Dating Profile

I (finally) wanted to step away from the usual process stuff we talk about here—structure, dialogue, characters, editing, and so on—to talk about another important part of the process.

Dating apps.

When we’re looking to find that partner for life—or, y'know, maybe just for the weekend—these apps can be phenomenal. They’re not perfect, no, but they can save a lot of time by, well... weeding out a lot of folks that aren’t going to work for me. For whatever reason. Maybe I have some really firm personal philosophies. Perhaps I know exactly what kind of relationship I’m looking for right now. Maybe, hey, there’s a certain body type I prefer—or one I don’t. Regardless of what my criteria are, whether they’re right or wrong, these apps can help whittle down my prospects to a manageable size by matching me up with the people who meet my requirements.

Except... well...

Okay, look. Clearly there can be basic misunderstandings now and then. She said she likes football, I said “hey, I like football,” but it turns out she meant soccer and okay, well... this was awkward. Sorry I scheduled our first date during the World Cup.

Or maybe it was a little more deliberate. Maybe I realized I get a lot better matches when my profile says I’m six foot even and 179 pounds with a thick head of dark hair. Which, for the record, is a 100% accurate description of me that I’m just using for this example. Except then we finally meet face to face and now I can’t hide that, okay, yeah, I’m closer to 5’9” and 225 pounds (look, lockdown was very stressful) with a silver-gray widow’s peak that’s pulled back a bit over the past decade or so. But I have a great personality and I’m sure... well, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if the matchee wasn’t too interested when they finally saw me. They might even be justifiably annoyed. I mean, they spent time looking for a good match on this app.

Hell, maybe I’m just going to be kind of obnoxious about it and rationalize away their criteria. Her profile clearly says she doesn’t want short guys and no sci-fi/superhero geeks, but she’s hot, dammit. I’ll just explain to her how short guys are more dependable (in so many ways) and that Star Wars is actually more in the science-fantasy genre, so we should definitely hook up. I mean, that’s what DMs are for, right? To make my case and skip over all those limitations she’s putting out there to weed out other guys exactly like... me.

Anyway, where were we? Oh, right, why the hell are we talking about dating apps on this here writing page? What’s going on?

Well, as I’m sure a lot of you have already figured out, using a dating app is a lot like submitting my work somewhere. It’s trying to find that perfect person who’s looking for what I’m offering. Either a long term partner like an agent or maybe just a quick, one-time thing like placing a short story in a magazine, anthology, or a contest. And I’m going to have my best results with these submissions if I’m being honest. With myself and with them.

Yeah, sure—there’s always going to be the occasional mistake. I might spell someone’s name wrong or misread a requirement. Hell, one time I submitted to a magazine and the editor politely wrote back and pointed out thanks but they’d gone out of print six months earlier. These aren’t a lack of honesty as much as signs I’m maybe rushing things a bit at times and need to slow down a bit.

But I really don’t want to be lying about what my manuscript is. I shouldn’t reformat it to make it hit a certain page count. I don’t want to call it a romance when it’s a thriller with a minor romance subplot. I definitely shouldn’t say it’s got strong religious themes without being clear the “religion” is a doomsday cult trying to summon the old gods to cleanse the Earth.

I especially don’t want to ignore what they’ve specifically said they want. Yeah, they don’t want urban fantasy novels—but they’ll want mine, dammit! All short stories have to be under 7500 words, but once they read mine they’ll understand why it’s 11,000. No explicit violence toward women or animals... but I mean, they just say that to weed out the real weirdoes, right? And I know I’ve mentioned the guy who sent his sex comedy to a Christian values screenplay competition... ?

If I want to make a connection—a serious one that’s going to lead to something, even if it’s only something short term—I need to be honest. I can’t lie about what I’m offering. I can’t ignore what they want. If I do, I can’t blame them when they toss my manuscript in that big pile on the left.

Or, y’know, if they swipe that way.

Next time, I really want to not talk about something.

Until then, go write.

The Six-Mile Drop

I follow a lot of writers over on Twitter (and I’m friends with two or three of them), and it’s not unusual for a lot of them (and me, too) to occasionally toss out storytelling advice of one kind or another. As best you can in 280 characters, anyway. Or a longish-thread. Sometimes it’s random encouragements or self-care reminders. A fair amount of time it’s basic guidelines or rules. It all depends on what sparked this particular bit of Twitter-musing.

When we’re talking about guidelines that talk usually revolves around publishing--the business side of things—and how it may affect our writing. Manuscript length. Genre definitions. The preferences of a certain agent or editor.

If someone’s talking about rules, it’s usually stuff every writer eventually has to learn. I need to know what words mean and how to spell them. I’ve got to have a solid understanding of structure. A firm grasp of grammar. My characters will need to measure up in certain ways. The stuff that we see come up again and again, oddly enough, when we talk about good writing.

And the sad truth is, learning the rules generally means study and practice and failure. Followed by more study and more practice and more failure. And eventually some success.

Now, as you’ve probably guessed, anytime someone offers advice like this... there’s pretty much always someone who argues against it. They’ll mention an article they read about someone who did it differently or another tweet they saw about an editor who bought something that didn’t follow the guidelines. In short, they’re pointing to an exception to the rule in an attempt to disprove the rule.

A lot of the time, oddly enough, these folks are doing this to justify their own opinions and preferences.  I don’t like statement X, or what it implies, so I’ll find an example where X isn’t true and use it as proof that X is never true. Therefore, my opinions and preferences aren’t wrong.

Now, let’s be clear on one thing—there are always exceptions to the rule. Always.  Anyone who tells you that something is never-question-it, 100% always this way can be ignored. Especially if they shriek “no exceptions!!” I don’t care who they are or how many million copies they’ve sold (or not sold, as is more often the case)

BUT...

Exceptions to the rule are very, very rare. You could say exceptionally rare. That’s why they’re the exception and not the rule.

