Facebook can be pretty awesome but as I’ve noted in the past it can also be a hive of scum and villainy and, moreso than Twitter, you can really find out which ones of your fake-and-or-real friends are racist or sexist or shitclumps of some other shape. And recently I saw one person kind of go on and on about the “friend zone,” that most toxic and passive-aggressive of male memes that begins in high school and often enough doesn’t get disproven — and this person was trying to prove that it was real, as if this were some kind of scientific study into the idea, as if he were on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, hiding in the weeds while watching the “friend zone” phenomenon manifest itself, provably. It was, of course, an argument positively choking on its own horseshit. I didn’t engage, I just clicked “unfriend.” Because, really, ew.

I thought, well, I’ll write a post about the friend zone, but I realized that my favorite most-wonderfully-horrible anti-hero, Miriam Black, already said it (albeit in a way more venomous than I would normally convey, as that’s how she rolls). Further, I am not averse to a tiny bit of self-promotion when the time comes (my shame sensors were destroyed in the war), and so I thought I’d quote a little bit from Miriam’s most recent adventure, The Cormorant, where she deals with this, erm, “friend zone issue” in that Very Miriam Way.

So, here’s a snippet from the book.

* * *

“I got you a job!” Jace blurts.

Miriam turns. Makes a poopy face. “Me and jobs don’t play well together. My last real job kind of ended with a shooting. And a stabbing, come to think of it.”

“I don’t mean that kind of job–” He fishes in the pockets of his flannel surrender-pants, pulls out a folded up piece of paper: the world’s most boring origami. He begins to unfold it. “I ran a Craigslist ad–”

“I definitely do not want whatever this job is. Particularly if it has the word ‘hand’ or ‘rim’ preceding it–”

“No, wait, shut up for a second. A couple months back I put up an ad for your… particular talents, the psychic death thing, and for a while I mostly just got a bunch of trolls who thought I was a pimp–”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

“But last week I got this email.”

He thrusts the unfolded paper at her. Like a beaming toddler proud of his dirty diaper.

She grabs it. Scowls. Reads.

Her gaze suctions onto a very big number in the middle of the email.

$5000.

“Five grand,” she says, looking up. “This guy wants to pay me five fucking grand to tell him how he’s going to die?”

Jace nods, grinning ear to ear.

“Are you sure he doesn’t think this is code for sex?”

“I… I called him.”

“You called him.”

“I thought he might think it was about sex, so.”

“And it’s not about sex.”

“No, he’s some rich guy in Florida. A little obsessed with his own…” Jace flutters his fingers in the air, a gesture he makes when he’s trying to think of a word. “Demise.”

“Five grand.”

“Yep.”

“Rich nutball.”

“Yes.”

“In Florida.”

“Apparently.”

“That means I need to get to Florida.”

He shrugs. “Well. Yeah.”

“Call him.” She snaps her fingers. “Set it up.”

“OK,” he says. But he just stands there. Staring at her.

“What?”

“What-what?”

“You’re looking at me,” she says.

“I think it’s OK to look at you. You can look at me, too.”

“I am looking at you looking at me, and at this point I’m starting to wonder what’s going on.”

He shifts nervously from foot to foot. “I just thought you could say, you know… thank you?”

“Oh. Well.” Miriam clears her throat, loosens some of that tobacco mucus that nests in her vocal cords. “Thank you, Jace. By the way, I hate that name. Jace. Jason – Jason is a good name. Or Jay. I like Jay. It’s like a bird. I like birds. Mostly.”

“Do you like me?”

“Huh?”

“I like you.”

“Oh, sweet Christ on a crumbcake, really?”

“Really what? We’ve known each other for a year now and we’ve kind of skirted around each other and flirted–”

“I did not flirt.”

“We were flirting,” he says, nodding, smirking. “Sometimes people flirt and they don’t even know it.”

She narrows her eyes. “Nnnyeah, I think I’d know.”

“You’re leaving soon.”

“Pretty much now-ish.”

He reaches out. Takes her hand. “That bed looks pretty comfortable.”

She shoves him backward. Not hard enough to crack his skull against the doorframe, but enough to get the message across.

