Author: terribleminds (page 371 of 467)

WORDMONKEY

December 3, 2012 / 18 Comments

In Which My Toddler Helps Me Think Of “Character” In A New Way

Our son, the one we call “B-Dub,” thinks of the people in his life abstractly.

Example: if he sees a magazine ad featuring the car you drive, he’ll point to it and say your name. If he sees a spot on the floor where one of the dogs likes to lie down, he’ll say that dog’s name. But it can be even more abstract, to the point where it takes us time to figure out what the connection is — like it’s a little bit of a puzzle. He pointed to a picture at one point of very grungy, work-dirty hands and said, “Pop-Pop,” and it’s not like his grandfather is some kind of filth-caked, rail-riding hobo. But — but — his Pop-Pop is in fact often working outside. In the literal sense, he’s frequently getting his hands dirty.

Sometimes it’ll be a color. Or an image. Or a sound.

But he’ll associate people with things both concrete and abstract.

And I thought, what a darling way to help us writery-types conceive of character.

We’re used to writing out descriptions of character — we may in our notes list a series of traits (selfish, two kids, has a pet monkey despite being allergic to monkey bites, is a zombie, obsessed with Law & Order: SVU). But it’s interesting to instead — or, more appropriately, in addition to — conjure a series of images that call to mind that character for you.

Say, ten images. Or however many you need to find the character in there.

A cigarette burning on a porch rail.

A copy of a 1970s-era MAD magazine. Shoes with clayey mud clinging to the treads.

A cup of coffee so lightened with cream it might as well be milk.

A monkey bite on the Achilles’ heel.

An infected nipple that looks like a human face.

Whatever, etcetera, blah blah blah.

Some of the images can be literal. Some more figurative or at the least more distant from the character’s actual present-day existence. What do the images mean? What do they say about the character?

Show, Don’t Tell is a piece of advice that’s mostly right and occasionally very wrong, but we generally think of it in terms of the end result — we put the practice into the prose. But here it we could put the practice into the practice, meaning, we can show ourselves rather than tell ourselves all the little pieces that go into the stories we want to share. It’s a good way to think visually and abstractly instead of textually and literally.

Hell, you could even cut images out of magazines and hang them on a corkboard.

I have a corkboard in my office.

Of course, it’s covered in images cut out from TIGER BEAT magazine.

Don’t judge me.

Don’t you dare judge me.

I guess it’s time to take down my spread of sexy Star Trek boy-toy, Wil Wheaton.

November 30, 2012 / 46 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: “The Last 1000 Words Of An Non-Existent Novel”

This challenge is a strange one. It came to me (IN A DREAM okay not really in a dream) and I thought, “Well, that’s a bit curious, innit?” So, I figured I’d float it, see who grabbed hold.

I want you to write the last 1000 words of a non-existent novel.

In other words: “the ending.”

Now, you can be a bit meta with this — the ending in your mind may be a tidying up, a denouement, or you may instead choose to write a climactic end moment before imaginarily closing the curtains.

Also, those 1000 words are a loose set of guidelines. Could be 500, could be 1500 — whatever you need.

So, get to writing, folks.

I’ll send a random participant an ART HARDER, MOTHERFUCKER mug, provided you’re in the United States. If you’re international, I’ll send you an e-book. Or naked pictures of myself rubbing food into my beard, whatever you prefer.

Your deadline is noon EST, Friday, December 7th.

Now let’s bring this utterly fake book inside your head to a close.

November 29, 2012 / 27 Comments

Terribleminds Merch: Mug And Shirt, Motherfuckers

It’s time to do a test run on some merch, see if it’s worth doing this in a bigger way (posters, hats, dildo cozies, hunting vests, chainsaws, Blu-Rays, Manta Rays, moon carvings). So, here’s the deal.

This sale only goes until tonight, say, 8pm EST.

I’m going to sell a mug.

And I’m going to sell a shirt.

This is what goes on the mug:

Or, the inverse:

The t-shirt on the other hand, looks like this, and has the terribleminds logo on the back:

The shirt comes in adult sizes: S, M, L, XL, 2X, 3X. Men’s or Women’s. (2X and 3X is $5.00 more.)