I mean, sure, there’s a double handful of authors who sold awful manuscripts filled with horrible spelling, bad grammar, and not the slightest clue about formatting. But the vast majority of those manuscripts never made it past the first reader for an agent or editor. We can point at a dozen or so people who sold their first book because they knew/ were related to/ were sleeping with the right people. But there are tens of thousands of writers (probably hundreds of thousands over the years)who broke in by taking their time and writing really good books. And, yeah, maybe I can point to a few people who sold the first draft of the very first novel they wrote. But I can also point to the tens of millions of people—actual, literal millions—whose first draft submissions were rejected.

Now of course, the downside of this is... well, it means most of us aren’t the exception. We’re all in the majority. And nobody wants that. Nobody likes the thought of eventually breaking in, we want all the success and recognition now! We want to be the exception!

And maaaaaybe we are. Maybe what we've done is good enough that it doesn't matter I broke a ton of rules and guidelines. But we definitely shouldn’t assume we’re the exception. Because that’s where things get dangerous. Just ask Vesna Vulovic.

(yes, I’m going to tell this story again)

For those of you who never heard me explain this at the Writers Coffeehouse (either at Dark Delicacies or Mysterious Galaxy), Ms. Vulovic was a flight attendant back in the early ‘70s. And in 1972, the airliner she was working on was bombed in mid-flight. She was trapped inside the plane’s hull as it plunged over six miles to the ground. 

BUT...

Vesna didn’t die.  She fell 33,000 feet to the ground and survived. In fact, she was only in the hospital for a couple of months before being discharged. She recovered for a bit longer, but ultimately she was... fine. She ended up with a limp. That’s it. Seriously. She just died a couple of years ago, in her mid-sixties.

So... anyone here want to assume they’re that exception to the rule? Feel like taking that chance? Sure, the vast majority of people would die horribly after a six mile fall—I mean, assuming our hearts didn’t explode during the fall—but Vesna did it so I guess it probably applies to everyone, right?

What? No takers?

As I was saying, it can be dangerous to start with the assumption that I’m the exception.  That the rules or requirements don’t apply to me.  I’m always going to be bound by the same rules as pretty much every other writer, and I’m going to be expected to follow them.  Until I show that I know how to break them.  If I don’t know what I’m doing or why, I’m just a monkey pounding on a typewriter, unable to explain how or why I did something and also probably unable to do it again.

Now, again, I’m not saying exceptions don’t exist. That’d be silly—they clearly do.  But it’s important to understand they are the exception. They’re the unusual rarity, not the common thing.  That’s why we’ve heard of them—because it’s such an oddball thing to happen. Like, y'know, surviving a six-mile drop.

But exceptions can’t be my excuse not to learn those rules and guidelines. All these rules have developed over the decades for a reason, and they apply to all of us. 

Well... the vast, overall majority of us.

Next time... I’m kinda drawing a blank to be honest. I’m about to dive into something new and that’s occupying a lot of my headspace is right now. Feel free to toss suggestions or requests down below, and if I don’t get any, I guess I’ll come up with something.

Until then... go write.

Wordcount Tips

If I’m Being Honest With Myself...

            Okay, look... there’s a good chance this post will piss you off.

            Two things I ask you to keep in mind, going in.

            First is that this comes from a place of kindness.  If you’re reading this, I want you to succeed.  All of you.  Well, okay, not him, but the rest of you, absolutely.  So I’m saying these things because... well, they need to be said.  And you need to hear them.

            Some of you really need to hear them.

            Second is that everything I’m going to be talking about is something I’ve personally experienced.  Not that I’ve seen another writer doing it—I’ve done it.  I’ve believed it.  I’ve been the person needing that smack in the face.

            And I learned from it.  And got better because of it.

            Writing’s tough.  It’s hard work.  I know this, because I’ve been doing it for a living for over a decade now.  When someone tells me how easy and wonderful and fun writing is, I’m often tempted to point out...

            Well, look.  There was a point when I thought writing was easy and fun.  It was back when I wasn’t taking it seriously.

            My writing ability started making huge leaps when I was finally able to admit a few things to myself.  I think that’s true of most people in most fields—if we can’t be honest about where we are, it’s hard to improve.

            That being said...

My first attempts at writing will suck—This sounds harsh, yeah, but... well...  Too often when we’re starting out, we just can’t get past the idea that something we wrote isn’t good.  I know I couldn’t.  My work was typed.  It was a full page long!  My mom liked it!  Of course it deserved to sell.  It deserved awards!  International awards!

            Seriously, there was soooooo much writing before my “first novel.”  There was Lizard Men from the Center of the Earth (two different versions).  A trope-filled sci-fi novel.  Some Boba Fett and Doctor Who fan fic.  A fantasy novel  fuelled by a sudden influx of hormones during my teen years (enough said about that).  The Werewolf Detective of Newbury Street, The Trinity, The Suffering Map, about half of a novel called Mouth.

            And then... Ex-Heroes. 
            It’s just against human nature to spend hours on something and then tell yourself you just wasted a bunch of time.  Why would I write something I couldn’t sell?  Obviously I wouldn’t, so my latest project must deserve a six-figure advance.

            The problem here is the learning curve.  None of us like to be the inexperienced rookie, but the fact is it’s where everyone starts.  Surgeons, chefs, pilots, astronomers, mechanics... and writers.  Oh, there are a few gifted amateurs out there, yeah—very, very few—but the vast majority of us have to work at something to get good at it.  And we can’t improve until we accept that we need improvement.

My first draft is going to suck—There was a point where I’d fret over my first draft.  I’d spend hours laboring over individual words, each sentence, every paragraph.  I’d get halfway down the page and then go back to try to fix things.  It meant my productivity was slowed to a crawl because I kept worrying about what had happened in my story instead of what was going to happen.

            The freeing moment was when I realized my first draft was always going to suck.  Always.  And that’s okay.  Everyone’s first draft sucks.  Everybody has to go back and rework stuff.  It’s the nature of the beast. 

            With those expectations gone, it became much easier for me to finish a first draft, which is essential if I ever wanted to get to a second draft.  And a third draft.  And maybe even a sale.

