Author: terribleminds (page 209 of 465)

I get this sometimes from new writers:

“Well, at least you’re published.”

Or, “Well, you’ve had a lot of books published.”

Kind of a must be nice comment.

And it’s not entirely false, either.

I admit — there’s a big privilege to being, y’know, a published author. (I hesitate to say a “successful” author, in that success is a bullseye duct-taped to the back of a coke-addled hop-frog. I consider it a success just to finish a book. That right there is an Epic Eat-A-Motherfucking-Cupcake-Messily Grade-A Bonafide Success. Remember, most people finish a novel Once Every Never.) It’s amazing having a book out there. On shelves. In people’s hands. I’m privileged that anyone would want to read whatever cuckoo shit I’ve dumped out of my own head onto the paper. I get to play in a sandbox for a living, and people pay me to do it so they can watch.

It is, in fact, weird and wonderful.

It isn’t, however, without its own kind of stress.

I liken it to this metaphor: in a RPG, you start out as some dick-nosed schlub hunting rats with like, a sharpened spoon. You’re the worst warrior ever, basically, or the crappiest mage who knows all the worst spells (“I cast UNTIE SHOES on the ogre!” “Sorry, he’s more than ten feet away, and your spell has a limited range.” “Oh, goddamnit”). So, you think, I just need to level up, and then I’ll get to do cooler stuff. And you will. Them’s tru-fax. You’ll get to leave the spoon behind and pick up a proper sword. You’ll eventually be able to, I dunno, conjure flaming birds that you can summon to attack your foes.

But your foes also upgrade at the same time. It’s not like you become RANTHAGAR, VAGABOND PRINCE OF THE HISSING WASTES but you still hunt mice with your legendary blade. Now you fight dragons. You get better, but the world gets harder to match your skill. The pressures of the narrative increase: before, the townsfolk just asked that you get rid of those rats out of stables and cellars. But suddenly they’re pleading for you to save them from stompy orc armies or big smelly naked giants who keep stepping on all the houses. The quests increase in difficulty. The monsters get bigger even as your sword gets sharper and starts to sing showtunes.

The real world analog is like this:

You get a book deal, yay.

Then the book approaches release. You start getting reviews and pre-orders and buzz. Or bad reviews and no pre-orders. Or good reviews and no pre-orders. Or no buzz. Or some buzz but not enough buzz. Then the book comes out and: nervousness and excitement! Magic and madness! It lands on shelves. Into people’s hands. You have no idea how many gets sold. Even if you’re self-published and you can see the metrics unfolding before you — you still don’t know how the book is really doing. Are they digging it? Quitting before it’s done? How far in do they get before they abandon it? (The wizards at Amazon probably know all of this. They probably can say, if pressed, “The moment they gave up on your book is when you used the word ‘widdershins’ on page 47. That is the moment you plunged your book into ruination and ignominy.”)

A book release is a bright flash: a supernova of heat and light. And then it kinda collapses back in on itself and there’s this vacuum in its place that is akin to the feeling of summer being over, or of a vacation ending, or of the pit of shame you feel after successfully masturbating. And then you do it all again: you try to generate more heat and light. You write another book. Or a third book because the second one is maybe already in the pipeline. And those books come out and —

Listen, it’s the same thing. It’s the same thing now for me (ZER0ES is my 13th novel) as it was when my first book came out. I still feel nervous and excited. I still feel full of magic and madness. I still feel hungry and bewildered and scared. The pressure is, in fact, worse. Because every book that lands has to do well, or the next book after it is suddenly in question. And every book requires some kind of extra effort beyond just writing it — you gotta do the marketing honeybee butt-dance, you gotta write blogs and be on your game and go do stuff amongst ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS (remember that many writers are just introverts playing at extroversion; all failed actors afraid of the stage). Every time feels like the first time. Every book feels like the first book.

Maybe that changes. Maybe it’s different for other writers — of course, it must be, given that we’re all different people and not cloned clippings from the Author Tree.

Still — for me, at least, it’s still the same.

It’s wonderful and horrible and scary and amazing all in equal measure.

