The workshop I gave this past weekend was about characters — specifically, how you make characters become architects of narrative rather than part of the architecture. Meaning, they build the house around them as they move through it. They design their space by making choices. They decorate. They are like earthworms chewing dirt and excreting plot behind them.

That’s right. I said it.

Your characters are best when they’re PLOT-POOPERS.

Crawling through the dirt.

Poopin’ plot as they go.

Or something, shut up, don’t @ me.

The point is that, as storytellers — specifically when we’re telling stories in the genre space — we can at times be a little over-reliant upon building the world (aka, the house) and then hastily shoving characters into it instead of letting characters lead the way.

And when asked to further explain this during the workshop, I came up with a suggestion to think about the dichotomy this way, as a manifestation of:

History versus Destiny.

Destiny, in this context, is a thing you cannot escape. It is a framework of mythic narrative that the character does not choose and is, ultimately, a prison — whether we’re talking a literal destiny in the context of the story or an enforced plot structure from the storyteller, it’s effectively a trap. (/Ackbarred)

History, on the other hand, is a thing that people make up as they go. What I mean is, in the truest sense, history is a thing you create for yourself and your world. We may view history as predesigned, but that’s only because it involves us looking back on it in reflection, but while it feels passive, it was active when a person helped to make it. Alexander Hamilton, as our largest historical-figure-slash-pop-culture-crossover, was not destined for shit. He carved his name on the bedrock of American history, changing fate instead of falling prey to it. (Now there’s an argument there too that he falls prey to a certain kind of destiny, but I’d argue that’s literally untrue and serves more as a literary device of him engineering his own downfall, which is a feature of the best tragedies. The difference here being he as a character and an actual historical figure created this for himself rather than the storytellers [Lin-Manuel Miranda and, I guess, American Jesus?] creating a paradigm for him and then forcing him into it.)

Point being, you can over-design a world and over-construct a plot — which threatens the agency of the characters in that world.

And to remind you, this is how I presently define character agency, as seen in this post:

Character agency is, to me, a demonstration of the character’s ability to make decisions and affect the story. This character has motivations all her own. She is active more than she is reactive. She pushes on the plot more than the plot pushes on her. Even better, the plot exists as a direct result of the character’s actions.

Multiple characters with agency creates an opportunity for a lot of interesting drama and conflict — which is exactly what you want in a good story. What you don’t want is a lot of characters feeling like, no matter who they actually are as characters, they have been given a role and a fate as dictated by plot: aka, a destiny. And again, I don’t necessarily mean a destiny in the world of the story, I mean a destiny outside the narrative, one levied by you, the storyteller, to force them into the plot you’ve created.

In a roleplaying game context, think of how a subpar dungeon master might overly try to control the narrative. Five players create five adventurers in a tavern, and the DM lets them know, “You hear the roar of a dragon somewhere near, burninating the countryside with his fire breath.” The DM then leans back, confident the players will have their characters run out into the countryside with their swords and scepters drawn, but of course, people are like cats, they’re utterly uncontrollable, and so instead the players say, “Our characters have devices that we will remain inside, and we board up the doors and windows and drink a lot of Goblin Ale and we fight the orcs by the bar who have been giving us the literal stink-eye all night.”

Now, a a bad DM here cleaves to destiny and says, but that’s not the story that I, the mighty Dungeon Master, created for you, and finds some way to force them outside to fight the dragon. He keeps pushing and pushing until they have no choice but to address the dragon’s scourge. This is, of course, the act of “railroading,” and can be done both at the game table and in video games, too.

A good DM instead relies on the characters, via their players, to write their own history and say “eat shit, destiny.” The DM helps them facilitate their drunken barfighty “shelter-in-place” moment, realizing that a) it makes more fun for the players (aka, the audience) to get to do what they want to do and b) it makes for a more interesting story because we’ve all seen the ADVENTURERS FIGHT DRAGON narrative but maybe haven’t seen the ADVENTURERS SHELTER IN PLACE AT A TAVERN DURING A DRAGON ATTACK AND USE THAT TIME TO SWILL MAGIC BEER AND PUNCH EACH OTHER. The latter also has the narrative advantage of being something that isn’t predictable, because it doesn’t fall into known patterns.