            No, needing another draft doesn’t make me a lesser writer in any way.  Every single professional writer I know (and I know a lot of them at this point) does a second draft.  And usually a third and fourth.

My writing needs editing.  Lots of editing—As I mentioned, I’ve been doing this for a while.  Surely by now I’ve hit the point where my stuff rolls onto the page (or screen) pretty much ready to go, yes?  I mean, at this point I must qualify as a good writer and I don’t need to obsess so much over those beginner-things, right?

            Alas, no.  Like I just said, my first draft is going to need work.  We all make the easy first choice now and then.  Things slip past us.  We misjudge how some things are going to be read. I’m fortunate to have a circle of friends and a really good editor at my publisher who all call me out when I make these mistakes or just take the easy route when I’m capable of doing something better.

            As I mentioned above, part of this is the ability to accept these notes and criticisms.  I’m not saying they’re all going to be right (and I’ve been given a few really idiotic notes over the years), but if my default position is that any criticism is wrong then my work is never going to improve past the first draft. 

            Which, as I mentioned above, sucks.

My writing needs cuts—Sticking to the theme, if I believe my writing is perfect, it stands to reason all of it is perfect.  It’s not 90% perfect with those two odd blocks that should be cut.  When I first started to edit, one of my big problems was that everything needed to be there.  It was all part of the story.  Each subplot, every action detail and character moment, all of the clever references and in-jokes.

            The Suffering Map was where I first started to realize things needed to be cut.  I’d overwritten—which is fine in a first draft as long as I can admit it in later drafts.  I had too many characters, too much detail, subplots that had grown too big, character arcs that became too complex.  It took a while, but I made huge cuts to the book.  It had to be done.  Heck, I just cut a whole subplot from the book I’m editing right now.  About 2500 words gone, snip-snip, in about five minutes.

            And the book it better for it.

My writing is going to be rejected –Know what I’ve got that most of you reading this will never have?  Rejection letters.  Paper letters that were mailed to me by editors.  I’ve got dozens of them.  Heck, I’ve probably got a dozen from Marvel Comics alone.  And since then I’ve got them from magazines, big publishers, journals, magazines, ezines...

            But when that first rejection from Marvel came... I was crushed.  Devastated.  How could they not like my story?  It was a full page!  I included a colored pencil rendering of what the cover should look like.  Did I mention it was typed?!

            It took me weeks—whole weeks, plural—to work up my courage to try again, and then they shot that one down, too.

            Granted, I was eleven, and those stories were awful.  I mean... really awful.

            Rejection is part of the process.  I still get rejections today.  I expect I’ll be getting then for the foreseeable future.

            Which is a good time to mention...

Rejection does not automatically mean my writing is bad—Getting that email is tough, like a punch to the gut.  It’s easy to let it get under the skin and fester.  Self-doubt feeds on rejections, so it’s important to think of it as “still looking for the right home.”

            Like I said, I’m still getting rejections today, even with the fairly solid list of credits and accolades after my name.  Editors and publishers are people too, and nothing is going to appeal to everyone.  Getting rejected became a lot easier for me when I realized it didn’t show up on my permanent record and it wasn’t a personal attack  It was just a person who didn’t connect with that particular story for some reason.

            Now, there’s a flipside worth mentioning here...

Rejection also doesn’t automatically mean my writing is good—There’s a lot of memes and recurring stories and a few general mindsets that push the idea that if my work gets rejected by an agent or editor it must be good, because all those people are idiots.  And it can be a comforting thought.

            It's also kinda close to conspiracy-theory reasoning, if you think about it.

            Going right back to the beginning of this little rant, there’s a decent chance my work just isn’t good.  No big deal.  Like I said, I had dozens and dozens of rejections before I started to get some sales.

            But if I refuse to back away from the idea that it might be me—if I take dozens of rejections as proof the system is stupid rather than admit the possibility my manuscript wasn’t ready to go out—then I’m never going to improve.

           

            If I can admit these things to myself, it can only make me a better, stronger writer.  It’s not a flaw or a weakness.  In fact, if I look at the above statements and immediately think “Well, yeah, but none of that applies to me...” it’s probably a good sign I’m in denial about some things.

            And that’s not going to help me get anywhere.

            Speaking of getting anywhere, if you’re in the Atlanta area I’m at Dragon Con this weekend.  Come find me and we can talk about books and writing and is Clark Gregg coming back to Agents of SHIELD or what?

            Next time, I’d like to put a few things in context.

            Until then, go write.

#NotAllWritingAdvice

            I’m relatively new to Twitter.  I mean, I’ve been there a couple years now, but there are some early-adopters who’ve been there for ten years or more.  I remember a while back when Ernie Cline finally got verified, and he noted that he’d been on Twitter longer than the Twitter verified account...

            Anyway, I follow a lot of writers, and most of them (and me, too) tend to toss out storytelling advice of one kind or another.  As best you can in 140 characters, anyway.  Sometimes it’s threads, random encouragements, simple reminders—there’s all sorts of stuff.

            Of course, like any statement made on Twitter, this advice is often followed by a response like “Well, actually...”  You’ve probably seen it applied to a lot of things beyond just writing advice

            In simple terms, this kind of response is people pointing to an exception to the rule in an attempt to disprove the rule.  And a lot of the time, they’re doing this to justify their own opinions and behaviors.  I don’t like statement X, or what it implies, so I’ll find one or two examples where X isn’t true and use it as proof that X is never true.

            Here’s the thing about approaching writing—or anything in life—with that kind of mindset.

            Vesna Vulovic.

            For those of you who came in late, Vesna was a flight attendant back in the early ‘70s.  I’ve mentioned her here once or thrice before, and a few times at the Coffeehouse.  Y’see, her DC-9 was bombed in mid-air back in 1972.  She was trapped inside the plane’s hull as it plunged six miles to the ground. 

            However...

            Somehow, through a near miraculous series of events and conditions, Vesna survived.  She fell 33,000 feet, was in the hospital for a couple of months afterwards, and left under her own power.  No wheelchairs.  No artificial limbs. No iron plates in the skull.  She was fine.  They did a whole Mythbusters episode about her fall.

