In other words: “Fuck the rules.”

WHOA, JEEZ, ME. SLOW YOUR ROLL, WENDIG.

Okay, so, at cons and conferences — or via e-mail — someone inevitably mentions in a question something that writer is “not supposed to do.” This person has been reliably and repeatedly informed at some point that This Particular Thing is Fucking Anathema, a Dealbreaker Of Epic Narrative Proportions, and to Do This Shitty Thing is Tantamount To Kicking A Baby Down A Flight Of Steps Into A Pile Of Burning Books. (No, I don’t know why I capitalized a bunch of those words, but it felt good at the time. This is probably appropriate given the post I am about to write.)

This can be anything, really.

Don’t open on weather.

Don’t open with a character looking in a mirror.

Don’t open on a character just waking up.

Never ever use an adverb ever.

(Related: “In Writing, There Are Rules, And Then There Are Rules.”)

And for all that’s fucking holy, writing a prologue is a major biggum no-no, on par with and as pleasant as prolapsing one’s anus. You may in fact be told that a Prologue killed Jesus in the Gospel According To… I don’t remember. Dave, maybe. Dan? Eh.

Point is: Somewhere, you’ll find a list of prohibitions that some writer somewhere decided was an official bad idea. This is maybe a published writer. This is maybe just some yahoo.

But what I want you to realize is this: for every prohibition made, for every supposed forbiddance, you will find a book that defies that supposed dictum. Not just a book — you’ll find a published book. A good book, too. Maybe one that sold a metric keister-load of copies. For every rule, many notable exceptions to that rule.

I mean, okay, I dunno how good it is, but I wrote Blackbirds by breaking a ton of these narrative norms and storytelling mores, these purported prescriptions. I open with a character looking in the mirror. It’s present tense, but third person. It’s a mish-mash of genres: frog-hopping from horror to crime to urban fantasy. I use lots of dream sequences and flashbacks. I wrote a theoretically unlikable character (though I prefer to think of her as quite lovable just the same, but then again, I’m kinda goofy). I actively and openly wanted to defy rules.

Hell, pick up a bunch of genre books and you will find contained with them a — drum roll please — prologue. Despite its reported Jesus-killing powers, the prologue continues to pop up like an errant credit card charge, like a bad smell, like the aforementioned prolapsed anus. Prologues are like a dietary restriction that we say we don’t wanna eat and yet there we are, gobbling the damn things down like we don’t care if we end up with a barely-chewed kielbasa clogging our aorta.

It is with this you need to realize:

This is your story.

It’s your book.

You can do whatever the flippy, floppy fuck you want.

Nothing is forbidden. Everything is permitted.

If you listened to every prohibition out there about writing, you’d be trapped in so tight a box I’m not sure you could even write a story at all. You’d probably just be writing the repair manual for a 1990 Geo Tracker.

With this, I offer two very important caveats:

First, just because everything is permitted doesn’t mean everyone likes those particular things. Some agents and editors — if you are going that route — will immediately throw the Kill Switch upon seeing one of these boogers appear. “She began her story by addressing the reader,” the editor says, then promptly spaces the manuscript through the merciless mouth of her spacecraft’s airlock. (All editors live in spaceships floating above the dystopian island of Manhattan. I originally thought this was to protect them from Amazon in a kind of Reagan-era defense program, but now I think it’s just because: hey, spaceship.)

Second, if you are going to break any of these prohibitions, know that they exist for a reason. Defying them is meaningful — an act of rebellion that says two things: one, “I don’t give a shit about your rules,” and two, “I am good enough to step on them and break their little bones.” Your contravention of expectation — your demand to be an exception — has to be one made of great effort and skill. Most prologues? They’re dogshit. That’s why everyone hates them, because people tack them on not because it’s essential to the tale but because they saw some other asshole do it and they thought, “I dunno, it’s a trope?” Like they’re checking a checkbox. People who overuse adverbs are frequently amateurs. People who start with weather do so not because the weather is essential to convey something about the plot, or the setting, or to lend us mood, but rather because the storyteller doesn’t know what the fuck to talk about. “I dunno — uhhh. The sun… is up? But a storm is… coming? Wait, is there supposed to be something relevant here?”

Do not ignore the prohibitions.

Know them.