The ‘tell’ that comes when you’ve pushed characters into a narrative destiny is that you have a moment when you realize, “I need Character A to perform Task B in order to reach Outcome C.” Meaning, you’ve created for yourself a performative, outcome-based model for the story — “I really need Dave the Barbarian to be at Castle Ogredong by morning to stop the Kobold Incursion, even though he’s a barbarian and really shouldn’t have any interest in stopping the Kobolds.” Which means you’re arguably closing off more narratively interesting options in order to cram Barbarian Dave into the outcome you’ve set. It shows a lack of flexibility and creativity and fails to let the character make his own destiny — would it be more interesting if Dave joined the Kobolds, instead? Maybe. So do that. Let Dave find his history and fuck the tropes and the standard scope of the tale as you have designed it.

You’re not designing adventures (aka, destiny).

You’re empowering characters (aka, history).

(This is good storytelling both in books and in games, by the way.)

(At least, IMNSHO.)

Curiously, the Star Wars prequels can, depending your (ahem) certain point-of-view, fit both of these modes — on the one hand, internal to the narrative, Anakin Skywalker does a very good job of rejecting his destiny as some kind of chosen one / Force-balancer / midichlorian private-dancerer character — he is too stubborn and willful to be trapped in the rules and life that this destiny demands of him. The Jedi Order says, “You’re the Chosen One!” and then Anakin says, “Actually, I’mma kill these baby Jedi just to show you how little fucks I give about that,” and then he gets punted into some lava.

On the other hand, externally, prequels often suffer from the problem where the fate of the story and its characters is already written. Not only written, but precisely pinpointed — the end of any prequel narrative must line up perfectly with the anchor-point beginning of the subsequent (but already told) tale, or the two will be out-of-sync. In that case, prequels are nearly always a case of destiny over history, and you have far less wiggle-room in terms of creating characters who can Be Interesting and Make History. Because history has already been made for them.

This, by the way, invokes the danger of overrelying on architectural story design, like the kind you’d find with Save the Cat — I dearly love that book and the pattern it sets as a starting point, but it dictates a series of milestones almost as if they’re sales targets. Art and story do not do well when they follow patterns and tropes and stereotypes again and again — yes, you can still use those patterns and tell a great story, but it’s also just as likely you’ll find them overly restrictive in how fluid it allows the characters to be when making their own way through the world you’ve given them. It forces us to declare that the plot is more interesting than the characters, which is almost never the case: we like stories and choose to enter them and remain in them precisely because of characters, because of the empathic bridge a good storyteller builds between us (the reader) and the characters on the page.

Note that this isn’t an anti-outline approach, should you be the type of person who is called a “plotter” rather than a “pantser.” It may seem anathema, but it’s really not: you just have to write an outline that’s character-driven, one that unfolds due to character choices rather than storyteller choices. (Yes, technically that is a bit artificial in its definition — character choices are always storyteller choices, because characters aren’t fucking real. They’re not prancing about in the ether just waiting for you to be their conduit into the CORPOREAL NARRATIVE PLANE, though it’s certainly allowed to feel that way.) What I mean is, the choices you choose to make in the story are better when executed based on the characters you’ve created rather than the exoskeleton of plot or world. Characters represent an organic, internal musculature and skeletal structure — plot and world represent something far too external and artificial.

We come for the characters.

So let the characters lead.

To sum up, when it comes down to characters either creating plot or falling prey to it, it’s worth realizing which is the cart and which is the horse — all that PLOT DESIGN and WORLDBUILDY GOODNESS and those COOL RULES don’t mean shit-on-toast if you have to cram the characters into it like a squirming, bitey raccoon into a trash bag. Characters are the center of the story, even if they don’t know it. Let them be makers of their own history…

….not victims of your railroaded narrative destiny.

* * *

DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Out now!

Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Honestly, I didn’t really believe it.

A lot of times, people hold a kind of hometown pride belief in some local manifestation of food — and sometimes it holds up (pizza and bagels in NYC, f’rex), other times, not so much. With Austin, people said, tacos and barbecue, and okay, fine, I thought, I’m sure the tacos and BBQ there are just great. In terms of tacos, I’m near some pretty solid taco options here in Pennsylvania, which always shocks people until I remind them that immigrants are not bound to one area of the country. You can make great tacos anywhere. And I thought the same about BBQ.

Anybody can smoke meat, I said to myself.