            Vesna lived a very full, rich life for another forty-four years, just passing on back in December.  She ended up working as a political activist for most of her life. And she still holds the Guinness Record for an uncontrolled fall.
            So... this means one of my characters can fall six miles and live, right?  It really happened, so it must be believable.  Heck, I could probably say they fell a mile without even needing hospital time.

            Let’s be clear on one thing—there are always exceptions to the rule.  Always.  Anyone who tells you that something is 100%, never-question-it always wrong--especially in art--can be ignored.  Especially if they shriek “no exceptions!!”

            Here’s the catch. Exceptions to the rule are very rare.  Exceptionally rare, you could say.  That’s why they’re the exception to the rule and not the rule. 

            For example, maybe I can point to a dozen people who sold the first draft of the first novel they wrote.  But I can also point to the tens of millions of people—actual, literal millions—whose first draft submissions were rejected. 
            Yeah, there’s a double handful of authors who sold manuscript full-to-the-brim with horrible spelling and bad grammar and not the slightest clue about formatting.  There are hundreds of phone books full of people, though, whose manuscripts were tossed out almost immediately because of these same issues.

            And sure, we can point at a dozen or so people who got their first book sold because they knew the right people or were related to the right people or were sleeping with the right people. But there are also the hundreds of thousands, probably (again) millions of writers who broke in by taking their time and writing really good books.

            The downside of this is... well, none of us want to be in the majority, right? Nobody likes the thought of eventually breaking in, we want all the success and recognition now!  We want to be the exception!

            And, yeah, some folks have gambled everything on being the exception. That’s their entire business plan. I don’t want to take the time or do the work or try improving myself and my skills.  So I’ll latch onto anything that says I don’t have to, anything that proves the advice from that experienced pro is wrong.

            Okay. Fine. Just ask yourself one question...

            D’you want to go skydiving without a parachute?

            I’m willing to bet a fairly large-denomination bill that right now someone is itching to write a “well, actually...” down below that will explain how this isn’t the same thing.  Or that you can go skydiving without a chute. Or that there are two or three schools of thought that Ms. Vulovic maybe didn’t fall quite as far as all the reports said.  It’s just human nature. Some people need to argue the way you and I need to breathe.

            Even if it amounts to arguing against parachutes when you go skydiving.

            When professional writers offer advice, they’re handing out parachutes.

            So, here’s my bit of advice for you, and it’s one I hope you’ve seen underlying most of the stuff I’ve said here since the first post you may have read.

            Y’see, Timmy, the best thing I can do is assume I’m not the exception to the rule.  No matter how clever, how witty, how perfect my writing is, I should not consider myself to be the one person who gets to ignore all the established standards.  The absolute worst thing I can do is scoff at the rules and think they don’t apply to me.  No matter how vastly superior my work is, I should always assume I’m working under the same conditions as everyone else.

            The reason I should assume this is because the person reading my work is going to assume it.  That’s what I’m fighting against when I plan on being the exception to the rule.  My audience—whether it’s an editor, and agent, or just someone reading my story for free on their Kindle or on Wattpad.  All these folks have seen attempts to break the rules again and again and again, and the overwhelming majority of these attempts have been simply awful. 

            Remember—exceptions are rare.  Very rare.  The vast majority of would-be writers who break the rules do it for the wrong reasons and in the wrong ways.  So when I veer away from the rules, most everyone is just going to go with the numbers and assume my work is simply awful, too.

            Does that mean all these things won’t happen or can’t be done?  Not at all.  My writing may be so utterly, mind-bogglingly spectacular the reader will forgive and forget those atrociously dull opening pages.  The structure could be so rock-hard that no one notices the abundant typos.  It’s even possible my idea is so fiendishly, unbelievably clever that nobody will pick up on the fact that every single character is carbon-copied from Game of Thrones   Yeah, even my dwarf, my teenage assassin, and my Princess of Wyverns.

            A nice, simple rule of thumb.  If at any single point I find myself questioning if something matters—I should assume it does.  Does my main character need to be developed more than this paragraph?  Will a reader care that I misspelled forty or fifty words?  Do I need to make that part of the story clearer?  Should I bother to look up the exact format rules for this?

            My default answer for all of these questions needs to be yes.

            Again, I shouldn’t be scared to do something new, because if I break the rules—break them well, mind you—I’ll get noticed and rewarded for it. 

            Just remember a lot of people break the rules because they don’t know what they’re doing... and I don’t want to get lumped in with them.

            Next week—okay, I have to be honest.  The next few weeks are going to be rough for me, from a blogging point of view.  One week from tonight I’m going to be down in San Diego at Mysterious Galaxy, talking with Daniel Price about his new book The Song of the Orphans. If you’re in the area, stop by and hang out with us.

            And then the week after that I’ll be back in San Diego for SDCC. I’m doing at least one panel, possibly two (but I haven’t heard back on that one, soooooo...), and I think there may be a signing or two and some cool Paradox Bound swag we’re giving away...

            So we’ll see what happens next week.  As always, please feel free to make requests below.

            Until then, go write.

Artsy Character Redux

            I wanted to revisit a topic I discussed a while back. If you’ve been following the ranty blog for a while, this’ll probably seem familiar. And if not, well, I promise it’ll be as semi-informative as anything else I put up here...

            A few years ago, on one of the message boards I used to frequent, someone once accused me of being horribly biased against anything that’s “character driven” or lacks a plot.  I didn’t feel the need to address it there, but it did get me thinking.  Am I horribly biased?

            After wondering about it for a brief while, I realized... yes.  Yes I am.

            Horribly biased.

            Keep in mind what bias means.  We tend to think of it as something evil (especially during an election season) but all it means is someone has an automatic tendency to lean toward or away from something when it comes to judgment.  If I have the choice of watching a sitcom rerun or Agents of SHIELD, my personal bias is to watch Agents of SHIELD.  If one salad is made with spinach and one with kale, I’ll probably choose the spinach.  It doesn’t mean Agents of SHIELD beats every sitcom or that spinach is always better than kale—it’s just the way I roll.

