Author: terribleminds (page 218 of 465)

Various quickie updates, for those who care to have them:

• I asked Scott Sigler if he wanted to take a look at my upcoming novel, ZER0ES (where hackers fight a sinister, self-aware NSA surveillance program), and he said, “Sure, kid, whatever,” and then he patted me on the head and gave my beard a lucky rub and then danced back into the forest from whence he came. Well, he has once more returned from the briar and he has given me not one blurb but, in fact, several of them. In fact, he blurbed the book while drinking whisky, and so the blurbs… they sort of degenerate quickly. He has posted the results of this drunken blurbing for all to behold. I laughed so hard at this until I realized the one about pooping might accidentally make it onto the book. *hurriedly emails the editor*

• (Fine, jeez, if you want the actual blurb, I think this is the one you want: “ZERØES turns ones and zeroes into pure gold — Wendig hacks the action thriller.” — Scott Sigler, New York Times best-selling author. Thanks to Scott, who rules.)

• As a sidenote, while he was reading ZER0ES on the plane ride into Phoenix ComicCon, I was coincidentally reading his newest, ALIVE — a head-trip YA thriller about a group of teens who wake up in coffins in a strange place and have to survive and figure out what the unmerciful crap is going on. It’s weird and awesome. I like to think of it as LORD OF THE FLIES mashed up with HELLRAISER. That comes out later this month so go make with the grabby-grabby.

• Also speaking of Herr Doktor Sigler, he recorded a podcast whilst at PHXCC with me and Delilah S. Dawson, and the three of us sit and chitter-chatter about being YA authors who also sometimes say really inappropriate things in public and in our books and oops is that bad? I’ll drop a link to the podcast when it emerges from the Internet the way Godzilla emerges from the briny sea.

• Storybundle! A dozen e-books on writing by authors like Bob Mayer, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith and yours truly. Set a price. Determine how much of that price goes toward bundler, author, and charity. You’ve got less than 24 hours left on the clock to nab it.

• Atlanta Burns is on sale at Amazon along with a whoa-dang host of other great YA books — Gwenda Bond’s Girl on a Wire, Sarah Fine’s Sanctum series, Christina Farley’s Gilded series, and more.

• Fantasy Faction’s Dan Hanks did a very kind review of Under the Empyrean Sky — you can read the whole review here, but if you’re looking for a snippet: “Under the Empyrean Sky is that most wondrous of things – an intimate tale, set against an epic backdrop that leaves you feeling as though you’ve experienced a story far grander than the words on the page actually convey. In that respect, Star Wars: Aftermath is in great hands. And as for The Heartland Trilogy, I absolutely can’t wait to see what happens next.” You can nab the first Heartland book right here.

• Some folks have said that I should talk more about the books I blurb on here, and to that end I totally agree, so let’s do that, yeah? I blurbed three books that landed very recently…

• Peter Clines: The Fold. “The Fold is that rare thriller that always keeps just one step ahead of the reader…a crackling, electric read.” A group of scientists find a way to bend space and create a teleportation channel, except, oops, they don’t know how they did it and hilarity I MEAN TERROR swiftly ensues. The third act is gonzo amazing good times.

• Eva Darrows (aka Hilary Monahan): The Awesome. “Hilarious and twisted, this is one bad-ass jump-kick of a book. Moveover Buffy, because monster hunter Maggie Cunningham is in town.” If you want to meet the little sister of Miriam Black, this is probably your book. A sex-positive, ass-kicking YA heroine? Check the book out. (Also one of those rare books that tries to be funny and actually does it.)

• Richard Thomas: Disintegration. “Sweet hot hell, Richard Thomas writes like a man possessed, a man on fire, a guy with a gun to his head. And you’ll read Disintegration like there’s a gun to yours, too. It’s a twisted masterpiece.” This is just a fucked up book, folks. Like, in the best way possible. Noir thriller. Go grabby. It’s like, $2.99, to boot.

• Last but not least, hey, I’m going to San Diego Comic-con! I’m doing one panel there that’s some kind of [edit: secret thing]. More details as I know ’em.

Going to cons or checking my email or wandering into the woods, inevitably a writer (or a rogue whitetail deer) will ask me one of a pre-selected set of questions. These questions are understandable — I’m not knocking them. But I did think, hey, maybe I’ll take the Top 15 by frequency, bop ’em in a single post, and see if I can’t hit a few fly-balls into the outfield.

Maybe some of these answers will help you.

Most likely, none of my answers will help you.

But sometimes bad answers are better than no answers at all.

So let’s do this thing.

1. How Do I Get Published?

“Have you written a book?”

“… y… whhh… no?”

*judgmental squint*

Seriously, this is one of those questions that is alarmingly simple to answer and simultaneously too complex. So, I’m going to go with the completely short-and-sweet answer:

Write a book. (A-doyyy.) Make that book as awesome as your earthly power allows.

Then either:

a) Enter it into the TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING MACHINE, which is to say, get an agent and have that agent shop the manuscript around to a gaggle of free-range, artisanal editors.

b) Fling it into the SELF-PUBLISHING MAELSTROM, which is to say, get a cover, and format it so it doesn’t look like hot poop on a clean window and then catapult it up onto the self-publishing marketplace of your choice and wait for the money or non-money to flow.