EDIT: For some reason the XL option isn’t showing up on the actual drop-down button? (Making and editing Paypal buttons is a bite in the scrotum.) If you order, either add a note to the invoice asking for XL or send me an email at terribleminds at gmail dot com.

The Penmonkey design is by the glorious Amy Houser.

The mug is $20. ($15 + shipping)

The shirt is $25. ($20 + shipping)

I have a Certified Penmonkey t-shirt and a mug (though not yet an Art Harder mug) and both are very nice.

Order through Paypal below.

Shipping right now only to the United States, please. (If there’s a real response to this and it’s worth the time, I’ll blow that out and include international territories. Diggit? Duggit? Good.)

Price includes shipping.

They will be ordered today and arrive ~10 days.

Questions? Drop ’em in the comments.

Sale now over! Thanks all for checking it out.

November 29, 2012 / 12 Comments

Why My Brain Is Goo, And Other Updates

Yesterday, I crossed the finish line on The Blue Blazes, my next Angry Robot novel in which I write about the conflict between the criminal underworld and the Holy Shit There Are Monsters Living Beneath Our Feet Actual Underworld. The man in the middle is Mookie Pearl, big thug, bad dad, and ugly motherfucker, who finds both sides playing against the middle — and in the middle is the entire population of New York City.

It’s just shy of 100,000 words, my longest novel yet.

I wrote 10,500 words yesterday alone.

The book took me a little under two months to write.

I have no idea if it’s total ass or not. You stare at a painting long enough, eventually, it’s just a blobby mess of colors. That’s the book to me, right now: just an array of words, their quality and context unknown.

I think it’s good. Or at least okay. I know it has some problems I look forward to fixing in the next draft or two. Hopefully you’ll dig it — it’s a little more straight-up urban fantasy for me. High-action, lots of criminal goings-on, lots of weird monsters you won’t find elsewhere — no vampires or werewolves or vampwolves or wizardvamps or sexy succubi, but you will find gobbos, trog-bodies, cankerpedes, roach-rats, milk-spiders, Snakefaces, Vollrath, and the Hungry Ones. And a strange man named “Candlefly.”

The character of Mookie Pearl, by the way, comes out of a short story I wrote called “Charcuterie” that will (er, hopefully) one day be published in this anthology right here. (At this rate, I’m almost wondering if the novel will be out before the short story.)

I’ve heard some awesome news on the cover that will tickle your pink parts as it did mine.

You can, at present, pre-order the novel (which you could apparently do even before I finished it) over at Amazon and BN.com. I’ll assume the date of May 28th is pretty firm? Good stuff.

Holy Crap, io9 Reviews Mockingbird

“All those plot gears do not turn in a wholly straightforward way. What appears to be a simple “find the serial killer” story at first delves down a few blind alleys before unraveling in a bizarre and stunning way. And even when the story does move in a linear manner, it’s highly entertaining.”

That, from Ed Grabianowski’s review of Mockingbird over at io9!

I know the first Blackbirds review was fairly influential for getting people into that book — I heard from a lot of people who told me that review was how they heard about the book and why they bought it. Hopefully this review will do similarly. Check it out, if you’re so inclined.

Interviews

I have a new batch of interviews I have to get caught up on now that I’m done writing Blue Blazes (and I move into editing Heartland, Book One, and writing Beyond Dinocalypse) — though, I’m thinking that after this batch I might change how interviews are handled here. They’re a fairly small thing but even still, they require just that much extra work from me to write up a second round of questions and read as much of the originating author’s source material as I can muster — I ultimately find that with the writing and blogging I already do, it’s a tricky sitch to force myself back to the computer to go that extra couple of inches.

I’m noodling turning interviews into something more along the lines of what you get with Scalzi’s Whatever — a series of ten questions, say, about a given upcoming release (book, game, film, comic, etc) and the storyteller behind that release. Same questions for everybody, no follow-ups. Thoughts? The other solution would be to have authors write a guest post, instead — something tied to the unofficial mission statement here of talking about story and process and all that jazz, but I think the interview is a greater chance to bring the funny? Fuck, I dunno. Comments, questions, complaints, prayer requests, death threats?