People say, BUT AUSTIN IS THE BEST BBQ, and sure, fine, great. I’ve been to Georgia, I’ve lived down South, I’ve had BBQ in both the Carolinas, and… I’m dubious about best ever BBQ claims. Shit, we have a pork place nearby my house that does BBQ during the summers and it’s like — boy howdy, it’s good.

So, I knew in my heart, Austin will have great BBQ.

But the best?

C’mon.

And then I went.

And I had beef brisket you’re looking at.

I was there running a workshop for the Austin Romance Writers Association (ARWA), and upon being met by my wonderful handler Tracie (aka Sloane), she said, “Do you want to go get barbecue?” And of course the answer to that is yes. I don’t care where I am, whether it’s terrestrial Earth or the moon, yes, I want barbecue, because it’s meat, and meat is wonderful. Except if you’re vegetarian or vegan, but I do not have the strength of character to be those things, and so I am a lowly meat-eater. Meat is wonderful especially when it is cooked in the Ancient Ways of Barbecue.

So, she took me to a place called Freedmen’s. It’s not Franklin’s, no, but we also didn’t have to wake up at 6AM to get in line to eat lunch by 1PM.

I went. They had whiskey. I did not partake because I had just come off of two plane flights, and desperately needed coffee. So I had coffee and barbecue, which works… surprisingly well together? And I thought, well, it’s cattle country, I should eat cow, and so gimme dat brisket.

And they did.

And mirth exploded from me in a shower of meaty, fatty embers, each alighting like a firefly as they erupted out of me — and okay, that’s a gross metaphor, to be sure, and we’re just going to pretend I didn’t say any of that. Point is: it was fucking sublime. It was definitely the best piece of brisket BBQ I’ve ever had, and not by a little bit, but by an epic margin.

So, go there.

In fact, go to Austin and eat — I didn’t have a single bad meal. (No tacos, regrettably, for me.) The workshop was aces all around, and I always love giving talks and workshops to the RWA because the audience always brings it — they bring great ideas and questions and a heavy craft focus which, y’know, is what I’m there to talk about. Some audiences sit and stare at you and don’t want to interact, and that’s never been the case with these workshops, and certainly wasn’t the case this past weekend, so thanks to the ARWA for having me there, and I hope I was able to bring something to the table in terms of talking about writing and storytelling and about creating kick-ass characters.

Sadly, I missed one of my extra days in Austin due to the sixteen inches of snow that dropped on us last week, so I didn’t get to see everyone or do everything I wanted to. Was hoping to hang with cool folks like Stina Leicht, but didn’t get the chance — I did get to meet Meg Gardiner (holy shit!) and have porch whiskey with Cargill, so it wasn’t a total wash, but I was kinda ping-ponging around with little time and not quiiiiiite enough sleep.

Next up for me is the Doylestown Books signing with Kevin Hearne and Fran Wilde (April 7th!), and then Ravencon in Virginia after that (April 20th-22nd!).

And that’s it.

SEE YOU ON THE INTERNETS

*dissolves into pixels*

Let’s talk about Brussels sprouts.

And yes, it’s Brussels sprouts, not Brussel, because Brussel isn’t a thing, and Brussels is a real place in Belgium, and this is important, historically. Because it was in Brussels that, in 1815, an occultist named Amandine Olivier first conjured these tiny demon cabbages into existence. Amandine got drunk one night on a rare Belgian liqueur called Le Pipi du Diable, and then he cast a 9th-circle summoning spell which brought a woody stalk of sprouts — once used as Baphomet’s walking stick — over through the fontanelle separating our world and the Hell-world, and on this stalk were the first Brussels sprouts.

That’s important to know, because for a very long time, I thought Brussels sprouts were bullshit. I assumed, quite correctly, that they were little demon cabbages. I mean, I was right. They are. They’re like if you took a full-size cabbage, with all its implicit cabbageness, and then you used some kind of magic(k) to compress that cabbageness into something roughly the size of a golf ball. For a long time I had assumed that their best use was to freeze them and slingshot them at your enemies as they besieged your home. I also assumed that if you broke one open, angry fart ghosts would be released to wreak havoc on the world of the living.

But I have since learned that Brussels sprouts are not bullshit.