More on the deviations between those choices in a moment, but for now, the mechanics of getting published is quite easy. Being successful at it is a whole other bag of cats.

2. How Do I Get An Agent?

You need bait and a trap.

Gruyere makes excellent bait. As does a bottle of wine. Or a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan. A slick-walled pit makes an excellent trap. Then what ensues is like Stephen King’s Misery, except you’ve kidnapped a cockadoody dirty-birdie bona-fide NYC agent!

Okay, maybe not that, exactly.

But partly that.

You still need bait — meaning, a hella good book. And you still need the trap — meaning, a hella good query letter. And here you want to ask how you write a good query letter, don’t you? I can see the question forming on your desperate, quivering lips. That is, like with all these questions, both easy in mechanics and difficult in the quality of execution. Writing a query letter is always an act of talking a 100-lb. pig and getting it into a 5-lb. bucket. Necessary, but brutal. A bloody rendering of the work you wrote into a couple paragraphs. The rest of the work left on the floor in gory ribbons.

My best and shortest advice on writing a query letter is: don’t study other query letters but rather, study the flap copy of books. Particularly books like the one you wrote. Flap copy is designed to attract and entice, which is also the job of a query letter. Learn how to write good back cover copy of your book, and translate that to a query letter. (Bonus: if written well, it shows the agent you are somewhat savvy at marketing and not just story-making.)

The real question you should be asking is: what makes a good agent? I know a lot of writers who have agents and don’t have the right relationship with those agents, and that always saddens me. Your agent is a partner, not your boss. Your agent is interested in your career and not a single book in it. Your agent will answer your emails. Your agent will make you (within reason) a priority.

(One question that fell off this list but still gets asked a lot so I’ll address it here is — “Do I need an agent?” The very short and obvious answer is, no, you don’t need one. But yes, you damn sure should want one. A good agent will maximize your potential and if you think you can go it alone or with just a lawyer and actually operate at the top of your game, I would like to take this opportunity to beat you about the head and neck with a stapler.)

3. Can You Read / Review / Edit My Story?

This is not a writing question but a writing-related question, but I am asked it often, so:

No, I cannot.

Almost literally.

I cannot for a lot of reasons.

a) legal reasons

b) time reasons

c) fuck you reasons.

Do you walk up to a chef and ask that he make you a sandwich, or worse, that he shove the sandwich you just made into his mouth so you can tell if it’s any good? Do you call up a home contractor in the hopes he’ll take time out of his day to come look at your handiwork so that you can join the ranks of contractors around the country? No, I can’t read your story. What the hell? Why are you asking me that? Don’t you know how rude that is? Stop asking me that. And definitely don’t just send me something. That’s weird. You’re weird. Stop being weird.

OKAY fine here’s where I admit I did this once upon a time. (Asking, not sending.) I was a young dumb penmonkey and I asked someone who shall remain nameless (cough cough Christopher Moore) if he’d read some bullshit I wrote, and he was actually really polite in his answer. I try to be similarly polite to individuals, but let me drop that veneer of politeness here and say:

Never do this or you will be eaten by bears.

*demonstrates my pointing to the cage of bears behind me*

4. How Do I Write A Good Character?

I love that this is a frequently-asked question. I do! Because character is everything. Nobody wants to read a book about a lamp. Unless the lamp is like, animated and has shit to do, it’s just a lamp. History is made of people. Stories are made of people. It’s all Soylent Green. We are people who want to read about people, even if those people are robots or wyverns or animated lamps.

Just the same, you might as well ask me:

“How do I personally get to Mars?”

Or,

“How do live my life until death?”

It’s such a wide-open, scary fucking question. Art is not an equation. Characters are not LEGO mini-figs where you just pop snap on the legs and pop press on the head and snap click on the hair. They’re this curious alchemical reaction transitioning the crass metal of your imagination into the burnished gold of a character that exists on the page that I love and that feels real.

I cannot tell you how to write a good character.

I can give you a few guidelines I follow and you do what you like.

Characters must want things. And they must pursue these things. Active characters (i.e. characters with agency) are more interesting than characters without it — meaning, the character is not a toy boat floating down a river but rather is the rock that breaks the river in half, or is even the river herself. Good characters needn’t be likable but they should be livable — meaning, we must be willing and able to live with that character for 300 pages. They should seem consistent yet also evolve — they should change yet still be recognizable as that character.

Above all else, they have to be interesting.

And what does that mean? Interesting?

I have no bloody idea.

It’s a different thing for everybody.

Best bet is: look at your most favoritest characters of all time and figure out why you loved them. Ask yourself what made them so compelling to read? What allowed them to crack through your breastplate and swim around in the sweet viscera of your heart’s love? Study that. Dissect them. As with all of these things: the lessons of how to write are often in what you have already read.

If you want a post specifically geared toward creating characters: then make with the clicky-clicky: the Zero-Fuckery Quick-Create Guide To Kick-Ass Characters.