In Which I Slather Myself With Homemade Ice Cream

I have an ice cream maker now, ho ho ho.

(That, written on my t-shirt not in blood but smeary chocolate.)

I made Nutella ice cream as my first attempt and it was guhhh drool sputter.

So good.

Recipe here, except I substituted cream for the milk and added an egg yolk.

Now it’s your turn to give me ice cream recipes and ideas.

Soon, A Merch Test

I will soon sell a few selected pieces of merchandise for a limited time.

Just to see if it’s viable.

Eyes peeled, terribleminders.

November 28, 2012 / 60 Comments

Here’s How You Flush Your NaNoWriMo Efforts Down The Crapper

National Novel Writing Month does not matter.

Not now. Not that it’s (almost) over.

It mattered before, sure.

It’s what stuck you in the ass with a stinging thistle. It’s what got your crap-can out of bed to pound keys and make the morning word sauce. It lit the fire. It sent the smoke signals whirling up into the sky.

Good. Great. Excellent.

Now it’s gone and — what?

Now: it’s artifice. Seeds on the wind. A placebo drug with a real effect.

I did an unofficial uncounted version of NaNoWriMo this month — not because I felt like playing along but because I had 30k written in the latter half of October and needed another 50k to finish a novel for deadline. So, quite conveniently, I had the proper word count to slot into November. (For the record, I’ve since written over 50k, as the novel’s running a hair longer than expected.)

Here’s how I could fuck that all up:

I could assume that November is the only authorized time to write a novel.

I could take the 50k I wrote and be done with it.

I could stop writing beyond the margin of the event.

I could leave the manuscript as the smoldering pile of word puke that it probably is.

I could choose to save it from the fires of a scorching edit.

I could choose to keep it away from agents and publishers and readers.

I could let it lay like a half-a-fish on a sun-baked dock. Rotting. Drawing flies.

I could let it be game over, goodbye.

The point is, writing is never about that one segment of time in which you write the first draft. It’s certainly never about 50k, which barely counts as a novel in most practical instances (here is where you chime in and tell me about all those novels that were only 50,000 words long and I say yes, yes, that’s true, but those are the exception rather than the rule, but thanks so much for playing).

Simply put, writing is rarely about writing.

Writing is about thinking. And planning. And rethinking and replanning. Writing is about rewriting. Writing is about breaking it all apart and putting it back together again. Writing is about running it through the gauntlet. It’s about editing. About criticizing. Writing is about the craft of putting one word after the other and then stacking them atop one another. Writing is about the art of the story. Writing is about the crass and unpleasant dance of commerce. Writing is about you first, and the audience ever after. Writing is about sharpening the words and honing the tale until it is as sharp as a thumbtack.

Writing is about more than that one month.

Writing is about more than the first draft.

Your work continues. Hell, the work just begins. You fought the first battle of a very long war.

Fuck winning. Hell with losing. This isn’t over by a long shot.

So: here’s what I’m asking you:

How’d it go?

And what’s next? Do you have more to write?

Then what? What’s your plan?

November 27, 2012 / 56 Comments

How Chuck Wendig Writes A Novel

This year, I’ve written — *checks psychic spreadsheet* — four novels. Bait Dog, Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits, Dinocalypse Now, and (finishing up this week), The Blue Blazes. I also wrote a novella, Bad Blood, which includes the next appearance of everybody’s favorite vampire-in-Zombieland, Coburn.

By this year I also have — *consults little man who lives in my mind* — five novels out in the world. Blackbirds, Mockingbird, Double Dead, Dinocalypse Now, and Bait Dog. (I apparently like ‘b’ and ‘d’ words. Eventually I’ll write one giant magnum opus called Blackdead Dinodog: The Baited Blood of Bad Bluebird.)

In the next year I am slated to write and/or publish — *polls the bacterial choir that lives inside my colonic labyrinth* — seven more books. Got the three books of my young adult cornpunk Heartland trilogy, got two more books in the Dinocalypse Spirit of the Century universe, have another Atlanta Burns book (Harum Scarum) and the third Miriam Black book (The Cormorant).

