Last week’s challenge, I asked you to come up with an opening line for a story.

This week, you’re going to write a story based on one of those opening lines.

(Er, not your own, thanks.)

Look through them:

Choose one.

(Choose one that complies with the original mandate of keeping to 15 words or less.)

A lot of great options in there. (Though, to be fair, a surprising lot of not so great options in this batch. Lots of errors and over-the-limits. People: read your entries before you click SUBMIT. It’ll take you like, 30 extra seconds, I promise.)

Please identify in the comments below which opening line you’ll choose.

I’ll tally and, presuming there’s a winner, I’ll send that person The Kick-Ass Writer.

Then: you write 1000 words using your chosen line. Post at your online space and link back here.

I’ll choose one of the participants (by random) and toss you a copy of — well, I dunno what. I’ll grab something off my shelves and mail it to you. (Or, if you’re international, I’ll give you something digital.)

Due by noon EST on November 22nd.

Get your fingers tapping.

I received this email the other day. I get emails like this a lot, and I always try to respond (though sometimes my lack of time — or lack of a meaningful answer — get in the way of my best efforts), and usually my replies end up being just a few lines. This one, I don’t know why, got a more robust response that even I didn’t really expect, words just sort of tumbling out, and I thought it might be useful or challenging or at least an artifact of curiosity to post the email and its response:

Hello, Mr. Wendig,

My name’s [REDACTED], and I’m a second-year at [REDACTED]. I was going for an Economics major, found that it wasn’t for me (I hated it, and I wasn’t good at it). Now, I want to major in English.

I’ve been hearing these nasty horror stories about writers going hungry, being unable to find jobs, and, recently, I read a blog post about how writers die off almost at the rate of artists in L.A., New York, and… Sedona, Arizona, was it?

I want to try to find a job in the editing or publishing industry because I love books, especially novels (I know, I know, “another one,” right?) and I believe that I have the personality to be successful as an editor or a publisher. That is, if I can get the job first and work my way up in the company.

Actually, my real dream is to become a novelist. Which is a lousy dream to have right now. I should know. I studied the economy for a year and a half (ex-Econ major, remember?).

I feel lost. I feel lost and scared. What I’ve been doing is collecting the life stories of English majors, poets, and novelists to try to figure out how they got where they are as professional writers that get to do what they love for a living. I want to be like them, but I don’t know how to get started on that path. They always tell me that everyone takes a different route, but I want to know some of the routes that I could take. I’ll have to carve out a fork in the road to get to the finish line eventually—I know that—but I want to see how much guidance I can get before I can decide the best route to carve. it’s kinda like an RPG. You go through the village following these routes, and you can follow what the villagers tell you, or you can ignore them, but in the end you gotta take your own path through the creepy, dangerous forest. So. I guess that makes you a villager. Maybe the friendly local village Wordsmithy?

What I’m asking for is your life story, and any advice you might have. I do take the advice that I receive to heart. Please respond; I will appreciate any advice that you have to offer.

Best wishes,

[REDACTED]

* * *

My response, which may or may not be helpful to the author of the e-mail and to you:

Hi, [REDACTED]!

I adore the RPG metaphor.

Don’t be scared.

I mean, you can be a little scared, but that should also come with a little exhilaration.

This is actually a pretty good economy for people who want to do their own thing.

So: after college, get a job. A day job. In publishing or out of it. Take the time when you’re not doing that to write a novel. And if that one sucks, fix it. And if it sucks so bad you can’t fix it, then write a different novel. Do this again and again until you maybe sorta semi-kinda know what you’re doing.

Make sure you have health insurance. When the day comes sooner or later that you won’t have a day job and you’ll be jumping out of a plane, building a parachute from your manuscript pages, we now have the ACA marketplace (which should be working by the time it matters for you) to help you obtain health insurance at a price that doesn’t kill you.

Write every opportunity you can.

But live every opportunity you can, too. We fill our creative coffers by experiencing the world around us. And we spend what’s in those coffers on the page.

Tell the stories you want to tell.

Bleed on the page.

Don’t chase trends — let trends chase you.

Be excited. Love writing. No reason to do this thing if you don’t love it. Don’t just love the result. Love the process. Even when you hate the process.

Learn why satisfaction is more important than happiness. Why long-term bliss means more than short-term dopamine release.

Tell stories about characters, not about plots.

Tell stories about you that nobody knows are really about you.

Write what you know except when that stops you from writing what you want to write — then use it as an excuse to know more and write more.