5. Actually, How Do I [Insert Authorial Story Task Here]?

How do you create tension? Or speak to theme? Or invoke mood? Or choose a great font? Or write in the nude like a forested nymph? So many questions with so many answers. I probably have the answers, in the sense that I am a loud-mouth who likes to pretend he has actual answers. I don’t. I have theoretical answers. I have answers that might work for me. I can say, “I did X, and maybe X will work for you too. I write in the nude by flinging all my clothes into a hamper, decorating my beard with hallucinogenic berries, and then I run sky-clad into the woods while covering my twig and berries with actual twigs and berries — but only while I’m running because I wouldn’t want to catch my no-no-bits on some briar or whack it against the rough-bark of an old apple tree…”

Beyond the more incisive, particular answers, I do have some generic ones.

a) Read actively. Do not sit back and merely enjoy a book. But as you read it, TEAR IT APART WITH YOUR MIND. Rip it open from eyebrows to asshole. Get all up in them guts. If you want to learn how to write tension, read a book you consider excellent at that. Try to figure out why that works for you and what parts of the book demonstrate that specifically. (Warning: this will make you hate reading and love reading all the more. It changes how you insert story into your brain.)

b) Just fucking try shit out. If you wanna learn how to surf, before too long you have to put aside the lessons (“stand like this, hips this way, don’t stop and fuck sharks”) and get on the actual surfboard — first on the sand, then in the water. You just gotta do shit. Then, once you’ve done it, it’s time to come back to it and rip it apart and maybe have some other people rip it apart and figure out why it worked or more likely why it damn well didn’t. The cycle goes roughly like this:

– try a thing

– fail at it because duh of course you’re going to

– fail quickly and with great joy

– reflect upon your failure

– fucking try it again because what did you think you’d get it right the first time?

– repeat x1000

6a. Should I Self-Publish Or Publish Traditionally?

*pinches bridge of nose*

*long sigh*

Yes.

6b. Okay That Didn’t Help Me.

Hey, it was an honest answer. Your best bet is trying both.

But the real deal is, maybe you’re suited for one or the other. Because no matter how much the adherents or acolytes on either side of the fence would have you believe, no matter what you believe about success rates and outliers and gatekeepers and whatever other weaponized horseshit everyone is firing around out of their cannons —

Not everybody wants to do everything.

And not everybody is going to be good at everything.

And nothing is a guarantor of success.

Self-publishing? You do it all yourself, earn more of the money per sale (and earn it more quickly!), but suffer the limitations of the marketplace in the process.

Traditional publishing? You cede some control, get an advance but earn less money per sale (and earn it slowly), but have the theoretical advantage of a wider marketplace.

Advantages and disadvantages of each.

If you really want the hard-ass, pin-me-to-the-ground answer? Try traditional first because then you can see if you like it. If they say “no” you can always consider self-publishing still. In fact, that “no” may come with some value-adds: you might discover more things to fix in your story and you might also get those secret-not-so-secret signals that tell you your book is good but they don’t know what to do with it. That’s a sign to self-publish — an edge-case book that won’t fit in the traditional space might still be amazing enough to reach sales and readers on its own.

7. Something-Something Social Media?

Sure? Do social media because you like it not because it’s some kind of obligation. Nobody wants to read the blog of someone who is being forced to do it. Just like we don’t want to read a book written by someone who hated writing it. (You turn to page 257 and across the book in a big-ass font is “PLEASE HELP ME CALL 911 AM TRAPPED IN NOVELIST SWEATSHOP OH GOD WHAT MISERY IT’S BASICALLY UPTON SINCLAR’S THE JUNGLE IN HERE oh god they’ve seen me.”) Tweet because Twitter is fun for you, not because it’s on your checklist. Put the social in social media. Social media is a great place to meet other people doing what you want to do, and it’s also a great place to talk to your audience. Note I said talk to, not yell at.

You know how we use the phrase IRL to differentiate between what’s happening in reality and what’s happening on the Internet and on social media? Newsflash: social media is reality. It’s not illusion. We need to treat what happens online like it’s real because oh shit it really is. It’s not Game of Thrones. And when you’re online, the same rules apply as when you’re offline:

Be awesome. Don’t be shitty. Why would you want to be shitty?

8. Something-Something Brand And Platform?

*makes a yucky face*

A platform is a thing you use to stand on and yell down at people.

A brand is a thing they sear into the asses of cattle.

Neither of those things interest me as an author. People like to talk to me about my brand as if I am an expert on the subject or a good example of what a brand is supposed to be. And I tell them I don’t have a brand or care about brands because I don’t think anyone would recommend I create this — *gestures at self* — as any kind of brand. And then they’re like, “BUT THAT IS YOUR BRAND,” and then I dry heave because my personality is not some carefully-constructed persona. This is me. I am who I like to be online. I try to be the best version of myself. My voice is what matters. That me and my work and all of it conspires together to feel like… well, me.

I do me, and you do you.

And the only platform you should care about is the one you build out of AMAZING BOOKS.

9. How Do I End My Story?

You stop writing it.

You probably want better advice than that.

FINE, MOM, JEEZ.

My only real advice toward an ending is: the whole book is you building dominoes and the ending is you knocking them down. It should feel natural and not like you failed to knock them down or worse, like you’re knocking down a different set of dominoes — ones we did not know were being set up. You have an infinite set of endings, but the one you choose should be written as if it’s the one that’s so obvious and organic that no other ending would make any sense at all.