And give them the middle finger when and only when you know why you need to go the other way. Nothing is forbidden, but a whole bunch of shit isn’t particularly recommended, and when you decide to walk the challenging path — when you pull a stunt — you better own it, and rock it like only you can. Write with purpose and awareness. It’s your story. So know why you’re making the choices you’re making. That is the way of the wise storyteller.

* * *

The Gonzo Big Writing Book Bundle.

*pay what you want, starting @ $10*

Last week’s challenge: “Behold Your Theme.”

Here, then, are three random sentences:

“The borderlands expire thanks to the hundred violins.”

“A poetic pattern retains inertia.”

“The criminal disappears after the inventor.”

That’s it.

I generated them randomly, online.

You will choose one of these three sentences and include it in a piece of flash fiction, maximum of 1000 words. (For bonus kudos, use all three sentences in one story. Ooooh.)

Due by this Friday, the 16th, noon EST.

Post at your blog.

Drop a link to it here so we can all see it.

Go forth and write!

(For those asking, sadly the flash fiction challenge on Friday failed to post! Actually it failed to save and I never noticed — been having some up-and-down website issues since last week and I think this was a result of that. Since I was in Canada with limited access to the web, hard to do much about it. As Canadians would say — sooorry! I’ll get one up later today.)

Here’s where I ask you:

How’s the writing going?

What problems are you hitting?

Not only does this give me stuff for future blog posts but it lets the rest of you fine folks here act as a hive-mind to discuss how you might solve a problem. This is less about me helping you today and more about you helping one another. In a weird way, terribleminds has become a kind of community of penmonkeys these days, right? So, hell, let’s use that.

Need advice on writing or storytelling, ask.

And check out the other comments, see if you can offer advice of your own.

Do this, or you will all get the hose.

And by “hose,” I mean, “upended basket of rabid ferrets.”

Well, hey.

Amazon has both Mockingbird and The Cormorant as Kindle Daily Deals. Each is $1.99, which means you can get both for just under four bucks.

You can do so by clicking this link.

Ancient monsters bite off more than they can chew in this action-packed adventure set in modern Japan.

Kenny Blackwood, aged 15, arrives in Tokyo to spend the summer with his estranged father only to find himself in the middle of a hidden war that is about to explode.

Racing against a near-impossible deadline, Kenny must find Kusanagi, the fabled Sword of Heaven, and use it to prevent the disaster. But a host of terrifying monsters is out to destroy him, and success will come at a price.

With the clever, fearless Kiyomi as his guide, Kenny must negotiate the worlds of modern and mythic Japan to find the lost sword, before it’s too late.

***

A MILL NEEDS LOTS OF GRIST

Ah, that old chestnut, “plenty of grist for the mill.” It’s a good plan; if you’re going to write, it helps if you live a bit, else what are you going to write about?

At the simplest level, I take this to mean try as many new experiences as you can. Try bungee-jumping – you might have a character fall from a great height. Try learning a new language – you’ll see the limitations of your own as well gain insight into another way of thinking.

Or you can push it to the extreme and snack on hallucinogenic mushrooms or wear a Ku Klux Klan costume to a hip-hop concert. Whatever you’re willing to risk, but the point is the same: try new experiences, because you never know when it will come in useful.

Taking a step back, I also apply this to leaving one’s comfort zones. Watch a movie, read a book, or listen to an album that you’d normally go nowhere near. It’s a good lesson in analysing why the particular piece doesn’t work for you, but also you might get an idea from it, however small, in which case it wasn’t a wasted exercise.

FEAR IS THE PATH TO THE DARK SIDE

Without getting all Freud-dude about this, we all have at least two selves. One passes for normal and is sensible; this is the self that functions in society, wears matching socks and knows how to queue. The other is a headcase; this is the self that wants to walk out of the house naked, to jump in front of a train, to fart in a crowded elevator. That other self is a dick – we know this – and if given control will kill us, which is why we have the Darwin Awards.

But here’s the thing; that other self has its uses and one of those is to make us chase opportunities. Nice Christopher Columbus probably wanted to stay home and play with kittens, but it was Nasty Christopher Columbus who sailed to the New World, caused mass genocide and ultimately gave us the internet which is how you’re able to read this. Sure, we can play it safe, but then we don’t achieve anything.

