Man, that title is a gratuitous grab for eyeballs, isn’t it?

I HAVE NO SHAME.

Further, I have very little understanding of Tantric Sex — I mean, I understand that something-something “enlightenment-through orgasm,” and something-something “erotic-ecstatic-consciousness,” and I’m pretty sure the penis becomes a magic wand and the vagina becomes a wizard’s hat and then Harry Potter yells “ejaculus patronus!” and a baby appears.

What am I, some kind of Kundalini Master? Whatever.

What I do know about Tantric Sex is the same thing probably the rest of you know, which is that one of the touted erotic techniques is the withholding of orgasm to intensify the power of the sex and its climax. Through this technique an average sexual encounter goes from the right old rumpy-pumpy to the coupling of two divine beings on a bed of writhing ghosts, and the standard orgasm goes from the popping of a tube of cookie dough to a mystical shower of embers from an iron-struck blade on the sexual force of that godly hornball, Hephaestus. Or something.

I’m probably losing the thread.

Point is, orgasm must be withheld.

And this is the lesson I want you to take away as a storyteller.

The power of withholding is key to telling a good story.

When describing something, withholding description allows for the audience to do work, to fill in the gaps, to bring something to the table and be a collaborator (at least in spirit) to the work. Further, by withholding description, you do not overwhelm with needless illustrative information. (Do we need to know what every lamp and sidetable and fingernail and skin tag look like? No we do not.) Pull back. Leave room. Do not overwhelm.

When creating characters, withholding aspects of that character (but teasing the existence of those aspects) gives us a sense of wanting to know more, more, more. A character with unrevealed secrets or stories interests us: we’re the kids at Christmas morning tearing through a pile of presents hoping to get to the big reveal at the end (a new bike! a BB gun! a Barbie dream home! a Turkish scimitar with which to behead thine enemies!).

When orchestrating plot, withholding information is the act of creating mystery, of removing points of data and replacing them with throbbing, pulsing question marks. Every question mark is a door that the reader wants desperately to walk through — and will do so almost to the point of compulsion, and compulsion is what we want, the compulsion to pick up the book again and again, the audience hungering to get back to the pages of the tale or to read the next issue or see the next episode. Litter your tale with unexplained mysteries big and small. The question will drive them: what does that strange tattoo on the woman’s back mean? Why did the wife kill the husband? Who is the one-eyed man? Who put the bomp in the bop-she-bop?

When instituting a relationship, withholding the culmination of that relationship has value. The will-they-won’t-they of romances. The denial of vengeance between one character and another. The mending of a broken friendship. The audience will continue to tear through pages, hoping to see the hero and the villain have their climactic showdown, hoping to see if the two star-crossed lovers will ever uncross the stars and come together, hoping to see if the sea-king and the mer-girl finally realize that they are father-and-daughter.

When complicating the goals of the protagonist, withholding victory and denying her success or an escape or an answering to her own questions is key — the audience is bound up with the protagonist and they want to see her safe and happy and vanquish darkness and find love and learn the truth. But by continuing to dangle the carrot, we see the protagonist urge forward through the story and we see the audience trailing along with her.

When determining the relationship between the protagonist and the audience, consider also withholding knowledge from one half but not the other. Things the characters know but the audience does not goes a long way toward establishing that gravitational mystery noted earlier. Withholding information from the characters but then revealing that information to the audience is dramatic irony, and makes the audience feel like they’re “in on the secret,” and further, become eager to know when the damning information they possess will finally catch up to the characters on the page.

At the end, this is about withholding what the audience wants. It’s about not showing the money shot right up front. It is about denying them narrative orgasm. It’s about build-up. And tension. And hesitation. And uncertainty. And fear. And lust. It’s about a trail of moist little morsels pulling them deeper and deeper into the tangled wood. It’s equal parts baited trap and Stockholm Syndrome. It’s about not giving up what the audience desires most and at the same time making them thank you for the privilege of being denied.

Further, it is the act of withholding that helps ensure that your climax is not a soft, limp rag plopping down on a cold linoleum floor. Save things to reveal until the end. Reserve those key sought-after moments until the final act.

Release them upon reaching the final thrust of your story and few will leave unsatisfied.

Do this poorly and withhold too much and you’ll have them leave the story frustrated. Or confused. Or feeling needlessly punished and left out in the cold. But do it right — dangle the carrot, drop the crumbs, give them a taste of what they can have if they keep on reading and watching and consuming the tale — and you’ll have them scurrying after you on their hands and knees, eyes bugging, tongues wagging. Hungry for their narrative fix.

GREAT NOW I NEED A COLD SHOWER. And a tissue.