And right now it’s even harder than it was when I started. I know more. I’m better at this. I’ve done well enough with my past books. And that only amps the pressure. It doesn’t reduce it.

I wouldn’t change any of it for the world, and I wouldn’t give it up for any other work. I adore it. This is the kind of pressure on which I thrive — but I think it’s worth noting that it’s the same all the way down. Unpublished writers, newly-published writers, legacy authors — I think we’re all just putting ourselves out there. Every book is a chance to make readers or lose them. Every story is one soaked with our blood and our tears and every story is our weirdo book-baby stumbling into the world. We all want the best for it. We all fear the worst for it.

But we keep on keeping on.

Because this is who we are. Isn’t it?

An Anonymous-style rabble rouser, an Arab spring hactivist, a black-hat hacker, an old-school cipherpunk, and an online troll are each offered a choice: go to prison or help protect the United States, putting their brains and skills to work for the government for one year.

But being a white-hat doesn’t always mean you work for the good guys. The would-be cyberspies discover that behind the scenes lurks a sinister NSA program, an artificial intelligence code-named Typhon, that has origins and an evolution both dangerous and disturbing. And if it’s not brought down, will soon be uncontrollable.

Doylestown Bookshop| WORD| Joseph-Beth Booksellers| Murder by the Book

The Poisoned Pen | Mysterious Galaxy | Powells | Indiebound 

Amazon| B&N| iBooks| Google Play| Books-a-Million

* * *

It’s here.

I hope you check it out.

The Wall Street Journal listed it as one of three books on their summer reading for geeks — alongside epic bad-ass geek-queens Felicia Day and Jane McGonigal.

B&N SFF blog said, “Wendig weaves together genre tropes like a madman, mixing sci-fi tech, frenetic chases, and elements of horror into a brash, apocalyptic thriller with a wide stroke of black humor.”

io9 listed it as a must-read SFF book of August.

So did Amazon.

Kirkus said it’s “…an ambitious, bleeding-edge piece of speculative fiction that combines hacker lore, wet-wired horror, and contemporary paranoia in a propulsive adventure that’s bound to keep readers on their toes.”

Publishers Weekly says the book “piles on the thrills and chills in this fast-paced near-future novel about human frailty and inhuman ambition.”

RT Book Reviews says “an engaging, diverse cast of characters, a pace that almost never lets up and more than a little of Wendig’s signature humor, Zer0es contains absolutely no dull moments.”

Nerdist said: “If you’re in the mood to be scared silly by the possibilities we create when we mesh our lives with technology, definitely give this a read.”

Five Quick Things I Learned Writing Zer0es

Here’s five quickie things I learned writing this book. Ready? Steady. Roll.

1. I sold this book on pitch, which is both easier and harder than you think. It’s easier because — hey, I didn’t have to write the book before I sold it. I just said, “Hey, how about this book?” And very kindly Harper Voyager said, “Hey, how about this money?” And then we freeze-frame high-fived as the credits rolled. Except the credits roll right into the sequel, which is me writing the book I just pitched. See, when you sell a book that’s already done, you’re confident (ideally, at least) in the book you’ve put out there. Now you have literally no book and yet it’s a book you have sold. So, now? Now you have to write the damn thing and pray to the reliquary of Sweet Saint Fuck that you get it right and stick the landing. The pressure is jacked.

2. Books that require more robust research are slower to write than books that require… well, less of it. I mean, if you’re writing about vampires or Wookiees or the Knights of Fartfantasyland, you can get away with a lot of stuff. But this book is a near-future thriller. Hackers are a real thing. A lot of the technology (er, thankfully not all of it, I hope) in this book is real stuff. That means: research. And it means sometimes stopping the day’s writing just to do a deep dive into figuring out how to nuance the story forward in an accurate — or, at least authentic way. I mean, don’t get me wrong, this is still a book full of MADE-UP SHIT. It’s not a documentary. The good news is: I did a year’s worth of reading and research before I even wrote the damn book. (And still probably got most stuff entirely wrong!)