Worry more about writing good stories than getting published. The publishing industry is just the minotaur in the middle of the maze: the challenge at the end. You still have to get there. You still have to wander the maze in order to fight the monster.

Don’t feel like you have to write just one thing. Write the things that make you twitch and smile and scream and clamp your teeth. Write those things to which your heart and soul respond. Write to your loves. Write to your fears.

Say things with your work. Make the words about something. About more than just what’s on the page.

When you have a novel you love and trust: seek an agent. Or self-publish. Choose a path and then choose the other path later down the line to mix it up. Seek diversity. Aim for potential and possibility.

Hell with the doubters.

Down with the haters.

If this is something you really want to do, do it.

Embrace the fear.

And write.

Good luck.

— c.

Max Gladstone — besides being a bonafide member of Tiara Club — wrote the really crazy-amazing (cramazing) Three Parts Dead (which at present is ohhh, $2.99 for your Kindlemachine right now). He’s also the guy who wrote this bad-ass dissection of Star Wars, suggesting it’s, erm, about a hive-race instead of human beings. You should be reading Max, is what I’m saying. And here’s one shot among many, for here Herr Doktor Gladstone pops in to answer questions about his newest, Two Serpents Rise:

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF. WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

24601!

Seriously, though.

I write books. TWO SERPENTS RISE, which came out this week, and my first novel THREE PARTS DEAD, are set in the fantasy world of late-millennial capitalism: gods with shareholder’s meetings and necromancers in pinstriped suits. When I’m not writing, I fence, read, cook, play board games (tabletop RPGs when I can corral enough friends into the same enclosed space), and develop my immunity to iocane powder.

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH FOR TWO SERPENTS RISE.

“Forget it, Jake, it’s Fantasyland.”

Or:

A risk manager for a lich king-turned-water baron must stop fallen gods’ followers from poisoning the water of his desert city. With demons.

Or:

Congratulations! You’ve killed the tyrannical storm god! Only… who will make it rain now?

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

Back in college I worked summers cleaning houses after the renters moved out—scouring all memory of a person from their place with toxic chemicals. We had a white Jeep and rigged up Hulk Hands on the ladder rack up top so whenever we went over a speed bump the hands would say “HULK SMASH!”  One day, Hey Jealousy came on the radio, this Gin Blossoms song about a guy falling apart at his ex’s door, and something about that song clicked in with other ideas I was spinning about fantasy worlds and the downfall of old orders and the rise of new. I had this vision of a guy in his 20s who once would have been a knight or king or Jedi or something like that, but the world’s turned and left him unsure about who he is. Kind of metaphysically stuck outside his ex’s door. And then I piled a whole bunch of soil over that idea and left it to germinate.

The next autumn I met the woman who would become my wife. She’s from Los Angeles, and on my first trip out there to visit her folks I was struck by how different that city looked and felt from anywhere I’d seen before in America. Broad, relatively flat—and thirsty. I grew up in Ohio near Lake Eerie and in middle Tennessee. Droughts were rare. Yet my wife’s always mindful of dripping faucets and running taps and yellowing grass. The more time I spent in L.A. the more its water, and its problems, interested me. The closest city I know of in terms of size and topology and water trouble is Beijing—also big, flat, and thirsty.

When I sat down to write the second book in the Craft Sequence, I wanted to paint a city very different from the vaguely Northeastern metropolis of Alt Coulumb that was the focus of my first book, THREE PARTS DEAD. So I thought of the sort of LA / Beijing metaconstruct. And since the Craft Sequence is about a world stabilizing in the aftermath of global revolution—a world where people overthrew the gods and kicked them out—my Hey Jealousy kid was a good fit for the main character.

So it all goes back to toxic chemical exposure really. Thanks, summer job!

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?

It draws off a weird and eclectic set of influences—ecological and political ideas coming off of my time in China, social network and evolutionary biology from scientist friends, comparative myth, activism, a bunch of book research and chats with people all along the socioeconomic and political spectrum, plus too much time getting smashed in Beijing. The odds of anyone, even me, having exactly that set of experiences are pretty small. You could say that about a ton of books, though!

At the same time, I think most readers will see where I’m coming from in this story: the world’s big and complicated, there are no easy answers, no clear bad guys, and we’re all left trying to figure out how to live, and love, and support one another. Also, demon infestations are bad news.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING TWO SERPENTS RISE?