“Hey,” he says, genuinely stung. “Ow.”

“Thank your stars and garters I didn’t perform dentistry using your asshole as the entry point.”

He sighs. “Friend-zoned again. Nice guys finish last.”

The temperature in her mental thermometer pops the glass. “What did you just say? Are you seriously pulling that nice-guy friend-zone crap? You little turd, how’s that supposed to make somebody feel? That my friendship is just a way station to my pussy? Is that what my companionship is worth to you, Jace?”

“It’s not like that. I just thought–”

“You thought what? That because you’re a nice guy, my panties will just drop because you deserve to have my thighs around your ears? Fuck you, dude. Being a nice person is a thing you just do, not a price you pay for poonani. I’m not a tollbooth. A kind word and a favor don’t mean I owe you naked fun time.”

Now he’s mad. Brow stitched. Lip curled. “Oh, like you’re a nice person? Please.”

“I’m not! I’m not nice. And this is not news, dude. I’d rather be a cranky bitch who lets you know what she’s thinking than some passive-aggressive dick-weasel who thinks friendship with a girl is secondary to her putting out. You wanted to fuck me? You shoulda just said so. I would’ve at least respected that, and we wouldn’t have to do this boo-hoo woe-is-me pissy-pants guilt-fest.”

She throws on her jacket and snatches the email out of his hand and slings the bag over her shoulder. A hard elbow to the gut leaves him bent over and oof-ing.

Miriam heads to the door.

He trails after like a bad smell.

Taevon and Cherie watch, goggle-eyed.

“I’m sorry,” Jace says, rubbing his stomach.

“You are sorry,” she says, throwing open the door to the hallway.

“I’m a dick.”

“A tiny dick. An insignificant dick. Positively microbial.”

“Can I call you?”

“Can you… No, you can’t call me.”

“But you have the same phone if I wanted to?”

“I’m going to throw it in a bag and burn it.”

* * *

Indiebound / Amazon / B&N / Robot Trading Company / Add on Goodreads

Miriam Black knows how you’re going to die.

All it takes is a touch — a little skin-to-skin action.

Now someone — some rich asshole from Florida — wants to pay her so he can find out how he’s going to die. But when she touches him, she receives a message sent back through time and written in blood: HELLO, MIRIAM. It’s a taunt, a warning, and the start of a dangerous and deadly game for everybody’s favorite carcinogenic psychic, Miriam Black.

TIME TO SELL SOME CLINIQUE —

*receives note*

Clinic? Not Clinique? Oh. Oh. Like, a, a… writer’s clinic. A story clinic, whatever.

Cool. I’m more of an Avon guy, anyway.

Here’s the drill, word-nerds and story-architects.

You’re writing something? Novel? Short story? Script? Etc? Let’s hear a status update. How’s it going? What problems are you having? Maybe we can all crowdsource some solutions or, at the very least, it’ll give me fodder for a future blog post. (Hey, nobody said I wasn’t at least a tiny bit lazy.) So, talk to me. What are you writing, how’s it going, and what problems are you having? Drop your answers in the comment section below. KAY THANKS BYE.

*takes off in a jetpack to battle psionic moon-bears*

I’m about to blow your mind.

I’m about to bake your lasagna.

I’m about to tweak your mind-nipples until the milk of enlightenment sprays you in the eye and eradicates all illusion, which is pretty much exactly what happened to Saul on the Road to Damascus, if I read my Bible correctly (which is to say, while drunk at 3 AM). You ready?

Are you?

Really?

Here comes the boom:

CAT BEARDS.

*waits for applause*

*checks notes*

Wait, that wasn’t it.

Shit shit shit shit.

All right. Let me compose myself.

Okay, here we go again.

I gift unto you: A BRAND NEW WAY OF PLOTTING, PLANNING, AND SCHEMING YOUR STORY.

*thundering timpani drums*

In storytelling, you have all these disparate components. Over here are the characters. Over there is theme. Plot is everywhere. You’ve got mood and pacing and POV and so on and so forth. Ah, but what if I told you that instead of sitting down and deciding all of these separately — taking copious notes and making head-asploding outlines — you could instead sit down and create a single organic document that addressed all of these things and it addressed them using the same technique, which is to say, by asking questions and sometimes answering them?

