with elaborate justifications not to pay them for their work (83% of which always seem to be some twisted logic to justify piracy).

If I'm an artist... I shouldn't be ashamed that I took a job because I needed the money. Or because it just paid more. It doesn't make me any less of an artist.  Artists all through history took paid gigs and commissions to put food on the table, and they still did some of their best work with them. Likewise, I shouldn't feel bad about walking away from a job because, one way or another, I couldn't afford to do it (financially or time-wise). Yeah, even if it's something I may have really wanted to do. We've all had to pass on fun projects because, in the end, they were going to hurt way more than help.

And being an artist shouldn't mean hurting myself.

Anyway... that’s my clumsy, scattershot thoughts on money.

Next time... well, we talked about getting paid to do it. So I guess next time we should address if you’re getting it or not.

Until then, go write.