3. Hackers are amazing. They’re our modern-day Wild West outlaws — on the fringes of known civilization, beyond the margins of charted territory. Living outside the law — sometimes malevolently, sometimes benevolently, sometimes straight up chaotic neutral. (And in D&D terms, that may best symbolize the hacker: chaotic neutral.) I mean, shit, we even talk about them wearing black hats, white hats, gray hats. Some hackers also turn into their own brand of “law” — just like outlaws sometimes became lawmen. Hackers get shit done, no matter what color hat they wear. And they’re frequently reminding us of the vulnerabilities of the systems that surround us.

4. Hackers are fucking scary. Or, more to the point, the ocean in which they swim is terrifying. Listen, in nature, monoculture is dangerous. Right? If you plant ALL ONE PLANT, then that single plant becomes vulnerable to… well, you name it. Disease. Pests. Weather. Whatever. Polyculture helps things survive. Problem is, all our systems are coming online and connecting with each other. Linking arms and laughing ha ha ha, singing tra la la, until next thing you know what we’ve created is a systemic, informational monoculture. Hack one system, you can hack ’em all. Every system then gets its little boltholes and trap-doors from one to the next. Computer security is a dire situation because, by and large, it’s controlled by governments and companies that don’t actually know what they’re doing (or who are trying to do the least effort to control bottom line money). Bonus: my post at Omnivoracious called “This Hackable Life.”

5. If you really want fucking scary, hey, artificial intelligence is it, folks. Last I checked, Stephen Hawking is no dummy, and he said, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” Elon Musk — you know, our real-world Tony Stark? — called it “our biggest existential threat.” (He also referred to the development of AI as “summoning the demon.”) Hell, Google’s Deep Mind is dreaming that we’re all made up of eyeballs and dogs. That can’t be good. I think it suggests we’re all just meat for the machine.

Why Grab A Copy?

Well, first, because I like to hope it’s a good book. I tried very hard to write a book that was equal parts scary, fun, savvy, thoughtful, and yet still retaining ESSENTIAL WENDIGNESS.

If that’s not a good enough reason, well —

*warms up the SOLICITATION MACHINE*

If you’ve ever wondered exactly how this website operates, it is exclusively by me selling books. Not Patreon, not Kickstarter, not donations. And I really would like to keep it that way. The deal is, I front the costs and the time and everything to maintain this blog as best as I can, and ideally you then buy my books and the GRIM CYCLE OF BLOOD AND HORROR uhhh I mean the glorious cycle of blog content and fiction-flavored goodness continues. That’s the implicit deal that I occasionally (like right now!) make explicit.

That doesn’t mean it’s a requirement — I do this because I love it and because I hope it what I do here at the blog either entertains or enlightens. But the reality is, the website does cost money (hosting fees for this site are surprisingly high) and also costs the time that I take out of every week. Buying this book could be considered a subscription fee of sorts, if you care to look at it this way. Grabbing a copy of ZER0ES is a good way to support the blog.

Bonus: if I sell books, publishers tend to want me to write more books. BOOKS BEGET BOOKS BEGET BOOKS. It’s books all the way down, baby. But that works only if you and other folks check ’em out. The publisher has gone above and beyond to support this book, too, and it’s been a really great experience from snout-to-tail. And I hope this book rewards their efforts and and that their efforts reward the book.

(I always fear being so bold-facedly honest about hey plz buy mah books, y’know? And yet, at the same time, I understand that sometimes it’s worth being up front with stuff like this, yeah? The art of asking and all that jizzle-jazzle.)

So: ZER0ES. Hope you check it out and dig it and tell others. And you leave a review. And send me cake and pie and a pony and then I eat the cake and the pie and the pony and —

Well, I’ve gone off again, sorry.

Here you might ask, as sometimes folks do, where the best place to buy the book happens to be? In what format? Let me be clear that how you buy the book is entirely your call. Buy the version you want to buy  from the place you like to buy books. I’ll make an extra note here that buying from local bookstores — at least, good ones that you love and who love you in return for buying there — is a nicely ethical choice because those places run on slim profit margins but large margins of SHEER BOOK LOVE. And book love creates book community. Seriously, the people who stand behind bookstore counters or who shelve books in bookstores are basically transcendent humans — literary bodhisattvas who have remained behind to help guide the rest of us toward AWESOME READING OPPORTUNITIES. They are equal parts avatars and angels and fuck yeah, bookstores.