In this theory, everything cleaves toward mystery.

Mystery is a genre, but it’s also a subtextual element that drives every great story. Every unanswered question is the rung of a ladder; every question mark is a bread crumb in a very long trail winding through the dark forest of the narrative. This is why we withhold information in stories: readers (and writers, who should also be readers) seek answers big and small. They want to know about all the big cosmic shit and all the little fiddly bits, too.

The question mark looks like a hook for a reason.

Readers are driven by the need to know. They are hooked. Compelled. Dragged toward the tale.

Which means you have a new way of charting your story: you can identify those questions that will drive both you the writer (thus preserving that sense of magic and mystery that compels us as storytellers) and the reader swept away by a great narrative.

And that’s what we want: for all of us to be swept away by the story.

Now, I admit I’ve maybe oversold this a little bit: this is by no means some great revolution in outlining, but it hopefully ends up as an interesting way to dissect any story you hope to tell. Let’s take a look at the whole process and what it means for your story.

Not An Outline, Exactly

In plotting your story it’s not about “Plot Point A to B to F to R to X” (note that this spells: ABFRX, name of the LORD OF MIDNIGHT CUPCAKE BINGES).

An outline tends to be “Here’s what happens, then what happens next, now the ending.”

Except, y’know, pages of that.

This isn’t that.

This is you taking a notebook or a Word doc or a Scrivener file or your own little weird-ass Voynich Manuscript and filling it with questions and answers. Answers that often lead to new questions. It’s not an effort to help you have the plot-ducks all arranged in a tidy little row (the duck poop alone ensures it will not be truly tidy), but rather, an effort to help you know so very much about your story, the characters, and the conflicts that when writing the manuscript you’ll never be far from figuring out where to go next.

This may actually help you diminish that dreaded goblin, writer’s block.

(A note on writer’s block: I find that writer’s block, that mythical demon, can come from a place where you’re not confident or knowledgeable enough about your own material. I don’t mean knowledgeable enough in the research sense, but in the “I intimately know these characters, their problems, and their secrets” way. Sometimes writer’s block is simply a case of not knowing where to jump to next. So: try this Q&A thing. See if it flies.)

Character Questions

These are questions you might ask about individual characters related only to those characters. And, by the way, the reason I put this first before anything else is because to my mind, a story is nothing without its characters. We ride them, piggy-back, through the tale.

You might say, “Ah, but isn’t plot first?” Yeah, no. Plot is either a thing you see built out of a series of characters pushing and pulling against each other and against the world via a series of desires and fears or it’s a thing that you the storyteller lay externally over the proceeding. As I’ve noted many-a-time, the former is like the bones inside a skeleton (hidden but animating), while the latter is like bones duct-taped to a boneless body (obvious and mechanical). Plot is not a thing for you to slot characters into; it is the thing created as a result of their words and actions.

Put differently, characters are not wandering through a maze of your creation.

Characters are creating the maze as they go. Each path born of a decision made.

That’s not to say we cannot have event-driven moments in a story; certainly the storyteller’s job is to sometimes challenge the characters with external tests. But those events should always reflect the character’s choices and the story’s themes in some way, otherwise you’re basically just writing the plot of an early Atari-era video game (YOU’RE FLOATING ALONG EATING DOTS AND OH SHIT NOW THERE ARE GHOSTS TRYING TO FUCK UP YOUR SHIT NO I DON’T KNOW WHY SHIT JUST HAPPENS, MAN, WHATEVER JEEZ, ARE WE ENTERTAINED?).

So, if we are to assume that Plot is Soylent Green (it’s made out of people), then our stories are best-served by us talking to and asking about our characters first.

Character questions might look like the obvious and expected:

What does she want? What is she afraid of?

But we can get deeper, too. More specific. Answers we find are likely to lead to more questions (and I am wary of answers that don’t), which is awesome.

Why does she hate her mother? Why as an adult does she carry around that stuffed rabbit? Where did she get that pistol? Why is she obsessed with that orangutan? Where are her pants?

We ask the questions that interest us.