I do not list these things as a humble-brag (though, make no mistake, it is a humble-brag, because I am a proud peacock over here), but only to note that somehow, I fell face first into a novel-writing gig. And further to note that, maybe it’s time I wrote a post on exactly how this motherfucker right here — *points to me and the squirming bundle of sentient cilia I call a ‘beard’* — writes a book.

That’s not to say this is how you should write a book. I’m just putting out these breadcrumbs — you may choose another path through this dark forest of novel-writing. People ask me how I do it, so here’s my answer.

This is going to be a long post, so get some tea and bolster your fortitude.

The Idea Skirts Past My Orbital Defenses

The question for writers should never be, “How do you get your ideas?” but rather, “How do you shut them up to get a night’s sleep?” My mind is a moon colony constantly being pelted by little fiery asteroid-ideas. Ideas are not my problem: they fill up the ol’ brain-bucket pretty quick.

The problem is figuring out which ideas are:

a) interesting to me beyond the moment in which they are conceived

b) potentially interesting to other humans who are not me

c) potentially interesting to the giant amorphous blob known as the “publishing industry”

d) about a character in a world and not just a world

and de actionable, meaning, an idea that suggests a book I’m actually capable of writing.

If an idea checks each check-box with a jaunty slash, then I write that sonofabitch down. I write it down on my phone at first (sometimes using voice recognition if I’m driving or walking or playing racquetball or hunting humans for sport), and then later I dump it into a file I’ve created that’s meant to be a storehouse of such potential ideas. For the record, this dump file now looks like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Shelves and shelves of crates and boxes, each a mystery container whose story remains untold.

I Barf Up A Blob Of Incoherent Thoughts

Once I’m ready to take the idea beyond that core seed of an idea (“Wouldn’t it be crazy if a cat was president?!”), I fish it out of its swampy mud-hole and hoist it into the light.

Then I start writing. Nothing concrete. Rarely anything that’s actual story. Mostly just notes and thoughts. And a lot of questions. What kind of cat is it? Is the cat a good president or a bad president? Will the cat have nuclear codes? Will the press discover the cat’s cocaine addiction (SEE YOU THOUGHT IT’D BE CATNIP BUT NOOOO THE CAT IS A LITTLE BLOW-MONKEY) and will that damage re-election chances?

The notes taken at this stage are almost stream-of-consciousness. Sentence fragments, mis-spelled words, grocery list thoughts interspersed in the middle, whatever. It’s just to ruminate on the idea. And it’s also to test the idea in a way. Is there more here than than initial idea? A great many ideas are dead seeds planned in fallow ground — they won’t grow a good goddamn thing. So, this stage of the game is very much about seeing if this thing has legs. Will it walk? Can it run?

The Critical Questions

I ask myself a handful of “cardinal” questions —

What is it about?

The answer to this isn’t about plot. It’s about the deeper, weirder answer. Like, if we were out in the jungle high on some kind of jaguar gland, I’d grab the idea by the shoulders and say, “No, man, what are you really about?” This is me starting to skirt around the idea of theme — the argument I want this story to make.

Why the hell do I want to write this?

If the answer is, “Because it’ll get published,” then fuck that. If the answer is, “Because it’s popular right now and will earn me big money,” then fuck that, too. If the answer is, “Because it’s cool,” then — drum roll please — fuck that. I need more. The answer has to be meaningful to me before anyone else.

Why will anybody care?

Some ideas are for me and for me only. I’d love to one day write them but if I think they’re too personal or too abstract to bring to an audience, I won’t bother. It has to be both a thing that’s meaningful to me and a thing that I hope will be meaningful to the audience, too. This isn’t the type of answer I can really predict; I do not live inside the collective hive-mind that is the aggregated audience. But I can generally spot a story that lives and dies with my own interest in it.

Who The Fuck Are These People?

Characters are the way through every story. As such, they are the most important component of a story — and it’s quite likely by now I’ve already got one or a few characters in mind for the story. Now it’s time to really hammer them into a gory, sticky paste and see what secret truths lie contained in those piles of steampunk gears and sloppy viscera.

