Last challenge: “Bad Parents“

AND WE’RE BACK.

Sorry — little holiday interruption last week.

This week, a bit of a quirky one.

You ever play those old-school Infocomm text adventures?

(Zork: “You are eaten by a grue.”)

I was a huge fan.

Now, there’s a Twitter account / bot that, if you tweet the word “inventory” to this particular Twitter bot — @YouAreCarrying — it will tweet back at you a randomized list of inventory items, taken, I believe, from old Infocomm games.

(Example:)

@ChuckWendig a chair, a broken clockwork canary, a green eyed rock, a veil, a skeleton key, a ransom note, a pretzel, a manhole cover.

— YOU ARE CARRYING: (@YouAreCarrying) July 11, 2014

So, I want you to do that.

(Or, if you don’t have a Twitter account, go pluck a tweet from the YouAreCarrying page.)

Take all the items listed in the response tweet (your “inventory”) and use them all — in some way, oblique, abstract or overt — in a flash fiction. We’ll up the word count to 2000 words for this one. Due by next Friday (7/18), noon EST. Post at your online space; drop a link below so folks can follow it back. And that’s it. Go forth. Get your inventory. Write a story.

Magical beings have been banned from the Golden City for decades, though many live there in secret. Now humans and nonhumans alike are in danger as evil stalks the streets, growing more powerful with every kill….

It’s been two weeks since Oriana Paredes was banished from the Golden City. Police consultant Duilio Ferreira, who himself has a talent he must keep secret, can’t escape the feeling that, though she’s supposedly returned home to her people, Oriana is in danger. Adding to Duilio’s concerns is a string of recent murders in the city. Three victims have already been found, each without a mark upon her body. When a selkie under his brother’s protection goes missing, Duilio fears the killer is also targeting nonhuman prey.

To protect Oriana and uncover the truth, Duilio will have to risk revealing his own identity, put his trust in some unlikely allies, and consult a rare and malevolent text known as The Seat of Magic….

1) DON’T WRITE THE SECOND BOOK IN A SERIES FIRST.

Yes, I did that. I wrote The Seat of Magic before I wrote The Golden City.

I originally wrote The Seat of Magic as a follow up to a novella, “Of Ambergris, Blood, and Brandy”, that was published in 2010. I pitched The Seat of Magic to my future agent (Lucienne Diver) at the DFW Writer’s Conference in 2010 but, after reading the full, she wrote back to me saying it was clearly the second book in a series, and therefore she couldn’t represent it.

Now by that time, I’d decided I needed to rewrite the novella at novel length. That novel eventually became The Golden City. After I sent it to my future agent, she did decide to represent the books. So that worked out in the end, but…

My editors for The Golden City suggested some changes. They were fairly large changes, but they made it a stronger book. But those changes set off ripples of further changes that essentially required tossing a full half of The Seat of Magic (since it occurs later chronologically.) So I ended up throwing out a lot of work because I’d done it out of order.

2) DON’T OBSESS OVER EVERY DETAIL.

My books are listed as Historical Fantasy, and I worked hard to get the day-to-day details of my historical setting correct. But shortly before I turned in The Seat of Magic to my editor, I noticed that in 1902 Porto…Santa Catarina Street had sidewalks.

ACK!

I went into full panic mode, poring through old photographs of my setting and trying to determine which streets were cobbled and which had sidewalks at the edge. After a couple of hours of this, I decided to get a map and start highlighting the streets with sidewalks so I would get them right.

And then I had a sudden revelation: no one would care. My alternate Porto has had entire streets demolished and a palace built in it. The city’s population includes selkies and sereia and seers. Readers can handle a few missing sidewalks.

3) DON’T TRY TO GET IN THOSE TASTY TIDBITS.

Like most authors, I did a lot more building for my world than I could include in my books. There were a couple of tidbits I felt people would find interesting, but every time I tried to stick in that paragraph about selkie procreation or sereia culture…I ended up taking it back out. Those things might have been interesting to me–and about 12 readers–but they would have been boring distractions to everyone else.

4) DON’T READ THE REVIEWS.

This isn’t the same for every author, but for me, I learned very quickly that reviews were distracting. I had a deadline for my next book, and if I started obsessing over some tiny criticism (which occur even in favorable reviews) that kept me from writing. Therefore, for me to be an effective writer–and get my work in by my deadline–I’ve had to stop reading reviews….even the good ones. (This was an unexpected development for me, since I never had that problem with short story reviews. I do not know why it’s different with my novels.)