You have to take risks if you want to get anywhere, whether it’s the grocery store or the Hugo Awards. In my case, I went to Japan, fresh out of college, without speaking a word of Japanese. It was a life-changing decision, the best thing I did, but it wasn’t Mr Safe who made the call.

SKELETONS HAVE THEIR USES

I long ago came to the conclusion, maybe wrongly, that everyone has scars from childhood. I even picture some Mitt Romney-type, silver-spoon-in-the-mouth, trust fund beneficiary sitting in his shrink’s office bemoaning the fact that his life was too sheltered, devoid of any character-forming challenges and he’s an emotional wreck as a result.

We all have scars, skeletons in the closets, bodies under the floorboards. That’s not a bad thing at all.

I have a somewhat unusual background, being born in England to Caribbean immigrants of Indian origin. (Think AMA award-winning Nicki Minaj or Nobel Prize laureate V.S. Naipaul, depending on your cultural proclivities.) Growing up in the Seventies, this meant I experienced racism and prejudice, but that’s life. As a teenager, I had a serious battle with depression after my father died, but again that’s all valuable grist. No experience is ever wasted provided you learn from it and this is where “write what you know” comes into play.

All stories, the ones written by humans at any rate, have characters with feelings and emotions that we all share and understand. The stronger the bond of empathy between character and reader, the more engaged the audience, and one way to do that is to unearth some of those skeletons.

When I came to write this book, I wanted the character arc to include a reconciliation between father and son and the way I approached it was to have that conversation with my own long-deceased father, to say some of the things I should have but never did. Yes, it was uncomfortable, picking at old scabs, but also therapeutic and, I hope, infuses some emotional authenticity.

BEING A STUBBORN S.O.B. ISN’T A BAD THING

Being a writer is a vocation. Like the priesthood, it requires sacrifice, dedication and faith. Unlike the priesthood, there is no promise of reward nor grateful parishioners. You’re on your own, sweetheart, and all you have to keep you going is blind faith in your own abilities.

This is easier to manage if you’re a raging egomaniac but, if not, then stubbornness isn’t a bad back-up trait.

The Sword of Kuromori is the third book I wrote but it’s the first one I sold. Back in 2007, when I started writing seriously again, the first fruit of my labours was a 144,000-word monster which I quickly buried without ever sending off to anyone.

It was too long for a debut novel and needed a lot of rework, but it was finished and I’d learned so much from writing it. For a complete break, I next wrote a fast-paced, action thriller for my kids. It got me an agent but not a publisher. I then wrote Kuromori but it took me a year and a half to find a new agent, during which time I went and wrote a fourth book, to keep me from fretting.

Once I landed my new agent, the book was sold four months later, but it took six years, four books, two agents and 78 rejections to reach that point.

The funny part is that I’d set myself a target of 200 rejections before I quit and moved on to another book, so I came in under the line.

RESEARCH IS GOOD BUT WHEN IT FAILS MAKE STUFF UP

I spent five years in Japan, which is why it was a natural move for me to set the novel there. Having said that, it’s been a while since I left and I’d never studied Japanese myth or folklore so I had a lot of homework to do, both directly for the novel and indirectly to re-familiarise myself with the language, customs and traditions.

Fortunately, thanks to the power of the internet, I could do a lot of that on my PC, such as using Google Street View to tour the back alleys of Tokyo. Nonetheless, it still took over a year of digging to gather the material I needed for the tale, but what do you do when you can’t find that elusive kanji or obscure god you came across in the Kojiki?

For me, that was easy. A fiction writer is by definition a liar. Plato wanted to banish all poets from his idealised Republic because as soon as you say, “There was once a man who had two sons,” you’re making stuff up and lying your ass off.

In this light, it then becomes simple to create the things you need, as long as you play by the rules of your world. For example, I created a system of using magic by writing out Chinese logographs in the air. It seemed to make intuitive sense to me and I later discovered folk tales in which that happened. Similarly, certain types of Japanese monster follow patterns, such as the chimera-style transposing of one type of head on to another body. Knowing that gives me licence to create new beasties if I can’t find one that serves the story’s purpose.

For me, research is still king and will often dig you out of a hole, but don’t become a slave to it. The beauty of writing fantasy is that no-one can really bust your nuts over it, not anyone sane at least. “But a real wizard wouldn’t do that,” isn’t going to carry a lot of weight. So long as you stay true to the spirit of the world you’re working in, you’re free to create anew.

