Apple-Obsessed Author Fella
Okay, last week I said, “come up with an opening line.”
The week before that I said, “come up with a last line.”
Now, I want a title.
Then we will mash up all three challenges into one proper short story.
For now, drop down into the comments, and I want:
One five-word title.
Just one.
Not three words.
Not six words.
Five words.
Due by Friday, September 1st, noon EST.
Go.
This is a thing that happens sometimes:
The story you’re writing drives top speed into a mountain and stops short in a ball of flames and crumpled metal. Or, it slowly putters out of gas, or drives off a cliff, or you’re stuck in a swamp, or you feel like an old person lost at the mall, endlessly circling Bed, Bath and Beyond. The plot crashes. The narrative gassily sputters. Whatever. The effect is ultimately the same: it feels like you don’t know where to go next, like you don’t have enough story to carry you forward.
Here, I think, is what might be happening:
Your characters don’t have enough to do.
They are like a six-year-old child whose endless refrain is I’M BORED I’M BORED I’M BORED and they just stare at you as they say it I’M BORED I’M BORED I’M BORED.
Simply put, the characters are driving this car. Not you. Yes, yes, you’re the God of this domain and they’re your little narrative meat-puppets — I’m not suggesting that your characters are independently alive. They have no sentience beyond your own. Just the same, they are the ones driving the car — and you’re the one giving them the map, the GPS, the destination.
If the car stops or hits the wall, it’s because you either gave them the wrong destination, or no destination at all. Orrrrrr, you instead let plot be the driver — meaning, you drop-kicked the characters into the backseat and gave the keys to the plot, which is very bad.
*swats your nose with a newspaper*
VERY BAD NO DO THAT
BAD AUTHOR
BAD
The reason that’s bad is because events are not compelling drivers of narrative. Think of how we learn history, and the difference between a good teacher of history and a poor one: a bad teacher of history concentrates on events, on dates, on occasions. A good teacher focuses on the people involved and the stories that surround them — history is made by people with motivations. They want things. They fear things. They have problems and beliefs, and they act to solve those problems and enact or enforce those beliefs. Be they noble or be they selfish, it is people with motivations who make history — and, more importantly, who make history interesting.
Your fiction is just like that.
Fiction should not comprise a series of inert, disconnected events. It is not a string of dates. It is not an unrolling carpet of happenstance.
Characters are not little paperboats in a stream of plot.
Characters are rocks that divide the waters. They change the course of the river. But that only happens when you give them things to do, when you drive them forward with problems at their heels and at their fore, when you fill their heads with things they want and things they fear.
This forms their character arcs. From this, they make plot.
Plot is the thing that characters poop.
*checks notes*
Okay, that’s not exactly right, but it’s good enough.
If your story has hit a wall, if you don’t know where to go, look to the characters. Ask them. If they cannot tell you, then you have not adequately given them enough to do. Look to their motivations. Look to their problems. Go back through the work, strengthen these emotional seawalls. Give them things to do. Give them somewhere to go.
(Then make it hard for it to do them. Think of the characters like your players and you like the Dungeon Master who is there to fuck with their quest.)
Character is everything. If something isn’t working, look to your characters first.
Give them the tools to move forward. Hand the characters a gun. Give them some crazy space drugs. Stick them in a fast car.
Then point them to the horizon and watch the story move.
* * *
Coming soon:
DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative
by Chuck Wendig, from Writer’s Digest, October 17th
A new writing/storytelling book by yours truly! All about the fiddly bits of storytelling — creating great characters, growing narrative organically, identifying and creating theme. Hope you dig it.
Pre-order now:
(Come see me launch the book on October 17th at Borderlands in San Francisco with Kevin Hearne launching the amazing Plague of Giants and Fran Wilde supporting her sublime Bone Universe books! 6pm!)