Well, not always. Most people don’t know how to cook them. I don’t know exactly why, but in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, people didn’t realize that sometimes the best way to treat a vegetable was to SCOURGE IT WITH FLAME, roasting those motherfuckers until they’re crispy and delicious. Instead people steamed vegetables, or worse, boiled them, and it is this latter preparation that plagued many of us, I assume, in our childhoods. Asparagus is a lovely spear of deliciousness, except when you boil it, in which case it becomes less a spear and more a fallen log long gone rotten in the woods. Veggies in this form become mushy, sad things — almost as if they have been pre-chewed in the mouth of a mournful widow.

Thing is, you can still roast Brussels sprouts and they can still turn out a hard, angry, bitter result. They can still emerge from your FIRE BOX still maintaining their demonic veneer. And so, many people — after long having learned to love difficult vegetables — still hold onto the belief that they do not, and will not, like Brussels sprouts.

Not in a box.

Not with a fox.

Not in some socks.

Not with the pox.

And I am here to change that.

And you will thank me.

You will lay a garland of laurels upon my brow, for I will be the champion who has rehabilitated the demon cabbages and given you a new FACE SENSATION inside your FACE. You will like it so much, you will try to send me money, and I will say nay, do not send me money, but buy my books, for I am a humble word-herder, nay, a simple and unassuming penmonkey seeking readers in this dark and tangled world.

Let us begin.

First, you need Brussels sprouts.

I suspect this is already where you resist.

DO NOT RESIST. Go. Get them. If you want the best, wait until the season where your local farmer’s market has them.

You want to buy ones that are not discolored and surly. They should be green and firm, not mushy or brown. They should also not have mouths and eyes. If they have mouths and eyes, the eggs have hatched, and now they are not merely sprouts, but rather, sproutlings, and they will bite off the tips of your fingers and thumbs because that is what they like most to eat.

Also, smaller sprouts are better.

Buy them.

Bring them home.

Show them your knife.

It is vital you show them the knife. You must hold the knife to them and let them know what’s coming. These are demon cabbages. Eggs from the devil’s own cloaca. They must be shown that humans control them — you have summoned them, and only the blade can truly tame them.

Now, cut off any stemmy bits. Up to a quarter inch into the sprout.

Then peel the outer leaves. The outer leaves are the exoskeleton. They are often tough and unpleasant and you must be rid of them. Get to the tender, soft leaf-meats within. One layer is usually good, but if they’re big-ass sprouts, maybe another layer down is necessary.

If the sprouts are small, bisect them.

If they’re larger — say, nearer to a golf ball size — then quarter them.

Scream at them as you cut them. Curse at them.

Then, let them sit and think about the horrors they have wrought.

Now, get your HELL BOX up to temperature.

I go 425, but if your oven runs cooler, go 450.

As the COALS OF HELL begin to fire, it’s time to make our sauce —

Whisk together:

4TB of real maple syrup

3TB of fish sauce

a blob of minced garlic

a bloop of minced ginger

the juice of half a lemon

the juice of half an orange

bit of salt

bit of pepper

four tears from a sad yeti

a bad dream

a good dream

and ten whispered promises that you will break

Already I feel you resisting.

It’s the fish sauce, I know. You’re thinking, why the fuck am I taking delicious maple syrup and mixing it with heinous fish sauce, and you’re right, fish sauce is heinous, if you go by the smell. The smell of fish sauce is like brined corpse-feet. Have you ever seen how they make it? Don’t. Don’t look. Spoiler warning: it’s dead fish. Left to get worse than dead fish already are. Left to break down into liquids. And then they just tap that briny death-keg and — ploomp — there’s your fish sauce. And I know, I know, Brussels sprouts are already bullshit, and now I’m asking you to put rotten fish slurry in there, too?

I am.

Your trust will be rewarded.

(Real-talk: fish sauce also kicks up soup. Chicken noodle soup is amazing with even one tablespoon of fish sauce into the pot. Failing your ability to use and possess fish sauce, you can instead use Worcestershire sauce. Which, ha ha ha sucker, is also fish sauce. But seriously: if you want to take nearly any soup or stew and kick it up a bit with an umami-bomb, use a little fish sauce and use a little sherry vinegar.)

Put this whisked concoction into a small saucepan.

BACK TO THE SPROUTS.

Get them in a bowl. Mix them with olive oil. Get them lubey, like they’re fooled into thinking they’re going to a vegetable orgy. Then, once sufficiently lubed, get them onto a cookie sheet onto some non-stick foil. Sprinkle salt over them.

Roast them for 20-30 minutes.

You want them brown and crispy, but not black and coal-like.