Once again I look for some of the same things I looked for earlier: I’ll turn to a series of insane rambling notes turns into a test to see if these characters are interesting and readable. (Fuck likable.)

Just as I need to know what a story is about, I also need to know who a character is. And in the same way the answer must go deeper than, “He’s a cat who gets elected president of the United States.” Again the jaguar-gland shaman grabs me and shakes me and says, “No, man, who is the character really?”

Then the questions of, why do I dig this character?

Why do I think anyone would want to read this character?

What makes the character compelling?

Then: I suss out the characters wants, needs, and fears. What does the character need to keep going? What does the character want — whether consciously or unconsciously? What will drive him as a goal throughout this story? And finally, what does he fear? Obstacles in a character’s path are critical, and some of those obstacles must be bound up with the character’s fears.

Finally, I do a little three-beat character arc for the character. Three words or sentences that are meant to indicate the state of the character across the story — beginning, middle, and end.

Poor cat down on his luck wants to see a change in this country –> elected president, way over his kitty head –> once again a poor cat but now knows the intimate details of the democratic process and oh did I mention he nuked the middle of our own country into oblivion.

The three beats could be fairly succinct — consider the simple mythic arc of Maiden –> Mother — > Crone. Or, as per the vampire in Double Dead, Predator –> Protector –> Penitent. When conceiving of Miriam Black’s arc in Mockingbird my only three notes were: Selfish Vulture –> Pecking Crow –> Reluctant Raptor.

I Write A Pitch

At this point, I write a preliminary pitch. First a logline, meaning, a single sentence that sums the story up. (“A cat is elevated from poverty and is elected president only to learn that cats shouldn’t ever serve in public office because cats are assholes.”) Some call this the “elevator pitch.”

Then I write a longer pitch — under 500 words — that acts like a bigger, blown-out version of back-cover text for the book. Hits key concepts and the larger story without giving much away. In part because I don’t have much to give away — I don’t necessarily have the total story in mind by this point. I’m writing this for me in order to boil the thing down as a simple referential document.

Building Something Out Of Nothing

The Miriam Black books didn’t take much in terms of research or worldbuilding. On the other hand, The Blue Blazes required a good bit of that — but even here I did as little of it as I could manage. Meaning, I did just enough work to get me to the starting line. I know my own crazy habits and I’ll get buried in details if I let myself (“I just spent two weeks reading about the sexual habits of housecats”), so I do the work that needs to be done now. The rest can come as I write, or even in a second (third, fourth, thirty-seventh) draft.

Alpha And Omega

I figure out what I want to be the beginning of the story. And then I figure out its end.

Some folks hate to figure out the ending, because they like to be surprised. (To me this is the same dilemma of whether or not you want to know the sex of your baby before it’s born — to me, it’s still a surprise if I learn that fact at 20 weeks and that gives me another 20 weeks to figure out what kind of clothes to buy the little critter.) To me, the need for pragmatism outweighs my bullshit need for magic while writing. A houseplant survives on water — an actual thing based in reality, not the whimsy of unicorn dreams.

Here’s why I like to have the beginning and the ending in mind: because as I write, my eventual outline will fail me. It just will. No plan survives contact with the enemy and eventually I’ll be somewhere in the middle of the book, spinning wildly in the swampy mire of my own fiction not sure exactly what to do next. And when that happens I will look to the ending and I will say, “I need to go there,” and then I will march the story toward that point and eventually get the outline (which by now may require modification) back on track.

For me a novel is essentially a lesson in drunk driving (DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE THIS IS A METAPHOR): it’s me starting at the beginning and then revving the engine and speeding sloppily and swerving dramatically toward what I’ve conceived to be the ending.

The end doesn’t need to actually remain in place — I can change it as I go.

But it’s a good thing to have in mind as I begin.

Oh! I also like to have some degree of parity between beginning and the end, some elemental or thematic or even physical aspect that links the two together across the space-time-continuum that is the rest of the story. (In the Mookie Pearl short story, “Charcuterie,” it begins and ends with him pulling up at the bar with his friend and boss, Werth. Hint, hint, the novel may have a similar book-end.)