Probably the part where I was working a day job and planning my wedding at the same time. Max, meet fifteen minutes of writing time each day. I wrote the whole thing on an Alphasmart Neo during my commute, and between the hours of eleven and midnight.

At the end of the first draft I had a 160,000 manuscript written in barely-coherent fifteen minute chunks. Which then I had to edit.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING TWO SERPENTS RISE?

Before TWO SERPENTS RISE, I edited my books sentence-by-sentence. THREE PARTS DEAD needed very little structural work—just a lot of language polishing. The disconnected way I wrote 2SR left me with a lot more structural work before I felt comfortable showing it to anyone. I added about 20,000 words to the original manuscript—and ended up right around 100,000 words total, which means I cut about half of the original wordcount.

Half.

So, yes. I learned to edit sentence-by-sentence while writing THREE PARTS DEAD. TWO SERPENTS RISE forced me to get good and comfy with highlighting ten chapters a time and hitting the ol’ delete key. Then, when I started to write the next book, I decided to try an outline. Messed that up, too, but I keep learning!

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT TWO SERPENTS RISE?

I love the city. Dresediel Lex is sprawling low houses and adobe and neon and a skyline broken by giant pyramids left over from the God Wars—temples turned to offices and shopping malls. Faceless police patrol the city from overhead on feathered serpents. Poker players mingle their souls along with their chips. Also, it’s a sports town.

I’m really excited about the characters in this book, too. I loved writing all of them.

I love the sly Giambattista Vico reference I slid in there.

And then the ending, where [REDACTED]. That part’s so cool.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

In my first draft, I tried for a nice, atmospheric start. I wanted more room for the city and characters to breathe than the plot of THREE PARTS DEAD left me.

That’s fine—character development and worldbuilding are both important. But writing TWO SERPENTS RISE taught me that these things work best after I give readers a reason to care.

And then I had to learn a whole bunch of other stuff for the third book, but we’ll talk about that next summer!

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY.

I have somewhere on the order of a thousand children, and you’ve just asked me to choose between them. Curse you, Wendig! Here’s a nice bit:

Three distinct, sharp taps trespassed upon the hush, then three more, then the thud of a bronze-shod staff on stone. The noises repeated. A heavy robe swept over the stone floor.

Caleb held his breath.

The King in Red moved among the cubicles, wreathed in power. The taps were his triple footsteps: the bones of his heel, the ball of his foot, the twiglike toes striking in sequence. “As you were,” he said. No one stirred. Sixty years ago, the King in Red had shattered the sky over Dresediel Lex, and impaled gods on thorns of starlight. The last of his flesh had melted away decades past, leaving smooth bone and a constant grin.

He was a good boss. But who could forget what he had been, and what remained?

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

In the short term, I have an awesome interactive fiction project set in the world of the Craft Sequence. That should debut in December of this year. The fourth Craft Sequence book needs revision, and I have a comics project and another novel (unconnected with the Craft Sequence, though I will return!) on the burner. And the third Craft Sequence book, FULL FATHOM FIVE, comes out in July 2014—watch for it.

Max Gladstone: Website / Twitter

Two Serpents Rise: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound

You: People are kinda mean.

Me: That is too true. I remember when I was in elementary school, this one kid used to make fun of me just because of the way I chewed, which I didn’t and don’t think was really all that weird, but it made me self-conscious about my chewing and so —

You: Hey, hey, focus up, blabbermonkey. This post is about me.

Me: Whoa, well, sorry. Who is being mean to you, little muffin?

You: Some people are really dismissive of NaNoWriMo.

Me: Some people are really dismissive of charity, health care, cats, ponies, creme brulee, gin, asparagus, Twitter, you, me, the kitchen sink. Collectively, as a whole, I think people are pretty cool. But you get some big-ass radar blobs of judgey-faced shit-snorkeling fuck-garglers, too. You have to decide if you’re going to listen to those poisonous crowds or, instead, ignore them entirely.

You: I’d like to ignore them, but it kinda harshes my mellow. It bludgeons my buzz.

Me: Then NaNoWriMo is indeed excellent training for being a writer, because nobody will respect you in the long term, either. Seriously: a career in any artistic medium can be a fine way to make money, but it is almost uniformly terrible at ensuring total respect from the world around you. I’ve been a professional writer for the last 16 years, and over half of them have been me operating in a full-time capacity. And not like, “Well, we’re eating ramen again this week,” but, you know, actual money. And just the same, I still have family members who do not approve of my choice to me a writer. I have family members who don’t even acknowledge the fact I’m a writer because, shit, I dunno. I’d probably do better in the respect department if I had chlamydia. On my face.