While the demon cabbages are being transformed by the fiery alchemy of your HELL BOX, get that saucepan on the stove, and turn it onto medium heat, and you want to reduce the sauce down — like, what, halfway? I dunno. You don’t want it loose and liquidy — you want it to become syrupy, like the maple syrup once was. Enough to coat the back of a spoon, but not so much that it, well, burns into some kind of napalm tar.

When the sprouts are out of the oven, get them in that bowl.

Then pour your reduced sauce over them.

Mixy mixy mix.

Then shove them into the BONE CAVE that is your MOUTH.

I mean, let them cool down first? Don’t just cram molten-hot Brussels sprouts in there, that’s fucked up, what’s wrong with you.

But once cool, eat them.

And then send me your infinite gratitude.

Oh! Here’s the other thing:

That sauce is also good on other roasted veggies — particularly other cruciferous veggies like broccoli. (They call these vegetables “cruciferous” because they crucified Jesus. It’s true, read your Bibles, kids.) If you want to mix other veggies in with the sprouts, you can: onions in there? Sure. Bacon in there? Sure. (Bacon is too a vegetable, shut up.) Note though that this does not require bacon — bacon, which I love, is also a cheat. You can stick bacon in a lot of terrible things and make them better. No, this recipe is good without it, and it is not required.

But it is nice.

(Last thought: this sauce also does well in fried rice.)

(And you can make it into fried breakfast rice with an egg overtop and Spam in there and okay fine bacon too, just shut up and make it.)

Go eat your vegetables.

And buy my books, thank you.

The epic first novel in the Dark Arts series.

On the eve of World War Two, Nazi sorcerers come gunning for Cade Martin but kill his family instead. His one path of vengeance is to become an apprentice of The Midnight Front — the Allies’ top-secret magickal warfare program — and become a sorcerer himself.

Unsure who will kill him first — his allies, his enemies, or the demons he has to use to wield magick — Cade fights his way through occupied Europe and enemy lines. But he learns too late the true price of revenge will be more terrible than just the loss of his soul, and that there’s no task harder than doing good with a power born of ultimate evil.

* * *

Don’t Be Afraid to Think Big

You’d think I’d have internalized this notion before trying to write a years-spanning World War II epic fantasy. But it wasn’t until I tried to craft something “epic” that I saw how hard it was.

In this case it meant trusting my instincts with regard to my supporting cast. There are sections of the novel that are unrelated to the main character’s mission. During development I worried that these might be seen as digressions. Now I think my multiple point-of-view characters are part of what gives the novel its “epic” quality — a broadened perspective on the war.

When I was younger and less confident, I might’ve cut all those secondary narratives. Instead, I chose to treat this book as an ensemble piece. Weaving all of its tales into a tapestry of causality made them all stronger and provided a foundation for my larger story universe.

Research Pays Off When You Least Expect It

One reason I’d never before tried to write historical fiction was that I’d been daunted by the degree of research it would entail. Though I felt as if I had a reasonable grasp of the World War II period in Europe, I knew that readers of historical fiction are quite demanding when it comes to accuracy. So I dug in and did my homework.

I spent over a year reading both online and in libraries. I visited the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

The great thing about researching a subject in such depth is that it’s like soaking your brain in smart juice. It works its way into your gray matter’s fatty squiggles and comes out when you least expect it.

Several such moments of serendipity graced my work on The Midnight Front. The most notable instance came late in the writing of the book.

While trying to write a pivotal sequence, I realized that Omaha Beach was, for many reasons, the wrong setting for the action I needed to depict. Then I remembered reading about Pointe du Hoc — a D-Day objective less often depicted but in some ways even more dramatic because of what the 2nd Ranger Battalion accomplished there. Once I transplanted my battle sequence to that location, one of the key sequences in my book came into focus.

Marinate your brain in facts and they’ll flavor your story in amazing ways.

In a Thriller, You’ve Got to Keep the Pressure On—Always

One note I received from my agent was to make sure that my heroes felt the pressure of the war at all times. Keep the heat on. Never let your characters feel free of peril. Always have a looming threat, an impending deadline, a ticking clock, a bundle of dynamite with a burning fuse.

This is one of the tricks to making certain the middle of a thriller doesn’t bog down. If you need to deliver exposition, have it happen while characters are under fire, on the run, or bleeding from an open wound. If you can’t find a way to do that, at least have them challenged by a conflict that can ruin some other aspect of their lives.