10. Should I Outline?

“Should I have eggs for breakfast? Should I move to Albuquerque? Should I buy sex furniture?”

Hey, shit, I dunno.

Once upon a time I would’ve given you an unqualified YES because of course that’s how I did things and I was young enough and dumb enough (and solipsistic enough) to assume that IF I DID IT AND FOUND SUCCESS then that was the golden shining path and if you didn’t walk that golden shining path you were basically a bridge troll or some kind of mutant super-oaf.

Truth is, everybody has their own way to do things. We all dig our own tunnels and detonate them behind us. We all burn the map after we draw it. You gotta find your way. But that means not being set for or against anything. It means trying things. If you haven’t tried outlines — particularly if you’re having trouble finishing your work or feeling like it won’t come together properly — well, try it out. At the very least, eventually a publisher might ask for an outline (I’ve had to do professional outlines for a variety of projects), so it remains a skill worth learning even if you do not personally care for them.

11. How Do I Minimize Distractions?

ERADICATE THEM WITH ZERO MERCY.

It’s like this — imagine you had to perform a task of vital fucking importance. Something not only of grand import, but an act so fragile that you don’t want anything to stand between you and success. We’re talking like, CPR on a loved one. Or defusing a bomb. Or making love to a wyvern. Now, replace that act with writing your goddamn book. The work has to be so vital (and so uncertain in the act) that if you truly care about it, you’ll kill your distractions with two to the chest and one to the head.

Unless you’re being distracted by children. Don’t kill children.

*the MORE YOU KNOW star sweeps glittery across the screen*

Some quick tips:

– Look into programs like Freedom or Anti-Social

– Have a writing space

– Protect that writing space

– Set aside specific writing time

– And drum roll please, protect that writing time

– Surround yourself with people who respect your work and your process

12. How Do I Defeat Writer’s Block / Self-Doubt?

You don’t. You just learn to ignore it because it is a lying lie-faced liar who fucking lies.

Note that this is very different from dealing with depression.

(Though depression is also a diabolical liar.)

For that, see this post: “The Writer & Depression.”

13. How Do I Self-Promote?

Don’t be noisy. Don’t be intrusive. Don’t be spammy.

Do be creative. Do bring your talents to bear. Do be nice.

Talk about your work in an honest, authentic way.

Best advice: worry more about promoting other’s work than your own. Here’s a fact: when I talk about my books or other authors get on here to promote their own books, if at the same time they reference the work of another writer? That work gets twice as many clicks as the book they’re actually promoting. We want to read what others love, not what others are trying to sell to us. The selling part works, but only to a certain end. Book-love, however, is forever.

14. What Do I Do About Genre?

Ignore it.

Too easy an answer and there exist many reasons to utterly discard that advice out of hand. But for me, writing a story isn’t about genre, and if it’s too much about genre, then it gets drowned beneath it. Storytelling isn’t beholden to genre. Genre is a thing people just made up, like movie ratings or cat memes or jorts. Worry about it later. Don’t worry about it now.

Read in your genre, but read way the fuck outside it, too. Reading too much “in” the genre that you love is why you see a lot of samey-samey reiterations of story. It’s like willingly inserting yourself into the Human Centipede of writing and publishing. In other words: ew, don’t do that.

15. [Incoherent Gabbling?]

I hear that.

Solidarity fist-bump for you, writer-person.

Writing is hard, publishing is harder, and both are really weird. Very little of This Thing We Do comes with true answers beyond what is both obvious and often not-so-obvious: if you want to be a writer then you need to write. (And you really need to finish what you begin.)

Best I can tell you is: keep on keeping on. Write long and hard, slow and fast. Write to climax. When you’re done, clean up and do it all over again. Worry not. Care less. Work your ass off.

And remember:

None of us know what the fuck we’re doing.

* * *

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

B&N

Indiebound

Writer’s Digest

At the end of last summer, I ran an awkward author photo contest.

Which is to say, I asked people to submit authorial photos of themselves that were, in a word, completely terrible. Truth is, most author photos are somewhere between fine to great. A novelist smoldering with intellectual possibility! A crime author at a fake crime scene! A sci-fi author looking up at the stars! A literary author staring off at the middle-distance and haunted by literary things! Pierce Brown just being super handsome! (Seriously, I met him this past weekend at Phoenix Comic-Con and it’s like, dude, you need to ugly it up a little. Handsome? And talented? And charming? Hint-hint, that guy better be a serial killer or he’s just too good to exist. We’re watching you, Pierce Brown. We are watching you.)

But then sometimes you get this guy:

(That’s last year’s winner, by the way — it’s not a real author photo.)

In fact, you can check out last year’s entire submission photoset here. I mean, holy shit. Lady with a chicken! Dude in a wolf hat! A lion eating dinosaurs! What the fuck is happening!

I loved the contest so much, it’s time to do it again.

SO, here’s the rules:

Submit to me the most awkward author photo you can conjure of yourself.

This must be a photo of you. Not someone else. You must also own the rights to the photo.

Send this photo to me at terribleminds at gmail dot com with subject header:

REVENGE OF AWKWARD AUTHOR PHOTO CONTEST

And send it to me by [EDIT: 6/23], at noon EST (meaning, you get two weeks).

Photoshop or other manipulation is okay, but not necessary.

You get one entry per person. Multiple entries disqualifies you automatically.

Winners will be determined by your voting (a roughly week-long process).

Prizes!

All three winners get:

That is the Secret to Writing mug.

(You have to be in the United States to win and receive the mug — though international can win it provided you’re willing to pay for the shipping.)

But as they say, WAIT, THERE’S MORE.

First prize winner (the one with the most votes) also gets:

DEATH.

Literally!

I will kill you in the fifth and penultimate Miriam Black book (tentatively titled The Raptor & The Wren) in some creative manner. Miriam always sees death — since it is her gift to behold how people are going to die by touching them — and you will creatively perish in the book. (And yes, I’m totally stealing this idea from Kevin Hearne.)

Second prize winner will get (in addition to the mug):

My writing e-book bundle — eight books, y’all, $20 value.

Third prize winner gets:

NADA.

I mean, except the mug.

But c’mon, it’s still a mug.

WHY DON’T YOU APPRECIATE NICE THINGS.

So, that’s it.

That’s the deal.

Get your photos lined up. Go big. Go awkward. Be as terrible or weird or what-the-fuck as you can. Play with the expected tropes of having an author photo — or don’t! YOU DO YOU. And we’ll vote.

The heart of grief lies somewhere between one man’s expectation and another’s intent.

Enemies come. But one enemy believes the gods were wrong about his exiled people. And he’s impatient.

Nations arm. But one man finds a realm paying for its gearworks with an awful currency. And he’s angry

Politicians lie. But one leader lies because he would end the days of slums and porridge. And he’s ambitious.

Songs restore. But one woman will train to make her rough song a weapon. And she’s in pain.

Magi influence. But one sage follows not his order’s creed; he follows his heart. And his heart is bitter.

And one young man remembers. He remembers friends who despaired in a place left barren by war. Friends who did self-slaughter. But he also remembers years in a society of science. A gentler place. So he leaves the rest, daring to think he can lead not in battle, but by finding a way to prevent self-slaughter, prevent war.

The heart of grief . . . is a trial of intentions.

 * * *

SOMETIMES A LOOK IS ENOUGH

I think, as writers, we often default to having our characters verbally share their feelings. But character communication isn’t simply about what is spoken. In fact, I’ve found that if I stare long enough at a block of dialogue, I can communicate everything that character is trying to say in a simple look. Or gesture. Condescension, for example, or dismissiveness, often work better when the character doesn’t even waste energy needed to speak an insult.

SCIENCE IS COOL, EVEN IN FANTSY FICTION

In Trial of Intentions, there’s an entire society dedicated to science. I have colleges of astronomy, physics, mathematics, cosmology, and philosophy. I spent a lot of time researching in these areas to write with a modicum of authenticity. And this is all inside an epic fantasy, mind you. Those sections are among my favorites, providing a nice counterpoint to swords and magic and all the rest. It has a reason for existing in the book, of course. But beyond that, it felt natural to me; science can invoke that same sense of wonder we often read fantasy to experience.

IT’S OKAY IF NOT EVERYONE IS RATTLING THEIR SABRES

Related to #2, I realized that while I had badass fighters preparing for war, I could have characters with just as much badassery whose goal is to avert war. I grew enamored of the idea that a few might use investigative techniques and rigorous thought and debate to try and find a way to stop innumerable deaths. Of course, along this path I wrote in mortal threats and painful backstory and the price of failure for these folks. But I liked the outcome, having different characters tackle big problems in very different ways. Also, a battle in an astronomy tower. Right?!

YOUR COOL MAGIC SYSTEM IS BEST EXPLAINED THROUGH CHARACTER USE

I’m a musician. I listen to everything from jazz to metal. I’ve had classical voice training. I’ve toured and sung shows in different parts of the world. Etc. And I brought that all to bear in building my music magic system. And then, I dumped a great lot of it on the page in the form of instruction of a music magic student. In revisions, I realized that while I loved these scenes, they weren’t working for the reader. So, I cut them back. Way back. And shifted most of the instruction and/or demonstration of my magic system into scenes where it’s being used. I tell you, it was more fun for me this way, too.

LIFE STUFF GETS INTO YOUR WRITING STUFF

It was always the case that the world I built in Trial of Intentions was a dire place. For some, anyway. For example, there’s a barren stretch known as The Scar, where children no longer desired by their parents are sent. You can imagine the emotional damage of those that live there, reflected and exacerbated by the wasteland in which they live. So, some choose to leave, by way of suicide. But as I started writing Trial, something in the real world happened. A friend of mine made this same choice. I thought I’d passed through the stages of grief okay. But in going back over the book, it had clearly gotten into the words. Trial isn’t about suicide, but I can’t deny its influence, either. A few of my characters deal with the aftermath of having loved ones who’ve made this choice. It gives them a powerful motivation to do the things they do. So, I have to admit that life informs art—sometimes, at least—in more than a casual way.

* * *

Peter Orullian has worked at Xbox for over a decade, which is good, because he’s a gamer. He’s toured internationally with various bands and been a featured vocalist at major rock and metal festivals, which is good, because he’s a musician. He’s also learned to hold his tongue, because he’s a contrarian. Peter has published several short stories, which he thinks are good. The Unremembered and Trial of Intentions are his first novels, which he hopes you will think are good. He lives in Seattle, where it rains all the damn time. He has nothing to say about that.

Peter Orullian: Website | Twitter

Trial of Intentions: Amazon | B&N

Perception is a first person narrative horror adventure that puts players in the shoes of a blind woman who must use her extraordinary hearing and razor-sharp wits to solve mysteries and escape a deadly presence, all without sight. Crafted by a team of veteran PC and console developers (BioShock, BioShock Infinite, Dead Space), Perception offers a bold and fresh take on first person narrative games.

After months of research seeking the house from her nightmares, Cassie discovers an abandoned mansion in Gloucester MA, the Estate at Echo Bluff. Once there, Cassie finds that Echo Bluff is worse than she dreamed. A ghastly Presence has tormented its inhabitants over generations, and it now hunts Cassie. She must solve the estate’s mysteries or become one of its victims.

The Kickstarter can be found right here.

WRITING A GAME IS DIFFERENT THAN WRITING A BOOK

I’ve been writing for years, and I’ve been gaming since I was a kid, so of course I can write a game, no problem.

When I sat down with my husband, video game design veteran Bill Gardner, and began to craft the story of Perception, the ideas flowed easily – the plot, the characters, the backstory of the estate at Echo Bluff. We knew the core gameplay loop, we knew the major beats of the story we wanted to tell, so all I had to do was write it and our team would help make it come to life.

Now just put the pen to paper and…

— Wait.

I can’t describe the protagonist’s memories or history. I won’t be able to go into details about how the house smells or the sounds of the creaky floors. I could only write dialogue, actions, and a bit of description of what her surroundings were.

I felt naked. How was I supposed to show what she was feeling? I couldn’t have my protagonist walk around spouting her inner monologue for the whole game. I felt that what I was writing was vague and skimpy. It dawned on me that a script is not a novel.

So then I started to think about some of the storytelling from my favorite games, such as the Mass Effect and Persona series. They didn’t all rely on what was being said, there was the world. I had to shift my thinking, and once I did, it was freeing. The best video game stories make use of the universe in which it exists. Take games that utilize mise-en-scene, for example, like Bioshock, Fall Out and Half-Life 2. I could tell a story of what had happened to the people at Echo Bluff just by utilizing the space around me. A fallen vase here, a pool of blood there and a well-placed diary entry and suddenly you have meaning. Using the environment instead of the inner-workings of your character’s mind is not only a viable means of storytelling, but a really compelling one.

DON’T LET ONE FEATURE DEFINE YOUR CHARACTER

Our game stars a blind protagonist. Cassie’s got a bold way of navigating the world, too. She uses echolocation, much like bats do to get around. There are a number of blind people who do this, such as Daniel Kish, whose TED talk our team found particularly inspiring. So yes, our heroine has a major feature that is heavily significant in her character development.

But that’s not all of who Cassie is, and it does not define her. I, as the writer, had to think of who this brave and headstrong girl was. A woman who would drop everything, fly across the country to visit the house that had been haunting her dreams, and then navigate it without sight? Bill and I really had to dig and search to discover what would make someone do that. In doing so, I’ve created my favorite heroine to date. Cassie is bullheaded but vulnerable, outgoing but distrustful. She’s as real and as flawed as any of my other characters in my books, and she happens to be blind. I wanted to make a character that was not defined by her disability, but certainly affected by it, the way anyone would be.

GOOD HORROR IS LIKE AN ONION

Games, movies or books that rely on only one type of “scare” to affect the audience usually come off as pretty flat. To truly get under the player’s skin, I learned that the horror in this game has to be nuanced, but more importantly, layered. I tried to approach the fear in the game as having many tiers, ranging from feeling startled, to experiencing dread, all the way to true, bone-chilling terror.

I started with the setting. The house itself is a character on its own, and I had to think about how to make the place frightening. Our team drew inspiration from The Shining and how the fear of isolation and madness can affect a person. I also really liked the unsettling feeling that reading House of Leaves gave me—this house changes. Throw out what you think you know, and start again. Plus, having lived in New England among historic homes my whole life, I understand the power that a house with a serious history can have. It was important to our team that Echo Bluff itself had a rich and tortured history.

I also felt there should be underlying personal issues that complimented the themes. Cassie had to battle her own inner demons that paralleled what was going on around her. I tried to weave the torturous stories of the house’s other inhabitants in a way that made Cassie sympathetic to them, but also made everything more frightening to her. These stories may have supernatural elements, but each level has a truly human and relatable fear about life.