I Start Building The Skeleton One Bone At A Time

Time to outline.

I do not have a single way I outline.

In fact, every book has suffered a different outline than the former.

Generally speaking, I first figure out a four-act structure — beginning, middle 1, middle 2, ending. Two acts lead to a critical plot-changing or escalating midpoint, which then carries us to another two acts.

Then I figure out tentpole moments (aka SHIT THAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN OR THE WHOLE TENT FALLS DOWN AND SMOTHERS US ALL UNDER ITS COLORFUL FABRIC) and then I write the key story beats that get me from one tentpole to the next and to the next after that.

Sometimes I hammer out critical story structure beats I hope to hit (a reversal of fortune, a key betrayal, a battle scene). I’m also always on the look out for at least one HOLY SHIT NO HE DIDN’T moment — some jaw-dropping pants-crapping event or revelation in the narrative that sticks you in the ribs with a story shiv. I like those moments. One of my favorite things is obliterating reader expectations in one fell swoop.

Sometimes This Stuff Lives In A Folder For Months, Years, Epochs

This might seem like the perfect time for me to jump into the story with a speargun and a wetsuit, but that’s not necessarily gonna happen. The Blue Blazes sat at this stage for many months until a gap opened up in my schedule (and, not coincidentally, this gap is just before my deadline to turn the book into my grumpy cyborg masters). Sometimes this stuff incubates in a folder for a while until the time comes.

The God Of The Ancient Grid Calls To Me

Spreadsheets. Used to hate the very idea. Now, I am married to them.

One spreadsheet I particularly require is the one that keeps all my writing schedule on it. I don’t use a calendar — I use Excel. I have the whole year planned out in terms of when my deadlines are and where the books slot in. (Then I also identify gaps and, ideally, figure out how to best use those gaps.)

I always assume I’ll write 2000 words a day and no more than that — by which I mean, that’s what I put on the spreadsheet. That’s 10k a week and, if I’m writing an 80k novel, that’s eight weeks or roughly two months. Now, I tend to write more than that, particularly if it’s a book I’m really feeling (Mockingbird was written in a month), but that then leaves me some padding, which is great.

As I write, I’ll also note in the spreadsheet “real daily word count” versus the 2k “projected” and that’ll show me if I did more or less (and by what amount). Most days are more, but inevitably I’ll have those days where I write less due to the vagaries of human existence (toddler meltdown, holiday, sick day, sentient cat swarm). That’ll give me a far better SITREP as I’m on the ground crawling through the word-trenches.

#amwritingmotherfucker

Then I write.

Nothing fancy here.

I write. I write with my head down. I write linearly, first page to the last page. I write without listening to the doubting voice that tells me I’m a total asshole for even trying this. I write without regard to safety or sanity. I write with the freedom to suck and the hope that I don’t. I write to finish the shit that I started.

Next Pass

I do a pass before I give it to anybody. If I have a lot of time, I’ll do a robust pass and take a lot of notes (almost a truncated process of what I’ve already gone through). If I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll do a Hail Mary pass and run through it with a manic gleam in my eye and a clumsily-swiping word scalpel.

The Agent Pass

The agent is wise. I’m very fortunate to have an agent who was a former editor and who is a smart, smart story-thinker. So, she gets a pass. A very important pass, indeed.

The Editor / Publisher Pass

Turns out, the publisher has, y’know, opinions on the work. That said, my work has at present not undergone any epic changes from a publisher — the draft I send them has by and large been the draft you see in your hands when it’s published. This is, in part, because the agent pass is often a robust one (Heartland, Book One was rewritten many times over the course of a year before submission and by its end, ~50% of the book was drastically rewritten.) And in part, I hope, because I’m not totally shitty.

The Hands Of The Gods

Then it goes out into the world. Outside my control.

It lives. It lands. Hopefully you like it. Maybe you don’t.

But what’s done is done.

And then it’s onto the next one.

Writing forward. Always writing forward.

Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

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500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

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250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING: $0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF