Back at the end of June, 2021, I finally fulfilled a years-long ambition to start a podcast with the first episode of Page Break. I’m not sure why. I write epic fantasy novels for a living (you might know my Powder Mage epic fantasy novels), and I’m good at that and when you have such a coveted gig it can be ill-advised to direct your attention elsewhere. But I did it anyways because so many of us creative professionals love to work on multiple disciplines.

So Page Break was born: a series of casual conversations between two creative professionals that rambled through the often-ignored aspects of their lives and careers. I didn’t really know whether people would listen, or if I would have the time and energy to produce more than a few episodes. To be frank, it was something I knew I’d be mad at myself if I didn’t try, but I didn’t think it would succeed.

Well, my recording with our gracious host Chuck Wendig came out a couple days ago and is episode #32. I’ve had conversations with actors, youtubers, authors, and comedians. People like Joe Abercrombie, Fonda Lee, Mark Hulmes, Robin Hobb, and Daniel Greene have taken the time to sit down with little old me for casual chats about life, creativity, business, hobbies, career, and more. It’s been pretty dang cool and I don’t seem to be stopping.

[ed — I loved doing this podcast and I hope you’ll give a listen]

So sit back, relax, and let me tell you about five things I learned while recording Page Break.

Everything is easier with a little help from your friends

Page Break exists because of my friends. It started simply enough with me bemoaning that I wanted to start a podcast but was intimidated by trying to record both sides of a zoom call. A buddy simply mentioned that Zencastr was a really good option for this and BOOM: I’ve got a program to use. The same thing happened when I asked the musically talented James L Sutter how I would go about commissioning an intro riff and, without being asked, he delivered a series of possible compositions the very next day!

I worked through my worries one at a time. I asked twitter about audio engineer costs and Tom Bishop messaged me privately offering his services for an affordable price. Several of my friends offered to help me with test-interviews so I could get used to talking to someone for an audience. Charlie N. Holmberg’s ended up being episode 5. Many of my author friends were just a text message away for subsequent guest spots.

Now, I caveat this point with the full understanding that I’m in a privileged position: with a decade-long career as an epic fantasy author, I’ve made lots of friends with diverse and useful talents and I know a handful of famous writers. It definitely gave me a head start. But it’s important to remember that your friends are there for you and they may have some good ideas or be willing to help you record a test episode.

Listeners are more forgiving than you’d think

I wanted to make a podcast for three years before I finally got around to recording for Page Break, and during that time the biggest block for me was worrying about quality. I thought I needed the very best physical hardware to record in-person conversations with mics, portable mixers, headphones – the whole shebang. I couldn’t record via zoom or phone because I wouldn’t be able to control anything on their end. Overall, I was convinced that no one would listen unless I had crisp, studio-quality sound.

Turns out that’s not exactly true. People like crisp, studio-quality sound but what they want is to listen to interesting conversations, cool stories, or fascinating facts. You still need a baseline sound quality of course—no one wants to hear bursts of static or sit through long pauses or one person talking louder than the other. But if it’s a good show, listeners are willing to forgive a guest having a low-quality microphone, or a bit of street noise on one end of the line. The content is what matters most.

Success is relative, especially when it comes to making a profit

Over the last eight months or so I’ve learned that podcasting has a very weird measure of success. If you have over a hundred regular listeners, you’ve done quite a good job. After all, that’s a hundred people who tune in to listen to you every episode! That’s pretty awesome if you envision them all sitting in a room together. Unfortunately if you want to break even on your time and costs, those hundred people are worth just a few pennies in ad revenue.

I’ll break down where I currently sit with Page Break. My costs for a month (four weeks) of episodes include about $500 for hosting, editing, graphics, and other misc expenses for things I have no skills or interest in doing myself. Roughly twelve hours of my attention goes into prep and recording. I do consider this part of my free time, so I try not to think too hard about how much writing I could get done with those hours.

So what do I get out of it in a very straight-forward business sense? The podcast currently receives roughly 1000-1600 listens a week depending on the guest. Not too shabby, right? Want to know my revenue? $71 from Patreon and $72 from Acast ads. That’s less than a third of my cash costs, and after 32 episodes of building an audience. Ouch. Good thing I’m doing this for fun!

It’s all about the slow burn

Now that I’ve laid out the start costs of limited success, I should say that I’m doing this for what I hope will be a long term listenership. My first five episodes each received less than 300 listens their opening weeks. As mentioned above, I’ve managed to raise that by a significant margin!

The rule of thumb I’ve heard is that a podcast needs a good two years of regular production to really find and keep their audience. At the moment I’m in the lucky position where I can eat the financial costs and I’m enjoying it enough to eat the time costs. I mentioned “hope” above, and that’s because hanging on to this kind of thing requires quite a lot of it. I hope that listeners will subscribe to my Patreon. I hope that Acast sends my feed more ad revenue. I hope that new listeners will be interested in my books. Which leads me neatly to my next point…

For a creative professional, diversifying can have hard-to-quantify benefits

One of the greatest challenges for any creative professional is keeping themselves in the public consciousness when there is so much noise competing for the attention of readers, watchers, and listeners. When my next novel comes out, IN THE SHADOW OF LIGHTNING, it’ll have been two and a half years since I put out an epic fantasy. Will readers remember who I am? Will they have long since muted my twitter or unsubscribed from my newsletter because those aren’t the things they really care about (my books).

Do you know how much that freaks me out?

Page Break is a small but interesting solution to that. It’s a place for listeners to hear from me and my industry friends every week. I can bring in people like creative director Lauren Panepinto to yak about the Powder Mage covers, or director Joseph Mallozzi to discuss the technical aspects of a Powder Mage TV show. Or I can skip my own work entirely and talk to a revered author like RA Salvatore about his most famous characters and infamous books.

In short, Page Break reminds the listeners that I exist—that my books exist—and that I’m still writing. Hopefully it brings in new readers for my books and introduces my existing readers to the works of people I find interesting. There’s that tricky word again: hope. How many careers exist solely on that?

It’s hard not to recognize that things are particularly bad right now. Some of it is what we already have been living through: pandemic, climate change, rising right-wing white Christian fascism. Some of it is from the tentacular outgrowths of those wretched seed-beds: Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the attack on trans kids in Texas, the attack on LGBT kids in Florida.

It’s not great, Bob.

I don’t know particularly what to do or say about much of this beyond the obvious choices. On Ukraine, I’m particularly lost. I have no great thoughts or wisdom here, except the clarity that we all should have, which is that war is fucking awful and should be everyone’s last resort, and that none of us should be straining for war, and all of us should be recognizing the costs of war. (This, plus the needling anxiety of old, which is, growing up Gen X and being afraid every night before bed that for some reason, the Soviet Union was going to vaporize your town with a nuclear blast.) I point here to some charities one can support, though in this list is the Red Cross, and the Red Cross has not always stepped up (Haiti, Texas, etc.) despite being the often-number-one place to which one sends donations in times of crisis. So, be advised, there.

On the matter of trans kids under siege in Texas and LGBT kids in danger of erasure and worse in Florida — obviously, call your reps, make your voices heard, follow LGBT voices and signal boost them on this subject. Some charities here will be particularly good to look at:

Trevor Project and Audre Lorde Project

Trans Texas (Transgender Education Network of Texas)

Transgender Law Center

And of course, the ACLU.

If you’ve not subscribed to Parker Malloy’s newsletter, I recommend it.

Finally, you have to vote. And you have to vote for Democrats and Democratic Socialists and independents who support trans kids and freedom for LGBT and for human rights across the board. And here someone will — correctly! — note that it’s a very hard sell to convince people to JUST VOTE HARDER, because it’s not exactly as if the Democrats are covering themselves in glory. They are routinely not fighting as hard as they could be, and often compromise on fights in a way that feels both preemptory and perfunctory. (I call this the “not in the face, not in the face” school of politics, as the Democrats always seem to be flinching even from punches that don’t land, often failing to throw their own punches in return.) They currently control the White House, the House, and the Senate, though with margins that are less robust than we’d like — but they don’t seem as able to accomplish much with those numbers, and so it becomes a very hard sell to just say HEY VOTE MORE OF THEM IN. We did vote them in. The country busted its ass to overturn the Republican control of this country, and it doesn’t always feel like as much has changed. Some of that’s down to their poor messaging, some of it’s down to tough choices or troubled realities, some of it’s down to just not really being the people we want them to be. We fought for them and we want them to fight back, and not just fundraise for the next election.

And yet.

And yet.

We still have to vote when the time comes, voting for the people who are not going to be the ones demanding that we out trans kids and gay kids, and the ones who aren’t going to outlaw and punish abortions, and who are may not be the best of our choices… but who are not actively trying to undo human rights. It’s often a grim choice. I don’t like it. It sucks, and sucks bad, but I don’t know what else there is to do, except letting it all swirl down the drain on principle. But letting it do that means letting a lot of innocent people — in this instance, kids — get hurt in that process.

Anyway. Thoughts. Do with them as thou wilt.

Uhhh. Let’s see, what else is up that isn’t actively awful?

Whoa, What, A Stoker Nomination?

To my great delight and honor, The Book of Accidents has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in the Best Novel category, alongside wonderful authors like Cynthia Pelayo, V Castro, Stephen Graham Jones, and Grady Hendrix. I’m really glad the book has found its audience and continues to find new readers. Thanks to all who voted to put it in that slot —

I say again, a great delight and honor.

You can check out all the nominees here!

And a reminder that the paperback of TBOA launches March 15th.

In Which I Do A Keynote

In cautious fingers-crossed please-let-the-pandemic-go-quiet hopes, I’ve accepted an invitation to do the keynote speech at the Colorado Gold Writers Conference Sept 9-11 — registration opens in May!

Speaking of Travel

You did see I’m doing a cool in-person mini-sized book tour with pals Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson, yeah? New York City! Rhode Island! Boston!

Come see us, wontcha?

Yeah, The Website Is Still Kinda Ass-Ugly

Good news is, no fresh hacks. Bad news is, I’m still hanging around with this kinda lumpy boring-ass theme, a pre-packaged WP theme. I need a refresher and am looking into some options to figure out where to jump to next. But yes, I’m aware it’s still not as appealing as it could be. Soon!

OKAY BYE

From a major new debut author in epic fantasy comes the first book in a trilogy where action, intrigue, and magic collide. The Justice of Kings introduces an unforgettable protagonist destined to become a fantasy icon: Sir Konrad Vonvalt, an Emperor’s Justice, who is a detective, judge, and executioner all in one. But these are dangerous times to be a Justice…. 

The Empire of the Wolf simmers with unrest. Rebels, heretics, and powerful patricians all challenge the power of the Imperial throne. 

Only the Order of Justices stands in the way of chaos. Sir Konrad Vonvalt is the most feared Justice of all, upholding the law by way of his sharp mind, arcane powers, and skill as a swordsman. At his side stands Helena Sedanka, his talented protégé, orphaned by the wars that forged the Empire. 

When the pair investigates the murder of a provincial aristocrat, they unearth a conspiracy that stretches to the very top of Imperial society. As the stakes rise and become ever more personal, Vonvalt and Helena must make a choice: Will they abandon the laws they’ve sworn to uphold, in order to protect the Empire?

***

1. The old writers’ adage “the first million words are practice” was actually pretty accurate for me

Following the sale of my Empire of the Wolf Trilogy to Orbit—very much the realisation of a 20 year dream—I did a little retrospective for myself, putting together a list of all the novels I had ever written, their word counts, and a sort of self-appraisal as to what I had taken away from each book and “phase” in my writing journey. It was a fun and interesting exercise, and I learnt two things: the first was that I really hit my ‘default narrative voice’ at around half a million words; the second was that I wrote and sold The Justice of Kings not long after the big one million (about 1.3). For me, at least, the million-ish-word mark represented a fairly stark shift in my writing fortunes.

2. The traditional publishing process has (so far) involved a lot of hanging around

My agent did forewarn me of this very early on in our relationship, but I was still surprised at just how much of being a debut trad-pubbed author (and I’m only speaking from my perspective as the author) involves entire weeks and sometimes months of very little activity. Exciting developments, such as getting a draft book cover artwork or the first blurbs or a marketing plan, are spikes of engagement in an otherwise lengthy and unyielding radio silence. Having previously self-published a few things, and having had full control over that process, this was a difficult thing to get used to. It’s taken a while for me to stop relentlessly and fruitlessly refreshing my Gmail inbox!

3. I enjoy reading and writing interesting character development over any number of exploding spaceships and collapsing empires (but I love those other things too!)

The Justice of Kings was the first novel I wrote in which I really focused on the individual characters, their motivations, their interactions and messy dynamics, and their development up and down the Mass Effect Paragon/Renegade spectrum. I found that for all the sword fights and murder victims and political manoeuvrings and beheadings and immolations and everything else that is in the Justice of Kings, it really was those messy, interesting dynamics between characters that hooked my interest as a writer more than anything else.

4. The best world building comes from what you don’t see

For me personally, it’s the throwaway in-world references to public figures, holidays and historical events that gives The Empire of the Wolf its verisimilitude. Dan Abnett gave a great example of this in an interview when he referred to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s original reference to the ‘Clone Wars’ in A New Hope, decades before prequel trilogy was released—a tiny, throwaway line but that did a huge amount of work in building Obi-Wan’s backstory and the wider Star Wars meta. Little titbits like that can add a lot of flavour and give the world a lived-in feel.

5. I’ve only really just become comfortable with using allegory

The Justice of Kings is the first novel I’ve written in which I really used the fantasy secondary world as a vehicle to explore modern-day themes and ideas. It’s the first time as a writer I’ve felt able to do this in a way that I hope is effective and nuanced. My previous attempts (few and far between) have been rather ham-fisted and I think that it’s something that, like anything, comes with experience and practice.

***

Richard Swan was born in North Yorkshire and spent most of his early life on Royal Air Force bases in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. After studying law at the University of Manchester, Richard was Called to the Bar in 2011. He subsequently retrained as a solicitor specialising in commercial litigation. When he is not working, Richard can be found in London with his wonderful wife Sophie, where they attempt to raise, with mixed results, their two very loud sons. 

Richard Swan: Website | Twitter

The Justice of Kings: Bookshop | Indiebound | Amazon | B&N | Powells

(ed: Rob Hart is a former journalist, and so if you need someone to tell you how to start researching for your novel? He’s your guy. (Also, his newest, Paradox Hotel, fucking rocks. It’s slick, cinematic sci-fi noir.)

Around when I was 18, I decided I wanted to write novels. I was failing out of an art conservatory, and realized graphic design was not in my future. When it was time to change majors, I figured: a creative writing degree is a clear path to waiting tables but if I go for a journalism degree, at least I can make some money!

If you read that and decide you don’t want to take any advice from me, I will understand. But… I was 18. Cut me a little slack, okay?

Anyway, I excelled in my school’s journalism program, then landed a job working for a daily newspaper in New York City, which I did for four years. At which point I saw the industry was on the verge of cratering, so I turned tail and ran for the hills.

But journalism placed some great tools into my fiction-writing toolbox. I’ve got good observational skills. I type real damn fast. I don’t miss deadlines. I understand the need to kill darlings, because often you’re dealing with a word count (or in my case, column inches), and a sweet-ass detail or quote might not fit—and that’s okay.

I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about research. That, I think, is my writing superpower. It helped me on The Warehouse, which was about what would happen if one online retailer completely took over the American economy and housing market (and then, slowly, the government). And it helped me again with The Paradox Hotel, which is about time travel but also evil billionaires and Buddhism and stuff.

For your reading pleasure, here is my research toolbox. As with any and all writing advice: your mileage may vary. Take what works for you and discard the rest. Oh, also, some of this would be tough to do in the United States of COVID, so make sure to have a mask handy.

CREATE BASKET, FILL WITH IDEAS. Every time I get an idea I think has legs, I create a Google Doc. For months, The Paradox Hotel was a Google Doc that said “time travel hotel.” As I come across relevant books or articles, or have stray ideas I think might fit the concept, I toss it in there.

I like Google Docs because they’re collaborative, easy enough to access, and I can keep an icon on my phone’s homescreen, so even if I’m on the subway or standing in line at the coffee shop or waking screaming from a nightmare, I can jot down notes.

But you do you. Carry a notebook. Shout ideas at strangers. Get notes tattooed on your arm. Just find something that fits your style.

ASSEMBLE YOUR AVENG… ER, UH, SOURCES. For me, there are two types of research. Direct and indirect sources.

Direct sources are explicitly about the subject matter you’re writing about. They can come from books, but also documentaries and news articles. So for Warehouse, it was books and articles on Wal-Mart and Amazon (Wal-Mart being better for this purpose; Amazon is a new company and not as much has been written about it, whereas Wal-Mart has been around since the 60s, so there’s a much deeper record of how it reshaped the economy).

For Paradox, it was a lot of time travel and quantum physics and Eastern philosophy.

Indirect research is more about tone: for Warehouse, I read The Trial by Franz Kafka and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. But I also read a lot of mainstream thrillers just to learn more about their mechanics. For Paradox, I watched movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel and Bad Times at the El Royale and Timecop and Primer.

Sometimes you need to live in an adjacent fictional world for a little bit. Besides giving you more of a frame of reference, it’ll help you see tropes and ideas that you can put your own spin on.

Pro-tip: Want to make your life a lot easier? Read your research books in eBook format. You can highlight stuff, and then it spits all your highlights into a file. It is game-changing.

THE NEWS IS YOUR FRIEND EVEN THOUGH IT HATES YOU. If you’re writing speculative fiction, or anything with an eye toward current events, it’s good to read the news. A lot. Which can sometimes be very depressing! But I’m a news junkie and besides informing my books (I tend to enjoy writing about how billionaires are douchebags), it’s also where I get most of my ideas. The entirety of Warehouse sprung out of this one article. 

This is why a Google Doc, or just some other repository, is important to have. My Warehouse document was 80 pages long. Half of that was just links.

News articles are also a great way to find information that you don’t need to waste time reading a whole book about. For example, in Paradox, time travel is what the space industry is turning into: it was developed by the government and later, as a way to raise money, was opened up to tourism. So I did a little reading on the commercialization of space travel. And I learned why reaching space is so valuable (it ain’t just to send rich people to ride on rockets that look like wangs—but you can read the book to find out more…).

MAKE NEW FRIENDS! People like to talk about themselves and their jobs. Use this.

Before I settled on Paradox, I was working on a book about a world where the power grids got wiped out by massive solar flares. I found an expert at the forefront of sounding the alarm on this. I sent him an e-mail, told him I was an author working on a book about the subject, and asked him if I could send him some questions. He said yes. I also spoke to Con Ed, the power utility in New York (which is where the book would have been based), to talk about their countermeasures, the science of it, what recovery would look like. And I spoke to the Office of Emergency Management, trying to figure out what the response to a massive, permanent blackout would entail. Those last two, I contacted their press/PR departments.

How do you find these resources? Think about your subject, and who the authority on it might be. My second book is set in a strip club; I had a friend put me in contact with a friend of his who was a stripper. My fifth book was about the heroin crisis on Staten Island; I met with a recovered heroin addict who lived on the island. Paradox features a trans character; I talked to two friends who are trans to get their perspectives.

Reach out respectfully, offer to buy coffee or a meal if you’re setting up an in-person interview (always the best kind), record the conversation (with their permission) but don’t be afraid to jot down notes in case the recording fails, and do your research beforehand so you’re asking good, targeted questions. Their job is to fill in gaps in your research, and provide personal anecdotes you can use to inform your story.

And always ask the most useful questions in journalism: is there anything else you think I could have asked, or information this has brought up that you think is worth knowing? That’s a good way to end things. Sometimes they’ll see an aspect that you didn’t even think of, and that’ll bring you down new paths.

GO TO THERE. For Paradox I knew I needed the hotel to have a “look.” And we all know what hotels look like, but there was a lot of value in being inside a hotel, and looking at it from a storytelling perspective.

I knew the Paradox needed a loot, and after a whole lot of Google Image searching, I settled on the TWA Hotel at JFK (I think a lot of hotel-based stories lean into Art Deco design, whereas the TWA is mid-century modern, which looks both retro and futuristic, which worked well for a time travel book…). 

Lucky for me the TWA hotel was nearby. I wrote a nice e-mail, which I sent to a few of the addresses on the website (the media contact, the manager, the archivist). An event coordinator got back to me and gave me a tour. He told me about the construction, design, and history of the space, and let me take a ton of photos, (you can find some of them on my Twitter and Instagram). It helped immensely—not just in being able to visualize my own hotel, but in creating action and momentum in the plot.

Pro-tip: That Google Doc or research file you’re keeping? Create an acknowledgements list. This way you don’t forget to thank the hotel event coordinator when you finish the book two years later. 

GOOGLE EARLY, GOOGLE OFTEN. Seriously, the Googs is your best friend—sometimes you just have to spend a day shotgun-searching relevant phrases and picking through endless links to find what you need.

But also: Image search is how I found the TWA Hotel. Street view is like a writer’s best friend. Writing about an unfamiliar city or neighborhood? Boom. Go for a little “walk.” I’ve used map and street view a lot when writing books about unfamiliar locations, or locations I hadn’t been to in a long time.

Street view is also helpful if you can’t afford to travel—or don’t want to, what with the world being on fire.

PATRONIZE YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY; YOU ALREADY PAID FOR IT [WITH TAXES]. Your library is chock-full of resources. Reference books. Old newspapers. Some of which haven’t been digitized so you wouldn’t be able to access them otherwise.

And the best part? The very best part?! Librarians are awesome. You can say “hey I am looking for information on this subject” and instead of getting borked by Google search algorithms, or spending hours clicking through non-relevant links, you get a real-life smart person who can help guide you.

It’s like the internet but way less frustrating.

This is an especially good resource if you’re writing anything historical, especially if it’s about a certain town or city. Local libraries (should) have local newspapers going back decades, and again, a lot of this shiz will not have been digitized; i.e., you ain’t gonna find it on Google.

KNOW WHEN TO STOP. This is very important. For me. I like the research phase. I like learning new stuff. But I will often fall down rabbit holes. Like this book on warehouse management which I read half of for Warehouse and was a complete waste of time.

Eventually you have to know when you have enough information. And, sure, you’ll find new things to check along the way. But, how do you know when enough is enough?

I dunno. You have to figure that out. For me, it’s when I’m getting completely exhausted by the work and the story is starting to claw its way out of my chest. Then I know it’s time to take all that research and write like a motherfucker.

***

Rob Hart is the author of The Paradox Hotel. His last novel, The Warehouse, sold in more than 20 languages and was optioned for film by Ron Howard. He also wrote the Ash McKenna crime series, the short story collection Take-Out, and Scott Free with James Patterson.

Rob Hart: Website | Twitter | Instagram

The Paradox Hotel: iBooks | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Amazon 

Most of us move through life hoping everything will go well and turn out exactly as we’ve imagined it. Most of us are therefore disappointed. This is even more true for characters in books, because without failure and pain and chaos, there is no story. A book in which everything goes right is exactly one sentence long. That means it’s up to the writer to uniquely torture their characters. In my most recent book, THE VIOLENCE, three generations of women use a pandemic of random violence to escape the cycle of abuse they’ve been stuck in. These three women have to fight everything from a new pandemic to their loved ones to the police to the cashier at a drug store to professional wrestlers. This book was an exercise for me in torturing your characters for the most satisfying and cathartic ending possible. Here’s how to do that.

Make torture part of the premise. When you’re developing the idea for your book, you don’t want to start with a perfect person in a perfect world. You want a character with specific flaws and fears who is uniquely challenged by their world. Pain should be baked right into that backstory. Even if you want to start with a generally happy character and take everything away from them, they should still have flaws and fears you can prey on while melting them down and forging them in a crucible of pain.

Throw thumbtacks in the cake mix. When I wrote my first few books, I wanted the characters to be relatable to literally everyone, which never works. We don’t want mild, smiling cardboard cutouts; we want characters so real and rich and messed up that it’s like we already know them. That means they have to be flawed—and not, “he’s so handsome no one believes he’s a spy”. Real flaws. Deep wounds. Troubled backstory that comes up at the most inconvenient of times. The key is to make them flawed but somehow likeable, meaning that if he’s a gruff jerk, we immediately learn it’s because he lost his entire family in a werewolf attack—and then we see him save a kitten when no one is looking. Maybe giving a character flaws and fears isn’t technically torturing them… but it’s more like throwing thumbtacks into the cake mix. Make it real enough and they’ll torture themselves.

Kick off with failure. I wrote an article for Crimereads called ‘Make the Face Match the Ass’ (https://crimereads.com/delilah-s-dawson-transformataion-in-thrillers/)which focuses on creating symmetry between the beginning and ending of a book. Since your protagonist generally triumphs at the end of the book, it’s nice to give them a symmetrical failure at the beginning. That means that if your character beats the bad guy in a hula hooping competition at the end, we see him suffer a tragic hula hoop-related accident at the beginning of the book. This failure can be as simple as being too shy to talk to a crush or as huge and terrible as Louis allowing his toddler to get run over in Pet Sematary. The bigger the fall, the better the rise.

The obstacle is the way. From the very beginning, make sure that there are all sorts of built-in problems for your character—don’t make it easy for them. You want to keep your reader on the edge of their seat, not knowing what will happen next. If possible, end every chapter on a cliffhanger or a question. If a chapter ends with a character happily falling asleep, it’s easy to put the book down and scroll through Instagram. If the character is falling asleep and hears a noise downstairs when they live alone, the reader may be compelled to keep reading.

When you’re not sure what to do next, think about the worst possible thing that could happen—and make it happen. Unless you’re a very strict outliner, chances are you’ve left some wiggle room for discovery in your first draft. Sometimes, you come up with the perfect idea while driving to work and feel like you’ve been tongue-kissed by the muse. Sometimes you come to a roadblock and your character is basically staring up at you like God in heaven, asking what comes next. That’s the perfect moment to throw a boulder at them. Let tragedy strike. Have them be attacked. Have their ex show up. Hit them with food poisoning. At the very least, throw a terrible, thundering downpour on them. Then they can’t stare up at you anymore.

Find your Jayne Cobb. It can be tempting to create a cast of characters who are all beautiful and perfect and lovely and get along famously, but again, that’s not a story—that’s a Publix commercial. When you add secondary characters, love interests, and acquaintances, build in that friction. Old grievances, moral differences, annoying habits, opposing wants and needs. Give your characters a reason to argue, to fight, to seethe. Sometimes the most interesting parts of the story come from what naturally happens between characters in quiet moments. It never hurts to throw a raging asshole into the mix and see what is extruded on the other side.

Even one small pebble can feel like the end of the world. Sure, a car accident or alien attack brings strife, but don’t forget how quickly the little things add up. If you don’t believe me, just put a pebble in your shoe and leave it there all day. Raccoons stealing food, a sneeze when silence is necessary, a child who won’t stop crying—it all adds up. If your character is on a journey through the forest and time is of the essence, a horse throwing a shoe is the biggest problem in the world. Don’t neglect the small things that become big things.

