-
It’s probably not a good thing that I’m even now trying to figure out how to cram some profanity in that header. Fictional? Fucktional? Test Drive? Tit Drive? This isn’t good. I have a disease.
Focus. Focus, Wendig.
Deep breaths. In, out. In, out.
Here we go.
I had this wacky idea. This notion, if you will.
I thought, when you’re learning to drive, Dad doesn’t just throw you the keys and say, “Good luck, you’ll figure it out. Highway’s over there. Accelerator is the vertical pedal on the right. I’m going back inside to glumly play with myself while you’re mother’s fellating the pool boy.”
Further, when you’re buying a new car, you don’t just look her up and down through one squinting eye and then suddenly proclaim, “I’ll take it! She’s mine! Here’s a check for $18,000. Later!”
No, no. When you learn how to drive, you practice with Dad. (Or, if you’re me, you practice with your mother and sister because your father would’ve had an aneurysm.) When you’re buying a new car, you take that bastard for a spin — see how it handles, see if it feels good the way it is.
Heck, we’re just starting the “holy shit, I think we’re gonna buy our second house” process (any advice on that front is welcome), and we don’t just click through the pictures online and scream, “That one! We’ll take that one. No, we don’t need to see it. I’m sure everything’s up to code and the basement isn’t home to a pile of corpses stacked like firewood. So what if the heating system requires us to burn live ducks to stay warm? I love berber carpet. And new appliances! Plus, it says, ‘good for pet owners.’ Sure, that might translate into, ‘we own 100 constantly-breeding cats,’ but why look a gift horse in the mouth?”
No, no, fuck that. Look a gift horse in the mouth. Seriously, why wouldn’t you? That horse might have a disease. What, just because he’s free you don’t want a vet to check him out? What if that’s where ebola comes from? They don’t know. Maybe it comes from gift horses. Maybe that’s how it spreads. Or shit, think what would’ve happened if somebody decided to look the Trojan Horse in the mouth. That thing was a gift, but you crack its wooden jaw and what do you find? Oh! Surprise! A bunch of dirty Greek solders (probably wearing diapers — hot, full diapers). So, take it from me. You get a gift horse? When nobody’s watching, you open that thing’s mouth, see what’s in there. You might find ebola. Or Greek invaders.
Where were we?
Right.
You buy a house, you go look at it.
Heck, if somebody would let you, you’d probably try it out like a mattress at the mattress store. “Let me lay on it for a while. Can I have sex with my wife on this thing? It’s important.”
Writers, though, we often treat our manuscripts with a hasty, “Hey, jump in with both feet and don’t bother looking!” attitude. Right? I do. Just dive in! Get your feet wet! Your hands dirty! Your pee-pee greasy!
And so I advocate for writers the same thing you’d do for a house, a horse, a car: take it for a spin, have a good look, check it from soup to nuts.
(And now, finally, we circle the drain and orbit the purpose of this post.)
Let’s talk about the test drive. Specifically, test driving your manuscript.
No matter how much outlining and prep you do, when the day comes to write, it’s often a day of uncertainty and fear. It feels (to me, at least) like being dropped in an empty desert with no landmarks on the horizon, and someone — let’s just call him “God” — says in a booming voice, “CHOOSE A DIRECTION.” You feel like, fuck, I choose a wrong direction, I’m going to get eaten by a grue.
And yet you forge on, as you should. As you must. You write.
And for me, it always feels weird. At least at first.
The voice isn’t quite right, maybe. Or when the character is faced with a choice, you’re just not quite sure. It’s like, “What does she do with her hands? Is this what she’d say?” Feels like you’re in a conversation with someone you don’t really know. A little awkward. A little hesitant.
And in fiction, awkward and hesitant are fun-killers.
Now, that can be okay — as noted, you can always go back and rewrite. Lord knows that, for me, the earlier parts of a draft are the ones that see the most rewriting. Because as you forge ahead, you gain confidence in the characters and the setting and the story, and with confidence comes awesomeness. Ideally.