5) DON’T LET STRESS SUCK THE JOY OUT OF WRITING.

As I got closer and closer to deadline on The Seat of Magic, I found myself having days where writing felt like drudgery. I hadn’t experienced that before, partially because writing has always been a stress reliever for me. Despite my looming deadline, I decided to set aside one day a week where I would work on something other than the WIP. I worked on silly stuff, stuff that will probably never see publication.

Doing that reminds me that I’m writing because I love to write, and that’s what’s important.

* * *

J. Kathleen Cheney is a former teacher and has taught mathematics ranging from 7th grade to Calculus, with a brief stint as a Gifted and Talented Specialist. Her short fiction has been published in Jim Baen’s Universe, Writers of the Future, and Fantasy Magazine, among others, and her novella “Iron Shoes” was a 2010 Nebula Award Finalist. Her first novel, “The Golden City” was a Finalist for the 2014 Locus Awards.

J. Kathleen Cheney: Website ǀ Twitter

The Seat of Magic: Amazon ǀ Barnes & Noble ǀ Powell’s

Blah blah blah, Amazon-Hachette.

Amazon put out a new offer which was very kind to Hachette writers, so kind, in fact, that it was untenable because it would hurt Hachette in the end: roughly the equivalent of saying, “We will give every author a pony and a jet-ski if all the executives at Hachette line up on television and punch themselves in the face.”

The offer may very well be an earnest one by a company that loves authors. The offer may be a plea to get the hearts of the authors without doing anything about it, because Hachette was always, always, always going to reject that deal. (If I know you’re going to reject a deal up front, I can offer you the world, appearing grandly magnanimous in what is predictably an empty gesture. I might suggest that Amazon’s kindest and most realistic move would simply be to return Hachette books to their original status — pre-orderable and shipping quickly. This wouldn’t merely be kind, but also help stanch the flow of buyers who are realizing they can buy books from, y’know, other places, thus altering their purchasing patterns and — oh, hell, this isn’t why I’m here.)

Point is: I do not know the hearts and minds of these corporations.

And if we’ve learned anything from Hobby Lobby and certain petitions:

Corporations are people and we’d hate to hurt their feelings.

Ahem.

I’d offer, however, the notion that authors are actually the real people here that are worth caring about — and the rhetoric and framing of this author-versus-author is total uglypants. So, in this instance, when Amazon makes its deal and several Hachette authors come out and say, “That’s lovely, but actually, I quite like my publisher,” they are noted as suffering from ‘Stockholm Syndrome.’ Which is to say, they are being compared to actual hostages who have been made to sympathize with their captors. It’s nasty language, suggesting that they are, in effect, abuse victims who have grown to like the licking they’re taking.

Please, understand:

Some writers like their publishers.

I know, that’s weird, particularly if you’ve taken the position that Self-Pub Is True And Mighty and Traditional Publishing Is Exploitative And Cruel. But, here’s a revolutionary idea: maybe traditional-publishing isn’t universally exploitative. (It can be! Oh boy, it can be.) Maybe, just maybe, people have agents who have negotiated for them strong contracts that don’t fall prey to a lot of the perils we hear: they keep copyright, they get good advances, they negotiate stronger percentages and escalators, they are free of various harmful non-compete clauses. Maybe every publishing deal isn’t a whip-crack against one’s bare ass.

Not every publishing deal is the Prom at the end of Carrie.

Some authors feel they are getting value from their publishers.

Editorial. Marketing. Distribution.

Some authors feel that they cannot do these things on their own, or simply don’t want to.

That’s not Stockholm Syndrome. (A term that proves itself false the moment you take a long look at it — a captor is one who has forcibly detained you. Authors willingly sign contracts. They are complicit from the get-go. If you’re another writer using this term: you should be a better writer and cleave to more precise — and less inflammatory — language.)

Some authors really are in uneven — even exploitative — relationships with their publishers. It’s true. And if you’re earnest hope is to help show them the light, you don’t do that by calling them names like a schoolyard bully, or worse, suggesting that they are in some way mentally ill. You do it by consistently showing them the freedom you possess that they don’t. (Not money. Going on about how much money you’re making, while honest, has the look of a rich kid crumpling up dollar bills and pitching them at your head.) Just open the door and let them see the Glittery Unicorn Wonderland in which you frolic — you don’t then also have to go up to them and punch them in the face because they’re not dancing around the same candy cane maypole.