            Unless the spinach is cooked, which is disgusting.

            By the same token, if I have the choice between a story where extensively-defined protagonists do absolutely nothing and a fun story with good characters and an arc... well, I’ll go with option B every time.

            So, yeah, I’m biased.  In fact, if you check the numbers, you’ll find most people are.  We like compelling characters, but we also want to see things happen.  Check out a list of bestselling books or films or plays.  How many of them involve people sitting on their butts for long periods of time?  How often do we look at a list of Academy award nominees and realize we haven’t seen 3/5 of them... if not more?

            The sad truth is, that kind of stuff just doesn’t sell.

            Please keep in mind before you leap to the comment section--I’m not the only one saying this.  People have been saying it for decades.  Probably centuries.  There’s a reason so much of Charles Dickens’ popular crap survived and most people can’t even name three of his contemporaries.  Stephen King has had a storytelling career for five decades now, but how many other authors followed him out of the 1970s?  People want to be entertained.  Silent film director Marshall Neilan humorously pointed out (about a hundred years ago) that there are two kinds of directors—the ones who make artistic movies and the ones whose movies make money.

            Are making money and popularity the only yardsticks of success?  Hell no, not by a long shot.  But they’re the common ones that most folks use.  If I tell you that I wrote a phenomenally successful book, you’re not thinking I made my dad proud, or impressed my tenth grade English teacher, or really touched three dedicated readers.  When I say “phenomenally successful” it means the book hit the New York Times bestseller list, sold a few million copies, and I’m writing this out for you next to my kidney-shaped pool while Jennifer Lawrence works a knot out of my shoulders.

            All that being said, there’s nothing inherently wrong with stories that focus more on character than on action.  There are a lot of character-driven stories that are just fantastic.  They’re vastly outnumbered by thebad ones, no question, but saying all such stories are bad would be just as lazy as the folks who dismiss all genre work as pedestrian and simplistic.  Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is far more a slice-of-life story than it is a courtroom drama.  Fiend is about drug addicts stumbling through a zombie apocalypse.  Contact is people studying and deciphering radio signals from the stars while figuring out what this discovery means for humanity.  The film (500) Days of Summer is far closer to a character study than a romantic comedy.  I’m sure anyone reading this can name three or four more.

            So, if I want to write something that leans far more on character then action, here are three tips for making it something people will still want to read.

1) Have compelling characters

            Somewhere along the line a lot of people got it in their heads that the only way a character can be interesting is if they’re seriously messed up.  This became the yardstick for “mature” fiction.  My character’s a drug-addicted, abuse-surviving, cancer-ridden, sexually-frustrated, self-loathing, dishonored soldier with a horrible case of Tourettes Syndrome currently working as a waiter at Denny’s.

            While such a person may have a great deal going on under the surface, you’ve got to wonder how my reader’s supposed to relate to such a character.  Or how they’re supposed to like them.  Even if this is some kind of redemption tale... how do I have somebody come back from going that far off track?

            If I’m going to make my story all about characters, I need to make it about characters my readers will actually like.  They don’t need to be perfect, by any means, but they also don’t have to be so flawed we wonder why they’re not in prison or an institution.  Someone facing an uphill battle is great, but someone facing a sheer cliff is just pointless.

2)Have something happen

            This is probably my biggest complaint with 99% of such stories that I read.  Nothing happens.  The week this story covers is the same week a few million other people have had.  Heck, it’s indistinguishable from the same week these characters have had fifty-two times a year.  Mundane.  Average. Unspectacular.  There’s nothing special or noteworthy about it in any way.

            Now, nobody has to fight off a killer AI android for a story to be interesting.  They don’t need to rob a bank or save the Ark of the Covenant from the Nazis or steal the Declaration of Independence.  But they need to do something.  If my characters don’t have a reason to aim a little higher while we’re watching them, then we’re seeing static characters.

3) Have an arc

            Once I’ve got a compelling character and I’ve got something happening, I need to have an arc.  By its very nature, an arc implies we end somewhere else.  Arcs that end in the same place are called circles, and there’s a reason you haven’t heard of well-structured character circles.  You’ve heard of people running in circles, though, haven’t you?  And that’s never a good thing, is it?

            The whole point of a story is to get from A to B.  People grow and change.  If there’s only going to be A, that’s just a plot point.  Plot points can be fascinating, but they also tend to sit on the page if they’re all alone with nothing backing them up.  Just as something needs to happen in the observed life of my character, something needs to change. 

            And that’s it.  Seriously.  It’s really that simple. Three tips to writing a character-driven story that will still make audiences cheer. 

            Because cheering audiences pay better.

            Next time...

            Well, I’ve got an idea for next time, but I guess we’ll see if I get to it or not.

            Until then, go write.

Re- Formatting

            Not so much a pop culture reference as a tech reference.  Came up with that title and then remembered working with my first computer when I was... nine?  I remember having to format floppy discs before you could use them.  Anyone else remember that?

            Very sorry I missed last week.  Deadline crunch. Which I’m still in, really, but I didn’t want to miss two solid weeks in a row.

            Anyway...

            I was rewatching some episodes of an old show recently, and it struck me that it had a major format problem.  And as I mulled on it, it struck me I’ve seen this problem a few times before. Sometimes firsthand, happening right in front of me.

            I want to point out something... well, I’d say it’s obvious, but I don’t think it always is. I think it’s been muddled by a lot of would-be gurus and experts spreading bad information.  And since that’s what led to the ranty blog in the first place, well...

            Anyway, let me throw some wisdom at you.

            Novels are not comic books.

            Comic books are not television scripts.

            Television scripts are not movie scripts.

            Movie scripts are not stage plays.

            Stage plays are not novels.

            As I said, should be obvious, right?

            Thing is, each of those storytelling formats is unique unto itself.  Seriously. I can rattle off at least half a dozen inherent differences between any of them.