But I wonder, maybe you can short circuit that initial fumbling awkwardness early on. Maybe you don’t have to be the uncertain foal birthed on wobbly legs.
(That, by the way, is also an ancient Persian sex move.)
So. Take the characters and the setting for a test drive.
Seriously. Take a week or two before you actually begin the proper writing of the manuscript, and just… write scenes or stories with these characters. These don’t need to be complete. I don’t recommend publishing them. You can just be like, “Okay, what does Dave do at a diner when confronted with a wrong order? And then spilled coffee? And then a gang of bandits?” Write it. You know that Dave breaks up with his girlfriend before the story begins, hey, write that scene out. You don’t need to ever use it. As you write it, you might find the scene goes a different place than you expected — maybe he didn’t break up with her, but she broke up with his sorry ass. Even more importantly, you write Dave for a week, you suddenly start to know Dave. Intimately. Biblically. You’re all up inside Dave. (Uhh. Shut up.) You get his voice. You get his mannerisms. You can feel how, when confronted by conflict, Dave jukes right or feints left. You learn that Dave can’t throw a punch but he can take a Herculean amount of damage. You learn that Dave is afraid of ferrets. You learn that first thing in the morning, Dave likes a Cafe Americano and he takes his Morning Constitutional while listening to his parrot, Steve, recite the poetry of A.E. Housman.
Point being, when you then step into the shoes of the proper story you’re writing, you’re not typing with uncertain hand and thinking with uncertain mind. You know Dave. You know the world in which he lives. Suddenly you’re off at the races — bang.
Here’s how this came to me (and I’m sure it’s not a particularly original idea, but it’s something I never thought of before now) — I’m poised to start writing the second book in a series (where the first book has yet to sell, but fuck it, I want to write this book so bad I can taste it like vinegar in my mouth), and you know what I’m finding?
The main character, Miriam, is easy-breezy to write.
I know her. I know her perfectly well.
I know her because I wrote a whole goddamn book about her.
Yes, that’s a long-ass test drive, but it works. With her I have no hesitant steps. I suffer no questions.
So, in lieu of writing a novel every time, I thought, “Well, in the future, I might just take a week and play. Play with that character’s voice, play with situations, play with the world. Sandbox that shit. Get past the cat turds and what-not and get a feel for the texture, the sand, the possibility.” It’s a way to remove fear.
And, the great thing is, I wonder if you might not be basically mining for gold, too — you write random shit with that character for a week, next thing you know you’ve got five, ten, fifteen thousand words of material. Maybe that character said some funny stuff. Maybe you made up a secondary character to act as temporary foil but dangit if you don’t love that character, too. You learn things and write things that can be extracted from the experiment and dropped into your current WIP (work-in-progress).
You can, after all, steal from yourself.
In this case, piracy is definitely encouraged. So is fan-fiction, since you’re your own biggest fan.
Smiley face, wank wank wank, tongue out, jizz, snore.
Anybody tries this trick, I’d love to hear if it works out.
About The Author
ChuckWendig
Chuck Wendig is equal parts novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He is the author of the novels DOUBLE DEAD, BLACKBIRDS, and MOCKINGBIRD. In addition, he's got a metric boatload of writing-related e-books available, including the popular 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with wife, dog, and newborn progeny.
Leave a Reply
- RT @jeffshelby: THREAD OF HOPE just hit #1 on the Amazon Mystery bestseller list. Everyone stay calm. #holycrap
- In other news, happy birthday to my wife, who is more beautiful than when I met her, and is an excellent mother to our insane dictator baby.
- Thus are my proclamations. Which you are free to ignore. One last proclamation: I would like a cookie. Someone better pony up.
- Oh, and I get jokes about a dead person -- it's our way of controlling our fear of death -- mostly, it comes across as you being a dick.
- You have a right to be sad. You have a right to be not sad at all. Infringe not upon the rights of others to feel however they feel.