And, just the same, when an author with a publisher says they’re happy?

Leave it alone.

Wish them well!

Consider that they might be:

a) earnest

and

b) not actually held hostage.

They are not sycophants for liking their publisher. Just as you’re not a sycophant for thinking Amazon is pretty whoa-dang cool for doing what it’s done. (Curiously, Amazon, when acting as a publisher, offers deals comparable to those on the traditional side of things.)

So, y’know — maybe tone it down a little.

Maybe accept that people have different experiences.

Maybe they’re not bound to their captors because they… aren’t held captive.

And maybe, just maybe, stop using a term that implies mental illness or at the very least makes you sound like a bully. One’s choices as an author-publisher are plenty valid without others having to make the same choice as you. As I said over the weekend: this isn’t religion, and this isn’t war. You don’t score points (outside of invisible social points that you can’t spend and that make you look like a wanker) for “winning.” You do what you do.

You don’t proselytize by cutting everyone else off at the knees.

PLAY NICE TOGETHER

DON’T RUN WITH SCISSORS

YOU’RE ALL AUTHORS NOT BEARS AND GLADIATORS

DON’T BE JERKS

NOW HUG.

HUG, I SAY, HUG.

*stares*

I am always eager to get characters on the page quickly, without fuss, without muss, and doing something immediately. Not like, sitting around, flicking their genitals and staring at the Travertine tile reminiscing about that time the exposition exposited about that other exposition, but actually up and about. Active. Interacting with the world — exerting will — with agency.

This was my motivation for writing an earlier post about creating kick-ass characters.

So, I figured I’d share another one of the little things I keep in mind when flinging characters into the gnashing hell-jaws of my monster machine — er, I mean, “into the story.”

This is: MAC.

Motivation.

Action.

Consequence.

It goes like this:

Motivation

A character has a need. A want. A major motherfucking desire. This isn’t just a small-time yeah, maybe I want that. This is something they are motivated to achieve. Motivated as in: moved to act. This isn’t, “I want those new Zesty Bold Pecan Habanero Diapercrisp Doritos I keep hearing about.” This is: killing someone. Falling in love. Hiding a body. Proving one’s innocence. Blowing up a planet. This is something that would change the character’s life for good or bad. Not just revenge, but a specific revenge on a particular sonofabitch.

The character is driven.

Action

The character takes action. They are forced by their want/need/desire to do something. Not talk about it. Not just turd around and ruminate upon it. They are pushed to drastic, compelling, fascinating action. They violate their own status quo. They do something they wouldn’t normally do. They push. Take risks. This isn’t like, putting money in a parking meter. This is betting it all. This is putting every last bit of oneself on the line to enact a fantasy.

This doesn’t have to be just one action. It can be several — a whole chain of them. A plan. A scheme. A sequence. A plot in and of itself. (And if you’re catching a whiff that this is how plot is actually made — well, you ain’t wrong about that.)

Consequence

As they say, actions have consequences. Push down on one bubble, another pops up. That whole scientific principle of ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction?’ True for stories. (Though I’d argue that you could, in the service of brevity, shorten it to every action has a reaction.)

Sure, it’s entirely possible that the consequence is: THE CHARACTER GETS WHAT HE WANTS AND THEN BUNNIES FROLIC AND EVERYTHING IS CHOCOLATE, THE END.

That sucks, though. You’re a storyteller. ‘Consequence’ is a word with great, well, consequence. It’s heavy. Foreboding and forbidding. It could just as easily be written as: and then shit happens because you accidentally fucked up in dogged pursuit of your desires. Character needs money for his baby girl’s heart transplant (motivation) so he robs a bank to get the money (action) and, well, c’mon, robbing banks usually comes with an unholy host of complications, right? Dead guard. Cops outside. No money in the vault. Hostages. Bill Murray in a clown costume.

Lots of potential conflicts and complications.

Both also great ‘c’ words that could sub-out for Consequence, should you so choose.

(Unlike “cock-waffle.” That gets us no closer to illumination, you cad.)

That Gets You Started

This is just a very, very simple way to get characters on the page — characters who want things and are willing to pursue their wants with diligence and fervor. Characters who are vulnerable to the truest, most vile antagonist of them all: you, the evil-ass storyteller.

(“And I would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling characters!” — every good storyteller ever, unmasked for the monster that they are.)

You may again notice that, from this simple-yet-vital springboard, sweet plot waters flow.