            We always hear people complain about changes when something is adapted from a book into a movie, but the simple fact is things have to change.  I cannot tell a story in a screenplay the same way I’d tell it in a book.  And I can’t tell a story in a motion picture script the same way it’d be told in an episodic television script.

            Let me give you some examples.

            Based off my own experience—as a crew person, a contest reader, and a screenwriter--I’d guess that 99.9% of all film, television, and stage work is done from the audience point of view.  The only parts that aren’t are the very limited POV shots that sometimes crop up in horror movies or thrillers(usually outside windows, inside closets, or across parking lots) and the rare experimental film like Hardcore Henry that was funded entirely by the powerful carsickness/nausea lobby.
            Contrast that with a book, where the author, with full control, can shift to any point of view they want. I can make the reader see, hear, and experience everything through one character’s senses, knowledge, and memories... and then shift to a different character.  There’s no real way to do that on film.

            However... a book is, for a lack of a better term, a one-source format.  I have to write things out.  There’s no way for the reader to know George has blond-brown hair without me putting “George has blond-brown hair” down on the page.  I might be able to get a little subtle with it, maybe pull some literary sleight-of-hand, but at the end of the day all I can do is put words on the page.  That’s it.  I can’t slip in some details in the background, because everything in a book is presented in the foreground—right there in front of my reader on the page.

            If I’m writing for television, I also need to be aware of the very specific format that most television writing requires.  Episodic shows are usually done with a four or five act structure (not to be confused with three act structure, which is kinda-sorta something else) which requires my story to have a series of mini-cliffhangers where the commercial breaks will be.  If it’s a show with an arc, it also needs to address that a week’s passed since the last episode, and some story points may need to be repeated or re-addressed to cut down on audience confusion.

            Of course, if I’m writing for, say HBO or Netflix, then that doesn’t apply and I have a bit more freedom, structure-wise.  These episodes are almost more like mini-movies.  Except that now I need to be clear people may be binging these stories, watching them back-to-back-to-back, and take that into account.

            Stage writing is also unique because it’s happening right in front of us. There’s an inherent storytelling conceit that we’ll accept these actors don’t see us.  Or that they’re not actually in a forest.  Or they can’t hear that guy behind the tree bellowing his lines out to the back of the theater. This is a different kind of storytelling mechanic, and that’ll be reflected in my writing.

            And none of these are like comic books. Comics are this fantastic medium where we can have an active, flowing story that’s being told completely through static images.  So my comic script has to reflect this. Each panel has to be a single moment, and it has to be the right moment to convey the most impact and information while still flowing smoothly into the next moment I choose to continue the narrative.

            You’re wondering why I’m talking about all this, yes?

            These days it’s not uncommon for a story—or a storyteller—to jump mediums. As I mentioned above, we’ve all seen a ton of books and comics adapted for the movies.  I know several novelists and screenwriters who’ve worked in comics.  I’ve worked with theater directors and playwrights on film projects.

            Thing is, a story can’t go directly from one format to another.  The devices and mechanisms I use here won’t always work here.  Usually won’t, in fact. And I need to be able to make those adjustments.  A really common mistake I’ve seen is when people just yank a story from one format to another with no changes.  Or when they start using the conventions of one format in another

            That show I mentioned up at the top?  In one episode it had three reveals. Thing is, each one was essentially revealing the same thing.  But the filmmakers had assumed since Yakko was the main character for that scene, and Dot was the central figure in that scene, and Wakko was the focus of the final scene... well, they could do the dramatic, big music reveal for each of them.  Alas, it just doesn’t work that way, because—as I mentioned above—we can focus on different characters but it’s all really audience POV.  So the second time around it was more eye-rolling than dramatic and the third time was... well, laughable.

            Last year I had a chance to be in an X-Files anthology.  Truth is, though, the main spine of my short story actually came from a spec script I’d written for an old TV show called The Chronicle.  And I had to make adjustments for that.  Most notably, all those mini-cliffhangers in the story had to be smoothed out.  Some things had to be described much more than they were in the script, because now all those details actually had to be on the page.

            Y’see, Timmy, if I want to shift a story from one format to another, I better understand the conventions and limitations of each one.  And if I want to write in a different format. I need to learn that format as well as I know my current one.  I can’t just go in assuming it won’t matter, or that I’ll be the exception who gets to slide.

            So know what you’re writing.  And how you’re writing.

            Next time, I’d like to talk about some artsy character stuff.

            Until then, go write.

Yeah, That’s True, Except...

            Okay, this is late.  A week and a day.  Do you want excuses?  I was away at New York Comic Con and then came home to layouts I needed to go over, on top of all the things I just needed to get caught up on. 

            So, that ate up some time.  Sorry.

            Anyway, I’ve mentioned this idea before, but a few recent blog posts and comments I’ve seen made me want to bring it up again.  If we’re going to talk about writing, we need to agree that any such discussion is going to get broken down into either rules or advice.  Or drinking, but that’s not relevant right now.

            Right now, I’d like to talk about the rules.

            Rules are things that all of us, as writers, have to learn.  No questions.  I need to learn what words mean and how to spell them.  I must have a firm understanding of grammar.  A solid grasp of structure is required.  Characters have to hit certain benchmarks. You may notice these things come up again and again when discussing good writing.  There’s a reason for that, and it’s not that professional writers and publishers and editors are all jerks.  Learning the rules means study and practice and failure and more study and more practice and more failure. 

            Why do I bring this up?

            See, I brought up the rules because they’re a good lead in to what I actually wanted to talk about.  Exceptions.  Those cases where the rules don’t apply. Some people love exceptions.  They approach them two different ways, but usually to get the same result.

            Allow me to explain.