At the news Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James was publishing a writing guide, I tweeted the following because I am at at least a little bit of a dick:

A writing guide by the 50 SHADES OF GREY author is like a cookbook written by Ronald McDonald. bostonherald.com/entertainment/…

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) March 11, 2013

And it was a ha-ha-funny tweet admittedly tasting of the vinegar tang of sour grapes because E.L. James has sold an eye-bursting number of copies of her book. I think by now everyone on the planet has at least three copies even if they don’t realize it. In truth I laud James for her success — I mean, shit, it’s out there, it’s selling, who am I to say she doesn’t deserve it? The joke for me is that just because the book sold well doesn’t make it the watermark for good writing, and so — well, blah blah blah, I’m explaining the joke, which of course kills it.

Regardless! A few folks tweeted or commented that it’s horrible she sells so well and what chance do they have of getting published and life sucks and the publishing industry is a cabal of vampires and we’re all fucking doomed so fuck it and let’s all just cry into our pillows.

Stop that.

Stop that right now.

You’re looking at the wrong thing.

You’re saying, “This crap over here is popular and that’s bad.”

Who cares? Who gives a jiggling jar of koala cock about that? Crap is frequently popular. (See earlier joke: Ronald McDonald.) It takes nothing away from your work or your chance of producing that work either on your own or when working with a strong and friendly publisher.

That one series of books is a lone floater in a very big pool of water.

Lift your gaze.

Look at your bookshelves.

I look at my shelves, I see books from years past and from this year and I see books that haven’t even been published yet (’cause I’m lucky like that) and you know what? They’re incredible! Great authors are producing great content and publishers are fucking publishing it. Who cares about some other book series? Books don’t really compete against one another. The 70 jizzillion people who bought the Fifty Shades books weren’t likely to buy your books anyway and if they do, great, yay, confetti, applause, puppies, ponies and popsicles for all.

Nothing in those books takes anything away from you.

Keep writing. Eyes forward. The popular kids are always gonna do what the popular kids are always gonna do. It’s a big world. Lot of readers. An infinite Internet. Keep writing.

To conclude? A point made by a very wise man who would’ve been 61-years-old today:

DON’T PANIC.

I’ve been enjoying the unholy hell out of some comics recently — just finished up the last trade of Locke & Key, still loving every weird and wonderful page of Saga, still hot for Cullen Bunn’s The Sixth Gun, and this week Marvel released an iOS app for their subscription service, described somewhat as a Spotify for their comics. (Basically: pay a monthly fee, get access to a giant archive of Marvel Comics, but nothing newer than six months old.)

Plus, I’m entertaining my own delusions of storytelling grandeur — I’m hoping that this might be the year I slide my parasitic tendrils into the gills of the unconquered industry and get to write a comic book or two or three OR THREE THOUSAND ahem I mean, what?

As such, I ask again for some recommendations.

What comics are you reading? Digging?

Not just Marvel and DC (though those count if you like ’em).

What else? Whatchoo got?

It’s International Women’s Day.

YAY WOMEN! WOO!

*applause*

*confetti*

*respect*

I’d like to say some things now from the perspective of a “writer with male parts,” and I’ll have you know that at first I hesitated to write this not because I was afraid of the response but because I am afraid I’d bungle it somehow. Sometimes people speak from a place of insensitivity without realizing it not because they are malicious but because they’re ignorant, and while I aim to dispel my ignorance at every given turn, sometimes we’re so damn deep in the mire of dumbshittery that it stops us from even seeing the ignorance in which we are trapped.

Just the same…

I figure to not say something because of fear is worse than saying something and accidentally coming across like a jackass. At least if I end up a jackass, I can be corrected, and we can all have a nice discussion. Ignorance sometimes must be dispelled by first putting it on display.

Anyway.

I’m a writer who, as noted, has dude parts.

I’m also a writer who writes a (here I’d like to add the description “fantabulous bestselling critically-acclaimed award-winning” but as yet I do not have the good fortune of such a language allowance) series of books about a character named Miriam Black.

Miriam is a character with lady parts.

As such, I get questions in interviews about me being a dude writing a lady and is that weird and what’s it like and so on and so forth. Further, I’ve read some criticism (sometimes reasonable, sometimes less so) that suggests that Miriam talks and acts like a man and so was clearly written by a man and a few have even gone on to suggest that men should not write women.

It’s surprising, in a sense, because to me Miriam was in some ways the embodiment of some of the tougher women I’ve met in my life and a refutation that female characters have to be particularly “feminine” — sure, Miriam has some aspects of me, though I don’t know they’re “male” aspects. She has some aspects of my wife, too, who is a foul-mouthed bad-ass who doesn’t put up with my shit or the shit of those around her.

Mockingbird carries the whole thing further, I think — most of the characters in that book are women, actually, as the book is predominantly set at a girl’s school.

Anyway, what happens then is I get that famous question:

What is a strong female character?

I never really know how to answer that question.

But, like I said, sometimes it’s worth talking and trying.

So, let me try.

A strong female character is a character who happens to be a woman or a girl.