Lastly, I had to go for a bit of the old school horror. Enter the Presence. We wanted a shadowy enigma, something unsettling that would stay with you long after you’ve played the game. For the Kickstarter campaign, we have actually kept our images of to a minimum. We wanted the Presence to be our version of Bigfoot—often spotted, rarely seen clearly. We want our elusive baddie to tease you just enough. But, in creating the character for the full-length game, the team had to dig deeper. I think something innately frightening is the power of myth and creatures that endure stories throughout centuries. Urban legends about the Presence in the game have been around for hundreds of years, dating back to sailors’ reports of the foul and unnatural events they witnessed on the shores of Echo Bluff. This little spin, for me, was a nod to a little bit of the Lovecraftian motif of evil that endures. But I had to think further about what it would do, and also say. Without giving away the plot, I wanted the Presence’s dialogue to be schizophrenic and manic. I wanted more than just Cassie to be afraid of this thing, I wanted you to be afraid of it.

Then, of course, there was some more overt horror, such as startling, ghastly images, gut-wrenching tragedies, and the like. Mainly, what I learned was that the best horror has a number of nuances that add up to a total cumulative experience.

GAMES REQUIRE MORE COLLABORATION

When you’re writing a novel, it’s yours. Sure, you may have great critique partners and a stellar agent like I’m lucky enough to have in Jessica Sinsheimer, but at the end of the day it’s your baby. You own it, regardless of how much input you’ve listened to or how many eyes have edited it.

Writing a videogame is quite different. Writing a videogame with your spouse is more so. I was intimidated, at first, working with my husband Bill on this. He’s been a fantastic crit partner for my books, but now I was venturing into his territory. Bill’s levels in BioShock have been called some of the best levels in gaming, and he even co-created all of the amazing Kinetescope videos in BioShock Infinite. I was in his house now. Well, not the one we pay the mortgage on, but I digress. It was a little frightening for me to now be the writer on this project full of award-winning gaming vets, especially since I was the one driving the narrative, and the BioShock series is known for its stories.

Soon after outlining the story, we came together and started to really put it together, and it suddenly wasn’t as terrifying. I was a piece in this very intricate puzzle of designers, artists, musicians, voice actors, and more. And each of these people have different, and often game-changing ideas that they contribute. You have to be flexible and not get too precious about your ideas, because in one day, an entire level can be struck from the game, or two characters could end up becoming one. There was a lot of give and take, and by the end of our Kickstarter trailer, I knew that as a collaborative, we’d really done something special.

A GOOD STORY IS STILL A GOOD STORY

There was a moment in the process that made me realize that regardless of how steep the learning curve was, a good story was a good story at heart. It was when Bill and I Skyped into the studio session where the amazingly talented Angela Morris recorded the lines for Cassie. We had over a thousand auditions to listen to, but Angela had this realness to her voice that we couldn’t pass up. She sounded professional but like a real person. Like Cassie. And when she began to record the lines for the game, I started to tear up. There she was, my Cassie, speaking the lines I’d written.

And she delivered the lines exactly how I pictured. They sounded natural, and her cadence and rhythm matched what was in my mind for so long.

I felt validated. The words I’d written were clear and meaningful, as evidenced by a complete stranger to the project being able to completely inhabit this fictional person we’d created as a team.

And I think regardless of the medium, writers write. Stories speak to us from all corners of our lives, and at the end of the day, we just want to experience a great narrative. I hope I’ve been able to bring that to Perception.

If this game sounds intriguing for you, I’d love for you to check out our Kickstarter campaign, www.kickstarter.com/perceptiongame. Thanks, Chuck, for having me!

* * *

Amanda Gardner: A life-long gamer, Amanda has been fully-immersed in the geek lifestyle for as long as she can remember. Amanda is excited to bring to you the story of Cassie and the estate at Echo Bluff, and has enjoyed transitioning from writing urban fantasy novels to writing video games. When she’s not writing, she’s chasing around her two children (while quite pregnant) and teaching English. Amanda also serves as the game’s producer, a role she was born for, considering all she does is chase after people anyway.

Amanda Gardner: Twitter

Perception: Kickstarter | The Deep End Games

Said it before, will say it again: Mad Max: Fury Road is the dust-choked rocket-fueled orifice-clenching crank-mad feminist wasteland batfuck doomsday opera you didn’t know you needed. It’s like eating fireworks. It’s like being inside a rust tornado. It’s like having a defibrillator pad applied directly to your genitals but somehow, you love it?

It’s not a perfect movie.

But it’s amazing just the same.

And part of — for me! — what makes it amazing is how easily it flaunts its rule-breaking. Writing — particularly the very-patterned art of screenwriting — comes with all these preconceived sets of “rules” or “guidelines,” and like most creative rules and guidelines, they’re half-useful and half-dogdick. It’s great once in a while to be reminded why the rules work. But it can be even more illuminating to realize when something works in spite of those rules — in direct contravention to what you expect can and should happen.

And I wanna talk about that just a little. Real quick.

Hold still. *fires up the defib pads*

CLEAR.

bzzt

Begins With Action And Then Action Action Holy Fuck More Action

Beginning with action is hard. Because a lot of the time, you need context. You jump right into some actionstravaganza and you feel lost — unmoored, drifting, caught up in OMG THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE EXCITING BUT MOSTLY IT FEELS LIKE ACTION FIGURES BEING FIRED OUT OF A CANNON AGAINST A WALL BECAUSE I DO NOT YET HAVE A REASON TO CARE. It’s all whizz-bang-boom, but ultimately? Hollow as a used grenade. Shallow as a puddle of sun-baked urine.