We ask the questions whose answers yield new questions.

Be sure to ask questions related to your protagonist, antagonist, and supporting characters.

On The Subject Of Killing Snakes

For you, the author, there exists value in asking as many questions as you can — letting those motherfuckers come fast and furious, each punctuated with a Scooby Doo ruhhhh? But it’s important to know the value too in limiting the questions that reach readers.

This is the problem of “letting more snakes out of the bag than you’re able to kill.”

Questions are good, as noted. They keep a reader reading. But they can also overwhelm. Every unanswered variable is a hole, and too many holes means the reader is going to break their poor foot in all that broken ground. A few big questions and twice as many little questions are always good to keep juggling at any given time; any more than that you threaten to confuse the reader and leave them thinking you don’t know your plot from your pee-hole.

So: ask yourself lots of questions.

But make sure the reader isn’t left bewildered by them.

Relationship Questions

From asking individual character questions we can then move to the relationship questions — we want to take the questions and answers we’ve drummed up for particular characters and find those links between those individuals. How they fit together. How they dwell in shared emotional space. What conflicts are common between them — and what stakes they share, too.

Does Eddie love Jenny? Does she know about his betrayal? Does he know about her orangutan? Why does the orangutan want revenge on Pim-Pim the giant panda? Why did Pim-Pim kill that meth dealer in Fresno? And on and on.

The questions we ask and the answers we get are like the rungs of a ladder. As noted earlier: we use this sense of mystery climb through the story.

These questions further allow us to climb through the characters of the story. We wind through their hearts and minds, through the tangled skeins of love and hate, through all the betrayals and desires and uncertainties and fears and orangutans and pandas.

We want questions that stir up conflict and drama.

We do not want to quash conflict and drama.

Plotty Questions

As suggested, I believe the best plots occur by the hands of the characters, not by the hands of the storyteller. As such, a lot of plot questions might seem answered (or answerable) while looking closer at characters, but here it’s at least worth considering the mechanics of what the characters intend. The schemes of the terrorists in DIE HARD — or the on-the-fly attempts of John McClane to undo their schemes — have to actually work in the eyes of the audience. (Complaint: too many Big Budget Films nowadays conjure plots that don’t have plotholes so much as they have plotcaverns that common sense falls into, shattering its sad body into a thousand bony bits.)

You ask questions and create answers that help you to understand the mechanics. Imagine dissecting a heist this way. Okay, so, they want the jewels. Why? What are they going to do with the jewels once they have them? How will they break into the museum? What tools will they need? Will Emmett and Pike put aside their differences? What if they don’t? What if the jewels are moved? What happens when the guards show up? And so on, so forth.

What if? is always a great question to ask.

As is why?

Also worth asking the simple questions of either therefore? or but?

Great quote from the South Park guys, Matt and Trey, on storytelling:

“We found out this really simple rule… we can take… the beats of your outline, and if the words “and then’ belong between those beats, you’re f**ked, basically. You’ve got something pretty boring. What should happen between every beat you’ve written down is the word ‘therefore’ or ‘but.’

“So you come up with an idea and it’s like ‘this happens… and then, this happens.’ No, no, no! It should be ‘this happens… and therefore, this happens.’ [or] ‘this happens… but this happens.'”

Think about logic. Consequence. Clarity. Simplicity. Elegance.

Ask questions that lead you toward these things, not away from them.

Worldbuilding Questions

This is a rabbit hole, admittedly — one where the rabbit’s about the size of a Cadillac Escalade. You start asking questions about the world, you can fill an actual book with the answers and follow-up questions. And maybe that’s okay — if what helps you get to the novel is first writing 300 pages of a WORLD BIBLE, hey, whatever makes your grapefruit squirt. But if you want to control that, then the Q&A should be focused solely on things that seem to matter to the characters and their experiences, not digressions that seem out of pocket for the tale you’re hoping to tell.

Regardless, questions in the worldbuilding vein can go toward… well, anything in the world. Religion. Plant life. Sexual customs. Food. Politics. Architecture. The religiously architectural sexual customs of plant life at political dinners. And so on, so forth.