Also, some folks seem to note with some shame that they get my books from libraries — whoa, hey, no shame there. Libraries are fucking boss, son. Librarians are biblio-wizards. They are book-recommendation assassins. I love libraries. If you have a library you love, go get Zer0es from a library. (If they don’t have it — I’d love if you ask them to carry it.)

Hope you’ll spread the word.

You can read the first five chapters here.

You can add the book on Goodreads.

Where I’ll Be

Reminder that tonight I’m in Lexington at Joseph-Beth Booksellers with Richard Kadrey and David Wellington. We’ll hang out and chat and sign books and breakdance naked.

I’ll be doing a Reddit Books AMA tomorrow (though I’m also traveling so, woo!).

Thursday I’m at WORD in Brooklyn with Daniel Jose Older.

I’ll be at DragonCon (Fri, Sat) and Decatur Bookfest (Sun).

I’ll pop by Murder by the Book on 9/27 with Kadrey and Beth Cato.

And I should be at NYC ComicCon, too.

I like to ask this question sometimes, because it’s an important one.

This week I’m bouncing around a few bookstores — Doylestown Bookshop, WORD Bookstore, Joseph-Beth Booksellers — with some more appearances on the way, and every time I pop into a store like these I’m reminded about how awesome they are. Awesome first because they let me in the door. I mean, I wouldn’t let me in the door. I’d lock my ass out. So, right there, that’s a kindness I do not deserve. But also because these aren’t just WAREHOUSES OF SHELFSPACE for books. These are community harbors. These are havens for stories and authors and the fans and readers of those. Which means they are magical places.

That’s not to say every bookstore is awesome by dint of it being a bookstore. Some bookstores don’t get it. They don’t understand that surviving in this day and age doesn’t mean outselling or outcompeting Amazon but rather, providing things that Amazon will never provide (community, connection, real human interaction and recommendation, book love, book smell). Some bookstores still just want to sell you books and that’s it. And a lot of those stores, I find, aren’t friendly to authors — which isn’t the worst sin, since we authors are sort of weirdos. But some of these stores aren’t even friendly to readers. I was at a bookstore recently (which will remain unnamed) that seemed like it didn’t even want to sell books. The books were on high shelves, poorly arranged. The kids’ shelves were untouchable and visually inaccessible to actual children-height humans. It was a shame. (Contrast that to a local favorite, Let’s Play Books, which actually is a kids’ bookstore that wants kids to grab books and plop down and start reading.)

So, I want to ask you:

What are some of your favorite bookstores?

Locally or around the country? Hell, even around the world.

(In addition to the ones mentioned, special love must also go to Mysterious Galaxy and Poisoned Pen, both of which have treated me very well and are super awesome. And kudos, too, to Borderlands in SF for not only surviving, but kicking ass in the process.)

Shout ’em out. They give us book love. Let’s give them some bookstore love in return.

AHOY-HOY, WORD NERDS.

I got my Dragoncon schedule (tentative!) up here, alongside my Decatur Bookfest Appearance!

First up:

Star Wars: Aftermath Midnight Launch
Thursday, 10PM, Edgewood B&N.

Title: Urban Fantasy or Horror: Lines of Distinction 
Description: Our panel of authors discusses the distinguishing features between these two closely-related genres
Time: Fri 01:00 pm Location: Chastain ED – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
(Panelists: Richard Kadrey, James R. Tuck, Cherie Priest, John Hornor Jacobs, Chuck Wendig, Jenna Black)

Booth Signing! At The Missing Volume
Time: Fri 6pm – 7pm; booth # 1301-1303 & 1400-1402

Title: AFTERMATH!
Description: It hit your Kindles at midnight. We have the author himself to discuss the 1st book on The Road to The Force Awakens!
Time: Fri 08:30 pm Location: A706 – Marriott (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Chuck Wendig)