            The thing about rules, as so many people have said, is that I have to learn them so I can understand when and where and how to break them.  Because all the rules are breakable.  Never doubt that.  Pick any rule I mention above, or any other rule I’ve ever blabbered on about here.  Mention it in the comments and I’m sure some of the other folks here can give a dozen examples
            Now, some folks think if the rules can be broken anyway, well, why should I bother learning them?  Richard Matheson and Daniel Keyes wrote stories with lots of spelling mistakes. Cormac McCarthy and Peter Stenson don’t use much punctuation.  If they don’t need to do all this, why should I bother learning it?
            Y’see, this mentality means I’m looking at the exceptions, not at the rule.  Yeah, I can point to a handful of stories that break the rules, but I can also point to tens of thousands that don’t.  More importantly, I can point to hundreds of thousands that broke them and were rejected for it.

            Here’s another way to think of this.  Driving a car means following the speed limit.  The exact numbers vary from state-to state, but we all acknowledge that driving in a school zone requires that I travel at a certain speed. So does going through a residential area or traveling on a freeway.  Makes sense, yes?

            An experienced driver knows there are situations where I can flex those rules, though.  There are times I can go a little faster through school zones or residential areas and not worry about it.  In all honesty, I’ve driven over seventy on the highway next to a police officer and only gotten a raised eyebrow.  A lot of you probably have similar stories.

            And yet... none of us are assuming traffic laws and speed limits no longer apply to us.  We just know how to work within the framework of the laws and when we can step outside of it.  We know the rules and we know how and when to break them.
            Contrast that with the guy who goes roaring through a residential area at 70mph in the middle of the day... and then gets annoyed with the officer who pulls him over.  He’s assuming he’s the exception.  He’s doing the same thing I did, but... he’s really not, is he?

            I can’t start with the assumption that I’m the exception.  That the rules or requirements don’t apply to me.  I’m always going to be bound by the same rules as every other writer, and I’m going to be expected to follow them.  Until I show that I know how to break them.  If I don’t know what I’m doing or why, I’m just a monkey pounding on a typewriter, unable to explain how or why I did something and also probably unable to do it again.

            Also, monkeys do not get paid well.

            Now, there’s another mentality I’ve encountered a lot of online.  This is that other way of viewing exceptions that I was talking about.   They’re the folks who use the exception to the rule as a means of dismissing the rule as a whole.  For example, you say every writer needs editing.  Except, I say, Yakko published his book without editing and it did very well.  Ipso facto, writers do not need to edit.  That rule’s out the window and can be ignored. I could probably give a dozen examples of this without trying, I just don’t feel like writing them all out.  Besides, you’ve probably seen them, too.  Everything I mentioned as a rule up above—and dozens more—there’s someone, somewhere right now arguing that’s a stupid rule that this exception proves doesn’t matter.

            Now, to be clear again, I’m not saying these exceptions don’t exist. That’d be silly—they clearly do.  But it’s important to understand that they are the exception. They’re the unusual rarity, not the common thing.  That’s why we’ve heard of them.  Just because there were a hundred news stories about a writer who turned in a handwritten manuscript on yellow legal pads and got it accepted does not mean the publishing industry prefers handwritten manuscripts or legal pads.  We’re only hearing about it because it’s such an oddball thing to happen.

            Now, I try to point out such things when I can, and I think I’ve been pretty open all along on the ranty blog that exceptions do happen.  But I don’t really push them. Honestly, if I had to offer or explain every exception to every rule, this blog probably never would’ve made it past the second or third post.  And each one would be the equivalent of thirty or forty pages long.  This is kind of a teaching 101 thing.  As I said above, you learn the rules, then you learn the exceptions to the rules. 

            Y’see, Timmy, exceptions don’t disprove the rule—they prove it.  Always.  If not editing or handwritten legal pad manuscripts actually demonstrated that these rules don’t matter, then shouldn’t we be seeing hundreds of examples?  Maybe thousands?

            And yet, we don’t.  The majority of our examples are still people following those basic rules.  And flexing them here and there where they can.

            So why do some people do this?  Why do they convince people to ignore the rules?  We could probably debate that for a while.  Regardless, it’s kind of like looking at a thousand cancer patients, finding that one person who spontaneously went into remission, and then loudly declaring no one needs chemo or to get those growths removed—cancer cures itself!  First, it’s just plain wrong. Second, it belittles the 999 other people who are all struggling to do things the right way and undermines the folks trying to help them.

            Exceptions are great.  They’re why all of us can do so much as writers.  But exceptions can’t be my excuse not to learn.  All these rules have developed over the decades for a reason, and they apply to all of us.

            No exceptions.

            Next time, I’d like to take a quick minute to reveal something.

            Until then... go write.

The Muse and Cake

            Okay, I’ve had a couple of deadlines shift, so I’m not going to be able to talk about Clint Eastwood like I planned.  Instead, I’d like to share a few quick observations about the muse that crossed my mind a few days ago.

            There is no muse. 

            The muse is a lie. 

            There is only you. 

            Writing is work.  The muse is not going to do the work for you because the muse, as I said, is a lie.  The muse is not going to sort out that plot snarl or polish that dialogue or put down those one thousand words today.  The only person who will do that work is you.  That’s the ugly truth.

            The idea of the muse has been pulled from mythology and perpetuated by modern writing classes and gurus to excuse lazy behavior.  It’s an artistic, pseudo-intellectual scapegoat.  People who don’t feel like writing, who don’t feel like solving problems, they blame the muse.

            Waiting on the muse is another way of saying wasting time.  Every day you wait on the muse is a day someone else is writing more than you.  A day someone is getting more experience than you.  A day that someone is getting better than you.
            Stop waiting on the muse.
            Write.  If you want to write, if you want to be a writer, if you want to become a better writer, you need to write.  You’re going to write a ton of stuff and a lot of it is going to be crap.  But that’s how we get to the good stuff.  By working at it. 

            Not by waiting for the muse.

            Next time, Clint Eastwood.  For real.

            Until then, go write.

            No excuses.  Go write.

The Plimoth Experience

            Very sorry this is so late.  I mentioned last time that I was working on a major rewrite of the new book which was due last week.  Then I looked at it again over the weekend and asked my editor if I could take another pass at the last fifty pages before he read it.  And he said I could, because he's very forgiving of my screw-ups since I own up to all of them.  Which is why I’m late this week.

            But enough with the excuses.