You: This is really not helping.

Me: Good. Welcome to reality. You need to harden the fuck up, Care Bear. You’re going to face down rejections. Editorial notes. Bad reviews. If you’re letting some NaNoWriMo critics knock you down a peg, you’re in trouble.

You: I just would very much like the respect of others.

Me: And people in Hell want Haagen-Daaz. Hey, I feel you. It pains me when people don’t dig on what I do or they use that to dismiss me in some way. Sometimes I think I’d earn more respect if I were a janitor or a sewage worker or a freelance hog inseminator. But it is what it is and at the end of the day I write for me — and, obviously, for the audience who wants to read the stories I slather onto the page.

You: All right, fine, so that’s for writing overall — but some jerks are particularly crappy about NaNoWriMo in particular. Like, they have these criticisms —

Me: Go on.

You: What are you, my therapist?

Me: I dunno, Captain Howdy, you tell me.

You: Like, there’s this one article on Salon — “Better Yet, Don’t Write That Novel.”

Me: That one’s a few years old. I’ve read it, sure. That article kinda sucks, actually.

You: Does it? Because it’s freaking me out.

Me: Why? What parts?

You: Well, I don’t want to “write a lot of crap.”

Me: Of course you don’t. Who does? If you were going to go build a chair — like, the first chair you have ever built — do you think it’d be the kind of chair you could immediately go out and sell? Ikea will buy it and call it SJNARGN and it’ll make you a million dollars? Do you think King Joffrey will sit on that motherfucker and not then ask to have your head cut off so he can kick it around like a soccer ball? No. That chair will be the ugliest goddamn chair you ever did see. It’ll probably be a safety hazard to you and everyone you love. But nobody says to the carpenter’s apprentice: “You shouldn’t build a lot of worthless chairs.” You have to build a lot of worthless chairs!

You: Worthless Chairs is the name of Scalzi’s new band.

Me: Are… you Scalzi?

You: No.

Me: Are you Rothfuss? Real or imagined Rothfuss?

You: No.

Me: … nnnokay, fine, whatever, moving on. Like I said before, you gotta write through the suck.

You: But aren’t I just committing more crap to the world? That’s what that Salon lady said. She said — hold on, lemme find it, ah, yeah, here we go:

“NaNoWriMo is an event geared entirely toward writers, which means it’s largely unnecessary. When I recently stumbled across a list of promotional ideas for bookstores seeking to jump on the bandwagon, true dismay set in. “Write Your Novel Here” was the suggested motto for an in-store NaNoWriMo event. It was yet another depressing sign that the cultural spaces once dedicated to the selfless art of reading are being taken over by the narcissistic commerce of writing.”

Me: Oh, right, because writers are never ever readers. If you can’t see me over here, my eyes are rolling so hard they just popped out of my head and the dog ate them. She also said this:

“Yet while there’s no shortage of good novels out there, there is a shortage of readers for these books. Even authors who achieve what probably seems like Nirvana to the average NaNoWriMo participant — publication by a major house — will, for the most part, soon learn this dispiriting truth: Hardly anyone will read their books and next to no one will buy them.”

Me: Again committing the idea that writers and readers are not the same people. Yeah, newsflash: in my experience, the Venn diagram featuring WRITERS and READERS has like, a 95.7% overlap. Moreover, I hate that bullshit about oh blah blah even if you do get published no one will ever read it so just stop now. Because what chimp-shit justification. First: she has no actual evidence that no one is reading books or even your books. Second: here, I can play that game with anything you might ever want to do: “Even if you do graduate from culinary school, you’ll never be hired by a real restaurant.” “Even if you do manage to learn accounting you’ll find that most companies won’t hire you because you smell. “Even if you do manage to learn how to sculpt or paint or write comic books or write novels or whatever you will soon learn the dispiriting truth that we all FUCKING DIE AND LIFE IS A FRUITLESS ENDEAVOR WHICH MEANS THERE’S NO FRUIT NOT EVER IT’S JUST A DEAD TREE LIKE A SKELETON’S HAND THAT WANTS TO PULL YOU INTO THE MUCK AND SMOTHER YOU IN ITS DREARY DEPRESSING MUD.”

You: I think you’re more upset about this than I am.