Title: Adventures in Super Fantasy
Description: Authors write on the fly, then pass to another writer. Hilarious improv mayhem!
Time: Sat 01:00 pm Location: Embassy C – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Panelists: Naomi Novik, Todd McCaffrey, Delilah S. Dawson, Lynn Abbey, Chuck Wendig)

Title: Chuck Wendig – Zer0es
Description: Chuck Wendig talks about his newest book ‘Zer0es’.
Time: Sat 02:30 pm Location: Vinings – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Panelists: Chuck Wendig)

Title: Comedy and Calamity: Humor in UF
Description: Our panel of authors shares their ideas on combining humor with the more serious aspects of their stories. Laughter guaranteed.
Time: Sat 10:00 pm Location: Chastain ED – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
(Panelists: Delilah S. Dawson, Richard Kadrey, Carrie Vaughn, Jim Butcher, Eric R Asher, Chuck Wendig)

And at Decatur Book Fest:

Title: Espionage and Demons
Date: Sunday, September 6, 2015
Location: First Baptist Decatur Carreker Hall Stage
Time: 2:30 p.m.
(Panelists: Chuck Wendig and Richard Kadrey)

Strapped in to artificial wings spanning twenty-five feet across, your arms push a tenth of your body weight with each pump as you propel yourself at frightening speeds through the air. Welcome to world of The Pilots of Borealis.

Inside a pressurized dome on the Moon, subject to one-sixth Earth’s gravity, there are swarms of chiseled, fearless, superbly trained flyers all around you, jostling for air space like peregrine falcons racing for the prize. This was the sport of piloting, and after Helium-3, piloting was one of the first things that entered anyone’s mind when Borealis was mentioned.

It was Helium-3 that powered humanity’s far-flung civilization expansion, feeding fusion reactors from the Alliances on Earth to the Terran Ring, Mars, the Jovian colonies, and all the way out to distant Titan. The supply, taken from the surface of the Moon, had once seemed endless. But that was long ago.

Borealis, the glittering, fabulously rich city stretched out across the lunar North Pole, had amassed centuries of unimaginable wealth harvesting it, and as such was the first to realize their supplies were running out.

The distant memories of the horrific planet-wide devastation spawned by the petroleum wars were not enough to quell the rising energy and political crises. A new war to rival no other appeared imminent, but the Solar System’s competing powers would discover something more powerful than Helium-3: the indomitable spirit of an Earth-born, war-weary mercenary and pilot extraordinaire. 

1: Researching the Future

A fantastic plot and great characters are required for any good piece of fiction; that’s no great revelation. A science fiction book like Pilots of Borealis though has even a more basic premise governing its success. There are a thousand scientific facts, from every discipline, to which science fiction must conform in order to create a work with an important patina, one whose absence will be as obvious—and unseemly—to the reader as a pair of scuffed and unpolished shoes worn to an important interview: it must be scientifically correct. Imagine what kind of fact-checking should be required to create a civilization that stretches from Earth out to Titan in the twenty-fifth century and one can appreciate the rather daunting refresher courses necessary to bring a work like Pilots of Borealis to life, in every curriculum between astronomy and zoology—including flora and fauna that don’t exist! The density and speed of the Solar Wind, whether bees can flourish in a low-g environment with high concentrations of carbon dioxide, the subtleties of artificial gravity, the effects of nuclear detonations in the vacuum of space, how titanic mirrors might be placed on the Moon to shine light onto the floors of deep craters otherwise in perpetual darkness—these and quite a few other very important details had to have been addressed…and with just the right touch.