- Flash Fiction Challenge: The Unlikable Protagonist February 10, 2012
- Martha Wells: The Terribleminds Interview February 9, 2012
- No Go For The Terribleminds Kickstarter February 8, 2012
- Two Girls And One Search Term Bingo February 8, 2012
- 25 Reasons That Writers Are Bug-Fuck Nuts February 7, 2012
21 Responses and Counting...
That’s cheating. You did this on purpose. You made a post just so you could BINGO in one go, hoping you get it as a random post.
I know. I smell your treachery. And ham. Ham? When the fuck did I have ham?
I’ve learned the hard way about your test drive, and I can say, I am born again. When I was setting up my current manny (hahah! MAN!) I decided to write a little background fiction to set up things Back In The Day, stuff way (WAY) before the start of the actual story. That was well and good, but then I plopped one of my main characters into it for no good reason at all, and with no explanation. I just let him deal with the problem that (in theory) his ancestor was supposed to be dealing with. I don’t know, maybe they tag teamed through time. Maybe he sang “tra-la-la” at the wrong motherfucker and had to pay the consequence.
Anyway, I had been stumbling – like, a lot – with how this character would work. But when I did that (Tra-la-la? Tra-la-la ME will you? Not on my watch!) it may not have made any fucking coherent sense, but I did suddenly know exactly how Sir What-The-Eff-Am-Doing-Here would react to a situation.
It was delicious. Like ham.
I popped back into his real skin and banged out
his wifea couple of thousand with more confidence. It was like dripping honey all over happy and burrying my sack in it.I didn’t come up with a good explanation for it, and I wouldn’t even have thought about it again – so thank you for putting this into words. It reminded me of what I’ve done before, and what can help me now.
I hereby demand you comment on every post, ever.
The Internet will be made better by such devotion.
Also: please link to the Terribleminds Bingo here, so that others may see the horror you’ve writ.
– c.
“Dad doesn’t just throw you the keys and say, ‘Good luck, you’ll figure it out…’”
Yes. Yes he did. It was a stick-shift too. Thank God for video games.
Your Dad was cruel.
…also, illegal.
– c.
Dude, I love your posts. They put things into perspective for me, and I seriously do not mean this as an insult, they make me realize if this guy can do it, so can I. Again, that is not meant to belittle the obvious amount of work and awesome you’ve put into honing your craft. What I mean is that you help make the process more apparent; suddenly it isn’t this weird clandestine thing jealously guarded by dudes in black cloaks and waxed mustaches, tempting Tom Cruise into Scientology. It’s a process, one that can be understood – even attacked. You may not succeed, but at least you have some landmarks to help guide the way.
I think that is one of the reasons I keep coming back; not all of your advice resonates with me, and some of your opinions I openly disagree with; but you present everything with a respectful (and self-deprecating) eye, and I totally dig on that.
So there.
Anyway, here is the link to Terribleminds Random Post Bingo. Chuck cheats.
http://wordasylum.net/images/tmblogbingo.pdf
I can think of a couple people for whom this advice would be most useful.
Holy shit. I was totally playing Bingo too. This post rocked. Where are my winnings?
I think this is a fine idea, and I think it’s going to help a great deal with the book that is currently being glanced at in Works and evaded. Fucking thing. It wants to eat me.
Julie:
Whenever you can, ditch Works.
Take it out back and shoot it in the head. Then the chest. Then the ass. Then burn it. Burn it and bury it. Then pour gas on the ground and burn that, too. Salt the earth after. Then move to another state.
Works is a plague.
Maybe try some of the free software. (Though, in the end, I can only recommend that people get a proper copy of Word however they can manage it.)
– c.