Again, the goal here is to create a deeper knowledge base and confidence when telling stories in this particular world — it’s not about chasing down every side dish or religious hymn.

(See earlier note: “on the subject of killing snakes.”)

Thematic Questions

Theme: the argument your work is trying to make.

More succinctly: what the fuck are you trying to say with your story?

That can be question number one, but other questions might follow after: What does the scene in Dubai say? What does the interaction between Thrax and Dongweather tell us? Who best represents the argument I’m trying to make in terms of characters? What does it all mean, man? Where are my pants? WHO PUT THIS CATBEARD ON ME.

May have gotten carried away there, but I think you get my drift.

Point is: ask questions that help you dissect the core ideas behind your story.

Do they stand up? How are they represented? Are you really saying something else?

Other Lines Of Inquiry

Mood questions. Metaphysical questions. Big story questions versus little story questions. Subplot (B-Plot, C-Plot, Z-Plot). Questions about sequels and backstories.

Lots of options. Lots of avenues to explore.

Find those that are critical to enhance your understanding your own story before you write it.

Ask. Then answer.

Look At It Another Way

Think of it like this: this is a Q&A where you’re interviewing yourself about the story. Or hell, maybe it’s an interrogation — you demanding the best of yourself, sniffing out plotholes, motivations, problems, conflicts, a bona fide dramahound on the case for good story. This is less about a cold, inert outline and more about a dynamic, flowing document that peels back the skin of the tale you want to tell one layer at a time.

Curious to see if anyone tries this, and how it works for them.

Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

* * *

Blightborn (the second book in the Heartland Trilogy) now has a cover. Which I adore.

And, you can pre-order the book.

And, if you pre-order the book now, you get immediate access to a new short story set in the Heartland — a Gwennie-focused tale (“The Wind Has Teeth Tonight”).

You can pre-order here. It’s available in Kindle, hardcover and paperback — all formats will release on July 29th of this year! (Skyscape has been a great publisher, I should note.) This book was a blast to write, and is almost twice as large as the first book in the series. As the cover suggests, it takes readers up off the ground and out of the corn and into the skies as we follow Gwennie and Merelda onto one of the flotillas — and meanwhile, we get to meet the Blight Witch, the Sleeping Dogs, the Peregrine, a Pegasus, another Pegasus, Erasmus the Grackle…

So much fun to write.

Check it out.

First book is available! (Only $3.99 on Kindle.)

Cover art by Shane Rebenschied.

*gunfire*

*gunfire stops*

GROSSER: Comrade! Hey, comrade!

MARTIN: What?

GROSSER: Why don’t you just join the Union? We’ll go upstairs together and cap Daddy!

MARTIN: This union, is there gonna be meetings?

GROSSER: Of course!

MARTIN: … no meetings.

*gunfire commences*

* * *

I’m nesting on the idea of joining the SFWA.

I like what they represent, in theory. And given a lot of the, erm, fun that’s been going on there in the ranks lately, maybe adding a positive voice to the mix would have some value. Plus: Writer Beware! Such useful. Very service. Wow. I also know a lot of great people in the organization and, oh, hey: I am a science-fiction writer. In America. SO I GUESS I QUALIFY AND STUFF.

On the other hand: that Grosse Pointe Blank video above is kinda me? Like, I dig that writing is a community but at the end of the day this whole thing has a distinctly Ronin-writer-without-clan vibe to it. And right now my time is strained so hard the elastic in my schedule’s waistband is about to snap. If this just means I get more emails that I have to answer (and will probably fail to answer), woooo, jeez, please, no. And finally, given the, erm, fun that’s been going on in the ranks lately, I see some voices abandoning ship.

(A discussion on SFWA’s relevance to self-publishers is here. The comment section is a mix of interesting, thoughtful, and worthless, but that’s increasingly par for the course there.)

I joined HWA once upon a time and had a hard time seeing any benefit from it. And being there significantly increased the noise in my life rather than decreasing it.

So: you people.

What are your experiences? I’m not looking for a list of benefits available from the SFWA — I can see that from their website. I’d like to hear from writers who have joined, left, or chosen not to join — and why? What did you contribute? What did you get out of it? So on, so forth.