Here’s a final example. I wanted to include a variation on the “five finger death punch” because, hey, it’s a kid’s book with martial arts and it’s really cool, but I couldn’t find any solid references in the literature, so I made it up. Enjoy!

“The remaining oni stopped to size up the frail-looking old man. Genkuro bowed to the creature and then adopted a fighting stance. The monster grunted and smashed at him with its club. Genkuro’s left hand flashed upwards and he parried the blow, blocking the huge metal beam with his bare hand. With his right, he landed a chop on the oni’s wrist.

Kenny winced at the sound of bone snapping and stared as a ripple went up the oni’s arm. The staccato sound of crackling bone continued as the shock wave travelled to the monster’s shoulder, along its rib cage and down its spine. The oni flopped to the ground, its body reduced to a large bag of skin, as its pulverised skeleton could no longer support it.”

***

Jason Rohan has worked as a staff writer for Marvel Comics in New York and as an English teacher in Japan, where he lived for five years.

Jason Rohan: Website | Twitter

Sword of Kuromori: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Powells

It’s been three months since Drothe killed a legend, burned down a portion of the imperial capital, and found himself unexpectedly elevated into the ranks of the criminal elite. As the newest Gray Prince in the underworld, he’s not only gained friends, but also rivals—and some of them aren’t bothered by his newfound title. A prince’s blood, as the saying goes, flows just as red as a beggar’s.

So when another Gray Prince is murdered and all signs point to Drothe as the hand behind the knife, he knows it’s his blood that’s in danger of being spilled. As former allies turn their backs and dark rumors begin to circulate, Drothe is approached by a man who says he can make everything right again. All he wants in exchange is a single favor.

Now Drothe finds himself traveling to the Despotate of Djan, the empire’s long-standing enemy, to search for the friend he betrayed—and the only person who can get him out of this mess. But the grains of sand are running out fast, and even if Drothe can find his friend, he may not be able to persuade him to help in time…

* * *

1) Plans Shmans

I went into Sworn in Steel knowing I had to do things differently. I mean, I spent ten years (off and on) writing my first book. That kind of turn-around time just doesn’t work in publishing, especially not for a debut author. So I had to up my game. I had to have outlines and word counts and story arcs and the whole nine yards. I’d pantsed my way through Among Thieves (meaning I made it up as I went, no outline), but that wasn’t going to fly this time around. This time, I needed a Plan.

And by god, I stuck to that plan. In well under a year, I was 90,000 words into my projected 125,000 word novel with plenty of room to spare. I had this.

And then I stepped back and looked at the book. It was, in the words of a good friend, a hot mess. Steaming, even.

I froze. Not just for a week, not just for a month. For over a year, I froze.

That isn’t to say I didn’t write. I wrote like hell. I revised like a demon. I fixed and fiddled and tweaked, trying to fix the mess that was my first draft. At one point, the book was up to 190,000 words.

No, when I say I froze, I mean that I got stuck in the story as it was. I had tied myself to a plan, and I was going to follow that plan, dammit. Except it was the plan that ended up messing me up.

And I couldn’t see it.

2) Tunnel Vision Will Kill You

When you wait tables, there is a phenomenon known as “Being in the weeds.” Essentially, it is a situation where you have so many tables and so much to do, there is no way you can keep up with it all. Every time you clear a table, two more seem to be sat in your section. When the food comes out, it is wrong, or half the order is missing, or something needs to go back. You can never get on top of things, and it feels like you are constantly teetering on the edge of complete disaster. Offers of help go unheeded because, frankly, it seems like it would be more work and take more time to tell someone what you need than to simply go do it yourself. The only way out of the weeds is to hack your way through, alone.

You are, in short, in extended panic mode.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this is where I was for much of Sworn In Steel (especially after I blew past the first deadline). And, just like when you are in the weeds, what seems to make sense from the outside doesn’t compute on the inside. You want to help me solve this plot problem? Talk me through the indecision I’m facing over this part of the book? Get me out of the house to just breathe fresh air and gain some perspective?

You know nothing, Jon Snow. I have to do this myself. It would take me too long to explain the problem to you; be too hard to tease out the difficulties that are dogging me; eat up too much time and energy to catch my breath and paint the big picture for you, because of course its all about the big picture and how it isn’t working!