2: Family Friendly Future

This second lesson wasn’t actually learned, just confirmed. There are few more hair-raisingly adult, white-knuckle thrill rides than Pilots of Borealis. It treats horrific and eye-averting topics that humanity may plausibly face in centuries to come, so its pages are hardly populated with characters like those found in the Sound of Music or other genteel literature of a less lurid time than the present. However, it accomplishes everything while refraining from explicit set-piece forays into obligatory sex scenes, unnecessary cursing, and other dressing that the reader will at end see we can not only do without, but come away with a more fulfilling feeling of having taken in something worth the time. Here is a view of the future that is thoroughly unpredictable, astounding, sublime, and terrifying, yet one that the elderly can gift without embarrassment to their grandchildren, and which teachers can assign to their classes. Why not write a book like that? I don’t know when, if, or how the never-to-be-forgotten protagonist of the story makes love with Nerissa—herself, the most pre-eminent, bone-achingly beautiful athlete in the Solar System—I don’t know, and I wrote the book. I do know there is a very poignant love story within the pages, and much of it left to the most fertile place for such tales: the reader’s mind.

3: Your Editor Probably Knows Best

Even on those occasions when the changes he asked for seemed to necessitate violating a few constants of the universe, in the end, there was a way around it, and he turned out right after all. He made the book exponentially better. This in stone, then: trust your editor.

4: “Erase, Erase, and Erase.”

When Horace was asked for three rules of good writing two millennia ago, he responded with the above witticism. I’ve known that for a while, but was one of the few lucky ones that never had to take it to heart. Traditionally, I’m a science writer, and well-known for three books on seismic forecasting that have caught media attention and put on the air throughout the world. My books on earthquakes, though, have never been described as “beautiful,” not be me nor by anyone else. Math equations can’t really be dolled up too many ways, a fact is a fact, and there is only so much literary verve that can be brought to bear in referencing peer-reviewed abstract. So I’ll not give the number of drafts that gave birth to my other books; I have enough detractors in seismology with sufficient weapons at their disposal already. I will say though, that I wrote Pilots of Borealis over, and over, and over…and over again. I have to admit, and hate doing it, Horace is right. But, then again, maybe not. Which leads me to . . .

5: Trust Yourself and Your Story

Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned is that there are no formulaic recipes a writer can follow to sure success—not even if they’re written in Latin and two thousand years old, and certainly not the ones you’re reading now. One can diligently prepare reams of plot outlines and character sketches and every other stratagem and artifice but there must come a time—if you’re lucky and on to something!—when the story or a character bolts out the door, insisting that you follow whether you like it or not. Sometimes the writer will catch up out of breath only to see that the destination is a dead end and the time was wasted. It wasn’t though; it was exercise, good aerobic road work, training for the test ahead, because in the end the only way to write is to do it. No one takes his notes and diagrams into that crucible—that’s just you…alone.

* * *

David Nabhan was a certificated bilingual public school teacher for nineteen years in South Central Los Angeles. Nabhan is now retired from teaching and has relocated to the Northeast, where he travels, writes, and tutors Spanish.

David Nabhan: Website

Pilots of Borealis: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

As some of you may know, I wrote this funny little book called SPACE CONTEST: CRAFTER BATH —

*receives note*

Okay, apparently it’s called something else? Whatever.

Point is, that book — like many of my books — is written in third person, present tense.

Now, that’s a particular stylistic choice. And for some, I imagine a bit jarring. I’ve seen the style more and more lately, but when I used it in Blackbirds, not so much. (Not suggesting I invented it or anything. I JUST MADE IT COOL. Okay probably not, but shut up.)

As you know, Bob, a few weeks back Entertainment Weekly released a short preview of Star Wars: Aftermath, whereupon eager fans and readers discovered that I was, indeed, taking this particular stylistic highway with the book. Some folks said they liked it, some said it grew on them, others did not like it at all, and a few were just like… fucking super mad about it. (Spoiler alert: do not read the comments under the Entertainment Weekly article. Or anywhere else on the Internet because comments sections are the Internet’s septic systems. Okay, you can read the comments here because people are cool and because I actually moderate this place, as should anyone governing any comments section online.) Some readers even said that because the classic prologue to the stories is A long time ago, that the books must absolutely be written in past tense or otherwise, Jar-Jar becomes Emperor and Greedo kills Han Solo back in the Mos Eisley cantina and BB-8 is never born.

I understand the complaint. It’s different. It’s a stylistic choice. It isn’t for everyone.