            Speaking of last time, it struck me a while back that I've never talked about why I end every one of these little rants with “Go write.”  Is it supposed to be a clever catchphrase or something?  Encouragement?

            Let me answer that by telling you a funny story about Plimoth Plantation.           

            No, it’s relevant.  Really.

            While I mostly grew up in Maine, I spent my high school years in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  Yes, the same Plymouth as the rock and the Pilgrims and the Mayflower and all that.  One of the big tourist attractions is Plimoth Plantation, a recreation of the original colony (with original spelling) complete with actors playing specific historical roles.  You can walk in and the colonists will talk to you, answer questions, and usually ask about your odd (modern) clothes.
            Every year in Plimoth Plantation is 1627.  It replays again and again, following the historical record.  Births, deaths, marriages, and so on.  A friend of mine worked there for a few years with her parents, and because of her age she was assigned a specific role.  Part of her role was getting married at the end of the summer to another historical  character, Experience Mitchell (ahhh, have to love those Puritan names).  The catch was that my friend was kind of interested in another Pilgrim.  So on “the big day,” one of her co-workers gave her a wedding gift in the changing room, a t-shirt that said...

            Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.

            I laughed when she told me about it, but the phrase stuck with me.  Mostly because it’s true.  If you talk to anyone who’s considered experienced, it’s because they failed or screwed up.  A lot.

            Now let’s jump forward a bit.

            Comic writer and artist Brian Michael Bendis has a new book out called Words For Pictures.  We happen to have the same publisher (well, where this book’s concerned) and the director of marketing slipped me a copy while I was at San Diego Comic-Con last month.  I read it as soon as I got home.  It’s great, you should buy a copy.

            Words For Pictures is mostly (as the title implies) about writing for comics.  But there’s a lot of solid advice in there for writing in general.  In fact, it was interesting to see that Bendis addresses a lot of the same points in his book that I have here on the ranty blog.  In pretty much the same ways.

            One of them is this.  To be a writer, I need to write.  I need to write a lot.  You’ve probably heard this before.  Many people have said the same thing.

            Here’s the part you probably haven’t heard.

            The reason everyone says to write a lot is that we’re all going to put out a lot of crap. 

            Tons of it. 

            I believe it was Neil Gaiman (in one of his books) who said that everyone has at least three great stories in them.  While I believe this is true, I think there’s an unspoken corollary there which is just as important.  All of us have lots and lots of bad stories in us.  Dozens of them.  Maybe even hundreds.  We have contrived plots, weak characters, awful dialogue, and  terrible structure

            I wrote a ton of bad stuff that none of you ever have—or ever will—see.  I spent about twenty years getting out all my bad stories and habits.  My first attempt at a novel (in third grade), Lizard Men From the Center of the Earth.  My Doctor Who and Boba Fett fan-fiction.  My middle-school sci-fi novel.  My junior high fantasy novel.  My high school werewolf-detective novel.  My college novel, The Trinity.  My after-college-moved-to-California novel, The Suffering Map (which went through eight or nine full drafts).  Plus a ton of comic scripts, short stories, screenplays, and I think even one or two attempts at stage plays.  Thousands of pages.  Thousands of hours of work. 

            Some of you may have noticed I’m in no rush to self-publish these, despite the constant assurances from some quarters of easy money. 

            Why?

            Because, pretty much across the board, they suck.

            My early work sucks.  It’s bad.  I spent days and days writing stuff that should never see the light of day.  I have no problem admitting it.  In fact, it was being able to admit it that let me move from being a random dabbler to a serious writer.  I dug through all the bad stories and found the good ones underneath.  Maybe even one or two great ones.

            Writing all those stories was my experience.  Whenever you hear about an overnight success or an amazing “first” novel, odds are that writer really has a long string of work—and a lot of failures—behind them.

            We accept that in every field of work someone needs a certain level of mastery and experience before they’ll be considered a professional.  Taking an auto shop class in high school doesn’t make me a mechanic, and taking a CPR class doesn’t make me a doctor.  Home Ec didn’t make me a chef, and oddly enough the White House hasn’t called me about any foreign policy decisions, despite my B+ in history. 

            And these people have screwed up, too, on their path to being a professional.  Ask your mechanic and she or he probably broke a couple cars while learning how to fix them.  Lots of doctors misdiagnose patients, and some patients die from these mistakes.  Your favorite chef cooked a lot of really bad food over the years.  Some of the better politicians are the ones who admit they were wrong about an earlier position they held.

            And we understand that in all of these fields, these mistakes are part of the learning curve.  I don’t get the success, but I get the experience.  It’s why it takes so long to become a doctor or a chef or even a mechanic.

            Or a writer.

            This is one of the reasons I harp on spelling so much.  It’s an easy-to-spot symptom that usually implies bigger problems.  If my manuscript is loaded with spelling mistakes and misused words, it means I don’t know how to use my tools.  And it also means I didn’t really spend a lot of time (if any) on my drafts and polishes.

            Y’see, Timmy, at the end of the day this is all up to me.   It’s not someone else’s responsibility to make my book good.  It’s mine.  If I can’t spell, have a weak vocabulary, poor plots, thin characters, flat dialogue... that’s all on me.  Which is why I asked my editor to hold off reading this new draft so I could fix some things.  Part of being a professional is knowing how to do all this stuff and, well... doing it.

            There’s an all-too-common belief that just finishing something means it’s good.  That the act of struggling to finish that first novel is the experience I need to call myself a good writer.  I mean, I made it all the way through to the end of a novel on my first try.  That’s a lot of writing.  That novel must be worth publishing and being read, right?

            But the truth is, the vast majority of first novels are awful.  The second ones are pretty bad, too.  The third ones are at least tolerable.  Ex-Heroes might’ve been my first novel that was published, but it was my seventh-and-a-half attempt at writing one.  And, as I mentioned above, I’m really glad it was the first one people saw.

            Because that junior high fantasy novel... man, that was embarrassing.  On so many levels.

            Next time, I’d like to hit another problem right on the nose.

            Until then... go write.