“Strong” is not an adjective describing that character’s physical or emotional or intellectual strength. It is an adjective describing the potency and depth of the character — in the narrative, not moral sense. A strong character is complicated, flawed, compelling.

“Strong” is just a synonym here for “great.”

It’s tempting to say that the “female” part of that equation is incidental, and it is in the sense that it is not maleness or femaleness that creates this strength of character — or the “greatness,” if you dig that translation. But it’s also important to recognize that women have different experiences than men and to ignore those experiences is, I think, to do them a disservice by pretending those experiences don’t happen or don’t matter. The same difficulties women may have in the real world — the glass ceiling, the rape culture put forth by male oppression, a general lesser but no less significant culture of dismissal — can and sometimes should still be present in our fiction.

These female characters may be hampered and hamstrung not because they are women but because the society within the fiction treats women poorly — the “flaws” are external, not internal (though one presumes external pressure can eventually create internal flaws on the individual level, though when those flaws are translated to exist on the entire gender level we once more enter the realm of gender bias and, again, oppression).

Er, if that makes sense.

Sometimes in the discussion about strong female characters we hear those two words, “Bechdel Test,” which is a test to determine gender bias in a work of fiction by testing to see if the work has (a) more than two female characters who (b) have at least one conversation that (c) isn’t about men. It’s a rather incomplete way to check depth of character, however, not because the test is bad but because it’s far too limited and all too easy (checking those three boxes does little to create great female characters, in my opinion).

We must then ask, well, what? What do we do? As writers of any and all genital configurations?

Well, I dunno.

But I can hazard a guess.

I think you strive to write female characters as great as you would male characters. You make them as complex. As heroic. As flawed. As compelling. As powerful or as weak.

You do not ignore that they are girls or women.

Of course they can be flawed. They should be. Because great characters are.

But their flaws and complexities are not because they are women.

(Is “oh, it’s because she’s a woman” ever a good excuse to include any character aspect?)

You needn’t elevate them onto a pedestal.

You needn’t drop them into the pit.

You just need to make sure they and their experiences are represented. And fully-formed — not some caricature, not some cardboard cut-out, not some sex object or silly goose.

Women in this world, the real one, can do anything.

Make sure the women who populate your fictional worlds have that same opportunity.

Oh, and by the way, the same goes with writing any character of any persuasion: man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, Muslim, Christian, Republican, Democrat, transgender, fat, anorexic, and so on and so forth. Everybody has experiences bound to their culture (and where applicable, their choices) but their strengths and flaws needn’t be bound to who they are at the core.

Or something.

I’ve gone on too long, probably.

Anyway, Happy International Women’s Day.

Don’t let anyone marginalize you. I aim to teach my son of your awesomeness.

*high-five*

(For a far more powerful and eloquent look at this subject, please click forth and behold Greg Rucka’s post about “Why I Write Strong Female Characters.”)

I should probably take care with naming my blog posts.

Oh well.

SO IT IS OFFICIAL.

I am making my way to Florida April 13th through the 16th.

Flying to Fort Lauderdale, visiting Miami and the Keys, and then fleeing the moist, tacky heat and ocean-fed breeze in order to return to the woodland embrace of Pennsylvania.

As noted the other day, I am thinking of doing a kind of ninja book signing / Q&A / hangout / breakfast-or-booze thing while down there.

Some folks expressed interest! Which is good. Because otherwise you’re going to make me drink alone and sign books for myself, which is probably the epitome of sad (BUT SCREW IT I’LL DO IT). I feel like doing it that Saturday (the 13th) makes the most sense, since, well, it’s a Saturday. That’s the day I get in, but I arrive early thanks to a direct flight.

Probably need to start thinking about, y’know, where this will happen. A park? A bar? A mall? Inside a shark tank? On a cocaine-filled speedboat as we escape the po-po?

But seriously: any ideas as to where to go in and around Miami or Ft. Lauderdale?

Ideally somewhere where we can eat and drink and talk. AND KILL.

I mean, not that last part.

Lemme know too if you think you’re down with the ninja-author-hangout.

Last week’s challenge: “Super-Ultra-Mega Game of Aspects.”

I’m kind of in love with this random sentence generator.

You are going to love it too.

I SAID YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE IT TOO

*points crossbow at your face*

Ahem.

Seriously, it creates a kind of… insane poetry.

So —

Go click the link to the random sentence generator.

Get a random sentence.

It’s okay if you have to reclick a few times.

Let’s say, upwards of ten reclicks.

Choose one of those ten sentences.

And use that sentence in a piece of flash fiction up to 1000 words long. See? Super easy.

Let us know what your sentence is before you write because, hey, it’s fun.

You’ve got one week, as usual. Finish your tale by Friday, March 15th, at noon EST. Publish at your online space and link back here so we can all check it out. Dig? Dug.

Get writing, word-nerds.