It’s true. Plot is easily and competently built from even a single character’s chain of motivation, action, and consequence. Want shit. Do shit. Fuck up shit. Boom, plot.

Except, here’s a secret.

Shhh, A Secret

Characters with divergent motivations and actions intersect.

And this intersection creates drama.

Darth Vader wants to bolster the Empire and hunt down that pesky princess who keeps stealing his plans and giving them to warbling droids. Luke Skywalker wants to get the fuck off his sandy cat-turd of a planet and with the help of one such warbling droid undertakes a mission to save the very princess that Darth Vader captured. When these two characters intersect, it creates drama — drama that is further fueled by the lie of Vader killing Luke’s father and the truth of Vader being Luke’s father. Each character is dicking up the other character’s plans.

Think about how multiple characters want different things.

Or sometimes want the same things, but demand different actions.

Or how the consequences of one character’s actions push and pull on the life of another character.

These three simple building blocks are bricks.

And sometimes characters fling these bricks at each other’s heads.

Sometimes on purpose.

Sometimes accidentally.

But drama is born as a result.

And in that conflict and that drama:

Plot.

*drops mic*

*mic crushes a pretty butterfly*

NOOOOOOOOO

#plot

Or a treehouse, or a cabin, or Neil Gaiman’s Magic Writing Gazebo.

Asked about this on The Social Medias yesterday, but now I’m asking you.

Anybody done this? Have an outdoor office? Some companies sell pre-fab buildings for just this purpose. Another option is to buy a shed and retrofit it to serve as an office — obviously I’d need electricity and some kind of HVAC and a rancor pit. Plus gladiator quarters.

So. Hit me with your best shot.

Dave presses his eye against the scope.

He sweats and squints. “Which one is which, again?”

Harry, behind him, squats down on a rock and peers through the binoculars. “The fat one — one that looks like a bean bag chair that grew pipecleaner legs and started tottering around, that’s Simon. The skinny one, tall and lean as a Virginia Slim cigarette, well, that’s Schuster.”

Deep breath. In, out. In, out.

Dave suddenly pulls away from the scope. “I dunno if I can do this, Harry.”

“Godsdamnit,” Harry says. He sucks in a snot, chews it a little, spits it against the rock — spat. “You picked a side, Dave. Time to tell them Big City Publishing types that they can’t tread on us.”

“Were they treading on us, though? I mean, seems like everybody’s allowed to do their own thing — it’s just, y’know, it’s just business –”

“Business?” Harry barks, incredulous. “Business? By Bezos’ balls, Dave. This ain’t just business. This here is idea-ology. They got ideas that ain’t our ideas and that’s a no-no. Can’t have folks running around willy-nilly thinking that they can just do different things. This is a war for the spirit. A war over freedom and independence. Now kiss that Kindle and take the shot, Dave.”

Dave nods. Grabs the Kindle dangling around his neck, gives it a kiss, then stoops back to the rifle. He blinks away stinging sweat.

Harry, in his ear: “Take the shot, Dave. Take the shot.”

Bang. The gun kicks like a scorpion-stung horse. The rifle report ripples across the valley — the sound of a bullet ripping the sky like a piece of paper moments before it unzippers Simon’s robot head, sending up a rain of sparks. Schuster warbles and screams and runs for cover. Even here they can hear its legs clanking.

“The other one’s running,” Dave says.

“That’s all right,” Harry answers. He claps Dave hard on the back. “We’ll get him later. For now, we gotta move down into the canyons. I hear there’s a camp of those Smashwords heretics that needs some education. Now, before we go –” He bows his head in sudden prayer. “May Amazon find us and bless us and keep our royalties high.”

“Ay-men.”

* * *

The publishing chatter has gotten weird again.

This time, it might be weirder than ever. For a while there, it felt like we were learning toward a matured, more nuanced conversation. Less cheerleading, more caretaking. Fewer Anakin Skywalkers running around, angry enough to lightsaber children, and more Obi-Wans dispensing wisdom and keeping his lightsaber mostly holstered.

We are, sadly, experiencing a minor hiccup in good sense and reason.

Because once again, we are treated to writing and publishing becoming an US versus THEM dichotomy. False dichotomy, actually, because it’s an absurd notion, that we exist on opposite sides of things — writers, who are ostensibly bent toward writing good stories, aren’t in opposition with one another no matter how we put those stories out into the world.