Me: Well, seriously, it’s just silly. Besides, it focuses on the wrong thing: publication. Like, yes, you can write to be published. You can write in the hopes of having an audience. But to get there, to connect with a publisher or to speak to an audience you still have to finish a book.

You: I just figured, hey, that article was written by a writer so, maybe I should pay attention. And feel bad about myself because, hey, another writer would know.

Me: But see, there’s another grim and ugly little secret: often writers will be the ones who criticize first. Hey, you know, I get it. I used to be kinda hard on NaNoWriMo. And I still recognize that it is one writing plan among many and it has lots of weird little “rules” and I’m not necessarily fond of the “win/lose” condition — but, you know, none of that takes anything away from me. Or my work. None of it removes the power from writing or storytelling. None of it harms the publishing industry. No, of course you shouldn’t be submitting your rough-hewn draft to publishers or agents on December 1st, and if you do that, someone should fire a howitzer at your genitals so that you may never breed. The actions of idiots should not be used to punish everyone else.

You: So, I should just keep writing.

Me: You should just keep writing. Haters gonna hate. I’ve said it before and will say it again: letting the haters occupy real estate inside your head is like asking a strange dog to shit in your kitchen. We’re hard enough on ourselves we don’t need to let other people stick us with knives.

You: When haters give you lemons… make haterade?

Me: No. Shove the lemons up the haters’ netherholes. THEN SQUEEZE THEM UNTIL LEMON JUICE FOUNTAINS OUT OF THEIR EARHOLES.

You: Whoa.

Me: Yeah.

You: *numb mumbling punctuated by hitching sobs*

Me: You okay in here?”

You: Jesus. You scared me.

Me: I’m sorry.

You: I peed a little.

Me: Like, a real little? Just a couple drops?

You: More than that.

Me: Just a little squirt?

You: More than that.

Me: Well how much are we — oh. Oh.

You: You’re staring at my pant leg, aren’t you?

Me: It’s starting to look like you just came down the log flume ride at an amusement park.

You: I peed a lot. A whole lot. I can admit that now.

Me: That’s a lot of pee. You might want to take a look at your liquid intake? But let’s just… let’s just get past that, for the moment. Let’s address your mumble-sobs.

You: It’s this story! For NaNo NooNoo Repo Weemo or whatever the hell it’s called.

Me: Well, it’s not called that. … Ennh. You know what? Not worth it. What’s wrong with the story?

You: The beginning was pretty cool, right? It was all like whiz-bang, kaboom, shit just happened, oh dang, big problem, characters on the run. And the ending I have planned is gonna be super-cray-cray-ultra bad-ass. It’ll be all like, parachuting ninjas and an exploding blue whale and then the characters will find alternate evil versions of themselves from a dark dimension where everyone wears clothing from the 1980s — like, it’s gonna be fucking nuts.

Me: Sounds like everything’s in good shape.

You: It’s not. It’s not in good shape. My story has swiftly become gorged on the junk food of boredom. His gut looks like a stack of soggy pancakes. All he does is sit on the couch, yawn, pick fragments of snack foods from his belly button, watch Spongebob Squarepants. He’s lost all tension. He’s lost all… motivation. MY STORY IS AN UGLY LUMP LIKE A GIANT WAD OF TRASH COLLECTING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

Me: Ah. The mushy middle syndrome.

You: That sounds accurate. The middle is mushy, all right. Mushy like mud. Mushy like a plate of overcooked peas. It’s just — meh, bleah, blergh.

Me: You need to tighten your story’s gut.

You: I do. He needs to work out. Get fit. Get back in the game. Except, how?

Me: Don’t worry. You’ll get the bottle, little baby. Before I get into specific tips — part of what needs to happen here is a philosophical adjustment.

You: Are you going to put something up my butt?

Me: I’m not a doctor. This is not that kind of adjustment.

You: WHEW.

Me: See, a lot of the advice you’ll read about mushy middles — including advice I’ll give — tends to be plot-focused. Start turning dials and knobs on tension and conflict and mystery and randomly insert MOAR PROBLEMS HERE PLZ. And that’s true, to a point, but doing that can also lend itself to another version of the mushy middle. That version feels exciting because OH LOOK WACKY SHITCRAP IS HAPPENING but none of it has any real bearing on the central characters, none of it reflects your theme, none of it has much to do with story. It’s artificial plot contrivance. It’s you just jackhammering needless event into the tale you’re telling. That doesn’t make for good story. It just makes a mechanical exercise that ends up unwittingly reeking of tedium.