But don’t forget the big things. So we’ve got little things and people and fears and flaws that can create friction, but there’s so much more! Most characters are at odds with big things, too—the very foundations of the world. Culture, economics, laws, mores, religion. If a character loses their shoes in the swamp, they might not be allowed in the gas station if the guy up front is really serious about No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service. I’ll never forget Louis (yes, another Louis) from Ghostbusters trying every door and window of the upscale restaurant that wouldn’t let him in and then falling prey to the Terror Dog because of a few locked doors and some snooty waiters. When in doubt, put your character in an altercation with some authority and see where they end up.

At the All Is Lost moment, dial the torture up to 11. Right before The Big Fight or whatever you have as a climax, there’s always an All Is Lost moment. That’s when it feels like your character can never possibly win and, well, all is lost. It’s the dark night of the soul, the moment the protagonist wants to give up. Your job is to push this moment as far as you can—mentally, emotionally, physically. You need your backstory, flaws, fears, wounds, discomfort, betrayal, and hopelessness to all come together in one hot, lumpy stew for your protagonist to swallow down and fight past. We really have to believe they can’t win or can’t go on.

All this pain will be valuable to you someday. When you hit the climax of the story, that’s when you take your long list of tortures and show how your protagonist uses what they’ve learned to fight back. Take that pebble out of their shoe and load it into a slingshot. The purpose of all that torture was to mold your protagonist into someone capable of defeating not only the bad guy—but also that poor sap they were at the beginning, the weak wiener with all the worries. The harder you’ve pushed them, the higher they can rise when it’s go time. That’s what makes us stand up and cheer—having watched this character go through hell, keep on crawling, and finally triump, just like we all wish we could do (without having to suffer all the torture, of course).

But if you really want to see how I torture my characters, please pick up a copy of THE VIOLENCE. It’s available in all the usual places as a hardcover, e-book, or audiobook. Chuck liked it, so it must be good, right? [ed: I totally fucking loved this book and from page one you get the sense it’s something special, also here is where I note Delilah, myself, and Kevin Hearne will be going on a short li’l book tour next month: NYC, Rhode Island, Boston-area.]

Also, someone is bludgeoned to death with a bottle of Thousand Island dressing, and that has to count for something.

***

Delilah S. Dawson is the author of the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: Phasma and Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire, The Violence, Mine, Camp Scare, the Minecraft: Mob Squad series, the Hit series, the Blud series, the Tales of Pell (with Kevin Hearne), and the Shadow series (written as Lila Bowen), as well as the creator-owned comics Ladycastle, Sparrowhawk, and Star Pig, plus comics in the worlds of Firefly, Star Wars, the X-Files, Adventure Time, Rick & Morty, Marvel Action: Spider-Man, Disney Descendants, Labyrinth, and more.  Find her online at delilahsdawson.com.

We have officially added a third date!

CHECK IT OUT.

Wednesday, March 16 at 7:00pm

Strand Book Store

828 Broadway, New York, NY

Link for tickets.

Thursday, March 17 at 7:00pm

The United Theatre

5 Canal Street, Westerly, RI

*Presented by Savoy Bookshop & Café

Link for tickets.

Friday, March 18 at 7:00pm (or 6:30pm?)

Barnes & Noble

1 Worcester Rd, Framingham, MA

Store info here.

It’s me, Kevin Hearne, Delilah S. Dawson, and again we are tentatively doing an in-person tour next month, like, literally a month from today, holy crap. We will sign books. We will sign babies. We will ask that you be masked and vaxxed. We will talk and engage in various shenanigans. It will be great. As long as none of you cook up some new OMEGATRON variant in the next four weeks. BE COOL, EVERYBODY. Just. Be. Cool.

See you in NY, RI, and MA! Er, hopefully!

(*We’re doing this in support of The Violence, the paperback release of The Book of Accidents, and the new editions of The Iron Druid!)