@Julie: You can beta test Office 2010 until they release it later. Works great – love it.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx
I did a combination test-drive/outlining by writing a story about my current MC via Twitter as little 140 character sometimes-flash-fiction-but-usually-vignettes. Works a treat: I don’t get a lot of rich-background-tapestry stuff going on, but since I’m boiling the story down to (a) the key stuff that happens and (b) only the most important stuff the guy says/does, I got a really clear picture of his character.
@julie: I first-draft using writemonkey, and make it pretty with OpenOffice.org (after unchecking “view text area” and shutting off “auto complete words” in the “auto correction” area). Both are free and both work wonderfully.
Thanks guys. Hubby told me the other night that through work he’s apparently able to get Office 2007 uber cheap. No, I’m not saying how cheap. He’s looking into it, because we both need it. He needs Outlook, and I need Word.
@Doyce, that’s pretty awesome. Post a link if you got one to an aggregate view of that stuff.
– c.
What a timely kick in the ass. Here I am staring at a pile of plans and a blank screen wonder how the fuck this character is supposed to tell his story. So I suppose I should thank you twice: once for giving me a new sense of direction and once again for giving me an excuse to dick around for a week while still feeling productive.
@Kate:
This may deserve its own post, but there are times when dicking around *is* productive.
– c.
@Julie: OpenOffice Writer is also free, and is about as robust as Word. It does some things better than Word, and Word does some things better than OpenOffice, but I use both for different reasons, and they’re about comparable. Plus, free is a great price point.
@Chuck: I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but I’ve kind of done the same thing with some other characters. The main character I used for my short story in “Close Encounters of the Urban Kind” was test-written in a few chapters of a novel I abandoned early on, so he was easy to write. The PLOT was a bear to work with, but the character was just fine.
@Eddy:
Plot is definitely its own goblin. Outlining helps take the fear out of plot, and I think this “test drive” thing might help take the fear out of character and setting.
Now, I just need to find the thing that helps take the fear out of random grizzly bear attacks, and I’m golden.
– c.
I’m sort of doing this as a way to get back into a manuscript that went on hiatus for a bit during the school year. Pretty much, there was a part of my character’s past that was relevant to the story, and I wanted to get a more concrete idea about it. Also, who was Michael when he was still under Barnaby’s control? What was he like? Perhaps more importantly, what was Asherah like way back then? Although really, the whole story started because Michael wandered into my head and wouldn’t leave until I wrote him down…
I would have loved to just learned to drive alone. It would have saved me an afternoon of parallel parking at *every telephone poll* the entire length of a 1 mile industrial park. Thanks, for that one Pop. Then the guy didn’t even direct me to park like that at the end. But I did it. Oh, yes. And asked his opinion on it.
Neat concept, Chuck. Which I may try in the fall for a 2nd book as well. The summer is for finishing the edited draft of the first one to pass around. I also like Doyce’s idea of tweeting something. I often find the 140 character limit forces ingenuity.
K
Excellent! There is a lot out there about how to know your character; everything from ‘interview them’ to writing out a physical description, blah, blah, blah…..
I pretty much have an image jump into my tiny brain right off, a physical description of the poor sod or sodess, but how they see the world, act, think, fart…is always a bit hazy. It causes problems big time. I am often scared to even sit down and write a scene with them in it (if it even comes to me) because they sort of wander around bumping into things, arms dangling at their sides…I have absolutely no idea who these guys are. I just know I need them, cause ah, well, its fiction, not Haiku. However, after the first few scenes they start showing up for work on time.
So…last week I mentioned that I have to go farther back in my story. Actually write the back story into the MS now, should have been there all along anyways, I was cheating myself and any fool trying to read this, but (big but!!!) Characters that were always on the hazy periphery of the back story, now have to step up and get their asses out on stage and who the fuck they are is anyone’s idea at the moment. So….I am going to try this, be patient (brownies take time).
[...] yesterday, after internal struggles of epic proportions, Chuck Wendig posts with a suggestion to take your fiction on a test drive. Fabulously timely advice. It reignited the fire under my butt for this project and gave me a way [...]
[...] Take A Test Drive [...]