A scene in which no one has anything to lose is one for which a reader has no reason to care.

You Can Humanize Villains Without Forgiving Them

I wanted Kein Engel, the villain of The Midnight Front, to be as fully realized as the hero. I wanted his motives, if considered separately from his methods, to seem almost reasonable.

Consequently, I decided his plot was to save the world. Of course, what one person calls salvation another might call destruction. So I had Kein blame humanity’s ills on its embrace of technology before we as a species were ready to control such gifts. He argues that the wonders of science are a fast track to danger, environmental disaster, and economic slavery.

What the heroes can’t know in 1942 is that Kein is right—at least with regard to the threat posed by developing technologies faster than we can understand how those inventions might hurt the world. Where Kein goes off the rails, of course, is how he proposes to solve it. But this is why he can’t see himself as a bad guy. He’s willing to do terrible things to save the day … but what hero isn’t?

Ultimately, though his motives might be justifiable his actions are monstrous. We are judged by what we do, not by what we intend. Making Kein’s motive reasonable doesn’t absolve his evil actions. I was willing to give one of his minions a path toward future redemption, but I never let myself forget that Kein himself is a villain.

Adjectives Do Not an Epic Make

The first draft of The Midnight Front weighed in at around 200,000 words, and, according to my agent Lucienne Diver, there wasn’t “a single unmodified noun” to be found anywhere within its pages. My friend fellow author Kirsten Beyer observed, “You never wrote like this before.” This prompted her to ask, “So why would you start now?”

In my desire to craft something “epic,” I went overboard with adjectives (and, to a lesser degree, adverbs). This observation struck me as odd, since I’d thought I’d learned many years and many books earlier to use modifiers with care. But with my mind focused on other goals (“It must feel huge! Grand! Sweeping and majestic!”), I lost my focus on the basics.

With the help of a text-analysis application, I flagged every single adjective in my manuscript. During my rewrite, I cut more than 8,000 adjectives and nearly 4,000 adverbs. That one action improved my sentence structures, clarified my meanings, and strengthened my prose.

I am happy to report that I do not seem to have repeated this error in the writing of the series’ second book, The Iron Codex.

I have, no doubt, committed all-new errors.

* * *

David Mack is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure, including the Star Trek Destiny and Cold Equations trilogies. Mack’s writing credits span several media, including television (for episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), film, short fiction, and comic books. His new novel The Midnight Front is available now from Tor Books. Excerpt here.

David Mack: Website | Twitter

The Midnight Front: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Powell’s

New macro photo there.

Is it good? No. Do I like it? Yes.

I’m noodling actually on getting a new macro lens — the MP-E 65mm, would let me do macros up to 5x (!) instead of 1x magnification, which is huge, but would also require greater technique, stability, light, and patience. There’s probably a metaphor in there for something but it’s Monday and it’s early and I’m not quite ready to snatch it, yet. Either way, be nice to up my macro game a wee bit.

Also, I’m now at a point where I don’t really have any deadlines? I mean, I do — but they’re a good ways off? And I’ve only got to write one book this year?

So, with that in mind, I went on a small adventure on Twitter.

Begin here.

Please enjoy.

Otherwise, I’m off to Austin at the end of the week to give a workshop to the wonderful ARWA, so that should be a blast and a half, because I’ll talk about characters and themes and, I dunno what else, probably Star Wars, and maybe spiders. Maybe it’ll just be eight hours on the Spiders of Star Wars. You don’t know. I’m unpredictable like that. Details here!

And that’s it.

Have a nice week, frandos!

This is a great Twitter account.

You should go to it — the Magic Realism Bot — and therein you’ll find an endless array of story prompts. I’ve no idea if they’re actually written by a person with intention or somehow cobbled together by a wise and weird neural network (I’d guess the former, but who knows?), but either way, I’d say use ’em.

Pick a prompt.

Write a story based on it.

Length: ~1000 words

Due by: Friday, March 23rd, noon EST

Write at your online space.

And link back so we can read it.

Now, a quick bit — I get emails sometimes where people say to me, “Hey, wait, what does that last part mean? Post to my online space and give a link?” It means you need to find somewhere online to host your work. Be that Tumblr, or WordPress, or some ancient Livejournal instance, you will need to find a place to post your words publicly so that you can then, after posting, grab a link and drop it into the comments below. K? K.

Go write.