Except that isn’t true. What took me a long, long, looooong time to figure out was that, while I might see only the problems and errors and mistakes in the book, they aren’t the whole work. What I needed, desperately, was a bit of perspective. But I was so far in the weeds, so busy whirling like a distracted dervish, that I couldn’t see what I needed to do: I could only see what I thought I needed to do.

It wasn’t until I broke down and had a long talk with my editor about just where I was (and wasn’t) in the book that I realized…

3) Editors want to help you, you idiot!

This may seem obvious, but when you’ve missed deadline after deadline, you start to get a bit gun-shy, ya know? You dread talking with your editor because you know the inevitable question – “So, how’s the book coming? When do you think it will be ready?” – is going to drop, and you just don’t want to answer that question any more. Because you honestly don’t know at this point (see Weeds, above).

But here’s the thing: your editor is on your side. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have bought your book in the first place; wouldn’t have persuaded the publisher that your work was worth investing in; wouldn’t have put their neck on the line give you extension after extension (after extension, after….). Plus, they want to not only get the book out, but they also want it to be good.

So yes, making that call and having that talk and sending the mis-matched, cobbled-together unfinished mess of a manuscript to my editor was, without a doubt, the hardest thing I have ever done as a writer (and may well be for a long while, I hope). But it was also the smartest thing I could have done.

When my editor and I finally got back on the phone and went over her editorial notes, it opened my eyes to a lot of thing that both worked and didn’t work in the book. Suddenly, what had seemed like a mountain of mistakes became a collection of smaller foothills, most of which I could see the path over. Oh, I needed to cut a lot and rework more, but I could see the end of the book. Turns out it wasn’t that far away.

4) It’s never as bad as you think

It’s easy to forget the parts you like about writing when things aren’t going well. But they’re still there – you just have to trust in them. Even when I was hacking away at the manuscript, I would stumble across a situation here, a bit of dialog there, an expected character around this corner, than delighted me.

I say “stumble” because, at heart, I am still a “discovery writer.” This means that I write the story not to get to the end, but to see where it goes, how it gets there, and who comes along for the ride. I forgot that for part of this book, but fortunately my brain didn’t. Sneaky bugger that it is, it kept doling out little treats here and there—so much so that when I went back to look things over, it wasn’t as horrible as I’d convinced myself. Parts of it didn’t quite suck. And some parts were even…arguably…maybe…kinda…good?

5) Readers are awesome

The thing that struck me the most through all of this, though, was how generous readers can be.

We’ve all heard the complaints online about how George R. R. Martin / Patrick Rothfuss / [Insert Author Name Here] is taking too long writing their next book. And yeah, that happens. But for everyone one of those, there are more people not complaining and patiently waiting.

I didn’t realize this last bit until I started having to post updates and explanations about why my release date was at first being moved back, and then cancelled altogether (since my publisher couldn’t leave the book in the catalog and keep moving the release around). I expected a torrent…well, okay, not a torrent, I don’t have that many readers…but at least any angry trickle of complaints from the people who were waiting for the next installment of the series. But to a post, e-mail, or response, every single reader who either asked or replied said something along the lines of, “That’s okay, take your time. I’d rather you write a good book than a fast one.”

This blew me away. In a world where we’ve gotten used to having everything NOW, where the complaints about a book’s speed of release are a Google search away, to have people saying they were cool with the delay? That they understood that Shit Happens? Well, it was damn nice, and damn reassuring, let me tell you.

That was also the best possible thing I could have learned writing this, or any, book.

* * *

Douglas Hulick is the author of the Tales of the Kin series, which currently consists of Among Thieves and Sworn in Steel. He is a full-time stay-at home father, part-time writer, and part-time swordsman (no, really). When not walking the dog or trying to determine the relative might of pens vs. swords, he can often be found haunting the aisles of books shops, usually in either the sf, crime, or history sections. He is very fond of breakfast.

Doug’s first book, Among Thieves, was a finalist for both the Gemmel Morningstar and Kitschie’s Golden Tentacle awards in the UK. It was also nominated for both the 2013  Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire and Prix Imaginales awards in France.

Douglas Hulick: Website | Twitter

Sworn In Steel: Excerpt | Amazon | B&N | Indiebound