You: You mean like how I reek of pee.

Me: Yes.

You: That sounds bad.

Me: It can be, because the problem isn’t not enough plot. The problem is, not enough character, or character with too small a problem. Or perhaps: I do not yet know my character and her problems well enough, as yet. And so I suggest a focus on — drum roll please! — the characters.

You: I don’t know what that means, “not enough character.” Like, she’s a character, she exists in the story, she’s got hands and feet and stuff.

Me: I don’t mean hands and feet and stuff. I mean that every character has layers, man. Strata piled upon strata. And a story is you pulling apart those layers. To expose. To diminish. To reveal. To damage. It’s like you tearing into a delicious, sticky slice of baklava.

You: Isn’t that the kind of mask you use to rob banks?

Me: That is a balaclava.

You: No, I think the balaclava is an instrument used in an oompah band.

Me: I hate you and shut up for a minute.

You: You’ve got thirty seconds, but okay.

Me: You need to go back to your characters. You need to rip ’em down to the studs and see what’s there. Who are these people? What is their central problem? What has driven them to this journey? Examine the “give-a-fuck” factor — why do we care about them? See, the way you tighten the belt on the mushy middle isn’t just creating conflict by inserting obstacles between them and their goal: it’s creating drama by making those obstacles matter to the characters. Drama is an important notion, so please emblazon it upon your face with a tattoo gun.

You: I admit, I tuned out a little bit there, because my pee-soaked pant-leg is starting to get very cold. Pee is so warm in the beginning it’s almost nice but then it gets icy and I am no longer a fan.

Me: I am disturbed that you were once a fan of pissing yourself.

You: It was a phase. I’m over it. To go back to what you were saying: can I get an example?

Me: Like, it’s one thing to stick your character in an oubliette just as she needs to be saving the day. But it’s a whole other thing sticking her in an oubliette with another character that matters to her — a brother she despises, a nemesis who also needs to escape, an old friend who betrayed her. The oubliette represents a basic physical conflict: an obstacle that must be overcome. But you create a kind of emotional, relationship conflict — aka, “drama” — by putting that other character in the hole with her. It makes it more meaningful. And, frankly, more interesting. But it doesn’t need to just be another character. The drama could be internalized, too.

You: Gastrointestinal distress, you mean.

Me: I mean, when Luke Skywalker ends up in that cave on Dagobah, he’s confronting the fears about his father and, in a sense, confronting himself. Which is of course why, when he chops Vader’s face off, he sees himself staring back. Trippy, right?

You: DUDE SPOILERS

Me: We are well past the sell-by date on Star Wars spoilers, jerk. Here are more examples: The labyrinth that Sarah has to conquer in Labyrinth is very much a labyrinth of her own making — even assuming it’s real and not a dream, it’s the labyrinth she “summoned” by summoning Goblin David Bowie and his magical yam-bag. The same could be said of Coraline, who summons a button-eyed artifice that thinks itself her mother. Characters like Katniss and Ripley are often alone, and their challenges are ones that reflect their survivor nature and are wholly appropriate to the characters (both of whom are kind of lone wolf think-for-yourselfers). And those challenges only get worse for all of these characters. Which leads us to our next important term —

You: Brobdingnagian?

Me: No, it’s —

You: Angiosperm.

Me: Where are you getting this? No, the word is —

You: Capybara! That’s it. It’s capybara. Nailed it.

Me: ESCALATION. The word is escalation.

You: I’m a little let down. I was hoping for ‘capybara.’

Me: If you don’t shut up, I’ll send a rabid one to eat yourface. No, listen, escalation is key to the eradication of the mushy middle. Physical exercise requires escalation — increasing effort, maximizing challenge — and so too must you escalate the conflict and drama that surrounds your characters. Once you’ve identified the problem in the first act — within the first 25% or so of the story — it’s time to turn the screws and twist the knife. It’s not about introducing new overarching conflicts or creating drama out of thin air. It’s about seizing the opportunity to escalate the conflict and drama already present. Turn up the volume. Make things harder on the characters, not easier. John McClane goes from trying to save his wife from terrorists to having to deal with an inept LAPD, a psychotic FBI, an increasingly savvy set of terrorists, bloody feet, reduced ammunition, and hostages who are about to be eradicated (which of course, includes his wife). You take the set-up and core problem of Die Hard — “NY cop who wants to reconcile with his almost ex-wife gets trapped in a building taken over by terrorists” — and then keep escalating that problem. The anchor of that piece is the separation from his wife. It’s true in the sense that they’re separated in career and marriage, and now they’re physically separated by Hans Gruber and his ethnically-diverse not-really-terrorist crew. All the things that happen in the film only widen that gulf and threaten to make the separation of John and Holly permanent.