But that’s the language we’re once more hearing. Because two big companies (Hachette, Amazon) are having a slap-fight in public view. And various pundits and polemicists have ascribed almost cosmic significance to the battle — a battle whose exact permutations are veiled behind clouds of PR and propaganda. The Guardian reminds us that “authors take sides,” and I’ve seen talk that compares publishing to war and revolution.

I just want to inject a little sanity into the conversation and say: while I quite like Scalzi’s “football” metaphor, some of the rhetoric surrounding publishing sounds more like we’re arguing religion or politics. It has the whiff of left-wing versus right-wing, atheism versus Christianity, good versus evil. Propaganda has a clever way of making it seem like, if we let THOSE OTHER PEOPLE “win,” then next think you know we’ll be gay-marrying our guns and have to drink organic pesticide out of terrorist hand grenades. Cats marrying dogs and Felix stabbing Oscar in the shower and all that.

It’s fine to think about these things. It’s good to have strong opinions about these things. Problem is, treating this like a war isn’t a very good way to make decisions about your art or the business of your art. Seeing two sides in publishing — whether it’s Amazon versus the Big Five or self-pub versus trad-pub or what — is almost dipshittedly reductivist, but also convinces you that your choices are far, far fewer than they actually are.

(My god, AMAZON VS. THE BIG FIVE sounds like a comic book, doesn’t it?)

I mean, even inside self-publishing, you can see various schisms — a visit to a forum like kboards reveals disagreements aplenty, some of which are helpful to watch, others of which are almost scary in their ideological posturing. Some traditional publishers love Amazon. Others despise them. Others still are like, “Ennnh, whatever gets it done?” Some go hybrid. Some don’t have the time, energy, inclination or skill-sets.

Presenting this as if it’s TWO SIDES, SO PICK ONE completely misrepresents the sheer potential of the landscape. This is a truly bad-ass time to be an author, and this makes it sounds like we’re fighting some fucking apocalyptic hell-battle on steeds made of Kindles and jousting ostriches ridden by slavemaster Big Five editors. You can do so much with your work, now. And when you find that one door closes — you can just take that other door over there. Or that one, or that other one, or that window, or you can stay right here and publish stories for your cat. You have a bonanza of options, grabbing hold of the advantages and disadvantages intrinsic to each.

We have choices.

More than we have ever had.

I fucking love having choices.

I like that I can buy things online. Or go to Target. Or the grocery store. Or the farmer’s market. Or eBay. Or Amazon. I can get a nice couch from the furniture store or one stained with blood and serial killer jizz from Craigslist. I can buy beef jerky made from a cow I just met a few weeks ago or I can eat Slim Jims made by enslaved sea creatures. (That’s the only thing that can explain the existence of Slim Jims.) I can, as an author, publish myself. I can hire an editor. Or not. I can talk to my readers. Or not. I can answer questions on Goodreads, I can submit to agents, publishers big and small and in-the-middle. I can stick, feint, duck, move.

I can do whatever the hell I want.

Picking a side by pretending there are only two will fuck that all up.

Do not do it.

When you see this kind of agitprop, call it out as what it is.

It is hot, bubbling monkey menses.

That’s not to say this stuff isn’t important. Or that you cannot or should not make business decisions and vote with your dollar. You can, and jolly well should. But once again I call for an end to lazy thinking and zealous cult-leader posturing put forth by camps who, surprise surprise, benefit when you join their army.

Approach this with empathy and logic.

Know yourself and know what works for you, and don’t let anyone try to take choices off the table. Traditional authors are not slaves. Self-published authors are not idiots. Hybrid authors are, admittedly, time-traveling terminators — though be assured that we’re totally cuddly and surely harmless. Remember too that in asserting the false dichotomy, you’re risking telling other people that their choices are invalid. You don’t want them to say that to you, right? You don’t want them to take away the validity of your choices — or take away your choices in general? Remember that the things you say have the potential to hurt authors and limit the choices of readers — because this is about their choices, too. Readers don’t have to buy from Amazon. They don’t have to read only work curated by Big Publishing. They, like authors, don’t have to pick sides.

They want good books, goddamnit.

So let’s give them good books in whatever way suits us.

Support authors and support readers.

Support the culture of stories and publishing as a means to get those stories into the world.

Stick. Feint. Duck. Move.

This isn’t a crusade. This isn’t Blue versus Gray.

Neither side has Vatican assassins.

Fuck false dichotomies and made-up publishing gods.

You don’t have to join the revolution or choose targets on the other side.

Otherwise, you might dig your heels in so hard the horse you’re riding dies underneath you.