Fury Road is like, “Yeah, fuck you, mate,” and then instantly there’s a car chase? And then like, five minutes of setup and another car chase that goes until the middle of the movie? And then a sequel to that car chase that ends the movie. On paper, that shouldn’t work. On screen, it roars like an engine and drags you behind it like you’re chained to the goddamn bumper.

How does it work? I don’t fucking know. That’s the amazing thing. Best guess is that we get just enough character overlaid — Max is a survivor, Max is haunted by ghosts, Furiosa is a bad-ass, Immortan Joe is a skull-mask wearing chemo monster, and we’re off to the races once more.

Very Little Oxygen

Writing action is very often: ramp up action, then draw down into some oxygen, then more action, then more oxygen. A action film’s rhythm is like breathing during sex — starts normal, then you hold it, then it gets faster and faster and then you slow back down and then go go go nnngh holy toe-curling shitkittens, boom. Die Hard has that classic rhythm. Intense action, then oxygen of roughly equal duration. You learn about character and context, then back into action. It works. It’s a good pattern and you can use it for a lot of storytelling that has fighting or gunplay or fucking or fightplay gunfucking or whatever.

But Max gives the tiniest little appe-teasers of oxygen. But mostly? It’s all action. It’s two hours of cinematic-foot-on-an-accelerator with only a handful narrative potty-breaks.

How does it work?

What little oxygen you get is like gulps of air when you’re drowning in rising floodwater.

They’re meager, but they work. And the film never really lets you get comfortable.

That won’t fly with every story.

But hot chromeshite, it works here.

Protagonist And Main Character Are Not The Same

Mad Max is the main character.

Furiosa is the protagonist.

His is our POV.

But she is the one with agency to change things.

She moves the story.

He is merely present in the story.

She fires the gun.

He’s the shoulder on which she rests the weapon.

(I can’t speak to whether or not the film is truly feminist — that’s for smarter and more impacted people than I am to decide. But you have a world where the men are either all-brutal or half-useless, and are made more “human” by their contact with women. Women in this are generative creatures, the keepers of the future, the civilizing force. They’re the ones who get shit done and who will change the world. The men can either get in line, or they can get fucked. It’s not just that the film gives the women characters agency — it’s also about what’s necessary for them to be equal, and for the world to be made better in their wake, not in the wake of men. We are given the suggestion that men ruined this world, but it might just be the women who fix it.)

Regardless — separating your protagonist and your main character is a tricky maneuver. It’s ADVANCED LEVEL shit, hombre. But Mad Max handles it well — even using it to perhaps drive home the point I just made (re: feminism) above.

Explains Almost Nothing

Haha, you wanted answers and context as to what’s really going on?

WELL TOO GODDAMN BAD.

The film’s world-building is such that here’s how it builds its world:

“Did you see that thing that just happened? We just drove past it at 120 MPH.”

“But you didn’t tell me anything about it.”

“Oh, you want to know more about it?”

“I do!”

*shoves bottle rockets in your mouth*

*throws you into a pit*

*covers you in guzzoleen and bullet casings*

*throws a car on top of you too because hey cars are cool*

*the car is covered in spikes and Juggalos because of course it is*

The movie doesn’t linger. It never AS YOU KNOW, BOBs you. It assumes you either will figure it out or you won’t and that’s on you. What’s with the chrome paint? And the Valhalla? And who are the Bullet Farmers and what the fuck is Gas Town? Why is Max a blood bag? What is a Doof Warrior and why is that girl named Toast? Who is the little girl in his vision?

What the actual unholy sand-fucked shit is going on?!

Nope. None of it. No hard answers.

Just buckle up, butterfly. Can you get away with this in your story? Maybe. Fury Road does it because it still recognizes that the real story isn’t all those details but rather, about the flight for freedom. It gives you the details you really need to get to the next moment — and literally nothing more. No fat on those bones. It’s lean and raggedy as a starving coyote.

But it still hunts.

And Oh By The Way, Fuck Consistency

Everyone wants to know how this lines up with the previous three films and they’re scrambling to draw the comparisons — MAYBE MAX IS FERAL BOY AND FURIOSA WAS MAX’S DAUGHTER AND LOOK THE MUSIC BOX AND I’M PRETTY SURE I JUST SAW MASTER BLASTER IN THE CORNER OF MY EYE SITTING NEXT TO ME IN THE THEATER — and all of that routinely fails because these films are basically disconnected narratives. They advance only the narrative of the apocalypse (in each, the world is worse than when we last saw it). Max is different in each. Little actually connects them. Less connects this one to the last three. It doesn’t matter.

Good luck pulling that off in your story, ha ha ha.

Why does it work here? Again, fuck if I know. It works because it works. It works because thematically it’s tied together. Because it’s like revisited mythology — an interpretation of character and story, whether we’re talking about Zeus or Jesus or Batman or Bond. (Behold my new character: JAY-ZEUS BATBOND, the super-spy vigilante savior! Somebody pay me.)

Mad Max: Fury Road doesn’t give a bucket of sunburned fucks about your rules.

Your writing and storytelling rules are just roadkill, bubba.