Once again, sometimes authors talk on Twitter. And when they do, the results are, uhh, well. The results are something else, boy howdy, whistle-dee-doo. Like, how can you forget the endearing tale of Spider Pals, with Maureen Johnson? Or that time when Sam Sykes became a camp counselor and it didn’t go so well? Or how about now, a tale of skulls and bread and sinfulness and old VHS tapes, with Sam Sykes once again?
Hey, look, it’s me, trapped in a frog’s eye, all because I went ahead and upset some wizard. That’s what I get for messing with wizards again! Pesky wizards, always running around, with their magic. Also that’s what I get for misidentifying a toad as a frog!
Poor toads.
Anyway.
Let’s see, what’s going on?
There be an eclipse today, avast ye scurvy eclipse watchers.
Here are some vital eclipse tips:
a) stare at it
b) stare right at it
c) keep staring at it until you can see nothing but the glory of the sun
d) get mad at the grandstanding moon for unfairly maligning the sun
e) keep staring until all is light
f) resolve to kill the moon
g) kill the moon with your mind
h) become the moon
i) continue to prop up the sinister sun regime
j) begin to feel bad about your role in supporting the sun’s heinous activities against the Earth and the rest of the cosmos
k) go through a self-discovery of guilt and empowerment
l) form a revenge plan that consists solely of “eclipse the sun”
m) eclipse the sun
n) never stop eclipsing the sun
o) watch the narcissistic sun die without the attention it truly needs to continue surviving in the sky, that glowing bastard
p) become the sun, but a variant of the sun called the shadowsun, just a dark glowing coin in the endless expanse
q) oh no you killed the earth
r) now it’s just you
s) you and all the other stars
t) hey, the other stars are suns, too, right
u) fuck those guys
v) kill the other stars
w) they don’t understand you anyway
x) did you kill them yet? all the stars?
y) now it’s just you all alone in the galaxy, the sole sovereign of the Milky Way cosmos, the shadowsun governing all the darkness, and there are no other stars and no other — wait, what’s that? there are other galaxies?
z) yeah those gotta go
Pretty sure that’s what all the scientists recommend, anyway.
What else?
Invasive and Zeroes, still on sale.
So too are Atlanta Burns and the Heartland trilogy.
A reminder that I’m on Instagram now.
I think Mark Ruffalo thinks I am a right-wing MAGA-head?
I’m sure there’s more I’m forgetting but fuck it.
Happy Monday!
HAVE A BUMBLEBEE.
Last week I asked you for the last sentence of a story.
This week, I’m asking you for the first sentence of a different story.
How this will work is this:
Next week, I will pick ten of each, allowing you to then randomly choose from that selection for an opening and final sentence to a short story you’ll write.
But that means we need another sentence that will start this unwritten story.
So, get to doing that.
You again have one week.
Due by Friday, August 25th, noon EST.
Pop the sentence in the comments below. Please only one sentence, and keep it to under 13 words long. You may begin.
I don’t know why they’re on sale — let’s go with serendipity, or maybe time-travelers did it, or maybe it’s the cosmic result of two wizards battling. Either way, it’s a thing, and it’s happening.
Both are on sale for your many e-reading devices.
INVASIVE is about ants and anxiety and will also give you a free trip to Hawaii*, and features Hannah Stander, a futurist consultant for the FBI contending with a horde of killer genetically-modified ants as well as an enigmatic billionaire and a secret atoll laboratory.
ZER0ES is about hackers and trolls scooped up by the government who find out from the inside about a secret wet-wired artificial intelligence that has invaded all our networks and nope, that’s probably not a good thing.
They are fun, I hope.
Despite what many sites will tell you, INVASIVE is not a sequel to ZER0ES, but both take place in the same world and share a few characters. Neither is necessary to understand the other.
If you like this site and you like my rampant shenanigans, here is a chance to show your support and grabby-grab some booky-books. Also, please tell your friends. And your enemies. What, I don’t know who your enemies are, maybe they like to read books, too, jeez.
* I mean, not really, but the book is set there so let’s pretend it’s literally true