You: You and fucking Die Hard, jeez.

Me: Die Hard is a perfect slice of narrative cake. It contains all the necessary layers.

You: YOU WANT MIRACLES I GIVE YOU THE EFF-A-BEE-EYE

Me: …

You: I’m ready to go write now.

Me: But I’m not done talking.

You: JESUS GOD SHUT UP but okay fine keep talking.

Me: The point is, keep hurting your characters. Make things harder before you make them easier, and when you do make them easier, make them immediately harder again. Every triumph is beset by two more setbacks. The pain you deliver shouldn’t just be physical. It’s gotta be emotional, too. John McClane’s glass-fucked feet aren’t bad just because they’re bloody and shitted up. They’re bad because his feet are the one thing that can carry him back to his wife. The hurt you bring’s gotta go deep, man. You’ve got to make them really feel it. And to do that you have to know your characters. You have to tailor conflict and drama to the character(s) and to the problem(s) at hand.

You: Cool. Any more tips, Mister-Can’t-Shut-Up-About-Stuff?

Me: Sure. Just when the reader thinks they know where you’re going, go somewhere else. Twist and turn in their grip like a cantankerous viper. (Related: 25 Turns, Pivots, And Twists To Complicate Your Story.) To knock the mud off your boots, try a change of location. Or a POV shift to another character. Or even a jump in time, or a flashback, or the introduction of a subplot. Your story is heading in a straight line, and as I’ve noted before — fuck the straight line. Juke left. Jump right. Zig-zag. Show the status quo a pair of pistoning middle fingers.

You: Switch it up, is what you’re saying.

Me: Yeah. Go nuts. Keep yourself interested.

You: I’ll do that. Hey, can I tell you something?

Me: You don’t need to thank me. I know I’m a big help.

You: That’s not what I was going to say.

Me: What were you going to say?

You: I totally just peed again.

Me: OH GODDAMNIT

Tumblr is basically a sentient computer network that is trying to communicate with us via pop culture memes. At least, that’s what I once assumed, though as a person with a Tumblr, I am increasingly assured that real human beings are behind it.

These days, when you go onto Tumblr — or, as I like to think of it, fall headlong into the bottomless pit of semi-amusement that Tumblr represents — you will indeed see a great deal of pop culture memery, and as of late it is not unreasonable to expect to see a great deal of Thor and Loki pop culture memery in particular. People love Thor. People really love Loki — and they also love his proxy in this human realm, Tom Hiddleston, aka, “Hiddles.”

You might further see the occasional objectification of Thor or Loki. They are topless and sexy and they will be shown for their toplessness or sexiness.

Which, you know, hey: these are sexy gentlemen. If I looked like either of them, I’d be running around shirtless non-stop. I’d be at the bus stop, the grocery store, the drunk tank — just, boom, long hair, no shirt, some oil on my hairless chest, I’d just be —

Shit, I’d just be working it.

Still, you might be the type to think — or even to say, on social media — “Hey, jeez, men aren’t supposed to objectify women, but women can apparently objectify men? We will be chastised for our gaze, but they will not be chastised for theirs?”

And then someone might comment on that particular nugget of social media and add, “Right, and they can ‘ship together two dudes into a gay relationship but if I ‘ship together two ladies into a lesbian relationship, I’m a sexist asshat.”

Thus begins a discussion that essentially looks at the search for equality and suggests that equal is not really equal, whereas one group can get away with a special kind of sexism or racism while simultaneously shouting down the sexism or racism of others. And eventually this all leads to the classic example of, how can black people use the N-word but white people can’t. Or a further devolution might ask why women get feminism but men can’t get dude-ism (see Joss Whedon’s recent misguided repudiation of the word “feminist” for a softball shit-the-bed version of this). Or, even creepier, African-Americans get “black power” but white people can’t have “white power.” And on and on; there exist justifications all the way down.

Abstractly, intellectually, some of this would seem to make sense. Oh, well, sure, if we’re all equal, then we should all be equal in the same way. No double standards here, no sir, no ma’am, that would only undo the very search for equality in the first place.