But it is for me.

And so, I’d like to unpack a little why it is exactly I like to write in this style.

TAKE MY HAND AND LET US GO ON A MAGICAL JOURNEY TOGETHER.

*takes your hand*

*throws you into the Pit of Carkoon*

*cackles*

Cinematic

Ever read a screenplay?

Third person, present tense. All of ’em.

Ever watch a movie?

A movie doesn’t happen in the past — even if it’s set in the past, it’s unfolding literally before you.

There’s an argument to be made here that, a-duh, books are not movies. Which, yeah, I know. I’m mule-bitten sometimes, but dang, I’m not that dumb. Just the same, the types of books I write — while not anti-intellectual, I hope, and certainly not in defiance of literary form — feel better to me when they’re more cinematic. When it feels like something playing out on the screen inside your head. That’s not to say I ignore the internal dimensions (mental and emotional) of the novel form. But it give me the freedom to write a book and imagine a camera running behind the words and pages. Dynamic and alive.

Urgent

I write in what you might consider “thriller pacing” a lot of the time — a sense of danger and escalation, a vibe of threat and ticking clocks and present dread. A lot of books to me read like, Once upon a time, which is to say, “This already happened.” It’s history. A re-telling, not a telling. Events gone past, times gone away, characters who have already come and gone and who did the things they did and now it’s all over.

Present tense affords me the chance to subvert that. It lets me write a story that feels all the more dangerous because its outcome isn’t set — by making it now instead of in history, it becomes a living document. It’s an evolving narrative. Just that tiny shift in timing lets the narrative (to me) become fresh, unpredictable, as sassy as a downed powerline sparking and snapping in the street. It feels like fate isn’t yet written. The destiny of the characters is ever in flux. As such, it lends itself to urgency — and you read less to find out what happened and more to find out what’s going to happen next. Every page feels like it exists only because you turn it. Less an excavation and an archive and more an act of shared narrative creation. The reader makes the story happen just by reading.

Close, But Not Intimate

Third person present lets me get close, but doesn’t demand intimacy. I don’t have any problems with first person present, but to me the combination can — though not always — feel too close. The characters run the risk of becoming irritating or over-sharing. And first person also limits us to who we know and who we see. It undoes some chances for suspense or mystery because we’re living in a character’s head all the time. Here it feels like we’re hovering close enough to hear the character’s surface thoughts — to get some internal history, but not to stand under the waterfall of their thoughts and drown there.

Simple And Elegant

No great description here to unpack — I just find third-person present to be a really clean, clear way to write. It’s not like looking at a painting, but rather, like watching someone paint.

It’s Sometimes How We Tell Stories To Each Other

Maybe this is more a factor of how we tell stories in the American Northeast, but we tell stories orally to one another, and they tend to skew to the present tense: “So then the guy at the counter says, ‘No, we ain’t got no fucking otterburgers,’ but I know he’s got fucking otterburgers because I’ve seen the guy eating ’em right out of the jar. And Betty over there, she’s walking by the Joust machine in the corner looking like someone just peed in her Lucky Charms because she wants otterburgers too and now this clown is telling me no goddamn otterburgers. Right? I mean, fuck.”

We tell stories like we’re all there, right now, present and accounted for. Even if it happened earlier that day or two years ago. We tell them actively, urgently, presently.

So, your turn.

Do you like present tense? Why?

Or, moreover: why don’t you like it?

Better with third, or only in first?

Sound off in the comments.

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The journey to become a successful writer is long, fraught with peril, and filled with difficult questions: How do I write dialogue? How do I build suspense? What should I know about query letters? How do I start? What the hell do I do?

The best way to answer these questions is to ditch your uncertainty and transform yourself into a Kick-Ass Writer. This new book from award-winning author Chuck Wendig combines the best of his eye-opening writing instruction — previously available in e-book form only — with all-new insights into writing and publishing. It’s an explosive broadside of gritty advice that will destroy your fears, clear the path, and help you find your voice, your story, and your audience.

Amazon

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Indiebound

Writer’s Digest