But like I said earlier, equal isn’t really equal.

Legally, we’re all equal, you know, more or less. We can all vote. We can all drive. On paper, we’re all allowed the same pursuit of life, liberty, happiness, cable TV, iPhones, Tumblr, shirtless Thor-and-Loki. But culturally, endemically, we’re not really equal. White people — in particular, white dudes, and even more particular, heteronormative white dudes with some cash in the ol’ bank accounts — get a gold-standard version of equality. Like, were I to use an airplane metaphor, we’re all allowed to fly and go to the same place, but the heteronormative white dudes get more legroom, free and better drinks, hot towels, all that happy shit.

Or, to go back to that cable TV half-a-joke I just made, okay, sure, we’re all allowed to buy cable TV, but these white dudes are the ones who can afford it (they make more money than women and minorities). And they’re the ones who run the cable companies. And who direct and write most of the shows and star in most of the shows and — well, you get the picture, right?

I mean, hey. Thor and Loki? Both heteronormative white dudes in mythology, in the stories, and reportedly as actors. Thor 2: The Dark World is a film written by a white dude. Directed by a white dude. The poster is a lotta white dudes. The black dude on the poster is ill-seen. The lead actress, Natalie Portman, appears classically demure — a damsel in distress pressing herself against the white dude’s chest as if for protection. (The other woman on the poster appears slightly more bad-ass, though is not shown being bad-ass so much as she’s shown concealed behind the might of Thor.) We can have Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man. But we can’t have a Black Cat film. Or a Wonder Woman movie. You know?

This isn’t meant to be an indictment against any of these films — I’ve not yet seen Thor 2 — but this rambly jumble of thoughts is there to remind you that what we have here is a very strong legacy forged in favor of the heteronormative white dude (heretofore referred to as HWD).

It’s easy to say, “Yes, it’s wrong for men to objectify women and so it must also be wrong for women to objectify men!” — but here, you may find more value in shoving words like “right” and “wrong” off the table and instead replacing them with a different term:

Result.

As in, what is the result?

The result of men objectifying women is stacking more weight on an already imbalanced scale. It’s contributing, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, toward that legacy I’m talking about. A legacy of unequal pay, a legacy of cultural separation, a legacy of rape culture and other forms of victimization. It adds to that legacy while robbing something from a whole group of people.

The result of women objectifying men is — what? Again, not asking about right or wrong but — what happens? I’m still Mister Lucky over here. You objectify me and I still won the HWD lottery. I’m still likelier to get paid more, to get the jobs, to get the kudos, to get to be a hero Daddy, to get to be the rule-setter. I’m still going to have a better shot at being a CEO. Or a politician. Or, or, or.

I point all this out not as a finger-waggling tongue-clucking judge and jury against the HWD. I point this all out as an HWD who has in the past wondered some of this stuff and had go ahead and open his eyes and see that, yes, there’s more going on here than maybe I imagined. It’s hard to see the forest because of all these white dude trees, you know? We like to think it’s keen to aspire to a color-blind world but the result of that is usually that white people are just blind to people of color. Whedon wants us to put the word “feminism” away, but all that would really result in is putting away feminists and, by proxy, those who are female.

So, when it comes to things like men’s rights or presumed double-standards or why we can’t join in on the cultural appropriation of bigoted words — maybe we need to think about the consequence of all this instead of whether something seems right or seems wrong.

More to the point —

Maybe we just need to suck it up and be allies for others instead of allies for ourselves.

Postscript to all this: I’ve been sitting on this for a couple days because I’m always nervous — worried not that I’m going to offend somebody, which is par for the course around here, but because this is sensitive stuff and I’m a certified HWD who has all kinds of secret little prejudices and unrecognized bullshit I’m probably not even aware of. I don’t want to try to play the hero and drum my chest and say, “Now that a white guy has brought this up, we can canonize it.” This is all very easy for me to say, and I’m going to get stuff wrong from time to time because of all this baggage and privilege and the sweet leg-room and free drinks and hot towels. Let me know if you think I’m off here — and, obviously, please play together politely in the comments because otherwise I’ll dump you in the spam oubliette where your shrieks will find no ears.

Second Postscript: I won’t link to the original discussion that led me to write this post, in part because I don’t want to send more signal into noise, and further, it’s already gone, poof, someone took it down. It was a trail I’d followed reading stuff about the Joss Whedon “genderist” speech — and his speech is probably a whole other post for a whole other day.